Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We got to go home to Utah for Christmas! We've been looking forward to it since we moved here. We all miss the weather and the outdoors and the seasons. I was so excited for Cole to see snow for the first time!

After Tyler's last test, we loaded up the car and the family and drove to St. George. We got there late, but my grandparents were waiting up for us. It was fun to spend some time with them before we made the rest of our trip. Cole made himself right at home. My sweet grandma remembered that I wanted pecan pie at Thanksgiving and we didn't have room to make it or eat it. She greeted us at 11:30pm with pie! Trust Grandma to make everything special! She and Grandpa made us a yummy breakfast in the morning (we even had sausage) and then we were off to beat the storm.

Coleman did really well in the car and we miraculously missed the crazy onslaught of snow we were supposed to hit. When we finally did get snow, it was really exciting! Tyler seemed to have a good time driving in it!

We had lots of fun while we were in town. Cole LOVED spending time with his grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles and Annie (his cousin - her real name is Addie, but 'ya know). He remembered where everything was at both his grandparents' houses and made himself right at home. He LOVED the Christmas decorations - especially Grandma's musical soldiers and music boxes and Grandma Marilee's snow globe with the train. Grandpa Terry was home during the day a lot, so Cole had a full-time buddy.

Cole (and his parents) also loved the time they were able to spend with all the family. It was so nice to be home. I loved chatting with my mom and Tyler’s mom. It was fun to see our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins too. The time seemed so short! We didn’t get to spend as much time anywhere as we would have liked. I think I almost miss everyone more now after just a little taste of hanging out than I did before we made it up for Christmas! I guess we’ll just have to plan another trip soon and for now enjoy the fact that we have so many people who we love and who love us.

Cole had so much fun being together with everyone and playing with everything in sight! He learned so many new words while we were there that I can't even begin to write them all down. MY favorites were when he stopped saying ssssndirt and started saying sno. He also loved saying SANTA! He says it with such enthusiasm!! He also was really excited about Uncle Trent’s toot toot (train).

We got to hang out with friends who were home from all over! I wish we had more pictures, but it felt like home to be with them and just hang out. We really miss you guys!!! Cole loved being with Byce (I’m not purposely misspelling it, that’s how Cole says it) and Hannah. He was really excited to meet Will. So excited, in fact, that he tackled him. We’re glad you’re ok, Will! :)

Our trip home was a breeze as well. We stayed with my grandparents again and enjoyed being with them. Once again, the time was way too short! We had to say goodbye when it felt like we’d just arrived. The drive through Vegas in the morning proved to be a much better option than our experience over Thanksgiving. (We drove 7 hours Sunday and ended up back at my grandparents’ house in St. George). We made it through in a little under 6 hours.

Well, I could go on and on (and I guess I already have). We had a wonderful Christmas. We hope all of you did as well! Thanks for making it great! We love you! We are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends and family!

Merry Christmas 2008

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.