"Another year over, a new one just begun" 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful holiday and great start to the new year. This Christmas was really special. Clara seemed to revel in all of the excitement, enjoying the company of her Grandparents and Godparents, visiting and meeting new friends at various Christmas parties, and ripping open and tearing into beautiful colored packages in order to discover fun toys from Santa. She seemed to enjoy it all, and we certainly loved watching her discover the joy of Christmas, even if her understanding of it this year was pretty limited. We hope that Christmas can be a magical time for her in years to come. Spending Christmas in worship at Calvary and helping lead through music was also very special for us.

Clara must have been good the last 8 months of her life, because Santa did not disappoint. Some of her favorite gifts included a pair of bongos, several handmade items from her aunts Christy and Cara, stacking rings, and several beautiful new books. Clara's Godparents, (my aunt and uncle) presented her with a very special ornate box frame which displays the baptismal shell and cloth from her christening, along with her name and the date of the service. We look forward to finding a special place in our home to display it.

We rang in the New Year with my parents and aunt and uncle from Virginia. Joey cooked up an amazing three-course fondue New Year's Eve dinner. Around 11:00pm we walked down to the ocean where a large bonfire was burning and celebrated the arrival of 2012 with the Stonington Borough ball drop and fireworks at midnight. It was an incredibly clear night, and the combination of the beauty of the stars in the sky with the sound of the ocean waves below made for a spectacular transition into the new year.

And now life comes back to normal. Joey is back at work, and I am back to practicing, teaching violin and taking care of our darling Clara. The Christmas tree and decorations are no more, and the living room is back to being Clara's playground. She is 8 months old now and sits up all by herself. She can crawl backwards but is still trying to coordinate the forward motions. Most importantly though, Clara now says "Da-da", a word that melts the heart of my sweet husband every time he hears it. What an incredible year it has been. May there be many more to come. Happy 2012!

Erin, Joey and Clara

"It's the most stressful...I mean, wonderful time of the year!"

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for Christmas decorating, cookie baking, card writing, gift sending and gig playing (for those of us who work as freelance musicians). We actually really love this time of year. Joey and I both enjoy putting our Christmas decorations out, and this year we decided to invest in a much bigger and higher quality fake tree (is that some kind of oxymoron?). We also decided to use white lights instead of colored lights, and I think they look really beautiful. White lights are a European tradition, and I have always thought they looked very elegant.

We have had fun watching Clara experience her first Christmas season. The town of Stonington puts on an event every year called the "Stonington Stroll". People gather in the green and sing Christmas carols, drink hot cider and celebrate the lighting of the tree. This is followed by a lovely walk down Water Street (the main street with all of the restaurants and shops) where businesses have decorated their windows and give out free goodies and wine. Joey, Clara and I took part in the stroll and had a lot of fun singing and looking at the decorations. Joey and Clara were interviewed and photographed by a reporter from the "Westerly Sun"(a local Rhode Island paper) during the carol sing, and we were shocked to find that a picture of Joey and Clara with carolers in the background made the front cover of the paper the next morning!

We have been doing other fun Christmas activities. We took a trip to a Christmas tree farm where we picked up a wreath and a few other "real" holiday plants. Clara had fun looking at the wreaths and Christmas store. We also took a trip to Providence, RI to check out a mall everyone had been telling us about. It was a very nice mall, and Clara got to meet Santa (well, Santa's helper) and have her picture taken with him. She wasn't too sure that Santa was such a stand-up guy. At one point during the photo shoot she turned to check him out a little closer and promptly burst into tears. Overall though, I think it was an okay first experience with a mall Santa, and the pictures turned out pretty cute. We also visited an old Cider mill in Mystic, CT where we enjoyed fresh apple cider and wine tasting.

December can sometimes be a very busy month, especially when your husband is a church musician. Joey has had some really busy years in the past with multiple Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services to play. This year, however, is really pretty simple. There is only one Christmas Eve service at 11pm and then a Christmas morning service at 10am at Calvary. I am going to be playing violin for the Christmas Eve service. Also, in the past Joey has had to commute quite a distance for church and kill time between services. This year he will actually get to spend a lot of time at home and even enjoy a Christmas Eve dinner with my parents and me. My parents arrive on December 19th and will be here until January 2nd. My aunt and uncle from Virginia (Clara's Godparents) will also be here to celebrate New Years with us. We are really excited about seeing everyone. Unfortunately we can't make it home to MN this year, so we will miss seeing Joey's side of the family. We hope they can come see us sometime this Spring.

Clara is going to be 8 months old on the 20th. She is now sitting up all by herself. She can sit and play for several hours which allows me to get some good practicing done while I watch her. She responds well to my playing. She really likes my bow, and when I play something fast she laughs and claps. It's pretty cute. (Clapping is also a newly learned skill). She sleeps 9-10 hours a night, usually waking up once for a quick bottle and then going back to sleep. She is also starting to develop a better napping routine. Napping has always been difficult for her, but she is starting to have longer naps at more predictable times, which makes my life a lot easier. She is a sweet little girl, and we are excited about her first Christmas. She has a sparkly red dress to wear on Christmas day, and I recently took some photos of her in it in front of the Christmas tree. I used the best pictures for our Christmas card, so I won't post those until later. Here are a few others to enjoy.

It's easy to get caught up in the commercial side of Christmas. Joey and I sometimes have to stop and remind ourselves about the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus. It is also a wonderful time to give thanks to God for the many blessing in our lives. Whatever your beliefs or traditions this time of year, we hope you have a magical holiday season with very little stress and a lot of happiness and love!

Joey, Erin and Clara

Thanksgiving 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving day. Our Thanksgiving started out bright and early this morning at 3:45am when Clara woke up crying and was unable to go back to sleep due to pain from teething. Poor Clara suffered off and on throughout the day and only seemed to be able to find relief by sucking on cold teething rings. I guess someday she will be thankful for her teeth, but right now they are giving her a hard time.

In spite of Clara's teething issues, we were able to enjoy the day. Joey still managed to turn out a wonderful meal although he was quite exhausted from getting up so early with Clara. As it turns out, we did not have to spend the holiday alone. We found out that some new friends of ours from church were also going to be spending the day alone so we invited them to join us for dinner at our home. They contributed some wonderful food and wine to our meal. It was a fun afternoon with great food and conversation. Clara managed to take a long nap during our meal and seemed to find some relief from her gum pain later this evening.

Traditionally we have always decorated for Christmas on "Black Friday" and we plan to do so tomorrow. We were able to skype with a few of our family members today but I also wanted to write a quick entry wishing those of you who follow our blog a very Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you enjoyed the day with family and friends. Have a safe and fun holiday weekend!

Joey, Erin and Clara