Papa got a cool new single cup coffee maker:
Lincoln helped Jack open his super-cool new zebra from Nana and Papa:
It would only make sense that Uncle Tommy would get Lincoln his first set of Legos...
And that Uncle Ryan would get Jack his first drum!
Jack is still a little too small to ride his new tricycle by himself, but he loves Mom and Dad to push him around on it!
Christmas wouldn't be complete without the posed family pics in front of the tree:
The boys each had a four-legged friend to ride while watching Sesame Street:
Hugs for Jack's friend, the pony!
Ryan, Brandi and Lincoln headed back to Fort Worth after having some of Tommy's delicious roast for dinner, but Nana and Papa stayed in Frisco to visit for a few days. Unfortunately, the next morning, Tommy caught the first of what would be many stomach bugs in the Mhire household and spent most of the day in bed resting up so we could use the New Year's Eve dinner reservations we had already made.
Nana, Papa, Audra and Jack headed to the mall to hang out. While we were there, we decided to take Jack on his first carousel ride. He thought sitting on the horse was really great, until it started moving. He never cried, but he held on to the pole for dear life and was not at all sure why he was moving so fast.
Later in the day, he took a second ride with just Nana and found it much more enjoyable now that he knew what was happening! We also spent some time in the play area in the mall. As it was a chilly day outside, the play area was packed and most of the kids were quite a bit bigger than Jack. Mom was a little scared that Jack was going to get knocked down and run over, but he had no fear. He was moving so fast that it was hard to get many good pictures, but he had a big time crawling in all of the tunnels and sliding down the slides:
Fortunately, later that night, Tommy was feeling well enough to head to dinner. Nana and Papa were kind enough to spend the evening Jack so we could have our date night. We stayed up in the suburbs and headed to Loft 610. I was very interested to try the restaurant, as the executive chef is Tre Wilcox, of Top Chef fame (one of my favorite TV shows). Before we moved to Connecticut, we had eaten his food at Abacus and absolutely loved it, so we were excited to try his newest venture. The food at Loft 610 was good, perhaps not up to the standards of Abacus in terms of creativity or taste, but still delicious and it was great to have a nice night out. Plus, we had a view of the kitchen from our second floor table and got to see Tre cooking all night - fun! We came home, had a glass of champagne with Nana and Papa and headed to bed before the clock even struck 12 (sad, I know, but I did stay up in bed long enough to see the countdown).
2010 was definitely a year of transition for our family. A brief summary: I returned to work full time after 3 1/2 months of maternity leave in February, Tommy started a new job with Microsoft in April, we moved from Connecticut back to Dallas in May, I transitioned into my "new" job back in audit in June, we celebrated a big first birthday in November. Whew! We're looking forward to a 2011 with hopefully a few less life changes, maybe some travel, time spent with family and hopefully soon, a little less time at work than I'm currently spending. We're looking forward to it! Happy 2011 everyone (just a couple of months late!)!
