Uncle Seany and Auntie Jennie's

We were sooo busy today... We ended the day with a little trip to Uncle Seany and Auntie Jennie's place. Look at them teasing Riley with her puppet. Who is finding more entertainment with the puppet here?

Riley quickly found that their place is not baby proofed. She found every wire, corner and door she wasn't supposed to get into. Curious little Riley! But don't worry babies are not on the horizon for Uncle Seany and Auntie Jennie while they are in CT. When they move to NJ and get a big house then they will baby proof it for Riley and her cousins to play safe. We will miss you guys when you move to Jersey!

MEOW!

We went over after playgroup to play with Kaelyn and Liza. While Riley and Kaelyn were playing I took a few photos of baby Liza.
I was only able to take a few before we were distracted by Kaelyn meowing in the other other room with Riley. Lorin walked in to see Kaelyn and Riley playing with the cat food. Playing as in eating the cat food! There is one way to fatten Riley up. lol Needless to say Riley was Meowing all the way home!

(Look at Kaelyn watching her mommy clean Riley off... she so knows what just happened! Lorin and I had to laugh because we know this wont be the last of the girls getting into trouble. BFFL)

My friend Leah

Play group at Leah's house today!! Leah had fun showing off all of her new toys. She did such a good job sharing. Riley the whole time we were there followed Leah around trying to give her kisses. She misses her friend Leah!

Merry Go Round

We met Pike and his family up a few days after Christmas to do the dreaded exchange all your "favorite" Christmas gifts. Lucky for me I had none to exchange. Riley only had to change a size of one of her dresses... she is tiny but she is growing and can take 6-12 months now! :) While at the mall who can resist a ride on the carousal?!

How big is Riley? SOOO BIG!
Every time! Got to love it!

Grampy's Christmas Story

Grampy wrote a Christmas book for Riley using the photos on his camera. Go check out the story... and remember this is written with Tony Diminico "HUMOR." (humor... if that's what you call it! haha! You can laugh at his jokes at your own risk.) :) We love you GRAMPY!!

Christmas Night... Santa came here too?

GG and Grampy's card was right...
Who needs Santa when you have Grandparent!

Luckily we have photos and video to capture what really happened at GG and Grampy's house. All I can say is we needed to take a few moments to take a time out and regroup because being overwhelmed with presents can not even justify what happend Christmas night.

GG was teasing Daddy all night saying there isn't a lot of gifts for him under the tree and that they are all for Riley. We told her to forget about us and spoil Riley... well she did and then some. When we arrived we counted about 5 gifts each for Daddy and I and about 30+ for little Riley! We had to do 2 car loads! It was ridiculous. Only Grandchild Syndrome! Help us!

And poor Brady, she was feeling left out. Luckily Riley let her help her open the gift.
I think GG had more fun with Riley on this one... it is a little red riding hood poncho that says "Going to Grandma's House!"
HAHA! Look at one of Riley's favorite gifts she took out of Mommy and Daddy's stocking! She was excited that there was one for her too... seeing as she has 5 teeth now!
Thanks GG and Grampy for redefining SPOILING!

Riley ended the night with reading one of her Christmas books with Nauni! She loved it!
What a GREAT 1st Christmas! I know Ryan and I can say this Christmas was the best yet! Celebrating Christmas with Riley brought excitement to the day like we have never experience. Christmas with Riley also made us truly appreciate being around all of our family. We went to bed that night exhausted from all the excitement but at the same time looking back and wishing it wasn't over!


*We wish it wasn't over not just because we had so much fun but now we have to figure out were all of the toys are going to go! How does this little 15 pound kid have enough toys to take over the whole basement now?!!? Daddy is sad that this Christmas marks the moment he realized he really did loose his bar... it is now next to the washer and dryer. Poor Daddy... but at least he has room to play with Riley and her baby doll and all the accessories to come! haha! :)

Casagrande Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Casagrande family. I never realized growing up how extended my family really is. The Casagrandes are my mom's mom's siblings and their kids. We grew up all together and never realized that we are closer with our 2nd cousins than some people are with their 1st cousins. And now Riley is going to be able to say that same statement about her 3rd cousins? Is that what the correct genealogy term?
Grammy and Aunt Ruthie

On Christmas morning we all went to my cousin Marci (Riley's Godmother) house. Now my mom's mom and Marci's mom's dad are brother and sister. Make sense how we are related? I never thought it was that complicated. :)
"GG look what Marci got me!! Do I look pretty?!?!"

Riley and my nephew David played all day. NON STOP! Riley did not nap nor get cranky for a nap the whole time we were there! They ran around laughing the whole time. They were so entertaining to watch. Well some of the guys found Elmo's Christmas more entertaining to watch... even when the kids were out of the room.

Lucky for us Alex and Chelsea were here and the kids LOVE them both so much!


Family is so important to us. I hope we are as successful with teaching Riley the importance of family as the generations before us were. Our whole extended family lives all within a half hour. We happily extending our family and developing new traditions. It is so unpredictable where we will all be in a few years but I do know we will always be together enjoying each others company as much as possible.



Riley is always ready to do... SOOOO BIG!!!
Poor Jay was trying to take a nap after lunch... Shireen is the only one who was truly successful at napping undisturbed.





This truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

We had a great Christmas will all of the family... just one more stop at GG and Grampy's house before the CRAZINESS of the Christmas excitement comes to an end. Riley LOVES Christmas!

David rocked Riley to sleep at the end of the evening... such a good cousin!

Did I mention... WE LOVE CHRISTMAS!

Christmas Morning

SANTA CAME!! SANTA CAME!! We woke up with more excitement then Riley because she had no idea what to expect. She thought she was waking up to a regular morning. Little did she know when we walking into the dinning room (yes our tree was in the dinning room due to our little curious walker) that under the Christmas tree would be tons of gifts waiting for her from Santa! Tons of presents to Riley means tons of boxes and tons of wrapping paper to play with!
Until she opened her most favorite gift... her new dolly. She would not let the baby go! She kept kissing it even without us prompting her. She absolutely LOVED her new baby doll!
Ryan helped get Riley's baby doll out of the box when a piece of paper fell out with all the doll accessories you can buy to go with the doll. He could not get over all the different baby doll accessories there were. Oh Ryan... you are a daddy to a little girl who will teach you it all. Riley has already opened her daddy's eyes or should I say nose to the sweet smell of baby dolls. He also never realized that many baby dolls smell like a sweet vanilla. MMM! :) Lets give Ryan a few years and we will be blogging about Ryan and Riley changing that baby doll's diaper together. lol :)

It took us a while to open the gifts because poor Riley didn't realize that after we open a gift, it gets taken away from you so that you can open another one. Riley wanted to play with each gift and then open the next one when she was bored of it. We compromised... we opened the next one when Ryan's attention span ran out. lol I love you Ryan!

Riley even loved listening to Dominick the Donkey on Christmas morning. We relived our memories of the song and danced around the house singing our favorite Christmas song!

With all of this excitement Riley was able to enjoy a nice long nap before the Casagrande Christmas began.