After John and I shared our Christmas morning with Miles and he got a couple naps in, we ventured up North to see the Zabel family. If you are just joining my blog, you may not know that I lost my first husband, Andy, to cancer. I have been very fortunate that I didn’t lose his family as well when he passed. We are all still very close, and I still consider them family and actually secretly enjoy the confused looks I get from people when I refer to them as my in laws. I have spent nine christmases (Minus last year when I was too sick and stayed home-yippee I was healthy this year!) with the Zabels and it just isn’t Christmas until you get out the piano rolls and play them on their player piano.

Here it is!

Miles was totally enthralled with the moving keys and added a few notes of his own.

There really isn’t anything much cuter than a baby sitting on a piano bench, feet dangling over the edge and playing along. Sometime I’ll have to go over there in daylight when we aren’t all trying to enjoy Christmas and really have some fun taking some photos.

Everybody gathers around the piano and sings along. Seriously. It’s like a scene out of a movie or something. I remember it felt really weird my first couple of Christmases, because I’m not much of a public singer, but it’s really neat and feels very Christmassy. Every song brings back another Christmas memory and it’s a wonderful tradition.

The Zabels have mannnny antique piano rolls. It’s fun to look at all the “old time” music they have.

The rolls have words that scroll along with the music and the wording can be kind of dated too. So that adds to the fun.

My FAVORITE song is the Chipmunk Christmas song and when Alvin sings, “I still want a HOOLA HOOP!” Steve always chimes in with a dead-on chipmunk voice solo. As you can see, Barb was queing him up for his part.

After we played all the rolls, I twisted Bill’s arm into playing another song for us. He’s a wonderful piano player. I hope Miles can get John’s gift of music because I would LOVE to know how to play, but alas, the three years of piano lessons never stuck.

Miles, who usually goes to bed at 6, stayed up pretty late to play with everybody and did amazingly well. Melissa was “reading” a cookbook I received to him. He just so happened to be nibbling on a page with a recipe for cosmopolitans. That cracked us all up.

A big thank you goes out to the Zabel family for hosting another sweet gathering. We’ll see you again soon, especially since we left about 23 random baby items in our wake at your house. ; )