Happy 2008!!!!!

We have gotten off to a great New Year!!!! The holiday season was sooooo busy!!!! The highlight of Christmas was having the entire Wine clan together at church in Burnsville for Christmas Eve services!!! We spent Christmas Eve at the "Lazy W" opening gifts....always too many!! Then Christmas morning we awoke to find a ton of toys and other gifts from Santa. Alex's gift to us for Christmas (and for his 7 month birthday) was that he pulled himself to standing for the first time!!! Then we were off to Webster to celebrate with the Morton clan!!! Alex met more of his cousins (Hans and Joe) and also met his Aunt Patty and Uncle Jim Marsh. Elizabeth seemed concerned that "Ali's stuck" because we put him in the pack-n-play to try to get him some sleep. But Uncle Joe sprung him, played with him, and even gave him his first taste of candy cane (bad Uncle Joe.) Elizabeth and Alex were both overwhelmed by the number of presents so moms and dads ended up opening most of them. We traveled to Buckhannon on Friday to surprise the rest of the Marsh clan so he could meet his cousin Steve (and Jessica, Grace, and Emily too!!) The holidays are definitely about family and friends for us!!

Alex has been full of firsts in the New Year. We have been trying out different foods with him, trying to make most of our own. He was not pleased at all with potatoes....they probably needed to be mashed up a little more. But he has been eating butternut squash, avacado, and carrots. Next on the list is green beans. He has also gotten his two top teeth.

What fun we had watching the WVU Mountaineers win the Fiesta Bowl!!!! Alex actually met his first real Mountaineer over Christmas. His Godfather Jordan Flynt was in from the Air Force, and came by on Christmas Day!!! We of course took lots of pictures of Alex and Jordan. My favorites are the ones of Jordan wearing the "Optimus Prime" mask from the Transformers movie. Jordan's brother Zach is on the WVU football team. When Zach held Alex for the first time he held him up and said, "You're a linebacker; you're a linebacker; YOU'RE A LINEBACKER!!!" Back in NYC we all gathered around the TV to look for Zach and a WVU win. Our friends Joe and Mike came over to watch the game with us. EVERYONE was wearing WVU shirts and had a fantastic time watching the Mountaineers pull off an upset win!!!!!!!!

We took in the last of the Christmas season in early January. We took Alex downtown to see the tree at Rockefeller Center! After a stop by the FDNY shop to play on the fire trucks we went to the Museum of Modern Art because I wanted to see an exhibit of Seurat drawings. It was Alex's first trip to an art museum. Alex loved the MoMA. He liked looking at all of the paintings with bright colors. His favorite was the Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup cans. He squealed like soup was his favorite food. I think it must have been the bright red colors that got his attention.