Treasured

     I love this man.

He has always been adorable.

He has always been funny and fun to be with.

He has always been a good friend.

     He will always be a great doctor.

He will always be an amazing father.

He will always be my best friend.

Happy 30th Birthday babe. I love you.

Collection

Forgot about this…

For about a month after Halloween (when I finally decided to pack up all of the decorations) Norah carried her jack-o-lantern everywhere she went. She picked up things of interest to her and stowed them away in her little bucket of wonders. She kept an inventory of everything in it. For example, if I took out the half-eaten hershey’s bar and put it in the trash, it would somehow end up right back in the pumpkin. If she saw me using the makeup brush she kept in it she would say, “No, Mom!”, take it from me and quickly put it back in her stash. 

Here’s what I found one day:

• makeup brush
• thing you you freeze to keep your breast milk cold (I’m sure these have an actual name)
• one shoe
• half-eaten Hershey Bar
• golf ball
• bracelet
• empty wrapper
• teaspoon
• rubber band
• toy horse
• clothespin

The items would vary on different days as she would lose interest in one thing and be attracted to another. It was always fun to see what made it in the bucket.

Our little collector!

Four months

Ezra has learned all kinds of things in the past week or so.  It’s incredible how fast they learn!  He rolled over on his own for the first time last week and I just happened to be taking his picture. 

One

Two

Three!

In the last few weeks he has also found his tongue (as you can see), had his first bowl of rice cereal (loved every minute of it), started playing with his feet and is able to hold toys and put anything he can get a hold of in his mouth.  It is truly a wonder to watch them grow!

We think he is starting to look a lot like his daddy. What do you think?

December

Think I’ll just roll the whole month into one post. Whew.

We wanted to make December magical for Norah this year since it the first Christmas she understood what was going on. She immediately fell in love with Santa Claus, lights and Christmas trees. Here are some of the highlights of our month:

She first saw Santa at the mall a few days after Thanksgiving. A group of teenage girls were standing in front of him asking him various questions. (I heard one girl say, “Okay, seriously, you can tell me, are you the real Santa?” Classic.) Norah had no thought for any of the girls. The moment she saw Santa she started running, arms open wide, through a mess of legs, right into Santa’s lap. This Santa was amazing, real white beard, rosy cheeks, plump in the middle and a jolly chuckle.  He picked her up, gave her a squeeze, an elf hat and a candy cane.  She couldn’t have been more excited. 

We went to another (deserted, half-abandoned) mall a few weeks later and found a Santa there who let us take a picture with our camera. This Santa was probably in this thirties but talked like he was still in high school.  Norah was a little apprehensive… Note to self: don’t go see Santa in malls that are about to close down, even if there is no line on a Saturday in December.

Some of the other festivities included:

• A trip to Santa’s Magical Kingdom. (A campground turned into a Christmas wonderland with lights and characters of all kinds. We drove through it.)
• Picking out our Christmas tree. Norah was not happy about this when she realized all it involved was driving to a parking lot filled with boring, undecorated trees and walking through them in the cold rain. She did love getting it home and decorating it though.
• Opening packages from our friends and family.  One of her favorite times of day was when the mail came.
• Making Nativity puppets with mom and watching the Christmas Day puppet show.
• Playing and sleeping with Trixie the elf.
• Reading stories about baby Jesus.
• Driving down Candy Cane Lane. Another Christmas light drive. She LOVED the lights. Any time we were in the car and she would see them she would yell “Ahh! Christmas lights!”
• Decorating Christmas cookies.
• Christmas Eve with the Reagan’s. Feliz Navidad- yummy mexican food and a piñata!
• New Christmas PJs.
• And of course, waking on Christmas morning to see that Santa had actually come! Even if our basement did flood on Christmas Eve…

He came! Every night in December she slept with her “baby elf” and “mommy elf”. They have since gone back to the North Pole.

Ezra woke up just as we were finishing up the opening of presents. Happy first Christmas little boy!

  Watching the Nativity puppet show put on by mom and dad.

I love December and all that it means. Happy Christmas.

Blessed

We were fortunate enough to take a trip to Utah this year for Thanksgiving.  It felt like we were going to be there awhile but somehow the time flew by and we didn’t get to see everyone we wanted to. We didn’t take very many pictures either. I will refer you here for a bit about our Thanksgiving. Thanks Kristen and Tyler!

We blessed Ezra at my parents house on November 22nd.  It was wonderful to have family from both sides attend.  Joel, as usual, gave a great blessing.

We are so thankful to have this little one join our family.  You can’t tell from these pictures, but he is always smiling and laughing. He likes to cuddle, suck on his fingers, eat, watch his sister run around and he just learned how to roll over!

Two.

Two months and no posts?! Sorry. A lot to catch up on…

Norah turned two on November 16th and to celebrate we had a few friends over for a party!  Friends, yummy food, games, cake, and presents… what more could a little girl want? 

Pin the tail on the donkey.. note to self: this game does not work so well with two-year-olds.

All of her friends her age are boys: We had Luke, Nolan and Harris over for the party…all very eligible bachelors :-)

The presents came out and all the kids wanted in on the action. Somehow Shannon still had the energy to play pretend…

Two of Norah’s favorite people… Lily and Megan.

Norah continues to amaze us as she grows into a little person.  She pretty much has a full vocabulary now and is a constant source of entertainment as she says things all the time that should not be coming out of the mouth of a person her size. She looked at Ezra today (who had had his socks removed by his sister), looked at me, put her hand up and said:

“Okay mom, I will be right back.  I am going to get brother’s shoes.  His feet are cold.”

She loves Ezra (a little too much sometimes) and always has a smile for him.  I think his favorite thing to do is watch her run around as she has never-ending energy.

Her nursery teachers have told us on several occasions that they think she is a genius.  She always has the answers to all the questions and knows all of the words to the songs.  Her teacher said that one time she was playing in the corner and he was asking questions to the class and she called out the answers from the corner, not really paying attention, when no one else knew them!  She has an amazing memory and loves to talk- I think that helps.

She loves Dora the Explorer and Curious George at the moment. She can’t get enough books to read and would watch movies all day if we let her.

Norah is a light in our home. She makes us smile and laugh everyday. She couldn’t be more loved.

Happy Birthday Norah!