I was thinking of Joe’s awesome self-portrait with his nephew in the last 7 Days run when I took my self-portrait today with my niece. I had a hard time getting as good a shot as he did, but it was fun trying.

Ben, Angie and AK came over today for an early family Christmas celebration. We ate and opened presents and passed the mostly-awake baby around. I finally got to see her with her eyes open! She even smiled for me a few times. I didn’t get a picture of her smiling, but I do quite like this one:

She looks like she’s saying, “Eh? Whazzat?”

Annalie was so super-duper hyper-excited to open presents that she got a little overwhelmed a couple of times. Once she thought she’d run out of presents to open and was upset. Another time she exuberantly hugged my mom in thanks for a present she’d just opened, and when I said to her, “Hey, that was from me!” and we all laughed a bit, she fled the room in tears because she thought we were all laughing at her. Poor kid. All the anticipation and activity at Christmas makes me feel like crying sometimes too, and I’m 29 years older than she is. She calmed down quickly both times, though, and was fine.

My friend Rachel built this dollhouse and a bunch of little dollhouse furniture. Annalie was happy when she opened the dollhouse, thanked Rachel, and cheerfully said, “Maybe when we get home we can get some furniture for it!” Then she opened the box with the furniture and hollered, “FURNITURE!!! This looks like it’s gonna be the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!”

I’ve been friends with Katrina since high school. Well, I’ve known her since high school, but we didn’t become friends till we were in college in different states. It’s a long story.

Anyway, she’s one of my best friends in Omaha, and her three boys are some of Annalie’s favorite people, so we try to see them whenever we’re in town. This visit, it worked out that we got to go paint pottery together WITHOUT kids.

Katrina asked if I could teach her how to paint dottery, and I was happy to do so. Katrina and I must think the same way, because it’s incredibly easy to teach her things. I can say something like, “The dots don’t matter so much, but you want the circles to be like this,” while gesturing vaguely with my fingers, and Katrina will say, “Oh! Got it,” when I suspect most people would be tearing their hair out in frustration. (Go check out Katrina’s photo of us painting. She’s doing 7 Days this week too!)

As long as I’m posting my 7 Days photos every day this week, I may as well post our photos for Troy, eh? This is Day 142. Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it was the only photo I got today that had both of us in it. You can just baaaaarely see my reflection in the glass.

I uploaded 50 or 60 photos to Flickr tonight. There are at least three or four posts that need to be written about them, but I won’t be doing that tonight. It’s late and I still have some crocheting to do before I go to bed. I will post this one photo, though, so I can ask Bekah, Sarah, or Sonja to translate the German for me. (This is painted on the wall in the new Wheatfields Express in the Old Market. Katrina, Kassie, Joe, I assume we’re planning on going to the original Wheatfields? This one’s so small it might not hold all of us.)

While I’m at it, here are Days 140 and 141 for Troy—in the pretty bathroom at OJ’s and shopping at Big Lots. Here’s hoping I get more time to write posts about all those photos in the next few days.

We landed in Omaha Saturday evening at 5:30. It was already dark by the time we left the airport, and Annalie was extremely disappointed when we told her she couldn’t play in the snow till the next day. We consoled her with a promised visit to meet her new cousin right after we dropped our luggage off at my parents’ house. As we drove down the interstate she opened her mouth wide in a show of speechless delight at each new expanse of snow.

When we stopped at Godfather’s to pick up pizza on the way to my brother’s, I literally had to grab her to keep her from rushing into a mountain of snow that had been plowed over to the side of the parking lot.

AK is extremely adorable and also a champion sleeper. She was asleep the whole hour we were there, even though we were passing her around and taking pictures. Annalie was totally smitten, asking to hold her twice, kissing and hugging her gently, and cooing over how adorable she was. I hope they’ll be great friends someday.

Annalie drew this on her dry-erase board during church yesterday morning (I snapped a quick shot with my phone before she erased it). It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her draw people with clothes rather than simple stick figures. I asked her later if she had seen that drawing somewhere before and was remembering it, thinking maybe she’d seen a picture somewhere in church that morning. She said, “It’s the drawing you did for me, remember?” I showed her how to draw a simple stable scene almost a week ago. I was rather amazed she held that image in her head for so long and did a fair job of recreating it without having it right in front of her.

And then after church and Sunday School were over, it was time to go back to my parents’ house and get Annalie suited up for PLAYING IN THE SNOW, YAYYY!

Annalie’s snow pants were a Christmas present two years ago. I’m kind of amazed that they still fit as well as they do. The coat is one we bought on clearance when we had to make that unexpected trip to Omaha for Troy’s dad’s funeral almost two years ago. It was huge when we bought it, and now it fits her perfectly. Time flies.

I think the only thing that would have made Annalie happier about the snow is if it had been snowing while she was playing. She didn’t worry about it much, she just made her own snow by throwing it up in the air.

Then she figured out she could pick up pieces of snow and throw them at Grampaw.

But before she got the chance, Grampaw made the first move!

Annalie got him back eventually, though.

Annalie was running and slipping and sliding all over the place. She kept going down in the snow, laughing her head off. She was getting pretty wet but she didn’t care a bit. I’m glad she got the chance to play in the snow before it got super cold (it’s 4 F/-16 C as I write this Monday evening).