The Day After...

The day after Christmas we decided to take advantage of one of our new gifts (thanks, Mom) and went to Sea World for the first time. Since we got year passes, we didn't have to worry about seeing everything all in one day, and planned to just spend a couple hours there. Well, we were impressed, to say the least. They were all decked out for Christmas, complete with live Carolers, dressed in Victorian clothing, Christmas music playing everywhere you went, and they even had a Christmas tree farm, which we didn't bother to enter. But that wasn't the cool part. We saw Dolphins up close, got to pet them, and we're splashed by them, we got to hold bat-stars, and we saw the famous Shamu show, which was pretty amazing. The kids really seemed to enjoy it - it was really interactive, and they liked that they could get up close with the animals and pet them. In two hours we felt like we saw and experienced a lot, but we didn't even cover half the park. It looks like we'll be having a lot of fun all year long!

Christmas Morning

This year Sam and I decided to leave the biggest gifts unwrapped. The main reason was that a lot of kids toys require a bit of assembly before they can be played with, and once they are assembled it is difficult to wrap them. It's also just fun to watch kids wake up and see new fun things to play with right away. And that's exactly what happened. Harrison received a bicycle and a helmet, and Noah got a Little People train set. They both loved playing with the train, and didn't even notice the pile of presents behind them for at least 10 minutes. But they eventually found everything, and had a good time playing with all their new presents on Christmas Day.

Twas the night before Christmas...

Christmas Eve was great this year. I much prefer to have Christmas eve on Sunday, than Christmas day - it was a great way to focus on the Savior. Harrison's Nursery class has been coming to Primary for a few weeks now, and so he was able to hear stories from many of the women in Christ's life told by the Young Women. He also was able to participate in singing lots of Christmas songs with all the other primary children, which he really enjoyed. We had gone signing to a retirement home earlier in the week, so ever since that he's been belting out Christmas songs all over the house. We did stick to some family traditions we've adopted - everyone opened 1 present on christmas eve, which was new PJ's. Harrison also prepared a plate of goodies for Santa, with a glass of milk, and carrots for the reindeer. We played out the nativity with our Little People nativity set, but it turned into mostly just playing... The kids were in bed early, and Sam and I were occupied late into the night with final preparations for the next day...

Strut

Noah is usually the one that likes to wear everything, but today, Harrison was insistent on wearing my pumps. And he had quite the little strut as he walked back and forth in our apartment in his Sunday best. Someday he'll regret this....

Deck the halls

The boys weren't the only ones that had fun with the Christmas lights this year.

Thankful

This year I was thankful for not traveling. And still having family around during Thanksgiving. We had a great time with Regent, James and David. The kids loved having "relatives" in the house, as they would often refer to their Aunt and Uncles, and Noah even added the word Uncle to his vocabulary during their stay. We spent some time at the zoo, and the La Jolla Cove, but mostly we just enjoyed having family around, and nice distractions for the boys. We had a casual dinner with most of the Thanksgiving norms: Turkey, stuffing (which I burned...), mashed potatoes, rolls (which were flat), gravy, cranberry sauce, and pie, of course. We had just enough turkey for everyone to eat left overs for the rest of the weekend, but to have it pretty much gone by Monday. Which I think is perfect, not being much of a turkey lover. All in all it was a great weekend, enjoyed by all.

Tired Boy

Recently, Noah has moved to one nap in the afternoon - which is great because it makes our mornings a little more flexible. With this new schedule change, I have introduced "pack'n'play time" where I set up the pack'n'play in the front room, and give him plenty of toys and books to play with, and he plays contentedly on his own for 30-40 minutes. Well, I guess today he was a little extra tired - he got really quiet, so I went to check on him, and this is what I found. As you can see, he found the only space free of toys, and fell fast asleep. Harrison played noisily in the room for another 30 minutes before Noah woke up, so I guess he was a very tired boy.

Boo!

I know it's taken me way to long to put up this post - but at least I'm getting it up before Thanksgiving! We had a great Halloween. Harrison was a "Dragonsaurus" (Dazzle the Dinosaur has this fictional character, one of Harrison's favorite books), and Noah had a last minute costume change (thanks to Old Navy putting their costumes 50% off the week of Halloween) to be a cowboy. One of Harrison's best friends, Joshua, happened to be Prince Phillip (from Sleeping Beauty), the Dragon Slayer, so it was pretty cute to see a dragon running around with a dragon slayer at the play ground. We actually had quite a few activities that the boys wore there costumes to. On Thursday there was a playgroup costume party at the local park. That's where I took the above pictures. It was like 85 at noon during the party, so I had to convince Harrison to take off his fleece dragon costume shortly after we arrived. He really wanted to wear it, but I thought he might get heat stroke running around in it. Then on Saturday we had the ward's trunk-or-treat party. Harrison really enjoyed that - at one point he was running around with Joshua and Chloe, and we realized we had a princess, a prince and a dragon. We couldn't have planned it any better if we tried! On Monday there was a party at our housing complex. More candy and friends, but at least this party was in the evening, so Harrison enjoyed wearing his costume the whole time. That night we had fun carving our pumpkin. Harrison wanted to make sure it was a happy jack-o-lantern, and not a scary one. He was really frightened a couple of times when we went into stores that had Halloween decorations up, but whenever he saw a smiling jack-o-lantern, he would exclaim excitedly, "That one is nice!" So we made a happy smiley jack-o-lantern. On Halloween evening Harrison first went to his friend Benny's house to play (we do a trade once a week) and he insisted on wearing his costume. Layne, Benny's mom, said he didn't take it off the whole time he was there (almost 2 hours) hood and all. So he came home, and had a quick dinner, and then we got our first trick-or-treater. Harrison was ready to go, so we set up a bowl of candy by our front door, and we were off. Unlike last year, when Harrison was almost too frightened to wait for the door to open, this year he was so anxious, he almost ran right into several people's apartments when they opened their door. A few people would remark at what a scary dragon he was, to which he would reply, "It's okay. I'm just a pretend dragon." Noah mostly just hung out in Sam's arms and looked cute as he sucked on a candy bar that was unopened. He has been obsessed by the word "baa" lately, and is convinced that any animal, not just sheep, say it. So while we were out trick-or-treating, I thought I would see if he would say boo. And he did, it was so cute. I guess I taught him that trick a few days too late - he kept saying it for about a week, but now I think he's moved on to moo. A few people were thoughtful enough to give the kids that came by candy-free give aways - like bubbles, and yo-yo's, and rings. Harrison's very favorite "favor" was a bouncy ball that had a little red and blue light that flashed when you bounced it. He exclaimed, "It lights up the night!" He also remarked as we were gathering the huge bag of candy as we went, "and I can only have one piece a day, or I will be sick." a little tidbit of information I had told him earlier in the week. He ended up eating 3 pieces that night, but I thought that was pretty amazing given the huge amount of candy he collected. And Noah just got whatever he could glean from sucking on a wrapper for 1/2 an hour. I call that a Halloween success!

Daylight Savings Drama

I discovered this year that the people who invented daylight savings time had no children. As a college student, I loved the "fall back" an hour. It gave me extra time to hang out, a free hour. However with kids, I realized that they don't really understand the concept. They did not know that they could/should sleep in longer on Sunday morning. We even kept them up late Saturday night to make them more tired (a classic parenting mistake). But Sunday morning came and Noah woke up at 4:30 or so. It was unfair. Somehow the extra free hour intended turned into an hour stolen. We tried valiantly to get him back to sleep, but when I left to church at 5:45, he had not gotten back to sleep.

So a bit of parenting drama, but mostly I felt robbed of what used to be an anticipated event.

Sam

Day trip to Julian

As we left for Julian on Saturday morning, I wondered if it would ever stop raining....

But, only a few mintues later the sun began to break through the clouds. The sky was beautiful and I knew it was going to be a good day.





As we got further away from the coast, and closer to the mountains, I was reminded that there were mountains here. Something I forget living so close to the coast. But the mountains here are really different than any I've lived by before. They have these huge boulders sticking out them and almost look like they are from another world. But the change of scenery was good.

As we pulled into the pumpkin patch, I was excited to see that there were only a couple other cars there. We had the whole thing practically to ourselves. We went over to the petting zoo first - Harrison decided to have one of his I-wont-go-near-animals-days, so he observed from a distance. Noah was really intrigued by the animals, but lost it when a rooster he was admiring cock-a-doodle dooed near him.

The boys really enjoyed looking at all the pumpkins and farm equipment. The farm had dogs sleeping all over it - I almost stepped on a few. It was just nice to be out in the country - it really reminded me of my childhood in Corvallis.

We loaded back in the car and started to make our way up to Julian. Julian is a quaint little town up in the mountains, famous for it's pies. We were stopping at an apple orchard first to do u-pick apples with the boys. Unfortunately, it started to rain again on our way up, but it was only a drizzle when we got out of the car. Luckily we brought our double jogger, so the boys were snug as a bug inside the rain cover with their jackets and blankets, and by the time we go all checked in and got over to where the apples were, the rain stopped, and Harrison and Noah both got out and took turns picking apples. At $10 for a smaller than 5 pound bag, they weren't bargain apples, but they were yummy. We didn't feel too bad sampling a few as we picked at that price. When we had our fill of picking, we headed out again, and just in time. It started to rain again. Julian was just another 5 minutes up the road - but it was raining pretty good when we got up there. The boys were again bundled up in the stroller, and I guess they've never seen a stroller with a rain cover in Julian before, because everyone we saw stopped and commented on it. "That's the way to go." or "What a good idea!" I mean EVERYONE. And there were a lot of people there. We had to park a couple blocks off the main street on a dirt road, there were so many people there. It was getting colder by the minute, so we grabbed some lunch at a local deli, and then I went and stood in line for the reason for visiting Julian - Pie. The line for buying pie was at least 20 people long, but the smell of warm apple pie on a cold day was enough to keep me motivated to wait the 30 minutes. We got two pies to go, and headed home.

As we arrived home, and were walking in the house, I asked Harrison, "What did we do today?" He responded without hesitation, "We bought a pie." Apparently a trip to Julian wasn't much more significant to him than a trip to Marie Callender's. But for me, the memories of the day will go far beyond the pie.

Mollie

Harrison Turns Three

Harrison is three now! He had a great birthday, despite the pumpkin patch/apple orchard outing had to be cancelled due to Noah being really sick. Harrison didn't notice though - all the necessary birthday things were present - which according to Harrison are presents, hats, and most importantly, CAKE! I actually had forgotten to get hats (they didn't have dinosaur ones at the party store) so we had to make a trip to Wal-Mart on the day of to get hats. The only non-girly hats were Disney's Cars hats - so they didn't quite go with the dinosaur theme, but the hat requirement was fulfilled. He loved opening presents, which we spread throughout the day. He acquired quite a few new dinosaur items which he has played with every possible moment since they were opened. He actually has taken dinosaurs to bed with him for every nap and night sleep since and requests to take one with every time we leave the house. He got some great new coloring/activity books, as well as some picture books. He loved eating the cake, and using the dinosaurs on top of it as forks to sneak extra bites. He actually got the hang of opening presents on his own for the first time, which should make for a more interesting Christmas this year. All in all he had a great birthday, and now the only trick is trying to convince him his birthday is over...

It's Great To Be One

In just the past few weeks Noah has developed a few very enduring little habits that have reminded me how adorable one-year-olds can be. I thought I would record them here before the terrible twos hit, and I forget all about them!

When ever we sit down to eat he folds his arms (as best he can) and says "pray pray pray pray" until we start praying.

He loves to wear things, especially on his head or around his neck. Anything. Some of his favorites are Harrison's ball caps, his blanket, mardi gras beads, scarfs, the Dr. kit stethascope, valcanoes from Harrison's new Dinosaur set, wipes (on his head), Harrison's Halloween costume, Harrison's underwear... the list grows everyday. He get's very frustrated when whatever he wants to wear wont stay put - and I often find myself helping him "wear" various requests.

When ever Sam gets home he greets him at the door with a "Hi dad."

He likes to "ride" on everything. One of his favorite things to ride is anyone who may be resting on the ground. A while ago, Sam gave Noah and Harrison a "train ride" on his tummy. Now whenever I am laying down, Noah climbs up on my stomach, straddles me, grabs my hands, and bounces up and down, his way of requesting a train ride. When ever you stop, he promptly signs "more" by putting his hands together, and then grabs your hands waiting for more.



He loves to give kisses, but his idea of a kiss is to put his wide open mouth, full of teeth I might add, on your face.


I'm sure there's more, and I'll add them as I think of them....

Noah's First Birthday!

Well, my baby turned 1 today! He had a great time digging into the cake, and playing with his new toys. He got a Little People Ramps Garage - but something tells me he may have wanted a ride on toy.... I think he was almost as excited by the pink Barney toothbrush I brought him home from the dentist!

Big Boys Don't Fly

Last week Harrison discovered, in fact, that big boys don't fly. The result of the experiment can be seen in the photo.... He was jumping on his bed and took a flying leap right into the rocking chair ottoman. Then, later that night, he discovered how hard Chloe's teeth were when he smashed his face into hers that night. This photo was taken the morning after - when his eye was looking the very worst. Below is a photo taken just a half hour after the incident:
Luckily, nothing was broken, and it didn't even break the skin. So I can't really complain. And a week later, he's already looking like himself again:

First Day of Preschool

It finally came... The first day of preschool. This has been a much anticipated event in our house for the past couple of weeks for a couple reasons. Harrison was very excited to be going to school with some of his best friends. I was busy preparing the lesson and activities, as the first week was my turn to teach. The morning began with a ritual which I had been talking about with Harrison for a few days - throwing all his binkies away. Kind of funny for a kid who hasn't used a binky except for the past few weeks (since we got home from vacation and he had been complaining of a sore thumb. ) He was so excited for school that he ran through the house excitedly throwing them away. Since I was teaching, I got to the classroom a little early to set up and make sure everything was ready to go - Harrison couldn't contain his excitement, and would ask every minute or so where his preschool friends were. They finally showed up, and he had a great time. The lesson (on trees) went off without too much of a hitch, the kids all seemed to have a good time, and it all ended with 5 boys completely entranced by Shel Silverstein's, "The Giving Tree." It was fun to teach, but I think I'll be looking forward to next week when the prep time wont be so long for me. Harrison is very excited about the next time, and is even more excited about bringing cupcakes when it is his birthday.