Christmas Trip to PA

On Christmas day we traveled with Pop Pop Green up to Uncle Kevin and Aunt Rhonda's in Macungie to spend the holiday with them, Brett, Lena, and Grandpa and Grandma Heier who were visiting from Nebraska. We spent a couple of days up there and have plenty of pictures to show for it:

We had a great Christmas with the family!

Buena Noche (Christmas Eve)

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated Buena Noche at Aunt Lisa and Uncle Rich's house. It was so nice and made me think of Christmas memories of Buena Noche Feasts at Mima and Pipo's house in South Florida. Lisa (and Rich) prepared a yummy meal, consisting of arroz con pollo (chicken and yello rice), puerco con mojo (pork seasoned with mojo), frijoles (black beans), platanitos (plantain chips), yuca (like potatoes? in mojo sauce), and a super yummy lava chocolate cake (not cuban, but OH SO YUMMY!). It was great to spend time with Pop Pop, Lisa, Rich, Lisa's brother Sean, and their puppy Channing and foster puppy Anabelle. We look forward to continuing this tradition in the coming years. Thanks guys!

Our Hosts: Uncle Rich and Aunt Lisa

The Cook!

Bruce (held by Aunt Lisa) with Channing, Sean, and Uncle Rich

Bruce and Aunt Lisa

Dada and Bruce

Pop Pop, Bruce, and Uncle Rich

Mama, Bruce, and Dada

A Merry Christmas indeed!

A Merry Christmas to all!

We had a wonderful Christmas holiday this year. Bruce was lucky enough to spend his first Christmas with all his Grandparents and his East Coast aunts and uncles, though everyone was in our thoughts, particularly as our Nebraska family was hit by a bigtime blizzard this year, Delaware was chilly, and the Miami contigent, while warm, was equally missed.

We started off Christmas week with the greatest snowfall on record for our area in the last few decades, guaranteeing Bruce's (and Deanna's) first White Christmas (as you may have seen in pictures on our blog) . It was pretty, even this Florida girl will admit. We were joined by Pop Pop on Monday and Grandma and Grandpa Heier on Tuesday and it was really nice to have everyone around. Bruce is a lot more mobile and interactive since the last time we were all together. Everyone got to see Bruce sporting his new pearly white teeth (we're up to 8 teeth now! 4 on top, 4 on the bottom) and they got to see his new moves too as he can quickly get from one side of the room to the other by either crawling or walking while hanging on to the gates or couches with one hand. He's quite a squirmy boy, doesn't sit still for very long; that's the Eleuterio (Guerra) in him.

On Christmas Eve, Grandma and Grandpa Heier headed North to Macungie to see Lena and Aunt Rhonda in their church Christmas pageant. While we, with Pop Pop, headed over to Aunt Lisa and Uncle Rich's house for a traditional Cuban Buena Noche celebration (blog post to follow).

Christmas morning, Bruce awoke to several presents under the tree left by Santa and many family and friends, of which he was most excited about the gift wrap! Lots of neat presents and beautiful Christmas cards from those near and far. Thanks to all who sent their Christmas wishes. Then on Christmas Day we headed up to Macungie to join Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Kevin, Aunt Rhonda, Lena and Brett for Christmas Dinner (another blog post to follow).

We hope you all had a Wonderful Christmas too and that the joy of the season made its way into each of your hearts!

Robb, Deanna, Bruce and Duke on Christmas Morning

Many of you asked what Bruce thought of Christmas, well...

I think it's safe to safe he liked it!

A cozy Husker coat from Grandma and Grandpa

A UNL Piggy Bank from Aunt Becky, Uncle Chris and the 5 C's

Start saving those pennies Bruce!

A Pop Pop (I mean Woody!) doll from Pop Pop :)

And a great time with Grandma and Grandpa, thanks for visiting!

Bruce Meets Santa Claus

On Thursday, December 17, we took Bruce to the Tyson's Corner mall to get his picture taken with Old Saint Nick. After waiting patiently in line for an hour, he got to meet the man:

So let me get this straight...

You come to my house and you bring me presents?

Do my parents know about this?

Christmas Decorations

We pulled out the Christmas decorations a couple weeks ago and put up our Family Christmas tree. I had dreams of Bruce's eyes lighting up when he saw the tree, the ornaments, the lights! But no, it seemed like he hardly realized it was there and he would look everywhere in the room, but at the tree. Nonetheless, we made attempts to have him help put up our favorite ornaments. It was a difficult photo day, but we managed to snap a few to share with you all below.

Hope everyone has a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!

Dada putting up the Christmas Tree Star

Bruce and Dada hanging Robb's favorite ornament

An Angel with a bell that reads 'Every time a bell rings an angel gets their wings'

From It's a Wonderful Life (Robb's favorite Christmas movie)

Bruce and Mama hanging Deanna's favorite ornament

A butterfly of course ;)

Our little reindeer trying to run away instead of posing with the tree

Robb, Bruce, and Duke posing in front of the tree

Bruce sneaking a peek at the tree when Mama wasn't looking

but Grandma Angel was watching!

Thanksgiving Visitors!

We had lots of visitors Thanksgiving week, reminded us of all the wonderful people in our lives that we are thankful for. We are so blessed to have so many family and friends who have supported us through the years. We love you all!

The week started off with a visit from Pop Pop! On Sunday, we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at the Majestic with Pop Pop, Uncle Rich, and Aunt Lisa. Bruce had a little bit of turkey to get ready for the Big Day. Bruce and Pop Pop had a nice time hanging out together and Bruce really loves his new Learn and Groove table, he plays with it every day.

On Wednesday we said our goodbyes to Pop Pop and an hour later we welcomed the Macungie Heiers (Kevin, Rhonda, Lena and Brett) and later that day we welcomed our good friends Matt, Valerie and their daughter Avery who drove down from Connecticut. Since the only food in the house that night was reserved for Thanksgiving Day, we ventured out to the Tysons Corner Mall (our first trip that week) for some dinner and playtime at the Mall playground. We even got to ride around on the train!

Bruce, Lena and Brett at the playground

Lena, Deanna, Avery and Brett on the Train

Robb, Uncle Kevin and Bruce eatin' Coldstone Ice Cream

Avery, Valerie and Matt

(Avery showing her Bubblegum Blue tongue!)

And we ended the night with a Seussical bedtime story

(Avery, Robb, Brett, Lena, Uncle Kevin and Bruce)

And then there was Black Friday! Now for those who didn't know this about me, shopping is pretty much my least favorite thing to do...ever. But Valerie knew just how to get me on board because the thing I pretty much love most is Tradition! So we carried on with a Horsley tradition to venture out on Black Friday. Here in Northern Virginia, Black Friday starts at midnight, so there we were 11:59 PM on Thanksgiving Night back at Tyson's Corner Mall. Nothing in particular to shop for, but there I was. I'll admit, there were some good deals. A nice winter coat for Bruce (original price $54, on sale for $14). But once we hit that 2 AM mark, I was ready to drop. It was still quite an experience! I could not believe how many people were there. And boy can Valerie and Rhonda shop, you go Girls! Now I can say I've had the full Thanksgiving experience.

Thanksgiving 2009

Better late than never right!

We spent Bruce's First Thanksgiving at home, hosting dinner for 11 guests plus the 3 of us. We were blessed to have Kevin, Rhonda, Lena, and Brett, our friends Matt, Valerie and their daughter Avery, and some of Deanna's family from Delaware Aunt Carole, Uncle Tom, Aunt Kathy, and Audrey come for dinner. Robb again prepared a wonderful meal consisting of a full bird plus another turkey breast, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, salad, rolls, and of course, corn! And we were also pleased to have THREE pumpkin pies, thanks to Aunt Kathy and Giant. The cook is a bit of a pumpkin pie purist; the only dessert allowed was pumpkin pie. But Aunt Carole luckily snuck in some petit fours too!

We continued a few Green Family traditions including the Thank You tree, where each guest and guests abroad as well (Pop Pop and Grandpa and Grandma Heier contributed too) write what they are thankful for on a paper leaf and we tape the leaves to our Thank You tree. A special thank you to Lena, Brett, and Avery for their help making the tree and leaves. We also kept a tradition from last year of making turkey hand placemats, we had some pretty interesting ones!

What did Bruce think of Thanksgiving you ask? Well, dinner fell right at nap time so he actually slept through dinner, but once he got up he had his taste of turkey and sweet potatoes, yum!

It was a really nice day and it was great to spend time with everyone. Unfortunately, our hands were a little full that day, so we didn't get many pictures, but Uncle Tom will surely have some nice ones we can post later on.

Robb carving the turkey

Our First Thanksgiving as a Family

Snowpocalypse 2009

Sorry for the blog hiatus. It's always so hard to keep up at this time of year, seems even tougher this year since we want to spend every free minute we get with Brucie.

But we had to write to let everyone know that we survived Snowpocalypse 2009! Between late Friday night and late Saturday night, we received between 16 and 20 inches of snow in our area and we are still shoveling our way out. Now, I have very little perspective on such matters, but even Robb admitted that this was the most snow he had seen fall in a 24 hour period. Thank goodness it happened over the weekend so we could watch the lovely white fluffies fall throughout the day and cover all the cars, trees, and everything outside without needing to commute to work. Unfortunately we did miss out on the Kings Holiday party and Christmon decorating at Church, but hope to see you all soon after the holidays.

Bruce's first snowfall was actually a couple weeks back, on Saturday, December 5th. A few pictures from his first adventure with snow are below too. This time Bruce stayed warm inside with Mama, while Dada went out to shovel the snow. It took 3+ hours to get the cars out. But what was nice was that all the neighbors got out around the same time and helped each other shovel the common areas. It was neat to watch everyone working together. And Robb really got a workout (he even wore is weight belt for support, thanks Uncle Darrel for the advice!). Duke was not a fan of the white fluffy stuff, but he made his way through to do his business. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Enjoy the pictures of our Winter Wonderland below!

Bruce's first time in the snow (Dec 5th)

Hmm, this is different

The taste test

(hopefully the neighborhood dogs were not here already)

Bruce's snow angel

Snowpocalypse 2009

(December 19th)

Don't worry Bruce, we won't make you go out this time!

Where's Duke?!?

There he is!

Bruce is 9 months old!

Bruce is 9 months old!
What a cute little reindeer

Well, it's been an interesting month. This one felt longer somehow ;) Bruce continues to grow bigger each day and is always getting into something (hence the transformation of our living room into a prison yard).

Movement: Bruce continues to be very active. He can crawl very quickly across the room, occasionally distracted by his toys, but always finding his way to Mama and Dada on the couch. One night, he even crawled from one side of the room to the other, when Deanna said 'come to Mama.' He is also starting to walk by himself while holding onto his gates and the couches. He can very easily pull himself up to standing position and has also now figured out how to sit back down gracefully.

Oral: Vocal development is pretty much the same. Bruce continues to babble, particularly when he is sleepy. He has a not so nice scream when he gets bored, that we are trying to put the kibosh on. He likes to amuse himself by playing with his lips and making a funny noise.

Lots more teeth to show off. Bruce now has 4 fully emerged teeth on the bottom, and just this week has cut through 3 teeth on the top. Needless to say, it's been a long, painful week for all 3 of us (short naps, fussy eating, and generally just not happy about anything).

Eating: Bruce's feeding schedule is weighed more heavily on solids now, and he seems to prefer finger foods to his baby food, but mainly still getting baby food. His schedule consists of a whole container of fruit with oatmeal for breakfast (stage 2), a whole container of veggies for lunch (stage 2-3), and various baby food meat/veggie combinations for dinner. He also continues to get about 30 oz of formula each day. His new finger foods include egg yolk, sharp cheddar cheese, turkey, pasta, peach yogurt, apple cinnamon puffs, sweet potato puffs, and banana puffs. He also has tried a few new baby food combinations: banana yogurt, turkey/sweet potato and spaghetti (which he was not so fond of). It's gotten a little tougher to feed Bruce his solids some days, and we can already sense the behavioral testing starting. He occasionally will purse his lips and he likes to look at everything around him except the person trying to feed him. There's also been some arm and leg flailing that has resulted in flying baby food. Usually, he eventually eats it all, but it's a bit more trying these days. We've learned that making him laugh or cry helps the process (whatever it takes to get that mouth open).

Sleeping and General Health: We've still been pretty lucky in this department. Bruce tends to go down for bed around 9PM and gets up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. He occasionally wakes up during the night, but usually can soothe himself back to sleep. Bruce has still managed to avoid his first cold. He is now fully vaccinated for the swine flu and regular seasonal flu. He has his 9-month check up tomorrow, so stay tuned for the results there.

Here are some photos from the past month to share. (We got behind on a few family visits and holiday moments, but hope to catch up soon)

Bruce in his high chair

Bruce watching President Obama

(this one's for you Aunt Rhonda :)

Also, notice the new furniture in our living room!

Bruce's new toy from Pop-Pop

I highly recommend this one, it's the Leapfrog Learn and Groove Musical Table (English and Spanish)

Bath Time!

Dada and Bruce talking Gameday strategy

Brucito and Mama