Christmas Time

We had such a wonderful Christmas-time spent with families,eating tons of goodies (I lost count on Christmas Day-did I eat 10 cookies or more?!)Nate always enjoys getting to play with his cousin Autumn.

We spent Christmas Eve with Josh's family that night and my family on Christmas morning. Nate enjoyed receiving new toys to play with! (mommy and daddy are happy about the new entertainment as well). He got his own "cell phone" (so hopefully mommy will no longer accidently call people), a stack of new books, two toy airplanes, his own tool belt with tools, a golfing set and a kitchen/BBQ set! He's been starting to play with them all some but has been interested in the new tools and electronics that mommy and daddy have gotten too. Lily benefited as well-Santa made sure to bring bones to chew and treats.












Our house is a disaster but we're just hanging out,playing. We're so glad daddy will have the next week off with us yet to play and go out. We hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have a happy, healthy and great New Year!

Lots of love,

The Polar Express!

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Merry Christmas!

Baby It's Cold Outside...

Which leads us to one our most favorite seasonal sicknesses: the cold. Or really at the moment, congested noses. It dipped into horrid weather for us Arizonans of high's in the 50's this last week along with rain. My poor baby: even just maybe a few minutes outside led to a runny nose, which led into sleepless nights and even napless days. I hope this doesn't mean we're in for a very long winter! But it is suppose to get warmer and I've been limiting his outside time-much to Nate's disappointment. If only it didn't take hours at night to get him to fall back asleep after such nose issues...I'm thankful for our fireplace keeping us warm and it's one of the newest things to calm Nate down when he's upset.

The little man continues to amaze me and make me laugh. For starters, the other day I got into workout clothes and he ran to our DVD collection and pulled out my Jillian Michaels work out video (which he enjoys watching me do). The other day I vaccumed and he opened a closet door and was trying to get the mop out. Apparently vaccuming wasn't going to be good enough,mommy. And now he has a new obsession:every once and a while during the day,multiple times, he must take off his socks so he can pick the fuzzies in between his toes. He literally pulls his foot to his nose and looks in between each and every toe. His vocab is consistantly growing-now we've added socks, shoes, cat, horse and yesterday he said thank you! I was caught off guard, had to make him repeat it a couple times. How nice.

Well I got my task of shopping and baking done last week-now on to wrapping and getting ready for our upcoming busy week full of holiday parties and leaving out of town on Sunday-we're heading up north so Nate can ride the Polar Express train! It takes us to the Grand Canyon (on the way up we listen to the story, eat cookies and have milk) then once there Santa boards to greet the kids and give them a gift. The train then takes us back, altogether a two hour ride. Prior to we'll be spending time in Sedona-visiting with my family who are also coming for the train ride-and going out to lunch to celebrate my birthday. Since it will be late after the train, we're staying overnight at a nearby hotel and then spending my birthday morning in Sedona. I'm super excited to do something fun with my family, maybe see some snow and spend some of my birthday in my most favorite AZ city (as I've mentioned numerous times in other posts!) It should be a great time-as long as colds don't get us down ;)

Time to get my little guy ready for hopefully what will be a peaceful night.

Tis the Season-Part 2

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Tis the Season-Part 1

...of fun craziness! Thanksgiving zoomed by and now we're just about halfway through December-Christmas is officially 19 days away! I hope everyone is sitting down with their big cups of joe or hot tea because it's been a while since I last wrote!

Starting with the week before Thanksgiving-I accomplished my goal of running a whole 5k
(3 miles) which I did in 35 minutes! Hooray! Josh ran two miles with Nate in his stroller-which is really good for him and that was all I was ever able to do if I had to run with Nate too so he was successful as well. This is all incredible considering the fact that all three of us caught a bad stomach bug which left us sick as dogs for a few days and pretty fatigued right up to the race. I'm sad to say Nate vomited for his first time :( It was heartwrenching to watch because he was frightened on what was going on. But we're all better and trying our hardest to avoid flus and colds as the holidays approach!

We had a great but busy Thanksgiving. We hosted my family here, cleaned up and jumped over to Josh's family for dessert. Then I continued to stay awake until 10am Friday morning to Black Friday shop with some of my relatives :) Two cups of Starbucks made that happen. I was pretty successful for the most part. Then, by Friday afternoon, I was off to Vegas for the weekend!

I stayed at New York, New York which was fine-well our first room had neighbors that were ready to party so we switched but the rooms were nice and everything ran smoothly there. I pretty much hit the sheets as soon as we got there Friday night, but awoke Satruday morning happy to shop at some outlets for the next six hours! Also very successful-would have to say my favorite store of that trip was the Disney outlet store. Much like a Disney store at the mall would be but half price or lower?! Had a ball there for Nate. Afterwards we bolted back to the hotel to get ready for dinner at Tao-the restaurant was busy but the atmosphere was zen like, it was actually refreshing. My sister and I shared sea bass (mmmmmm) and sliced filet mignon which almost melted in my mouth-so good! Then we hit Serendipity 3-just like the one in NY-and I got their famous frozen hot chocolate. It tasted like melted chocolate ice cream, but with a slush texture to it. SO good! I was completely full but thought I'd regret it if I didn't devour every drop so I did. Happily. All the yummy food made us tired so we went to bed-didn't gamble til the next morning before we left. I got lucky-I put money into a 5 cent machine and wound up on a turn with $52! Cashed and walked out at that point. It was a fast but fun trip, exactly what I was looking for in a getaway from home.

Josh had a good time with Nate that weekend-kept busy with our families and walks. I came in and asked how things went-his reply : "I'm tired". Oh good :) It's nice to have people walk in your shoes so they better understand why you want to sit with a book at the end of the day!

Now we're in full holiday mode. Our decorations inside and outside are up, Christmas cards done and sent, Christmas tree up and decorated. We took Nate out to our favorite brunchery this past weekend to have tea with Santa-I was nervous he was going to scream bloody murder but he didn't (once he sat on Santa). He started to whine a little bit after a second but not a full out, terrified scream. Whew. So we won't have great pictures with Santa but they won't be looks of horror either :) Mrs Claus also visited us, along with three elves. We each got a frosted sugar cookie and some apple cider. Nate enjoyed watching the carolers that were there too. It was cute and fun, something we might be interested in making a tradition.

This week we're planning to build a gingerbread house, finish Christmas shopping and start all the holiday baking. At least weather wise it's a good time for all of that-we're in the high 50's/low 60's and it's calling for rain most of the week. This is personally my favorite month of the year but it's pretty crazy with everything needing to get done! All in good fun though.

Stay tuned for Part 2-pictures of the start of the season! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Toodles for now!

Uh Oh...

Literally-this is one of Nate's newest words! He uses it when he falls or something drops. So cute. What is an "uh oh" and not so cute...his continued fascination with dogs-their bottoms and what comes out of them to be exact. At least luckily when we're outside and Lily does her thing, he doesn't pounce around in it-but he stands over it, checks it out, then looks at me, like, "Aren't you coming to pick this up?" As soon as we enter the backyard that's the first thing he checks for-if there's poo in Lily's typical poo area. Now that he's seen the action of Lily going to the bathroom, he chases after her, wanting to touch her bottom. All.The.Time. Ugh!

He also just started picking items up and putting them behind his ear, as if he's talking and saying hello. He giggles when I say hello back :) Nate is even pickier with books than before--I read the same books once/2x a day,everyday....zzzz.....but hey, he usually takes good naps and sleeps well at night (well, as long as he has his Motrin again lately-darn teeth!) so in that case I'll read him whatever he wants!

I'm very proud to announce that in another week I will be running my first 5k-yes, running! I've been training the last two months or so to be able to run the whole thing (about 3 miles). Within the last week I finally reached my goal! I haven't been able to do it if I'm running with Nate, but wonders happen if you aren't pushing 30pds around! So I'm hoping come racing time that I'll be able to run the whole thing again. I've come a long way even from two months ago-I'd run half of a mile and be done for! I'm very anxious and excited.

I'm also getting excited now that we're halfway through November-this is my absolute favorite time of year here on out! The weather cools off, there's Christmas decorations and music everywhere (even before Thanksgiving, yeah I'm one of those people!)I just start looking forward to holiday traditions. This Thanksgiving we have an uncle of mine coming from out of town, so that will make it even more special this year. Good food, good quality time with family and friends.

More than likely this will be the last post before the holiday-I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! I'm so thankful for the health of my friends and family and for all of our quality time together!

Fall and Halloween Time!

So...a few new things... :)

We had a blast in CA! Dinner/beach time in Malibu, Disney for three days and a visit to Long Beach and Newport before heading back home. We had some drizzle/overcast days but nothing that put a damper on our trip. There were so many rides for Nate to do at Disney (small ones, not like Splash Mtn!) I never realized how much there was. He took them all in--didn't get scared at all. Loved walking around and getting to see the different lands. However, we checked out Disney Adventure park--not so great for tiny kids, very limited. We were also bummed that they opened late/closed early. I got turned away when I had my heart set on a yummy sourdough soup bowl! :( So other than the sleep deprivation it was great!

Halloween was also a fun day-picked out our pumpkin, had a fun time carving and took Nate out for a tiny bit (dressed up as a race car driver, of course!) We took him also to a few farm/fall festivals which were fun. As usual, we're out the door doing something, always!

Josh just took his first business trip since January this week--bummer that he's gone, but good that it shows the economy improving. Once a month they were forcing him to take a day off (again,bittersweet). But that should be over too. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend when I get to go out of town--Vegas none the less!--without my men. I love them of course, but it will be fun to be selfish for a few days and think about what I want to do and when! I could use a fun,good re-charge. Plus it's good to give the guys some quality time-Nate is all about his daddy on the weekends anyway so I might as well!

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween, Thanksgiving will be here before we know it.

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California

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Smarter and Smarter...

My little man just amazes me by how much smarter he gets, literally he picks up on something new each day. For starters, he's adding more words to his vocab : fan, done, baby, chicken, fish. May not totally be clear but you can tell that's what he's aiming for. It's funny, now when we read him stories before he sleeps he'll say "done"--whether it means he's done looking at the book, I'm done reading it, or if I start reading it and he wishes for me to discontinue reading it after a page or two :) Then he precedes to shut it for me too.

He likes to go around and turn off electronics (like power switches and the computer), likes to open/shut our refridgerator doors for us...and he knows when to run to the kitchen for a drink as he's familiar with the sound of a certain faucet we use for water. He knows how to take out DVD's and put them in the DVD player, put things away he takes out...oh my! More and more.

We're looking forward to our CA trip in almost two weeks! SO excited for beach time and Disney of course. That will probably be my next post, til then take care!

The Latest and Greatest

Just took the little man to the pediatrician for his 18 mo checkup (and last shot besides the flu one for I think years! woohoo!) He's 34 in long, 24 pds. He's still growing on the same percentile except for his height-he's shot up to the 90th! In other words I think he got the tall factor from the Salisbury men ;) We're still on the move to new museums,bounce places,water parks,etc. Anything to tire him out and keep him active. For once I'm actually thrilled to announce that he's done teething for the moment-no meds needed at night, hooray! His top two molars are peeking through. He's happily eating better and getting into trouble--opening/closing the DVD player, climbing out the doggie door....those sorts of things. He's also discovered going through our DVD's and taking out the scene index papers and spreading them across the room. Happy,happy,joy,joy!

Unfortunately that's our most exciting news for the moment. In case I haven't mentioned it before we're anxious for summer to be over so we can run around outside! Have a great weekend everyone!

Summer Pix

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18 Months Old...

I thought with a lot of kids going back to school, fall clothes coming out, August coming up...it was time for a fall change on our blog. Though we're still living in summer clothes and weather for probably two more months at least (and thats even before it hits 90 some degree weather in October!)Ugh. Halfway done at least I suppose.

It's hard to believe that Nate is a year and a half old now, in no time I'll be a crying mom on her baby's first day of kindergarten. He's still more active than ever, so we're trying to keep busy with playdates and activities.Going through yet another sleeping transition...he can now go 6-7 hours in the morning before needing a nap and goes to bed at 7:30,though I'm afraid that may turn into later soon too. He's also just about in toddler clothes. He isn't speaking any other words yet. As Nate has been getting older it seems he enjoys playing with other kids more and more. The busier the place the better for him!

We just celebrated Josh's birthday this weekend, hitting a Cuban restaurant for something different. Daddy is trying to teach Nate how to jump at the moment. It's interesting to see how Nate likes doing some things with mommy and others with daddy.

Well I just thought I'd drop an update while I had a few quiet minutes. Time to enjoy the rest of Nate's nap!

Random Summer Pics

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