Busy Belnaps

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright

Here in sunny SoCal Christmas came amidst wonderful weather. We are so blessed to live here in this climate with our family and friends.

The day ended this way

we made it to both family's houses and took family photos of the whole gang
- neither family had done that in several years-
funny thing about these pics is that every child in the Belnap family is looking at the camera
(except of course, Jr. who is usually looking down)
yet in my family's pic (made up of mostly adults) the only one not looking at the camera is Donnie- my sister's husband and the 1 person who has likely had more photographs taken of him than anyone else in the group!

Christmas day started this way ...

Santa Dad fell asleep in the wee hours of the morn, pen in hand, after wrapping presents to put under the tree

the girls awoke and headed to the tree while dad grabbed the video camera

these 2 pics couldn't capture any better the differences between the personalities of our girls


E reads to K as the girls flip through their new book

Christmas Eve

love how short my dad and bros are when standing next to 6'3" Dr. Drew

the girls are whispering secrets into Santa's ear
he appeared at our front door on Christmas Eve
E remarked, "He looks like Papa Chet."
I was upstairs nursing the baby and was laughing to myself as I heard the dialogue downstairs. Luckily, E didn't quite figure it out. K totally believed in him.
Yes girls, our Santa was Papa Chet!

We needed a way to pass the time until our family arrived for dinner on Christmas Eve.
So E decided to make herself merry by practicing for the day when she can dance in the Nutcracker Ballet.

love

these

long

limbs

Pre-Christmas Fun

Pictures with Santa at the botanical gardens in Encinitas

love this one-
she thought it was so cool that we had several ornaments with her picture in them
she felt special!
and of course, what is she doing in the photo she's holding?
one guess-
if you can't tell/see, she's sucking her fingers

the Christmas card that wasn't

We had two appts. to take our pics. We missed both due to illness for the whole family, or half of us at least. So I tried to work something out on my own. As you can see, it was so NOT going to happen. Finally we were well enough to get a pic a mere few days BEFORE Christmas. I told my friend (and awesome photog) Jennifer Gilmore to just put Happy New Year on 'em since they clearly weren't gonna make it out before January.

Hope you all enjoyed your card.

Good luck in the New Year. We're certainly looking forward to what it holds for us.