Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope that everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday with friends and family. The note above is from Ellie to Aunt Susu (who did not make it to Santa Barbara for turkey with family and was missed).

And once again we didn't take any photos...and learning our lesson last year, and it being Cal's first Thanksgiving you would think we would have been all over it with the photo documentation. But, sadly we were not. And so we rely on the photos from others, mostly Cousin Jimmy.



Ellie helped set the table, including the writing of name cards for the place settings. Jim brought his talents as a mixologist to mix up the beverages for our dinner. We had store bought stuffing and a pumpkin pie (we missed Susie). But I did make rolls as usual! Grandma Pam rocked an awesome turkey and Nicks family recipe for green bean casserole. And we had the usual family recipe sides of mashed potatoes and Claire's cranberry sauce. It was an awesome meal.

Despite individuals dealing with pneumonia, ear infections, sleep deprivation, and acute levels of stress, it was a nice family get together.

And Cal really seemed to enjoy his Turkey vegetable dinner. Really, I promise he did.







Happy Thanksgiving!

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Calvin is 8 months old!

How did that happen? How did Cal become 8 months old already?!? Time is definitely going by fast. In fact, when uploading photos today for this blog post I realized there was some awesome stuff that we did when he was 5 or 6 months old (like go to Disneyland!) that we haven't posted about on here. We will...eventually.

If you can't tell in the photo above, Cal isn't feeling too well. He had been sick for a while and so last Monday Nick took him to the doctor where he was diagnosed with two ear infections. After a couple days on the antibiotic all was better. But then he stopped sleeping and it was obvious he was uncomfortable. So back to the doctor we went today. Ear infections are still there, so we started a more heavy-duty antibiotic. Hopefully this helps, but I was told to call the pediatric ENT and get Cal in for an appointment. Fortunately, we know one and like him from when we first moved and Ellie still had her tubes.

Normally he is a really happy baby with lots of smiles. He is pretty laid back, but still hates to be alone. In fact, now that he is crawling, or crawl-scooting, his main objective is typically to chase down me or Ellie or Nick if we walk away from him. He can move pretty fast. While he is still dragging his belly...its only going to be a short time till he is actually crawling. And when he does, we are really in trouble because if he goes any faster he will be able to keep up with us! We decided it was time for the baby gate so Nick pulled that out of the garage today.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!

Our Halloween wasn't just one evening, or even one day. Oh no! Halloween lasted for about a week in our house. Everything started last weekend with Nick taking the kids to Ellie's school's Fall Festival, then trick or treating at KidSpace, then Ellie wore her costume to ballet, and then, on Monday, the kids were costume models on KTLA (see Nick's post below). Of course for all of these activities, except the KTLA morning show, Ellie wore her 50s girl costume and Cal went costume-less. Both Ellie and Cal got to keep the costumes they wore on the KTLA morning show, which meant that they each had multiple costumes for Halloween!!

On Halloween itself, Ellie took her 50s girl costume to school for a party in her after school program. Apparently she had a blast, but she was ready to continue the fun once she got home and was very excited to go trick-or-treating.

Cal's daycare also had a little Halloween party. There was a little costume parade and then a little get-together, which obviously was more meant for the parents of the Piglets class than for the kids. I was fortunate enough to be able to go. When I got there, just minutes before the parade was supposed to start, Cal was sound asleep in his crib. I, not wanting to miss out on the fun, woke him up and quickly got him into his Pooh Bear costume. We had fun and it was fun to see all the other kids all dressed up as well.

As soon as everyone was home we ate dinner and all did a costume change. Ellie got dressed in the Tinkerbell costume (with light-up wings!) and Cal got dressed in the pumpkin costume that I had made Ellie for her first Halloween, complete with hat by Grandma Pam. We did some photos by the fireplace before heading outside.

Ellie of course was awesome. Striking poses that she thought a fairy would do.

Cal on the other hand...he was not took keen on his hat, or looking at the camera. But eventually we got one of him.

And then we had to get one of both of them together.

We went trick-or-treating with some friends in our neighborhood, just a couple blocks away from our house. Ellie got quite the loot. She even got a full size Snickers bar! It was good fun and we were all home by about 8pm. Of course Ellie got to pick out her token one piece of candy. Cal wanted some too...but, we were able to keep his hands out of the pile.

It was a great and very successful Halloween. You will notice that we did not carve any pumpkins. Nick, last weekend, kept asking Ellie if she wanted to carve pumpkins but she decided that she didn't. Oh well. There is always next Halloween when Cal will enjoy carving pumpkins a little more than he would have this year.

Hope everyone else had a great Halloween!