Max enjoys his daily chicken nuggets and french fries with lots of ketchup.

Chiara and I enjoy the baby pool.

Chiara was pretty excited about one of the birthday presents I recieved from Max, but who isn't excited about a blow up alligator?

Max tries his hand at beach side chess;-)

Thanks to the fabulous babysitting services at our hotel, Jay took me out for an amazing birthday dinner.

The meal was a four course French dinner with champagne pairings and the main course of pidgeon and foi gras was out of this world.

Our first dessert!

Then they brought a cake, which we took back to our hotel room and Max happily helped us eat the next day.

Ahh a happy Californian;-)

Max and Jay carefully placing stones and shells on one of the many sand castles.

It was VERY nice to be in such a beautiful place with warm weather;-) We all enjoyed lots of time on the beach and Max built a sand castle every day with mom or dad or both of us.

Lots of piggy back rides!

Max practices stearing the stationary boat outside our hotel room.

Just happy to be alive;-)

After a week in Oman, Jay tries out his Omani look....

Good times on the Lazy River;-)

Max decides to try eating sand.....a few times.....

Luckily over all he seemed to like collecting shells better;-)

The most awesome Christmas wreath you, or any one, have ever seen

NB: The following post is by Jay.

Colleen tried desperately to stop me from adding this Buon Natale wreath to our Christmas trappings. She gave other reasons, but I think she secretly was insanely, raging jealous that I was the first to scope out this super, maximally awesome Italian Natale festivity thingy. She was so green with envy she made me keep it in the back room, but I bid my time and waited until we had friends over and debuted it in all its triumphal glory in front of witnesses.

Like you, I didn't think Colleen was so crazy about Christmas decorations, you know, kind of in to them in the holiday spirit like everybody else, but this year, our seventh in holy matrimony, some deep secrets are coming out;)

We had a great Christmas just the 4 of us, unfortunately I erased all the pictures.....yup it is true. So here are a few pictures of some late arriving gifts while our tree was still up.