PS – Though the boat is somewhat newer and more powerful this is pretty much like a typical Sunday afternoon from Alisa’s childhood (the same lake, close to the farm).

We went home to the farm the weekend before we left for Austria and had our family Christmas on a fun-filled Sunday afternoon. We all had lunch together – as you can see the Fehr nieces and nephews have all grown up quite a bit and know how to have a good time at the “kids table” – it’s almost as big as the grown-up table now… After lunch we enjoyed a talent show in the living room with lots of piano playing, some singing and Simon showing off his walking skills. Shayna had prepared the Christmas story for us to read (all the adults took turns reading parts of the story) and we also sang some carols together before opening presents. It was a great afternoon with everyone together and to cap off the festivities we all went to the Herschel carol festival – what a treat!

Only one short week later we already found ourselves in Austria. Simon traveled quite well, but more on that in another post specifically about the Austria trip. Christmas with the Funks was great – it’s been such a long time since we’ve had Christmas with the Austrian Funks (six years to be exact – wow! – that’s long). On Christmas Eve we went to Gmunden for the traditional duck feeding (we used to do this every Christmas Eve growing up) and a church service at the church Daniel attended growing up. There are still lots of people there that knew me from when I was small – they were all very excited to meet Simon and Alisa for the first time. Very neat experience indeed, especially for Christmas. After that we headed to Mom and Dad’s new place in Linz and Christie was over for the evening and we had a wonderful Raclette for supper. The highlight of the night was Simon getting his speedy, little, red car. Was he ever excited – he fell over a couple of times from waving his hands in the air with joy… Andrew, Silke, and Paul came over on Christmas Day for a family Christmas celebration. Nathan and Cindy unfortunately couldn’t make it to Austria this time around BUT they were extremely thoughtful and sent us a PUZZLE (another Funk family tradition)! And not just any puzzle… A 1500 piece puzzle of Paris rooftops in the fog… oh, and it was black and white… We had to resort to sorting pieces by shape with over 300 pieces left… What a chore – thanks again Nathan and Cindy We also got to meet up with Christie and Andrew, Silke and Paul a bunch of other times while in Austria which was awesome – too bad we can’t bring them all home with us

Of yeh, one more thing – a special Christmas gift we got from Mom and Dad in the Funk family Christmas box. They bought us Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus! Well, not the actual ones, but the start to our very own nativity! The picture below is Mom and Dad’s set – all hand-carved – how cool is that. This will be a great way to have a touch of Austria around at Christmas when we can’t be there.

Oh, and before we get to the pumpkin pictures, the first photo is how I found Simon the other day. He found one of the storage boxes, pulled it off the shelf, opened the Ziploc bag full of crayons, dumped it out and got stuck leaning over into the box to play with his new-found treasure. His feet were off the ground, his tummy was stuck on the edge and he was headfirst in the box – I couldn’t help but take a quick picture before helping him out of his predicament…

We’ll have to do another post here shortly with some updated pictures of the little mr. as well. He’s sure changing quickly. This past week he’s started to “communicate” with us via clicking sounds with his tongue and he thinks tickling daddy’s toes is one of the funnest things around. Other than that he’s barely ever sitting or laying down – he pulls himself up on anything and everything and is already walking with the assistance of mom or dad or other objects to hold on to. So yeh, more up-to-date pictures coming shortly.

We’re hoping that pizza week will become somewhat of a family tradition. It’s not only a “harvest celebration”, but also one way to appreciate the fact that the days are getting a little cooler (we’ve tried making pizza in the middle of summer it’s nowhere near as fun…). That being said, maybe, just maybe, some day we can have an outdoor, wood-burning pizza oven around which we can create many great family memories.

We started off September with a road trip to Edmonton to visit Calvin. Some of you already found pictures on the gallery, but here are a few highlights of our new nephew… Just realized we totally didn’t get a picture of Cindy with Calvin, but we did get one of her aunt with Simon… Calvin is a super-relaxed baby. He slept most of the time we were there, even right in the midst of everyone talking in the living room. Simon showed signs of jealousy when either one of us would hold Calvin and in the whole weekend I doubt Simon looked at Calvin for more than a few seconds. What a little stinker.

Speaking of the little stinker, Simon is all about standing these days. We just got interrupted from writing this post ’cause Simon was standing up in his crib and was finding it rather hard to fall asleep while standing. He likes to stand at the couch, at the kitchen drawers, in the crib, in the bathtub (which we’re trying to discourage as much as possible), on our laps, and while trying to pull himself up on our pant legs… One skill Simon still needs to perfect though is the “dismount” – often we hear him whining from the other room ’cause he needs help to get down from, out of, over or through something – it’ll be nice when he figures that out.

The kitchen drawer he’s got open is actually the exact same drawer his daddy used to play in… see old grainy picture with non-white cabinets

For the record – we are not trying to raise a musical prodigy. At this stage he just enjoys playing the piano and attempting to sing along (it’s pretty cute when he tries to “sing”). But we now realize we desperately need to tune our piano or else we’ll be raising a tone-deaf trouble maker. We’ll have to post video once the piano gets tuned (or when we find a clip where his mom and dad aren’t making fools of themselves oooing and awing).

In other news we’re really excited to be heading to Edmonton this coming long weekend to visit Simon’s new cousin Calvin (Nathan and Cindy’s little guy). We can’t wait to take a bunch of pictures of the two of them together! We just remember how small Simon looked beside a 6 month old when he was in his first weeks – well, now it’s his turn to be the big boy. Hopefully he won’t be the big bully poking at Calvin’s eyes and nose…