First walk of the year

We just de-Christmasified our house, which is just as much of an art as putting up all the decorations in the first place. By the time we take them down again we can't remember what went in what box and end up shoving things helter skelter until we can close the lids on our boxes. It's kind of like a puzzle.

Somehow we added a box of Christmas stuff this year...it could be the Christmas Village sets that Sister Kitchen gave to us. Those take up a whole lot of room. No matter how we packed the boxes we couldn't get them to fit in the three designated Christmas boxes, so now we have four. Plus our tree. That's what we get for getting married in December, I suppose. Half our gifts were Christmas decorations.

When we had gotten all the lights back into their original packages, a feat in itself, and checked our house over to make sure we didn't miss anything, Andrew took the boxes outside to put them back in our shed.

Our poor little storage shed is full to bursting. How we got that much stuff I will never know. I guess the storage shed is more like an outdoor closet and half the space is taken up by our many suitcases, but still...we have a lot of stuff.

Andrew used his tetris skills to work the Christmas boxes back in there. When he came back inside he remarked,

"It's eerily warm outside."

The high today was 47 F. We took the opportunity to enjoy the warm(ish), melty weather and go for our first walk of 2008 wearing nothing but light jackets (and our clothes, of course).

It was so nice and warm--the day could only have been improved a) the sun been out and b) we knew the warm weather would last, which we're quite certain it won't since it's only the 4th of January.

Rachel had a great time though! She loves going outside.


She's getting to be such a grabby baby. The first thing she did when I put her in the stroller was to grab onto the tray with both hands. By the time I got out the camera she was down to one hand.


She explored snow with Daddy. We took it away when she decided it would make a good snack.

What do we have here?
Can I touch it, really?
It's cold...
There's snow on my face!

She loves when Daddy does crazy things with her in the stroller. He runs around and steers crookedly and tips her backwards.

Wheee!

It looks like this is the last of the warm weather for a while so I'm glad we got out to enjoy it.