We are back from our trip to visit the grandparents in Chicago. Everything went smoothly for us from air travel to the weather - fortunately it wasn't too cold and we even had a White Christmas! As you can see from the look on Reese's face, we had a lot of fun.Grandma and Grandpa's house is big and has so many things to look at and explore. Not the least of which is the Christmas tree.
It has been in the same spot and decorated in almost the same way since I was a little girl but to Reese of course, it is all new and amazing. She is working on her crawling (anyday now!) but she mostly stays put so we didn't have to do too much to keep it out of her reach.She also learned to play piano. We'll let you all know when she'll be giving her first recital.
As I said, the weather cooperated. It was in the mid-30's most of the time and there was snow on Christmas Eve and Day so we were able to take Reese out in the backyard to do a little sledding. Here she is doing her tribute to Ralphie's little brother from the Christmas Story.
I'll be honest, Reese wasn't wild about the snow. If you go back and look at the post from August where we took her to the swimming pool for the first time, her facial expression looked very similar. A sort of, "why are you doing this to me" look.
We asked her to make a snow angel but she didn't oblige.
There were many highlights to our visit. For one thing Reese finally got to meet her Uncle Morgan. Uncle Morgan was unable to come home when we visited in July so he has been very eager to meet his niece.
Reese also got to experience dinner at The Drake Hotel on Christmas Eve, a Halacy family tradition for 20+ years. It was her first encounter with Santa Claus. Next year, when she can walk and talk, we'll take her to see him at the mall. 
For now, she can admire him from afar.
We need to go to the mall soon and check out some after-Christmas sales. It will be hard to top this year's look but I'm sure we can find her another pretty Christmas dress for next year.
Christmas morning was delightful, it was nice to see toys under the Christmas tree again after many, many years. The grandparents showed remarkable restraint for baby's first Christmas. We only had to ship 2 boxes of presents back to San Diego!
In addition to the Fisher Price animal sounds farm, Reese also got her two front teeth for Christmas (hey, that should be a song...)
Unfortunately you can't see the new teeth without prying open her jaw. So, I'll just leave you with this photo of clouds and sunset from the air just above San Diego as we flew home.
Happy New Year everyone!
