Jonathan's 2nd Christmas - 1st He Was Awake for :)

Well, I somehow was able to embed all of my Shutterfly pictures on here, so guess I should write a small post about our wonderful Christmas celebrations! We had such a fun couple of days being with my family. Christmas Eve, Jeremy got home from work early which was nice and then we had the traditional chili at my parent's for dinner then headed to the Christmas Eve service.

Afterwards we all headed to our house for games and food. This has become a somewhat tradition (although with a 3 wk old last year, I passed on hosting). It was great because after a bath and entertaining aunts, uncles and grandparents for a little bit, Jonathan went to bed, and somehow slept through all our noise, but promptly woke up after everyone left and we were headed to bed. He eventually fell back asleep, although it took a while.

And because my family has always done Christmas super early, we had to be awake and out of our house by 7:30am. I of course had no problem getting up and going, the excitement of Christmas always gets to me, and I can never sleep. Yes, I'm such a little kid. And yes, every year since being married I wake up and hope that Santa has filled my stocking, but know that my husband is not about to wake up in the middle of the night. (but this is my hint to him) :) . So, after getting myself ready, Jonathan also woke up himself at 6:45 (slightly early, but ready for the day). SO we did stockings as a family here at home and then headed to my parents. And yes, Santa visited us at my parent's house again this year! :)

We had such a fun day giving and opening gifts. Jonathan only made it through about half of the event, meaning that I ended up opening most of his gifts, but he had fun playing with them later. He definitely enjoyed Christmas more this year, and enjoyed the wrapping, and particularly some Tonka trucks he received. But, mostly I think that he liked that we were distracted with the gifts and he could sneak away to get into the cabinets and things that he knows are off limits at Grandma's. :)

A couple of highlights were the super cute small child's chair that matches our larger chairs from Ikea, he also got a tool workbench from my uncle who works for Napa, which is very cool. And like I mentioned, he is loving his Tonka trucks and makes truck noise when driving them! He also got a basketball hoop from us, which I'm not sure if it is more for him or Jeremy, but as my mom suggested, the best gifts are ones that we will play with him. :) Then after the gift opening was completed the boys and their wives headed to their in-laws to do gifts and then their large family gathering and were back later for more games and a few other families came over to play more games and eat lots more food!

We have now been working on re-doing our living room a bit, and have created a "kid" area with new shelves for Jonathan and a cute Tonka car rug. Jonathan already seems to be enjoying this area and likes not being in the corner like I had him before.

OK, well I think that's about it for now, and my computer battery is about to die on me.

Pictures from Brandy

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Miles and Jonathan

So, another very fun thing recently has been to watch how much Jonathan LOVES Miles, and Miles is, well, accepting of it, and mostly loves that Jonathan has learned to feed him food by very sneakily dropping food on the floor while he is eating. {which does have its benefits, any food that does land on the floor, I don't have to clean up, but we are also trying to train Miles to stay on his bed when Jonathan eating, and to train Jonathan not to drop his food, all this somewhat unsuccessfully so far. Until then, I will enjoy not really having to clean the floor up :) }

Miles really is good to Jonathan and is mostly gentle, sometimes though when Jonathan is teasing him, Miles can get a little excited and jumpy, but for the most part is really good. This usually happens when Jonathan grabs Miles bag of treats and walks around with it, this of course drives Miles CRAZY!!! And Miles is chasing after Jonathan and jumping up and down for the bag of treats! {this picture is of Jonathan with the treat bag, although I had to take the picture from above him - as soon as he sees the camera he starts to come toward me, making picture taking a new art form now}

The other day Jonathan grabbed a stuffed Nebraska helmet ornament off the tree (I'm sure everyone has one of those on their tree) and Jonathan was wandering around with it, loving that it has an elastic hanger, so was bouncing it and shaking and it looked like way too much of a toy for Miles to not leave it along, so was of course jumping for it, and I think at one point actually knocked Jonathan down, which didn't even phase Jonathan. I then decided it was time for that ornament to be taken away and put up higher :).

Another thing that Jonathan loves is to kiss Miles, or more of for Miles to kiss him! He will go over to him with an open mouth and Miles of course will oblige and kisses him all over his lips! yuck! We do try to keep this to a minimum, but is quite comical. I love it when I can hear Jonathan just cracking up laughing and I will look over and Miles is just licking him like crazy!! One time I put Miles on the other side of the gate - I'm sure he was annoying me somehow - and Jonathan went over to tease him essentially I think, but he got up right next to the gate and kissed him through the gate. Lovely. {hmmm the picture below it looks like Miles is biting Jonathan, but I assure you, that is not the case, and it was a bit hard to capture Miles kissing him through the gate, but this is Jonathan's excitement over what was going on}

And another time, I was holding Jonathan, trying to get him to give me kisses, which he was not doing very well, but I then put him down and he went straight to Miles to give him kisses!! Yep, I was feeling the love!

This picture is one morning, when we opened up the kennel for Miles to come out and Jonathan went over to encourage him to come out and play, it was pretty cute as he sat there waiting for Miles to come out. It was totally like he was sitting there and saying "it's time to get up already! you've slept long enough now come out and play with me!"

So, these are just a couple of the fun stories of these two and it's fun to watch them together and I am looking forward to seeing Jonathan grow up with a dog, because so far he really enjoys it!

Christmas Findings

So I mentioned in an earlier post Jonathan finding a jingle bell from the tree. Well, once this bell is found he often will carry it around shaking it to make noise, but it quickly ends up in his mouth - like most things. I'm not sure how he can fit the whole thing in there, but he does!




He was also a great "help" when I was wrapping presents last week! I was able to occupy him with an old roll of 2008 graduation paper and some ribbon that I didn't want to use. :) He was thankfully occupied with the new findings long enough that I was able to get all of my gifts wrapped!




One thing that I have really enjoyed this year is making a number of gifts for our family members! Not that I can share what exactly I made, but there something really fun about coming up with what I think is a really great idea and something they will enjoy and my being able to make it! So it makes me really excited for Christmas morning to be able to share these gifts. :) I think that is one of the most enjoyable things about Christmas, is the giving. It is fun to receive as well, but the giving really is my favorite part.

Peppermint Crack and Christmas Baking

I had a very fun day today of baking Christmas goodies with my mom, and sisters in law, Ashley and Kara. I love that I FINALLY have sisters to share in these things with and one that even lives in town! We made a ton of fun things today. We made and decorated sugar cookies and gingerbread angels (yes, angels because out gingerbread man cutter was rather small, and when Kelly and Ashley went to Michael's to get one they were informed that they were about a month too late, and should've thought about that sooner than today). Then, we also did almond toffee, peppermint bark, dark and white chocolate dipped ritz with peanut butter cookies and pretzels. And the best thing ever was to make Peppermint Crack - which is actually Peppermint marshmallows, but the friend I got the recipe from calls it crack because of how addicting it is, and so now my whole family was calling it that as well! But, these seriously are amazing and I couldn't wait to get home tonight and make some hot chocolate to drink with my peppermint crack in my Starbucks holiday mug of the year :).

Christmas Decorating

Well, this is a couple weeks overdue, but I had to get the pictures off my camera first, and since it is just now happening...well, you get the point...

{Helping get the tree out of the box - Jonathan was very interested in this large box!}

I was totally dreading putting up any Christmas decorations this year, I thought at first it was because it just seemed like one more thing to keep Jonathan out of, but as I was pulling out our decorations, I realized it was even more that I didn't want to look at our decorations anymore. Last December I spent essentially the entire month sitting in my recliner in the living room holding/feeding Jonathan, looking that these four walls and the Christmas decorations I insisted on being put up right after Thanksgiving. I loved that month and time with Jonathan, but it was also a very hard month for me. Jonathan slept only in my arms (including at night) for the first two weeks, so I was pretty sleep deprived and not always totally functioning. So, in some ways I think the decorations brought back some of those memories, the good and bad. I am very pleased that this year I am not up with him all night long, and in fact we are not up with him at all, so that I am grateful for.


{Helping Daddy get the tree together.}

The other thing I did was not put out all my decorations, I tried to do some new things with what I had and overall just went very simple. And maybe after Christmas when everything is on sale I will try to find a couple new Christmas decorations to add to my collection.

On the other hand, Jonathan didn't "find" the Christmas tree until just a couple of days ago (it had been up for well over a week). At first he would reach out to try and grab an ornament off the tree, with arm outstretched as far as possible and body staying as far from tree as possible, I think he was sort of afraid of the branches. He eventually pulled off a jingle bell - which I intentionally put the bells on the lower branches thinking he would enjoy them. And then yesterday he discovered the beaded garland and thought it should be pulled off the tree, and also thought he should try to pull at the branches. Although he hasn't discovered the gifts under our tree, he did attack the bows on gifts at my mom's house today. Overall, it has been fun watching him discover the new things around the house, but I am looking forward to the tree coming down next week now that the tree looks like so much fun to play with.




Of course watching Elf while decorating.

Birthday Celebrations

Well, I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus I guess, but I actually have so much to post, I just don't really know where to start. So, I think I will start with Jonathan's birthday. I can't believe it, but we actually had three birthday celebrations for this little one! yikes, yes, that is more than is really necessary for a 1 year old. We were able to be in Colorado with Jeremy's family from Thanksgiving night until the next Wed, so on the Sunday we were there had a family gathering (minus two sick ones :( ) and did cake and ice cream and presents for Jonathan there. This was a Nebraska Husker themed party - big surprise :).




This was a mini cake that the store made also for Jonathan, he unfortunately wasn't able to eat this one (he has an allergy to egg whites) but Grandma Paula made him an awesome eggless cake and it was delish, one of his cousins also thought so!

Then on Jonathan's actual birthday, it was a Friday night and we were back at home still adjusting to being back, and me always looking for a reason to not cook - rarely do I win, usually reality of the bank account wins that:) - and I thought it would be fun to go do something fun for his bday. so we headed to Red Robin and invited along my family, so my mom (my dad was out of town), and brothers Dan, Ben and Robby and his wife Kara came out with us. And, if anyone knows me, you may see the irony in the fact that we took Jonathan to Red Robin - I really do not like it that much. I don't mind the food, but ALWAYS get irritated with the service, probably from my restaurant experience, and I don't even have high expectations from a place like RR, just to be greeted within 15 min would be nice. Unfortunately this night was no exception and they lived up to my low expectations and after about 10 min I had to go ask for some service, but we stayed and the food was pretty good - and we got some free onion rings :). Anyhow - that's all a side story, and not the most important part of the night. We had a great time celebrating that night and the highlight for Jonathan quite likely was the very fun balloon! He played with the balloon a ton - it was so fun to watch him! We did have them sing to him, but asked for a small group, it was sweet, he was almost mesmerized by the singing, and when they left he started moving his arms up and down kindof like dancing and a motion he makes we wanting more. So I think he enjoyed it and it didn't scare him.







And then that Sunday we had his birthday party. We hosted it at my parents house, as they have more room than us, and it was so fun to get together with so many of his and our friends. It's fun to see the little ones being able to interact more, and not just all lay down and stare at the ceiling. He was a good sport, and even enjoyed wearing his party hat! And at all three party's his favorite part was the cake or ice cream! not a big surprise! And rather than smushing it, he would pick up the whole piece and just hold it all in his hand eating off of it until it was gone! So cute to watch! It was so special to be able to celebrate his birthday with this group of friends as we have gone through this first year of parenthood together. Especially the moms have become such an important part of mine and Jonathan's weekly life and have been an encouragement and blessing to us. I'm sad that one family has just moved, and another is moving shortly, but will never forget this year particularly together.


I love this picture because all the kiddos are going a different direction and so mobile, in contrast to a picture of them a few months ago all just laying on the floor focused on something else.

Jonathan helping Neal out with his party hat - and this unfortunately ended badly with Jonathan snapping hat against Neal

Just chillin' with Uncle Rob

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake Cake

Christmas card 2010

All Of Us Christmas 5x7 folded card

Make a statement with custom Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Another Shutterfly promotion! This time it's for a $25 gift certificate! Sweet! Thanks Laura for telling me about it and finding this!

I really like Shutterfly and am currently working on a couple of projects on there. One being the Christmas card of course, trying to figure out the perfect pictures and which card is "our family". And also am collaborating with a family member on a gift for a relative. :)

If you want to know how you can also get your $25 gift certificate from Shutterfly, let me know!

Happy Birthday Jonathan!!

I cannot believe that he is 1 year old today! This has truly been the most wonderful year of my life! Every day (and night) full of new adventures and it has been wonderful to watch him learn and grow and explore. It has also probably been the hardest. There have been nights that I've been ready to throw in the towel and just be done being a parent, yet all along knowing that God specifically gave us Jonathan and that we were the right parents to raise him, as hard as it can be sometimes. And I know that we will have many trials ahead of us, but I pray that the joys many times outnumber the harder trials. Although I do think the trials and hard times also make us better parents.

Jonathan has been such a joy to get to parent and to get to know. He is so curious and wants to know about everything going on around him. He has always been so alert and aware of his surroundings. It has been fun to watch his body grown and develop from being a small newborn to eventually sitting up in our lap then pushing up on his arms and rolling over and sitting up and then rolling all over the place, learning to pull himself up then crawling and shortly thereafter walking! It is so amazing all the changes that happen in the first year that I never before realized would happen so quickly. He is truly a blessing and joy in our lives everyday!

First Trip to McDonald's Playland

So Jonathan and I went out for lunch today with my mom and the little boy she watches twice a week. We went to an award ceremony for my brother at his school, then to McDonald's for lunch, where Jonathan got to enjoy his (not first, I admit) Happy Meal and even played in the play place. He had fun cruising around and looking through the windows at Grandma. And yes, he even fought me when I tried to pull him out, he got a hold of part of the toy and held on trying to not go down - awesome. He seemed to enjoy the inside of his chicken nuggets, although he much preferred eating the breading we so diligently pulled off, and the apples were ok, but of course better in the caramel sauce, and he even got to try a french fry, which was better in ketchup. :) Yes, probably all things that as a non-mother I said "I will never feed my child those things at such a young age". hahaha

Tub Times

I was getting ready this morning and Jonathan was playing in the bathroom with me and while I was bent over the sink brushing my teeth I heard him knocking the bottles into the bathtub (his all time favorite accomplishment, a day is not complete with that). When I was done I looked over and he was in the tub! So, I grabbed the camera, snapped a couple of pics, and when he decided he was done in the tub, he just got himself out! Never a fuss, just plopped himself over pulled himself up and walked away!

Shutterfly Promotion

Ok I've been watching friends put up these posts, and getting their 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly, and not to be one to be left out, here I am trying to get mine as well! I think that they have a ton of really cute designs for this year. I haven't actually ever used Shutterfly for cards before, but I like that they have photo cards that are folded and then I could write on the inside. Christmas Photo Cards are a fun way to share a Christmas picture in a Christmas letter. Here are some of the designs that I liked.








SO, I might as well also mention things I've done on Shutterfly, I made a 0-6mo book for Jonathan and then also a summer book and I'm sure a 9-12 mo book will be in the works soon. I've been very pleased with my books, and what was even better was when my last book was taking FOREVER to get here, and after it was about 5 days late I called their customer service dept and based on tracking it had been stuck in Seattle for a few days. So for my wait the guy just had another book ordered for me and sent off! It was great and came quite quickly. I was very impressed, no hassle about it! :) I also am thinking about doing a fun photo calendar for the coming year. And, another fun gift idea for the grandparents are these photo mugs! What better way to enjoy pictures of the grandkids each day! :)

If you are interested in joining in the fun here go here

Now just to capture and select that perfect family Christmas picture!

More weekend fun

We had a very fun Halloween party last night with Jonathan's and our friends. All the kids were of course dressed up super cute, although didn't like that we tried to get them to sit on the couch long enough for a picture, and none was more determined to get off than our own. :) WE also carved pumpkins which was fun too! We have been so blessed to have such great friends up here and now to watch the little ones growing up and even interacting with eachother is really fun!

Ok, these pics are pretty much in reverse order, but they at least have captions :) - ok and for the most part the captions are on top of the picture, and a couple are a little off, but pretty self explanatory - sorry but I've been working on this way too long, and it is dinner time! :)


Some of the kiddos in the hallway, the two older boys loved running up and down the hallway - a sign of what is to come for us in the next couple of years


I loved this picture I caught of Jonathan and Renee and her son Emerson, all smiles and happy


The kiddos working on their pumpkins, I loved watching Levi focused on his pumpkin scooping


Jeremy and I holding Jonathan's hands to paint our pumpkin, ok so not really the greatest idea with an 11 mo old, especially when EVERYTHING goes in his mouth and his reflexes are quite quick, but between the two of us we didn't get paint anywhere else


Moms and their kiddos working on the pumpkins


Kiddos totally done with the picture thing


Starting out taking pictures, constant movement, just had to snap as possible - Melanie did a great job trying to keep my little one on the couch, because he was determined to not stay there!


Trying to get the kids positioned and ready to go


I LOVE this one of Natalie and Kaleb - so sweet - both of them


We had a cow, Buzz Lightyear and a Tiger playing in our living room


Laura's really yummy spider web cheesecake


The pumpkin cupcakes I made - I got to use all the cake decorating stuff I bought for the class I did this summer - yay


We used fingerpaints to do "handprints" on a fake pumpkin. It actually turned out pretty cute, and my idea is that it is something I can use as a decoration next year.


More Handprints, Jonathan didn't love doing this, but put up with us :)





ROAR!! - my little Tiger - just waking up from his nap



Attempting a pumpkin carving Sat night, Jonathan was actually totally afraid of it, and wouldn't put his hand in, right after I snapped this picture he turned around and essentially crawled up Jeremy and clung to his neck. Unlike anything he's done before, but wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin.