Meeting Santa!

Last weekend was filled with Christmas parties. Saturday night was my company's holiday party which was held at the Museum of Science. There were lots of cools things to do!

The party took place on 3 levels of one of the wings of the museum and we had free access to all of the exhibits there. The Harry Potter exhibit is currently going on at the museum and we also had tickets to go to that special exhibit. Later in the night, the omni theater had a private showing for our party as well. We, however, did none of these things. With Dylan, just being somewhere new and with lots of people surrounding us (and ooing and ahhhing over the baby), we stayed quite busy just chatting with folks.

Mike and Dylan at the MOS

It was really nice to see lots of my colleagues and get to catch up with them. Dylan was a big hit and did very well that night, despite the mass amounts of stimulation. He even got to meet Santa! You never know how babies are going to react to the red dressed, long bearded guy, but Dylan seemed to take it in stride!

Santa and Dylan

Even with the threat of a nor'easter, the party had a great turn out and we had a great time. Around 9 (Dylan's bedtime), he'd had enough so it was time to go. Outdoors, all was calm....the calm before the storm.

One thing I've learned since I got here is that weathermen can not predict AT ALL what's going to happen in a nor'easter. Normally, they give you worst case scenario. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. This time, they were saying Boston was going to get over a foot of snow. The next morning, we awoke to about 8 inches. Not too bad. The snow had really tapered off, so Mike got outside and got the snow blower going Sunday morning and "dug" us out. Our street is always the last to get plowed in the area so if it's passable, we know we're good to go on other streets. It had been plowed, though literally to only one car width, so we headed out to our Sunday party - Mike's cousins' Christmas gathering.

All of Mike's cousins are around our age and we always have a great time with them. In addition to being family, they are also good friends. We had a great time just sitting around and chatting with them.

Mike and Dylan Watching the Patriots Game

The kids, of which only two were there that day, Dylan and Justin, exchanged gifts. Dylan seemed pretty interested in opening presents. Hopefully he'll enjoy it Christmas Day as well. We had bought Justin a Sesame Street shapes\block thing. We thought it a great, quiet, educational toy. Little did we know he would deafen us all by shaking around the block shapes inside the wooden box and almost take out a few people by throwing the block shapes. Apparently, we still have some learning to do on what nice quiet gifts for kids are!

Dylan Opening His Present

After being there for several hours, Dylan was getting fussy (because he always fights going to sleep and had been up for many hours at that point) so it was time to go. I thought it would be nice for Dylan and Justin to get a picture together. Justin had been interested in the baby all day. However, he did not want to sit next to him for a picture. First attempt at plopping them on the couch together did not go well!

We were able to trick them a bit later and had Dylan in a lap and got Justin to sit up next to him. So, here they are:

It was a great holiday celebration weekend with coworkers, cousins and friends!

Lee\Hines Cousins Christmas 2009