Pre-Christmas Catch Up.

What have we been doing! Well, one weekend we went up to LA and got to celebrate Hanukkah with Lauren, Jonathan and baby Piper:

And then from there we drove on to Fluff and Jasmin's house for their holiday pot luck, filled with delicious food and good friends. Adam and Lucas have really started to hit it off, which was cute.

(in a post food and bounce house coma.)

Tim and I attended the Team Four holiday party in all of our festive, velour glory.

We celebrated a year since adopting the cats. This is how I take my coffee in the morning. Usually just one lump, but sometimes I get two.

Tim turned 39, which means he is very elderly.

Annnnnnnd Ellie got fitted for a palate expander, and we can add orthodontists visits to our list of things to do in the coming months. The x-ray of her teeth is nuts - there is almost no room for any of her adult teeth, and that crowding is part of why they haven't pushed through normally. The hope is that if she wears the expander for the next twelve to sixteen months, as her baby teeth fall out, the adult teeth will come in straighter so that she can spend less time in braces (because let's be real, they talk about avoiding braces completely, but based on my amateur opinion, this is only phase one.) She has to wear the expander 24/7, except for when she takes it out to clean it and brush her teeth. She's really excited about the whole thing and is very charming to the staff. Her speech was pretty impaired last night but that should get better, and I'm cutting her food up for her so that she has an easier time chewing. I feel for her - her mouth is sore, it's all a weird new thing and the process will be at least a year so she just has to suck it up and deal. This morning when we were walking to school she goes "so your teeth just came in straight? That's just what they did?" Yup kid, sorry. Your father has many fine qualities, but a wide enough jaw for his head and chompers is not one of them.