Turkeys, Nutcrackers and a baby!

19 moths old!

Dear Family and Friends,
Let me first start off by saying NO, I am not expecting! The "baby"part of the title of this post refers to the beautiful baby girl my brother Alan and his wife Cara brought into the world this afternoon. Her name is Aravis Moore and she is my third niece and my dad's ninth grandchild. We are so happy for Alan and Cara. They already have four wonderful little boys and now a precious little girl. I was thrilled to be able to send many of Clara's gently used clothes to Aravis and she will certainly be receiving more in the future. Before I had Clara I really never understood the magic of bringing a child into the world. Every child is such a miracle. Congratulations Alan and Cara! 

In other news...We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It seems as though this month flew by, but I realized that the last blog I posted was on Nov 7th, so there was a shorter lapse between blogs. Thank you to those of you who have expressed your enjoyment of our blog. I appreciate your interest and I will do my best to keep the posts coming. This is going to be one of my shorter blog posts. I have to make up for the never ending post from last month. I'm sure I will end up posting a lot of pictures, but I will try to keep the writing to a minimum.

Trying on her new holiday sweater dress

Clara and daddy

Happy girl!

Joey, Clara and I enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It was nice to have a little break from work, especially for Joey. It felt a little like the calm before the storm since December promises to be an extremely busy month. We spent Thanksgiving day with our good friends Richard and Lois who live in Stonington. We shared in the food preparation. Lois prepared the turkey, stuffing, sweet potato puree and a delicious pumpkin pie and eggnogg cranberry tart, among other things. Joey prepared corn casserole, an Italian green been dish, and cranberry sauce. The meal was wonderful. We ate our adult meal while Clara napped and let her enjoy the feast after she woke up around 6pm. It was a fun and relaxing day.

Skyping with both sets of grandparents

We spend black Friday the way we always traditionally spend the day by visiting a Christmas tree farm and decorating our home for Christmas.  We drove to Olsen's Tree Farm in Voluntown, CT and picked up some wreathes. Clara really wanted to get a real tree, but since we have such a nice fake tree we decided to continue using that. When we got home we ate leftovers and drank eggnog while decorating the house. The house looks very Christmassy now and feels warm and cozy. We have candles in each of the windows at the front of the house. They are light sensitive so they turn on as it gets dark. The tradition of placing candles in the windows during the winter seems to be big here on the East Coast.

Christmas tree farm

"I want this one!"

"I also want this one!"

Trying on the tree skirt

Helping with decorating

Dreaming of Christmas

Decorations are up!

Come on down the chimney Santa!

Relaxing after a day of decorating

Clara is now 19 months old and has found a new passion in life; dancing to the Nutcracker ballet. Clara has been dancing to music for a while now, but this month we pulled out our DVD of the Nutcracker ballet with the American Ballet Theatre. The ballet features two incredible dancers, Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov. In my opinion it is the best version of the ballet available on DVD.  The music is well done and the dancing is incredible. Clara has completely fallen in love with the DVD and will dance for the entire hour and 18 minutes it plays. She wakes up in the morning and asks for "cracker" and asks for it again after dinner. Needless to say, Joey and I are getting to know the ballet very well. The interesting and fun thing is that I grew up dancing to and loving the exact same version of the Nutcracker. Back then I watched it on VHS. I also studied ballet very seriously when I was a child and the highlight of my year was performing in the Nutcracker production. Clara seems to take after me with her love of dance and of the Nutcracker.

Dancing up a storm

Pure joy!

Trying to do the splits!

                                   
Well, that's the news for now. December is going to be very busy up until Christmas for both Joey and me. Our students will perform in a recital on Dec. 15th. Joey is conducting and playing organ for the Calvary Church Messiah sing a long again this year. He is also leading lessons and carols for advent at Calvary and accompanying a couple of services at St. Paul's Episcopal church in Fairfield where he used to be organ scholar. My parents will arrive in CT on Dec. 22nd and will stay through the new year. My aunt and uncle will also be with us for the new year. We have talked up Santa Claus to Clara during the last several weeks and now if you ask her what Santa says she will reply "HoHoHo!" It's really cute and we are looking forward to taking her to meet Santa Claus sometime this month.
We hope you enjoy this holiday season and that you can spend it with the ones you love. In my opinion this truly is "the most wonderful time of the year!"


Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
Joey, Erin and Clara