Thanksgiving 2010

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time out in Palmer with Tyler's family. Though we were missing some of the family there were still lots of us to celebrate the holiday. We had about 21 people for dinner and enough food to feed twice that many. It is always so fun to get together with family and friends and share a meal and Thanksgiving has to be one of my favorite holidays (besides Christmas of course).




Since this is our first year with a kid I have been thinking about what type of traditions we will want to start for the holidays with our family. I don't have many ideas yet but one tradition that we have is Thanksgiving morning cinnamon rolls. I thought this was a tradition until the night before Thanksgiving I told Tyler that I didn't think we were going to have cinnamon rolls in the morning 'cause I had just gotten over the stomach flu and wasn't in the mood for baking. Tyler responded, "What? We've never had cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving morning." I laughed and couldn't believe that the last 5 years of Thanksgiving cinnamon rolls was not remembered. So, in order to make it a true tradition (one that Tyler will now hopefully remember) I got up and made some cinnamon rolls for the morning. Yes, they were delicious and the perfect start to our Thanksgiving. Neal even got to try a small bite and one bite was not enough for him :)



This was Neal's first Thanksgiving and unfortunately he didn't really get to enjoy any of the Thanksgiving food. Neal has been sick (stomach flu) the past few days so eating a Thanksgiving meal on a recovering tummy was not going to work for him. But that didn't stop him from having a great time with the family and sitting at the table with all of us enjoying his saltine crackers and juice. I did end up giving him a little bread dipped in gravy and he devoured it like it was candy.




I think he is really going to like Thanksgiving next year 'cause I can't think of one dish that we had that he wouldn't love. Sadly I think he paid for that delightful gravy on the way home. We left the house and not more then a mile down the road Neal threw up in his car seat...poor guy. Thankfully we were close enough that we turned around and were able to go back and clean him all up at GiGi's house. It was a much nicer drive home with a clean baby, car and car seat. He seems to be doing good today but we are sticking with the saltine crackers and juice for now :)

New toy for Mom and Dad

So Tyler just purchased a new Camera for his company. It is a Canon EOS 7D and takes video and still shots. This type of camera is used by "the professionals" and was even used to film an episode of our favorite show "House" (so it's a great video production camera). I was pretty impressed that a hand held camera could take such good video. The best part about this is that I get to use the camera at home when it is not needed at the office. I am so excited to learn how to use this camera and all the different features and things that it can do. We have been playing around with it the last few days and have already been really impressed with the photos we have gotten. These are some of our favorite ones:







Now remember these have not been altered or anything so they could be even better but I am so excited about how they turned out without any real knowledge on how to do photography. Needless to say this is only the beginning of our soon to increase photo skills. I am looking forward to great "professional" looking photos right from home in the future. Oh and here is a sample of a video...again better ones to come as we learn more. (quality of the video went down a little when we changed the formate for posting but it's still cute)



I think I should look into some good photography and photo shop tutorials online - or maybe someone I know could show me a few pointers...know anyone you could suggest?

Crafting

We have been doing a lot more activities indoors lately with the cold weather outside. Cooking, baking and quilting are my favorite indoor projects. We had our friends Rob and Melanie over, with their son Eli, for dinner last weekend and Melanie and I got to create a great Sushi dinner. It was fun to be creative with the sushi rolls we decided to make and the dinner turned out delicious. The sushi not only tasted delicious but looked so colorful and authentic.




It took quite a bit of time to put everything together but made for a fun day and great dinner to share with friends.

Since Neal and I are home together all day I didn't want him to miss out on any fun activities. However, baking and quilting are not activities for a 9 month old, or a boy for that matter (baking maybe later if he wants to be a Chef). So we decided to make a fun kiddo craft together. This was Neal's first craft project and he did a great job. He is really quite the artist :)


He loved the feel of the wet, cool paint on his hands and even held relatively still while I got his hand print. We managed to finish the project with very little mess and no paint in the mouth.




This is a one of a kind piece of art work with a limited number of originals so keep your fingers crossed 'cause you may be the lucky recipient of one of these limited addition original paintings. :)

New Favorites

New things are happening every day around here, including the arrival of the winter snow. When you look outside everything is covered in a fresh layer of snow. Because of this we are staying indoors much more but that hasn't stopped Neal from his adventures. He is getting around everywhere and thus discovering so many new toys and other things to play with and explore. Here are some of his now favorite things:

1 ) Playing in the tupperware drawer:


2) Playing with and eating his new wood blocks:


3) Eating pasta with butternut squash sauce...


I got this sauce from Costco and it is Neal's absolute most favorite thing to eat. He shovels it in his mouth faster then any other food. We were eating dinner one night and he crawled right over and starting eating the pasta and sauce right off of my plate. I am going to have to go buy some more of this since it was such a hit. :)



4) "Standing" on his knees


5) Sending picture message to Daddy while he is at work:

Halloween Party

This weekend my friend Brandy and I put together a Halloween party for the kids. This is the first Halloween with kids for most of our friends up here so we wanted an excuse to get all the kids dressed up and hang out together. It turned out to be a fun evening full of lots of great food, friends, pumpkin carving and happy and sad kids. Poor Neal was not feeling very well that night so we hardly got any pictures of him smiling. I think he is working on another tooth which is why he was so teary eyed that night but maybe he just really didn't like being a monkey :)



As you can see below we had a very hard time getting all the kids to stay still for a good photo shoot on the sofa. We tried our best and at least you can see all their cute costumes.



Here is Neal with his friends Kaleb, the puppy and Luke, the cow.



We had so many yummy snacks/desserts. It was fun to have an excuse to make some fun fall/Halloween desserts. Brandy made some cupcakes and decorated them with icing pumpkins and I made a spiderweb cheese cake topped with a candy spider. My mom gave me this guacamole recipe that I tried for the first time also and it was a hit. She told me it was the best guacamole she had ever had and I would have to say I agree, it was the best guacamole I have had so I will be keeping that recipe and making it again in the future.



Neal was so tired that half way through the party we actually put him down for a nap in Jonathan's room and he slept for almost an hour. After his nap he seemed a lot happier and even played some with Kaleb before we left.


We got home that evening in time to pass out a little bit of candy to the few trick-or-treater's that came by our place. It was overall a fun evening. We always have a blast with our close friends and really who doesn't like a party right? By the time we got home Neal felt just good enough to smile for a few "First Halloween" pictures. Doesn't he make the cutest monkey you've ever seen?

Playtime Buddies

A few weekends ago Neal got to have his friend Eli stay the weekend. Eli is two years old and much more active then Neal but they had such a good time together. It was lots more fun to have a friend to play with at all times. Eli and Neal did everything together including eating, playing, reading and bathing. They both learned how to share their toys and both loved to play with Yawkey.





One evening before bed we put on a movie for Eli and all three boys sat on the couch and watched the movie together.


It was fun to get a little glimpse of what life will be like having a two year old in the house. Eli seemed to enjoy himself and must have felt right at home 'cause the whole weekend he called Tyler and I "mom" and "dad." This was cute and a little strange to have a two year old refer to me as mom. Guess I should get use to it since Neal will be at that age before long.

Neal is getting more and more mobile and crawling a lot now. His favorite thing to do is pull himself up onto his knees. He isn't really interested in standing yet but has learned to crawl quite fast if he wants something. If I leave the room for even a moment he is either headed to the puppies water dish or the dog kennel to play with the door. There are some boundaries we are setting in the house of things that he is not allowed to touch. We will see here in the next few weeks how well he catches onto these new rules.



Neal also moved into his new car seat. He seems to really like it and can still take a nap in it on long trips which is perfect. Tonight we were driving over to Tyler's office and Neal was in the back seat "talking" to Yawkey almost the whole time. The new seat allows Neal to see out the windows and what is around him more and with only him and the dog in the back seat he decided playing/talking to the dog was the best thing to do. I thought it was really cute.


I have once again started compiling some new Caribou recipes to try. With a freezer full of Caribou I am constintly on the lookout for new recipes. Last night we had Caribou tacos which were wonderful. Tacos are a staple meal in our home, since it is one of our favorites, and the ground caribou meets works great.


Hopefully I will have some new recipe stories to post in the next few weeks. On the Caribou meal list is: Caribou Chli and Pepper Steaks. We'll see how those turn out :)

Movement

Things have been changing around our house lately. Neal is now 8 months old and is going to be keeping me a lot bussier in the next few weeks.


Just a few weeks ago he learned how to get up on his hands and knees and after just two days of rocking on all fours he learned how to crawl. It is still a lot of work for him and thus he is slowly moving but it didn't take long for him to figure it out so I think that his speed will pick up quickly. I am glad that we have the baby gates installed in the house so I am as ready as possible for this little guy to get around.




The Lord has blessed us so much with such a good little guy. He is continuing to sleep through the night and is so good at taking his naps during the day. I have been dreading the whole teething phase just from hearing stories of some kids who are so uncomfortable during that time. Once again Neal has surprised me because one saturday morning a few weeks ago I saw his first tooth poking through. I didn't even know he was working on a tooth :) He had one or two restless nights which I now think must have been from the discomfort of teething but even with that he simply just needed his binky for comfort. His smile is so cute with his little tooth poking through. I think I may see tooth number two starting to come also :)


Almost all the leaves are off the trees now but the snow isn't here yet so we are continuing to go outside whenever we can. I have pulled out the warmer clothes however and make sure that we all get bundled up nice and warm before going out for a walk in cool weather. We will continue to walk outside as long as possible but once the snow hits we will have to find an indoor place to get exercise and visit with friends.


We are watching a friends 2 year old son, Eli, this weekend so we are going to have lots of activity here for the next few days. Neal loves to have others around him and he and Eli really enjoy playing together so it's gonna be fun. I think Yawkey is even going to enjoy having a new playmate for the weekend. There is sure to be some fun stories and pictures to come from this "sleepover weekend party."