Muench Family Happenings: Happy New Year

It is now 2012. Time for a quick recap of the kids and family from 2011 and a look forward to 2012. 2011 was marked by about 10.5 months of mediocrity for the Muench family: No vacations, no visits to relatives, etc. Not to say that people didn't come to see us (they did) but having someone make the trip out to see you hardly represents an "accomplishment" on your part. However...we did get to visit Rome for 6 weeks in the October-November time frame (see previous blog entries) so that's mostly what we talk about. I will not recap Rome here (see previous blog entries). Notable milestones:

Clara is out of diapers (except for night time). That happened around the end of November. She made the transition quite well and still expects an M&M candy just for peeing on the potty.
Hadden continues karate. He likes it...but really wants an orange belt. He's in the Kinder Karate class, which is 4-6 year olds. He's still one of the bigger folks in class even though he's still 4.
Trips to the pool. We started up regular trips to the Ballard pool in December and Hadden and Clara are back to loving the water. They often request "pool" on the way home from preschool. This will set them up well for Hawaii in March.
Cool stuff according to Clara: anything Hadden likes, princesses (Disney or course), babies, pool, Optimus Prime (Hadden's toy), singing, running around the house naked saying "You na-fa catch me!" Not sure where she got "na-fa" but I THINK it's either "never" or "cannot".
Cool stuff according to Hadden: Star Wars (movies and all merchendise), Buzz Lightyear, Transformers, lego, puzzles, pool, singing, things his friends say at preschool.

Christmas
Christmas was great. We celebrated locally in our house with Nona attending for 3 days. Kids, of course, loved it. I think they were overwhelmed by the gifts but really got into opening possessing. Sharing came later. Did the big dinner on Christmas Eve with the Nelson-Lincecum clan in attendance as well as Cory Crocker. Great dinner - everyone brought such wonderful food. We had a hugely expensive beef tenderloin from Skagit River Ranch (I think it was $140). It was REAL good. Got lots of red meat the next week or so.

Snow
We couldn't wait for the snow to come to us so we drove up to Snoqualmie Pass on January 2nd. I think everyone else did too. The snow park with the sled hill was filled up and closed so we went across the street to the ghetto sled hill and had a blast. The hill was much smaller but perfect for Hadden to go down by himself and Clara really enjoyed sledding with Mom. "I wanna go again!" she kept saying. We also met Uncle Chris (we should really start calling him Chris and not Bug) and Marvelliz on the "slopes" and they went sledding too. '

Hadden and Clara go down by themselves as Uncle Chris follows.

Uncle Chris/Bug steams down the 2 meter hill at an astounding 5-7 mph.

Poor Hadden face plants in his saucer. I was taking pictures with a point-and-shoot so there is a significant delay between when you hit the button and when the picture is taken. This one just turned out to "luckily" catch the moment of Hadden's face plant. He had seen Uncle Chris/Bug go down head first a number of times and decided it was time to give it a try. This was the only time Hadden went down head first. I doubt he will be participating in the Skeleton in the Winter Olympics.