Christmas

We had such a great Christmas! We spent the night on Christmas Eve at my parents house so that Gavin could wake up to a Christmas tree and beautiful decorations (and of course be with family). This was the first year that Gavin was old enough to kind of anticipate Christmas so it was really exciting for me and Lance. Santa brought Gavin a red roadster trike and a red helmet. He was more excited about wearing the helmet around than anything. My sister Nicole was in town with her family so we spent the majority of the past week over visiting with her and her daughters. Gavin loved playing with her 5 year old daughter Katie. And Jackson's playdates, (her 5 month old twin daughters) didn't do much this time around except drool, smile and look adorable. Sorry Jacky, maybe next time. Jackson surprised us all this past week by starting to army crawl. He can scoot anywhere so quickly we suddenly have to have him always on our radar. He is also getting his bottom teeth in so when he is not smiling he is wailing. I am so blessed to have both mine and Lance's families so close. We truly appreciate all that they do for us!

Spinning Horses

I took Gavin on the Carousel at Fashion Island and he thought he died and went to heaven!

He loved the horses and getting dizzy!

Visit with Santa

"Who is this fuzzy guy?"


"Okay-I guess he's alright."

This Santa handed out coloring books instead of candy canes which I thought was a brilliant idea. His beard was real, so I'm pretty sure this was the real one.

Has the World Stopped?

The kids are sick. Gavin had a head cold which he passed to Jackson on Thanksgiving. On top of the cold (which he still has) Jackson had the stomach flu, which scared me to death. I’ll leave out the details, but thank goodness my sweet baby is okay. Lance has been going about his normal days untouched by the sickness and the mayhem. As for me, it feels like the world has stopped. I have been lucky to get a shower for the past few days and I’ve pretty much always been dressed in my sexy sweats. We haven’t ventured outside for quite a while besides our balcony and courtyard. You can imagine that I’m a bit stir crazy. I’ve also been regularly scaring the realtors with my makeup-less face and unkempt hair. But they deserve it because they keep showing up unannounced. According to our viewing instructions they are supposed to give me at least a one hour notice. Trust me, the ones that saw me today will never make that mistake again. On top of the treat of my unsightly appearance they got to wait outside while I tidied up. If any of them knew the way our house has been bejeweled by Gavin, they would run the other way. But thanks to my brother’s great prowess, no one is the wiser. It helps to have a brother in the carpet cleaning business. Let’s just say we are one of Zerorez’ most consistent and loyal customers. All in all I think I will survive this week.

The mischief’s of Gavin (this week)
Unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper and strung it around house
Filled a new bottle of baby wash with water
Pulled flowers out of my pots
Peed on counter
Smeared poop into the carpet (while diaper was still intact)
Wrote on my desk with permanent ink
Scratched several DVDs

What makes it all worth it…
When he asks for a hug with those beautiful brown puppy dog eyes
When he laughs (even if it’s the evil villain laugh)
When he is kind to his baby brother (by smothering him with kisses, hugs and toys)
When he helps me clean (by wiping his greasy hands all over my clean glass tables with his invisible paper towel and happily singing “clean up!”)
When I remember that he starts kindergarten in September of 2011

Adventures

We stopped at the Newport Beach temple (while on the way home from Newport on Saturday) which is gorgeous. That would be a fun date night -dinner and the temple.

Today we had 2 showings of the house at 2 & 6 pm. Therefore I spent most of my day picking up after my whirlwind Gavin or as I like to call him my Tazmanian Devil. I think I picked up the same things about 4 times each today. My kids didn't get naps because of the 2 o'clock showing. I finally layed Gavin down and 30 minutes later I could still hear him so I went and checked on him and he had miraculously pulled poop from his diaper while his diaper was perfectly intact with duct tape around the top! That's always fun cleaning up that when you have a showing in an hour!

I took the boys to the temple today to walk around on the grounds. It was perfect timing because we were able to see the assembling of the nativity. Gavin wanted to get up on all the animals. Our temple is so beautiful. I can't wait to go back when everything is lit up.

Newport Santa

This Saturday we drove up to Fashion Island to take the boys to see Santa. It was so nice just to get out of town for a day. It's always fun to go up there to check out my old make-up counter where I used to work, but sadly it was closed. The store must be getting a facelift, as are the rest of Newport. Of course the mall & parking lot were crowded, but thankfully I had my trusty handicap permit (that expired that day) from when I had surgery. I was so sad that it was the last day I could use it (for those days when there is NO parking). As we were walking towards the mall with our kids in tote, a grumpy man sitting on a bench mumbled at us and I did not think he was speaking to us, but Lance said "excuse me?" and he said,"I'm calling the police to have your car towed. You parked in a handicap spot." Lance said, "AND we have a valid handicap permit from my wife's surgery." He kept mumbling and said some more rude things under his breath. That put Lance in a bad mood for our whole Santa visit until he went to check on our car. I kept reassuring him that the cops couldn't tow our car on that guys word that we didn't appear handicapped. It did make me feel a little guilty knowing that I was using it even though I didn't need it, but it also irritated me that the man accused us of being handicap parking theives! We did enjoy the rest of our time, wandering around and not shopping. The santa was great-he even had a real beard! We ate at my favorite restaurant El Torito Grill. I love the warm tortillas, salsa and honey butter. For those that haven't been, it is like 10 steps up from El Torito-everything is soooo good.

4th Year Anniversary & Thanksgiving

Well our 4th year anniversary was on Thanksgiving Day this year. Lance was so sweet. He made some pumpkin pecan pancakes (William Sonoma mix) which were so delish! We had to put the rest of our celebrating on hold due to Thanksgiving. I brought a few side dishes over to my parents house for an early dinner/lunch at 1pm. My mom is such the chef. Her food is always phenomenal and the presentation is perfect. We were very punctual this year which was a big accomplishment! We had a lot of fun hanging out with them and then we went over to Lance's parents house at 5:30 for their dinner. I brought soup and a pumpkin pie. As a family tradition, Lance's mother likes to make all of the food herself and let everyone else just relax. It is so sweet of her, but its just so hard to let her do everything for everyone else. I think she deserves a break since she has been cooking for several decades now! I'm trying to convince her to let everyone else bring the food so she can relax and enjoy Thanksgiving. Anyways food was delicious at their house too, as always.

The best part of Thanksgiving is just sitting around and talking after the feast. I love family time. It's so funny how we are so comfortable at our own family's house. Lance teases everyone non-stop when he's at his house. He serenaded his brother with a romantic ballad while on one knee. He cuddled hilariously too close with his father, crushing his imaginary comfort zone. He gave his sister a piece of cake which was half of the cake for her piece (she's tiny, so its ok) and hid brownies in his brothers room. He is loads of fun. At my parents house I just tap danced for Gavin like the penguin on the movie Happy Feet. Lance and Gavin thought that was pretty funny.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

And Lance wonders why I have to keep buying more make-up...

Hot Dog

I knew I was in trouble when we pulled into Costco's parking lot and Gavin yelled, "Hot Dog!" I swear he's only had one twice before, but I guess he really liked them.

Play-doh still smells the same

Gavin and I play with play-doh every day, several times a day. We get all the animal cutters out and the spaghetti maker and the confetti maker, but all he wants is mommy to mold some animals.

Finally Succumbing to Blogging!

So I thought I would give this a try since we have family that lives out of town and its easier to keep up this way. This is exciting! I am terrible- I have not downloaded pictures (until just a few days ago) since Jacks birth. We have a lot to catch up on. I will just start with Halloween. I made dinner and took it to my parents. I made the William Sonoma recipe of butternut squash soup. I love fall foods. Gavin went trick or treating in their neighborhood and everyone loved him because he was so friendly. People walked out into the street with us from their houses to keep saying bye to him. I carried 20lb Jackson around the whole time. He was just a cozy little duckling in that costume. Almost like he was drugged, it was so funny. We spent some time at mom and dads afterwards.

We are selling our house which is a lot of continuous work. It is definitely a challenge to keep the house pristine when anyone could drop by. But I did get a compliment. An agent that brought a potential buyer through said that "this was the cleanest kid house that he had every seen and to give compliments to the wife". That made my day.