Holiday Happenings - The Big Day

Christmas Eve:

After we finished out last book, I asked Nolan to take a picture by the Christmas Tree. This is what he gave me.
Take away the blanket and cup and I got this.
Finally I got this gem, with the snow shoe covers on his head. Oh well!
Per usual, Cortez looked beautiful under the tree.

The next morning:

Nolan found this easel under/beside the tree.

He also got these fun light up bath toys.

His stocking had to be the favorite of the day. He found sticky toys that hung to the window.

And a reindeer Pez dispenser.

As well as many other things as seen in the aftermath.

Holiday Happenings - Pre Christmas

Wow, it's almost been 6 weeks since my last blog post. Sorry about that! To quickly catch you up, we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. Despite Nolan coming down with a 102 degree temperature the day before Thanksgiving and having to postpone until the weekend we had a great time, in fact I think a weekend Thanksgiving worked out even better! Then it was pretty quiet after that for a few weeks. Nolan continued to go to school, I worked away on all my Christmas diy projects and Pat kept busy with his pasta. Life was pretty bland around these parts.

Thank goodness for Christmas activities! First on the calendar was the Festival of Trees, we went last year and had a great time and this year our friend Heather designed one of the featured trees so we were practically celebrities! Nolan was in quite the mood so we didn't stay long. Just long enough to check out some of the other trees.

take a pic with Santa. Annabella and Nolan were still too scared to sit with Santa so the mommas jumped in.

Next I got our Christmas book advent project completed and ready to go. Each day we would open and read one of the books. It took Nolan a few days to get into it but by the end he was asking for more books.

I'm working on compiling the list of books we put together over the years if anyone is interested. Should be on Amazon's listomania soon, if I have time to get fancy, I'll post a link here too. This is definitely something we will be doing for the long term as I think we all started to look forward to our book time.

We also spent quite a few evenings driving around checking out all the light displays in our area. This is one of our favorites, the lights go along with music.

We also checked out the Christmas Ships after many recommendations. We were late and only caught about 12 minutes worth of the show but Nolan is still talking about it. So I'd say it was worth it.

The picture at the top of the page is Nolan acting like he wasn't trying to sneak open one of his gifts. He ended up holding out until Christmas day but many of the packages had proof of his impatience.

Photography by Nolan

Nolan can get pretty impatient with me when I'm trying to get a good picture. Now when I bring out the camera he immediately stops doing whatever adorable thing he was doing and runs away. So when he found my camera the other night I was surprised that he wanted to use it. After a quick tutorial I let him take a few pictures around the house. Side note, Pat cried conspiracy as he figured I let Nolan have it so he would break it and I could get a new camera. Not at all what I was thinking but good plan babe!

Nolan seemed to know exactly what he wanted to capture as he quickly ran around snapping away and brought it back to me to see how they turned out.

A picture of his bin of "bubbles". They are actually water beads that I put in his sensory tub.

His favorite car of all, green vroom.

The bottom of Pat's slippers. I guess I know what Pat needs this Christmas, those things are looking tired! Pat was pretty pleased with this shot as he hates pictures of himself. I guess I know where Nolan gets his hatred of cameras from.

He took this picture of me that I actually really like! Great job Nolan!

Here is a picture I took of him right before he took that picture of me. We were obviously grasping for any sort of entertainment that evening.

I didn't even know we had this camera setting, it's called color accent. This is a picture of his train station.

I was pretty impressed with these as I assumed when we got the camera back that it would be broken (shoot, it wasn't), or full of smudgy, blurry pictures. I think he was shooting his favorite things and I'm pretty proud that Pat and I made that list.

Spooky Bath Time

Since we went trick or treating the Saturday before Halloween, Pat and I weren't sure what to do with Nolan on the actual day. We He didn't need any more candy that's for sure so we decided to stay home and just hand out candy. He was cool with that.

To make the day a little special I told Nolan we would have a spooky bath time. I turned out the lights, filled the tub a little more then usual and put light sticks in the water. The bubbles hid the actual sticks and made a fun glowing effect. Sorry the pics are so grainy. I took pictures in the dark so the lights would show up.

It didn't take Nolan long to find down the sticks. He actually turned it into a game, he'd throw them in the bubbles and then search for them again.

He ended up going to bed with those and carrying them around long after the light had worn out. I would say he had a pretty good Halloween. I'm thinking of handing out those glow stick bracelets instead of candy next year. Pat thinks our house will get egged. Thoughts?

Trick or Treating: Cowboy Style

We met up with our friend Bella (aka Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz) and did our very first Trick or Treating Halloween. The business district in our neighborhood did a day time trick or treating the Saturday before Halloween. Perfect for first timers!

He was pretty antsy to get things going, here he is waiting for dad and ignoring my posing requests.

We finally we get there, and my camera dies...this was the last picture we got. I'm dressed as a pirate. Pat was dressed as a dad that would rather be watching football.

Thank goodness for iPhones! Here are the cowboy and Dorothy previewing their loot.

They did pretty good considering this was their first time and the streets were really really crowded. I guess kids learn pretty quickly when candy is involved.

We let Nolan eat whatever he wanted while we were out. When we got home it was straight to bed to sleep the sugar off. When he woke up his candy had magically disappeared! He never asked for it though so it all worked out.

Pumpkins

We trekked down to Auburn again this year to pick out our pumpkins. You might recall that last year didn't go quite as planned so I was cautiously optimistic.

We got there just in time to do the tractor pull. Nolan is all about tractors so he was pretty stoked.

He even got up close to check out the big tires.

Note the muddy those tires are, the field had 6-18 inches of mud. My optimism was taking a nose dive at this point so we made the decision to not go into the field and just pick our pumpkins from the "little" section. Nolan didn't care, he was having too much fun finding the rotten or crushed ones.

We hurried out of there with our pumpkins (and kettle corn, mmmm) without taking a family picture, bummer! Hopefully next year we can get back on track.

Here is our "family" of pumpkins. Pat's is the 1 tooth wonder, mine is the toothy one and Nolan's is the kitty pumpkin. When I asked him to draw his pumpkin face he just kept saying meow meow pumpkin so there you have it.

Stay tuned for our first ever trick or treating adventures!

A Vroom Room

Nolan's room got a little bit of a face lift last week, which was long over due. The last time you saw his room it looked like this:

This was before Nolan was born and just after finishing the paint, hence the paint can. His room stayed this way for pretty much 2 years. Toys and equipment came in and out, the mattress was lowered but it mostly looked the same. Around his 2nd birthday I packed up his nursery bedding and baby equipment and it sat untouched.

Recently, the pieces started coming together...well actually they first started coming together before Nolan was even born when we got this quilt made by one of my mom's friends at my baby shower. It's vintage transportation themed and I loved it but I didn't know if Nolan would be into cars and such so I tucked it away for safe keeping.

Luckily, Nolan naturally fell in love with all things transportation. He carries his 2 train cars or 2 toy cars with him at all times (along with his 2 blankies, he has quite the entourage) and points out every airplane, helicopter, bus, bike, train, etc that he sees. He knows what sounds each make and talks about them none stop, it's pretty intense. I guess we lucked out though with the quilt, good call Julie!

I'm getting ahead of myself though as this quilt is actually for his big boy bed. He is still a crib sleeper and is very happy in there so we have not converted anything yet. I do have the toddler rail piece on standby as soon as we feel he is ready though. For now, we bring the quilt out every so often to admire but Nolan knows it's for his big boy bed. I'm hoping this anticipation will make the transition smoother? But I based his room off of this quilt knowing it will be coming out soon.

I knew all along I would want one of these highway rugs, frankly because I loved them as a kid. I found this one on Zulily and had to have it (thanks yaya!), it has an airport, firehouse and was on a great sale!

I got the table and chair and small bookshelf from my mom, they used to be in my room. It's in original condition so I think I'll repaint the top of the table with chalkboard paint. The number boxes are IKEA, they hold all his art supplies and playdoh. He's been surprising great with keeping his supplies on his desk and not drawing on the walls and such. I was a little worried about giving him this responsibility but his co op teacher assured me he could handle it.

The vintage ABC print is actually sheet wrapping paper from Paper Zone and the frame is IKEA, only $25 for the whole thing and Nolan loves it. I hear him going through the letters over the monitor.

I made his blanket that will be on his bed, he needed something cozy now that it's getting chilly and this one is made from cuddle fleece which might just be the softest fabric ever.

Across from his bed is my favorite spot in the whole house. Pat hung the shelves (IKEA picture ledges) for us while we were up in Bellingham and when I saw them I literally squealed. Nolan loves having all his books on display and is reading so much more since we ditched the bookshelf. Above is what it looks like when I'm able to distract Nolan away from his room.

This is what it usually looks like. He likes to have multiple books open at a time and just rotates around them.

For now he really likes to put the books back up and is pretty particular on where each one goes, I think I will need more of those little ledges! He can't reach the top one yet but it works well when we want to take some books out of the rotation. Like when we read the airplane book 5 times in one day, it goes back on the top shelf!

This wasn't a huge face lift, his furniture is still the same as day 1 and even in the same place, his walls are the same color, the blinds are the same. But these pieces I intended to keep with him for as long as possible. Once he's through his toddler bed phase his crib converts again into a double bed meaning he could potentially keep this bed with him until he moves out. I love this and have romanticized the idea that someday a 16 year old Nolan could be sleeping on a bed with a headboard and foot board with his little teething marks on them. Or that he will store his boxers in the dresser where I changed so many diapers. See what motherhood has done to me? I'm all sentimental now! But honestly that would be pretty amazing.

Puyallup Fair III

We ventured South to check out the Puyallup Fair again this year and had such a great time! We weren't sure if Nolan would be tall enough yet to go on any rides so we just had to cross our fingers and give it a shot. Luckily he was good to go by just a hair (his fluffy hair added an inch) so we bought some tickets and had a blast. First up the giant slide. I love this one so I volunteered to go with him.

He was pretty ok with it, I still love it. We let him choose where he wanted to go, when he spotted the car/truck/helicopter/boat ride section he was so excited, luckily there weren't any lines that day and he could jump right on. First up was the dump truck ride.

Next up the sports cars. He had to share this one, but he didn't mind.

We also did the train ride that goes all around the park but I couldn't get a good picture, the countdown to a new camera is on!

Unfortunately we missed all the animals this year, have they always packed them up so early?! We made up for it by snacking our way around the grounds and playing on the mobile sound machine.

That was definitely a favorite of the day for Nolan, we parked it here for a good 30 minutes.

So far we are 3 for 3 on great Puyallup Fair experiences, it's an amazing thing to watch him love a place that was so important to me as kid. Now that we know he will be able to go on all the rides, we're going to have to get the bracelets for sure! I already can't wait for next year!