New Words

Coleman is learning so fast! We're having a hard time keeping up with all the new things he can do and say. He's becoming quite adept at expressing to us what he wants. His latest discovery is if he says "peez" (please) Mom and Dad are so thrilled that he gets pretty much whatever he wants. :) It really is pretty cute. We're really excited. He's also learning to put words together to convey a more complex meaning. He insists on walking everywhere. He's been getting new teeth (finally) and when he wakes up in the night he asks to go on a walk. It really is cute. He also frequently asks for the vacuum and to watch Burt (Mary Poppins). He asks for sips (his sippy cup) and snacks. He asks for "appoes" which equates really to any fruit. He's not picky with that food group! He's really funny to be around and makes every day an adventure. Since the last word post he's added many more words to his vocabulary. We've been writing them down on a pad of paper that we keep in the kitchen drawer. Over Thanksgiving we realized we're not going to be able to remember all of them to write down any more. He's learning them too fast. Here's a list of the new ones we have managed to write down:

cookie

ball

bug

o'oh

wet

Addie

vac (vacuum)

yuck

peas

knee

diut (dirt)

ambuger (hamburger)

peez (please)

upay (airplane)

walk

hemet (helmet)

watch

rock

arc

cat

church

tookey (turkey)

CD

help/helper

burr

bricks

leaf

amen

toes

Thanksgiving, etc.

We had a great Thanksgiving! The holiday was really hectic and there was a lot going on, but it turned out nice anyway. We weren't sure what we were going to do. We had lots of family and friend plans change before something worked out. We ended up in St. George spending the holiday with my grandparents' home. My parents met us there and we got together with Cody and Michele and Bryce. Tyler got a little mountain biking in and Cole really enjoyed the dirt in Grandpa's garden, all the attention, exploring all Grandma's stuff, his squeaky shoes, playing with Bryce, and the "tookey" - it's great to be a kid! I enjoyed the break from my apartment and the "cold" weather. Yes, it's sad to say, but i thought St. George was cold. :) I guess I'm truly acclamating to CA...

The sad part of it all though is that I left our diaper bag and camera in my Grandma's living room. Yep - all the pictures will have to wait 'till we drive up that way again. Thankfully Christmas is rapidly approaching and we're headed up to Salt Lake to see some real cool weather :) - we're all praying for snow.

Tyler is finishing up his 1st semester of medical school and has been going a mile a minute. School keeps him busy, but it's all the extra things he does that really keep him hopping! He's so good at coming home to be with Cole before he has to go to bed. Cole has been cutting teeth and isn't always the happiest camper by the end of the day. But he always has a big smile for Dad when he comes home!! He loves to say "Dad". He repeats it over and over and smiles. Who needs Christmas, we've got Dad!

I'm still trying to get on the stick with some photography stuff. (Obviously I'm not doing a whole lot right now since my camera is still on vacation.) I keep busy playing with Cole and trying to find things he'll eat. I guess he was spoiled by really good cooking over Thanksgiving because now he hardly wants to eat anything (except oranges, which he calls "appos" (apples)). I guess that's better than some things he could be hooked on eating...

Cole has discovered the playground at our apartment complex. We've played there before but it wasn't a big hit. Now he stands by the door several times a day repeating "walk, walk, walk." He loves to put his shoes on and walk over to the playground. On the way he tells me all about everything we pass - "leaf," "bricks," "rock," "diut" (dirt). He likes to pick pieces of stuff up to give to me. He's especially fond of acorns and seeds from the trees. :) This little guy keeps me on my toes! He loves to go down the slide and crawl through the tunnels. He loves to hide and then pop out laughing. He likes to dig in, throw and eat the wood chips (yuck!) He's hilarous! I'm so thankful for him and his great sense of humor!

Today I took him to the craft store on an errand. He named lots of things as we passed them on the aisles. When we got to the Christmas displays down the middle of the store, he was at a loss for words. He yelled "0ooooooh" at everything we passed. Women were staring and chuckling as we paraded through to the back of the store. He loved the lights and the trees and the sparkly decorations. Every new thing brought another "Oooooh!" I wish I had all our Christmas stuff out at home for him to enjoy, but I haven't gotten to it all yet. We do have our little 2 ft tree up in the living room. It's decorated with lights and a string of cheerios. He's pretty proud of it and if I forget to plug it in, he lets me know. The ornaments that should go on the tree are scattered all over the house. He carries them around all day and loves to throw them (thanks Mom for the plastic decorations!). We may have a future baseball pitcher on our hands. He's got quite an arm.

I love this time of year! Even when life gets crazy, it seems like there's always time at Christmas to remember the wonderful blessings I've been given. I'm so thankful for my family. I'm so blessed to have wonderful parents and parent-in-laws, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins... the list goes on and on. Living in California has made me even more aware of how blessed I am to have Tyler and Cole. They make my life wondeful! I love them so much!! I'm thankful for great friends - even from far away - who always seem to make things seem like they're going to work out! I'm especially thankful at this time of year for a loving Heavenly Father and our Savior. I'm thankful for the restoration of the Gospel and for the Book of Mormon. When I remember these great blessings, it's easy to feel joy, even when life seems to throw lots of curve balls (or curve ornaments :) ). I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season!

Copycat

So, I was looking at my friend, Melissa's blog and was inspired by 2 of her posts. One she posted about her apartment and tagged me. (I'll have to get right on that, but I want to clean up the huge mess I made today before I take any pictures of my apartment). The other was the 4th picture from the 4th folder in her pictures folder. I thought I'd give that one a shot:

This is a picture of Tyler after a crazy skiing accident in high school. Pretty gorey, right? He showed me this picture on our second date (and we still got married Ü )! His skiing accident also played a role in his decision to go to go into medicine. So here we are very happily married and going to med school in CA and it all relates to this picture. Pretty crazy hu?

Thanks for the fun idea, Mel!

Hilarious!

So, I feel like a geek posting without pictures, but today was too funny to pass up sharing the moments!

Number One Funny Moment-
This morning Cole walked over to the door, turned around and emphatically said "up! dirt!" Up means out and dirt meant he wanted to go outside to dig. I love this little guy! Every time I turn around he makes my day! :) His newfound method of expressing himself is keeping things interesting! I like it a lot better than the pointing and yelling.

Number Two Funny Moment-
Playdough. I won't elaborate too much. Just think of it as a three stage process.: playing, mopping and bathing. :)

Number Three Funny Moment-
This afternoon Cole stood by the broom closet and repeated "vac, vac, vac..." about a million times (you can say it a lot of times in 20 minutes). He wanted to get the vacuum out of the closet to hear how loud it is and play with the cord (he can entertain himself with the cord for hours). I explained to him that we couldn't ge the vacuum out until Dad got home. (I didn't want to vacuum right then. I'd just mopped the floor 4 times in 1 hour.) He eventually moved on to something else. When Tyler got home, the first thing Cole did after giving him a big hug was to walk over to the closet and start saying "vac, vac, vac..." I lauged and told Tyler what I had promised. He laughed and said "You're like the elephant that never forgets." Cole's response was a big smile, an elephant sound and lots of laughs. We all almost died laughing! Tyler got the vacuum out and Cole watched him vacuum the whole apartment. Talk about entertainment! Afterwards Cole played with the vacuum in our room for about 45 minutes until we forced him to stop for dinner. :) What a funny little guy!

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween to you! cole and his second favorite pumpkin

surfer cole

eating snoopy's surf board

what a funny time of year! we were going to dress cole up as whinny the pooh. he has a cute little outfit that my cousin gave him when he was born. it just fits! we were pretty excited about that. it took all the stress out of figuring out what to do for a costume. but, as luck would have it, the week of halloween saw temperatures here in the upper 90s. it didn't even dip below 70 even at night! it was way too hot to wear a sweatshirt!! so, for our ward halloween party we resorted to our favorite thing to wear - swimming stuff. cole was a surfer instead of pooh bear. he seemed to think that was just fine. :) on halloween it was 98* so we stuck with the surf stuff!

coleman and his friend mckenna hugging at the halloween party (right before they both fell over)

surfer cole

dad and cole socializing at the halloween party- we met lots of cool people there. it was fun to do it with 2 wards!

this is cole's favorite halloween decoration. grandma neff gave it to me when i was teaching school to set up in my classroom. it's really our only halloween decoration, but it's just as well. cole had to have it turned on every time he ate (4 or 5 times a day) and every time he walked by the kitchen table (the rest of the day). he figured out how to unplug it and he loves carrying it around the house. now that halloween is over i have to hide it. i can't find the box, so he still finds it once in awhile and we have to get it down an let him carry it all around for hours.

beautiful california

California has some of the weirdest and coolest plants I've ever seen. Maybe it's just 'cause they're new to me, but I think they're beautiful!! I'm constantly looking around for beautiful here. I really miss my mountains!

visit from mom and dad

hey look! a space helmet! - i can see you, earthling!

put them in, take them out, put them in, take them out...

wow! i love tools

buzz! buzz!

buzz!

helping dad and grandpa is so fun!

grandma reads good stories!

grandpa's and my favorite movie is "mary poppins"

my parents came to visit in october. it was soooooo fun to have them here. it was a really busy week for tyler, but he worked his schedule out really well so we could all spend some time together. we ate luch at western with tyler a couple of the days and hung out in the evenings. we just relaxed and mom and dad helped with a lot of things around the apartment. we even had time to hit a few antique shops! cole LOVED hainging out with grandpa and grandma. he really loved working on the storage shed door with dad and grandpa - you know - 'ya gotta love the manly stuff! thanks mom and dad! we love you!

october 2008

new words

it seems like cole learns a new word every time we turn around. he loves to talk to us or to himself. here's a list of his words so far (all the ones we understand, anyway) -

bath

snack

grapes

cheese

dad

mom

what

that

up

on

off

book

read it

eyes

sip

Jesus

nose

hat

hot

ice

tent

stuck

hot dog

duck

dog

apple

Burt

hammer

clock

congratulations little buddy! we're so proud of you and all the neat things you're learning!

i love to be silly!

cole loves to just practice walking around while talking to himself. he loves to be silly too, so this was the perfect moment for him. he walked around laughing and saying "hat, hat, hat..."

10.18.08

newport beach in october!

i love this stuff!

yep! it doesn't get much better than this!

saturday we decided to hit the beach one last time before the weather turned cold (turned out we had all sorts of time on our hands - it was 98* on halloween). we went with our friends, the andersons. we had a great time even though the weather wasn't fabulous. we even saw a whale (we think).

october 11, 2008

waterfall/they have water here somewhere!!

coleman and our friend, clara, enjoying the ride

after we went swimming in ice water...

this is like the shower, but so neat 'cause there are rocks to walk on! - and the water is FREEZING!!!

hmmm... i think i'll jump right in

cole and i went on an adventure with our friends, sally and clara. we hiked up to a waterfall and ate lunch and played in the water. cole LOVED the water and the waterfall. he has absoluteley no fear! he played 'till he was as cold as an ice cube then we went home. thanks sally and clara! we love hanging out with you guys!!

october 1, 2008

joshua tree

these are joshua trees. pretty cool. it's amazing they can survive out here!

getting a good look at this weird tree...

hmmm... dad! what IS this?

you see cole, you put your hand in like this and it's called a hand jam

best buddies chillin' in one of their favorite places - on a rock

last weekend tyler and i decided we'd had enough of the normal grind. we ignored the laundry and the messes and other mundane things we should have been doing and headed for joshua tree. it's about a 2 hour drive from san dimas, but we figured it was worth it to get out. we're missing how easy it was to spend a lot of time outdoors in utah. the trip turned out to be really fun! coleman especially had a blast!!! he loves to be outside. he had an especially good time eathing the sand and rocks. tyler got a couple climbs in and i just enjoyed being outside and taking a few pictures. lots of people took pictures of tyler climbing. we were in a pretty high traffic place. unfortunateley, i couldn't quite balance watching cole who was tied in to the back of my harness and belaying tyler and taking pictures. sometime we'll have to bring a friend to be the photographer. :) we have to go back anyway. this park has a 5.0 climb - we've gotta do it just to say we did it. there are so many easy climbs that we could start at 5.0 and then go to 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, etc. i think they have all the way to 5.13 (i'll have to check with tyler) anyway, fun weekend getaway.

Labor Day!

Cole loved having Bryce to play around with! They were like two peas in a pod!
We went to the park the last day we spent with the Flamms. The little guys had such a fun time seeing all the new sights and playing together. Cole was in heaven even though he was soooooo tired!
Cole loves climbing on Tyler. It's one of his most favorite passtimes! I love to see them hang out together and enjoy fun guy stuff.

Ok - I'm way behind! We've had a great time here in CA so far. We've had a lot going on and experienced a lot of new and exciting things. Life with Cole helps us remember how exciting everything really is! :) We loved hanging out with Cody, Michele and Bryce over Labor Day weekend. I hope I can finish getting these pictures together along with the others from Sept. before too much longer. I can't believe how time flies!

LOVE

We're so lucky to have such a loving family! This week has stirred up a lot of fun memories! We LOVE you so much, Grandma and Grandpa!

Playing Catch-Up Again!

Tyler and I found a great deal for printing digital scrapbooks and we've been inspired by their deadline to catch up with the months we haven't scrapbooked. The deadline is Tuesday and we're almost caught up! Here are a bunch of pages in a completely random order!