Leland's First Holidays

Wow, can't believe its already been more than a month since our last blog. It has been a busy past few weeks...

Highlights from the Holidays, with accompanying pictures:

- Christmas at our house with the Pacho and Malazo Families, 12/24/08

Leland of course still doesn't understand the full concept of Christmas, gifts, Santa, etc. He does like the colorful wrapping paper and cardboard boxes, though. They make for perfect chewing objects.

- Christmas Day with the neighbors, 12/25/08

Apart from waiving hello to the folks in our neighborhood, there are a few that we stop and chat with occassionally. Then there's Scott and family next door- Best Neighbor in the Whole World. Might have mentioned this before. Anyways, he had a small gathering he invited us to. This is us next to the extremely large Christmas tree. Leland did great amongst the white folks, being passed around from stranger to stranger without a peep. Social butterfly.

- Post Christmas, MacDigity's come by from LA, 12/26/08

Leland's cousins Xavier and Vinny came by the house on their way up from LA. The last they saw each other was when we visited them in October. They were all pretty excited to see each other. One thing we learned: Xavier loves beer-battered onion rings!!!

- New Year's Eve at Amy's, 12/31/08

With Leland, we knew our New Year's party was going to consist of just us three in our house, Leland asleep in his crib while watching Dog the Bounty Hunter... And that's what we did. Beforehand, we did make it out to a family party and got our grub on. But come midnight, Leland was out, and it was just Melissa and I watching Dick Clark (struggling) to count down...

- New Year's Day at John Muir, 01/01/09So we get a call New Year's Morning from Jay-R. Not good news. We find out one of our good friends got into a bad fight (at a family party) with some hoodrats slashing tires. We all go visit him in the hospital, where multiple stab wounds later, he's up, alert and making jokes.

- New Year's Day at Cha Am in Vallejo, 01/01/09

After eating at our favorite Thai restaurant, we were about to order dessert when all of a sudden Leland started mumbling... "Mmmm...Maaa....Mmmm...Maaammaaa....Maaamaa....MAMA!" You should of seen the looks on Mama Macho's face. Leland has been saying "Dada" really well for the last couple of months, so for him to say "Mama..." Well, Leland got to eat Fried Banana with Coconut Ice Cream for that!

- New Year's Day at the Macaraeg-Collins House, 01/01/09

Along with the MacDigity's, Dustin & Ruby were hear from Chicago. The first time the "Jongs" (James, Leif, Jeff and Dustin) were able to spend time with each other for almost one whole year.