As always, the kids’ birthday celebrations extended over a several week period, with visits from all the grandparents, parties with friends, and much present-opening. 39 photos

While we’ve been remiss in actually posting photos, we haven’t stopped taking them. In an effort to catch up, here’s a set that covers the first half, or so, of the year. This selection of photos finds us making cake, visiting the Zilker Botanical Garden, going on the Casa camping trip, taking a field trip to the Sauer-Beckmann Farm, and entertaining visiting grandparents and friends. 42 photos.

No snow a-falling,

One new knock-knock joke (ask Nathaniel to tell it to you),

Two new winter coats,

Three Christmas celebrations (Chribirthday not pictured),

Four Christmas stockings,

Five cookies each at the Casa Holiday Party,

Six dress-up outfits,

Seven pets in OKC,

dozens of Christmas cookies,

51 people for the Cullinan Family Christmas,

55 photos,

400 miles of driving (one-way),

and lots and lots of acting goofy.

The Fall Holidays are big-time favorites around our house. The triumvirate of Halloween, Yvonne’s birthday, and Thanksgiving makes for an exciting month. This year, Adele decided to be Laura Ingalls Wilder since she’s a huge fan of all the books and Nathaniel decided on Peter Pan since he’s a huge fan of the tick-tocking crocodile. As always the costumes were made to perfection by Yvonne. Nathaniel announced, “We’re the trick-or-treaters!” at every door we stopped at with great success.

Yvonne had a fun birthday weekend highlighted by a homemade cake baked and frosted by Adele and Nathaniel. We had some friends over to strike up some merriment, fill out the birthday chorus, and share the homemade birthday cake. Adele and Nathaniel also provided their expert unwrapping skills completely free of charge to help their mother. That’s just the kind of kids they are.

We stayed at home this year for Thanksgiving and although it was just the four of us we still managed to have a traditional holiday. We watched the Macy’s Parade on TV, cooked the vegetarian harvest roast, did box hugs, and wore turkey hats, just like the Pilgrims did thousands of years ago. After Thanksgiving we got into the sprit of Christmas during a “thankfully” dry holiday parade in downtown Austin featuring bands, dancers, floats, balloons, and Chewbacca. A perfect kick-off to the Christmas season.   40 photos.

A few weeks after our big summer trip to OKC, we headed down to San Antonio (a shorter but still “big” trip) to spend some time at Babcia’s. Stacy showed up from north Texas to hang out too. After we returned to Austin, Adele spent a week at Nature Camp, we had a visit from Mary, Jason, Adam, and Adam’s friend, Mason, and then it was time for kindergarten to begin.

During the school year, our days are a little more structured but we still find time for fun and games. Adele attended a princess party (the high quality of the photos make it obvious they were not taken by us), we cruised around DinoLand, and had a visit from Cranmommy & Crandaddy. We also spent a day exploring the Austin MakerFaire. After silk-screening shirts, riding snake bikes, and checking out all the wild and wonderful creations, we’ll definitely be heading back next year — possibly in our own art car if Nathaniel has a say.

As a special bonus, catch photos throughout this gallery of the kids acting nutty in their daily lives.  63 photos.

Our summer got off to a big bang with 4th of July fireworks. The next week we hit the pool for swimming lessons. Although the water was cold, Nathaniel and Adele both made good progress. (Watch for them in 2024.) After the swimming we packed up the car and headed on our “big trip” (as Nathaniel liked to call it) to OKC to visit Grandmommy and Granddaddy.

In OKC we spent time lounging by the pool, we visited the zoo to ride the carousel (two times) and check out some animals, and ate ice cream at the Grateful Bean, of course. One highlight of the week was the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History and its impressive collection of dinosaurs featuring special guest star, SuperCroc. Uncle Michael came from the Big Mo to visit and celebrate his birthday with Batman, pizza, and cake.

Adele made a new cat friend in Max, Nathaniel realized his dream of riding a carousel, and fun was had by all. 53 photos.

Birthday season for Adele and Nathaniel is getting as crazy as Christmas. Family from out of town, gifts all over the house, food, warm temperatures, and tired people all are characters in the fun. The season began with Babcia in town to celebrate Adele’s birthday at Casa. Next, special guest star, Michael, traveled down from the Big Mo’ for some double birthday fun. As a change of pace, instead of a big park-based production, Adele’s birthday party was a more low-key affair with three friends, lots of fun and cake, of course. Then Grandmommy and Granddaddy came to visit and bring bunches of gifts. Nathaniel’s birthday wrapped up the season with a small party for his peers and a very large cupcake.  Luckily we had a couple weeks to recover before the Casa end of year picnic. 45 photos.

Lots of crazy fun as usual around here. The photos start with a trip to San Antonio for our annual Chribirthday celebration. It was a little later than usual this year but that didn’t dampen any of the excitement of opening gifts and rolling around in sleeping bags. We then enjoyed the early Easter by dyeing two dozen eggs and having a big egg hunt.

In April, Adele went with Daddy and a number of other Casa families on her first camping trip. She had a great time sleeping in the tent and checking out the wildlife. The photos end with our picnic at Eeyore’s birthday party–probably a new yearly event for us.

Intermingled between these events is the normally high amount of mugging for the camera, hats and other costumes, and even a baby bigfoot sighting. 35 photos.

(We have a new gallery system in place. Let us know if you run into any issues with it.)

We’ve got all the holiday pictures in this one, from Yvonne’s birthday through Chris’s birthday with Thanksgiving and Christmas in between. We had the traditional Thanksgiving weekend going to the dinosaur museum in San Antonio and freezing our bottoms off at the parade in Austin. In December we stayed active with all our family’s Christmas traditions: decorating the tree, swinging out back, playing the triangle, checking out the lights, ice skating, and ultimately opening gifts and spending time with the family. I think we can say that a good time was had by all. 49 photos.

Although the majority of the photos in this collection are directly related to Halloween, we did fill the month with other activities too. Adele’s hard at work at school and beginning to learn to play the piano. Nathaniel is spending time cruising around the house while repeating his favorite animal noises. His elephant, cat, and dog are excellent and his “serious cow” is without equal.

We also celebrated Peace Day enjoying songs performed by Adele and her classmates at Casa followed by yummy food from around the world. Our pursuit of yummy food and fun music continued as we attended the Mediterranean Festival with Bert, Kate, and Jane.

And then finally, Halloween rolled around. Adele and Nathaniel had lots of fun playing games and getting their faces painted with Camille and Yana at the Halloween carnival. Adele also had a party at her school followed by a parade around the new playground. We hit 2 streets this year for trick-or-treating and had some respectable success, but it just isn’t like it used to be when we were kids. 26 photos.