This Thanksgiving we celebrated with my dad’s sister and family.

We even did an early Christmas present exchange so we could see people open their gifts! Here’s Josie playing with her airplane. Maybe she shouldn’t be a pilot.

We had a nice calm visit even if the drive down there was a little rough. Josie doesn’t sleep like she did last year anymore and so we had to have a 3 ring circus to entertain her through all the driving. We also saw our cousin Sue and Jeff and their daughter Erin, and Josie’s favorite, their dog Zeke. Josie was awestruck by Zeke, he’s huge, over 100 lbs. She thought he was great, but Josie is so short that she got bowled over once when she went running and Zeke went after her.

One of Josie’s favorite aspects of the holidays has been delivering gifts. Here she is, again lifting heavy objects, with Zeke in the background too.

On the way home we left later and stayed overnight in a hotel just into Connecticut. It had the warmest pool I think I’ve ever been in, just shy of being a gigantic hot tub. Josie loved it and we ignored bedtime to get in two swims on our quick trip. Her favorite game is jumping into the pool and watching us all pretend to drown ourselves.

This photo was taken after she was asked to pick up the tool box behind her and she tried and tried before declaring it ‘heby’. She is amazingly determined to pick up heavy things, she even dragged an entire bag of groceries from the front porch to the kitchen for me. I didn’t ask her to, she just did it, she’s quite the helper.

She wouldn’t listen to us suggesting that she keep her mouth shut, so a few twigs went in there too, but she had a blast. Good thing grandma and grandpa’s yard is big enough to actually collect enough leaves to make a pile.

Josie has found her love of finger paints. Actually I’ve been so slow in blog posting she’s actually moved on to another new love, but finger paints are still good. She can make 3 paintings in 10 minutes, here’s a photo of her first painting in her home-made smock made from dad’s backwards shirt. Shortly after the picture, most of her face was blue, she really likes blue. It’s a great activity to add to the mix now that it’s cold outside.

Just a nice photo from the pre-Thanksgiving Miami trip.

It’s been a rough few weeks, Josie and I have both been sick. Really rather sick, stayed home and didn’t leave the house for 5 days sick. Sick before Christmas, sick after Christmas. Both of us on antibiotics, running through teabags like crazy. But now we’re doing better and so here come more (and better) pictures!

One of our favorite places to visit down in Miami is the zoo, it’s huge and very impressive. Last time we visited Josie was about 7 months old and she was interested, but not entirely engaged with actually looking at the animals. Now she’s very excited to see the new animals, except for the elephants somehow bothered her. She kept telling it to go away, oh well.

She brushed a pig and fed sheep. She marveled at the camels while we ate our lunch. The howler monkeys were a huge favorite as they were making a ton of sounds and the tigers had a big fight right while we were watching — Josie cheered them on ‘mas mas’ (more more).

She also loved the playground and we even managed to get her to take a nap so we could stay most of the day. If you go with kids when it’s hot, bring your water shoes and swim suits, they have a lot of water spray areas which we didn’t let Josie run around in because she lacked the appropriate attire.

Sadly, in late November, Jordi’s grandfather, Juan, lost his battle with cancer. We got the call on Thursday at noon that he had taken a serious turn for the worse, we flew down that afternoon at 4:30, and he got to see us and Josie again the next morning. Josie gave him some stickers and he joked about cute Josie’s pouting face. He passed on Sunday evening after several more visits. His funny stories, warm encouragement, enthusiasm for life will be missed.