Making ornaments and a mess

Every Christmas season my family gets together and does our version of the 12 days of Christmas, it pretty much consists of doing a different activity with the family each day on the 12 days before Christmas. The first activity we did was make Christmas tree ornaments. You start with a dough made out of cinnimon, apple sauce and glue (so its edible!). You roll out the dough and cut out shapes with cookie cutters. I had a great idea of getting Shad's hand print, well it didnt work very well because the dough wasnt the right consistancy. Knowing how much Shad likes textures I thought he might like to play with the dough and boy was I right. He mostly just grabbed it with his hand and squished it in between his fingers and of course made a huge mess but it was well worth it.

Reading time

I try to get in a least a few minutes of reading time with Shad every day. I can usually squeeze it in but sometimes it doesn't happen. My hope is that he will grow up loving books and reading and that will only benefit him that much more in the end. He loves textures so his favorite books are the touchy feely books but he will sit and listen to anything and often tries to hold the book on his own. Its only a matter of time til we go in his room and find him sitting up in his crib reading, right?

Memories and Sock Monkeys

Dan and I thought it would be cool to get a new ornament every year since we got married (you know a little something to remind us what happened that year). So naturally this year we had to get something to represent our new little addition to the family. I could have gotten you know the "Baby's first year" ornament I have found some pretty cute ones but we wanted something a little more unique and thats when i found the adored sock monkey. And with our luck the purchase comes with a story. So the day after Thanksgiving we went christmas tree shopping. Well they didnt have any trees up yet so we went to the Antique/Flower shop next door (The Planted Earth, dont ever go there you will see why). Its a cute little shop with fun little trinkets that we were adoring (we as in, my sisters Angie and Bekah, my brother Luke and me). Well shortly after we got there I noticed that one of the workers coinsidentally needed to dust wherever we were. I pointed it out to my sister thinking that we were being spyed on so we didnt steal anything, I guess we are not the usual customers of an antique shop, figures. Well we then went up stairs to look at some vintage hats and jackets when Luke proceeded to try on an old War jacket, very cool. We then heard a screach from downstairs (and Im not exagerating we actually thought it was a parrot) saying "dont put that on, dont put that on" over and over, "thats over 100 years old and you will tear it" WOW. I dont think I have been yelled at like that since I poked holes in my sisters water bed. After being repremanded by a 50 some year old fashionably challanged store owner we felt very uncomfortable. Then to top it off the same worker from before shockingly needed to dust some pictures right next to where we were upstairs. I said "lets just go" and Bekah very loudly said, "YA we're being followed". We went to leave, well first buy my sock monkey which I realy didnt want to buy from her but I really wanted it and didnt know where else I could get it. While I was checking out the owner came out and said, not apologetically "ya I have tried on really old clothes and tore right through them" and Angie replied, "ya well we just dont like being yelled at from down the stairs", the owner didnt have a response to that. I really cannot believe that an owner would treat her customers so poorly, we felt like little hoodlums, as Im sure she would refer to us as such. In the end we ended up with a beautiful tree, and adorable ornament for Shad and a store added to my "will never shop at again" list. I found this ornament in my moms Christmas box and decided to put it on my tree, I hope she doesnt mind. I made this when I was in 1st grade I think, wasnt I so stinkin cute, that must be where Shad gets it from.

Christmas in Comming

I cant believe it Dan didnt fight me on putting up a tree this year, actually I think it might have been his idea. I think I just might be more excited about this Christmas than any other year, there is something different about Christmas when you have kids. I am more excited about opening Shad's gifts than my own but that may also be because not only do I know what I am getting, I bought and wrapped it too (I guess we are not very traditional in that way). I am so excited for the rest of my family to get here, and get more excited every morning when I turn on the tree lights.

Sacramento or Bust

I know they look gentle and harmless, if we only knew

Kaylee showing her true colors (Shad looks so miserable)

Since Dan will be starting the Post Academy in January and we finally had a car that would make it we decided to go to Sacramento to visits Dan's family and friends. Bekah was here for Thanksgiving so she rode with us back to CA, which was nice because I got to spend a little more time with her. This was the first time Shad had met his cousins on Dan's side so that was fun especially because they love dolls and thought that Shad was just a real live doll, I still dont think that they can hurt him eventhough everytime they picked him up he whined in protest. Overall it was a very eventfull evening, but I think Shad will enjoy his cousins more when he can defend himself. I drove up to Chico one of the days to play with Bekah and meet her freinds, it was really nice to see that she is being taken care of by some pretty good people. The last night we were there we went to Dan's best childhood freinds house for some dinner and games, which always includes a game of Killer Bunnies which didnt dissapoint. The trip home was much easier then the one there because we stopped half way in Winnemucca so each day we only drove about 5 hours. Shad holds his ground with hating the car seat but Im sure I will break him in eventually and he will learn to love road trips, the sooner the better.

Dan finally gave in

Well our two cars have been slowly dying for about a year now and we are just waiting for one of them to finally go toward the light, so it was inevitable that we would need to get a new car. So around August I told Dan that all I wanted for my birthday was a new car, and he just laughed and said yeah right. Well when my birthday came around and Dan took me to Park City for the weekend, my new phrase was "all I want for Christmas is a new car, and maybe some front teeth for Shad so he will stop teething". He just laughed like before, well we thought the Explorer had driven its last mile so we went car shopping, just to see what was out there. I think that a new car is an appropriate Thanksgiving gift after all I would be very thankful for it. We finally decided on the car we wanted and went to a friend to see if he could find one at an auction for us. I must have been our lucky day because he ended up getting the car we wanted with a few extras along with it, it had about 30,000 less miles than we expected to get along with leather interior and a built in DVD player which we probably wont be using much until Shad is older and we are needing to entertain him on road trips. We are very happy with our new purchase, especially after taking our first road trip out to Sacramento last weekend to visit Dan's family and my sister in Chico.

Just like Daddy

Ever since Shad was born he has always had a nice head of hair which I am very proud of not like I really had any say in what he looked like. We gave Shad is first haircut at 2 months and again every month after that. Because his hair was growing so fast I gave in to Dan's request to buzz his hair this time and I really like how it turned out. I was worried about cutting off to much so I wanted to use a #8 guard and if Dan had his way he would use no guard at all so we compromised on a #6 guard and were both happy with the results so I think this will be our hair cutting methods from now on. Maybe next time I will be more adventurous and go with a shorter length.

Dan's Update

Dan stopped working for the Canyon's ski resort in July of this year and since then has been trying to get his business going which has actually paid off a bit, we have actually taken a pay check for the first time since he started it over a year ago. However since his business is not yet able to pay all the bill he is in the process of registering to go to the post academy. He actually applied to get a job with a few police departments and in the end he was always on the top of the list of candidates but they all turned him down because they did not want to pay to put him through post and told him that if he was already certified he would be one of their top choices. So that made our decision. When Dan was in the military we knew that some benefits would come our way when his service was through but we never thought we would need them so badly. Because Dan is a veteran the state is actually paying for his academy training and his GI bill will be giving us money for living expenses and we are so grateful for that opportunity that he has. If everything goes as planned then he will be starting his training in the end of January and will be finished in July, and hopefully hired with a PD soon after.

Hangin with the cousins

These are just a few pictures of the whole family well the little ones anyway. This is all the grandkids with Nana and Pop from left to right; Violet, Mason, Grace, Lily, Shad, Hannah, and Sam.
These little ones were all born within 1 year, well almost 1 year Grace's Birthday is exactly 1 year and 1 day older than shad. Grace 16 mo, Mason 13 mo, Violet 10 mo, Shad 4 mo.
I guess it was twinner day, JK. Jay Kim and Mason came over for Sunday dinner and I told Jay that shad had the same onesie so I put it on so we could get some twinner shots. Arent they the cuttest little boys.

Eating Cereal

Well we decided to start Shad on Rice Cereal a little early hoping that it would help him sleep a bit longer and it may end up biting us in the butt. As it turns out he absolutely hates it. I don't know if he doesn't like the taste texture or just the fact that it takes to long and is to much work but for whatever the reason we cannot seem to reason with him long enough to get a bite down so I think we might give up for at least a few weeks and try again, maybe then he will be ready.

And then there were 2

I can't believe it only took 2 weeks but he got his second tooth. He was not quite as fussy as with the first but we could deffinately tell when the tooth came in cause he cheered right up.

Just showing off how freaking adorable my little boy is

Playing in his Johnny Jump-Up

What a stud with his fo-hawk, in his church clothes