Kalamazoo Christmas

After a rough week before Christmas and an even rougher flight into Kalamazoo, by Christmas morning Jasper was able to have fun again. He loves spending time with his cousins, Karin and Linnea, who love spending time with him in return. They were such great girls on Christmas morning who patiently waited for all the adults to get up before they looked at their stockings. They then helped distribute all the presents so we could open them one by one. Did you know there was a monster truck at the nativity? I had no idea, but Jasper assured us there was. This nativity set is a gift from his aunties, uncles and cousins. It plays "Away in a Manger" when you press on the angel on top of the stable. Jasper likes to dance to the music.
There was no shortage of people to love on Jasper over Christmas. Here he's spending some quality time with Uncle Chris.
His cousin Karin let Jasper play with her new Bitty baby doll stroller. This is as close as he's come to playing with dolls, and really it's only because it's on wheels. :)
Jasper got new Robeez from Nana and Papa. They have lions on them. Jasper does know who a lion is and what it says. His roar is quite tame but quite adorable.

Oh my, the girls got a microphone for Christmas. They loved it! They're both quite excellent singers, so we were given concerts all week. It was great!

Here are some videos of a church service the girls held for us. (the videos are broken up for length but meant to be viewed sequentially.)

The Jasper girls (Britt, Erica and Lindsay) in '07:
The Shively family (Adam, Linnea (age 5), Karin (age 3 1/2) and Brittany)
The Atkinsons with Daisy:
In her shopping through little kid toy catalogs, Nana came across an updated version of Rubik's Race. This is Lindsay's trophy game. She routinely whips us whenever we play her. I don't know why she felt the need to practice.

I have no idea what it is about midwestern weather that makes Jasper's hair go CRAZY ... but he woke up from almost every nap looking like he'd just performed some science experiment.

Even though it was a busy week with lots of people, nana got some cuddle time with each grandchild. (Papa was unfortunately sick on Christmas eve and Day. He was a trooper to hang out with us despite not feeling well. We stayed home with him from church on Christmas eve. Jasper still wasn't back to normal and wouldn't have made it through the service.)



An excursion while in Kalamazoo was to the mall to check out the carosel. It was actually really nice. It turned out to be a gorgeous west Michigan day (translation = the SUN was shining). First daddy rode the carosel with Jasper.

then mommy rode it with him.
Cousin Karin was nearby on the carosel. All the kids loved it.
And Linnea loves helping take care of Jasper. She's often looking out for him.
The day we flew out of Kalamazoo we got snow. Snow that came down in big thick flakes. It quickly coated everything with a beautiful white blanket. On their last afternoon together, Linnea and Karin sat with Jasper and read him a book. They all had fun.

One really nice side effect of all the snow is that BIG snow plows were out clearing the runways at the airport, so in the long wait we had for all the passengers to get on the plane and during deicing, Jasper was quite entertained looking out the window at these big trucks. He actually had his face plastered to the window pane. It was adorable!