Christmas Break

I am so bummed that Christmas break is coming to an end and we won't have daddy home to play with us everyday, but we had a lot of fun while it lasted.  I love the Christmas season and all the things that come with it.  This year we started the season off with the ward's cowboy Christmas party.  Paul got to meet Santa for the first time, too.  It was a lot of fun. 

 We always love to go see the temple lights as a Christmas tradition.  It is nice that we can still do this living in Arizona and having a temple that lights up at Christmas.  This year we went twice.  I love looking at the lights to get into the spirit of Christmas and Paul loves looking at lights, too, of course.

This year we flew to Reno to my parent's house for Christmas.  My sisters Amy and Janet were both going to be there and it was the first time we had the whole family together since our wedding over three years ago.  It was so fun to see all the nephews and niece and have us all there.  One of the other perks of leaving Arizona: we got to have our white Christmas and give our little Arizona baby a white Christmas for his first Christmas!

Paul was a perfect angel on all of our flights.

 Paul started to crawl pretty good and got better and better at it everyday while trying to get in on the action with his older cousins.

Paul and his cousins

He was excited about all his goodies from Santa

 When we got back to Phoenix, we took a trip to the Zoo for the zoo lights.  They were fun but we wished we could have also seen some animals.

Paul with all his awesome surprises from Grandma and Grandpa Chandler

We even got to have a little second Christmas and see Paul spoiled all over again when Grandma and Grandpa Chandler's package arrived!

Paul spent the whole season getting into all the fun Christmas things around the house.

 We are sad to see daddy go back to work but glad we got him to install pretty new sink faucets and a whole new shelf in the closet while we had him ;-) We hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday with friends, family, and the spirit of Christ!

Happy Halloween!

So, we are wrapping up Paul's first Halloween.  We had a lot of fun.  We didn't know for sure what we were going to dress up as but the Chandler's sent us a little lion suit for Paul.  At first, we weren't sure he would wear it because the weather is still so warm but we tried it on him one day and it was too cute to pass up.  Being that it is our first Halloween with a child, I really wanted to do a fun family costume so I asked my mom to make me a Dorothy costume and a scarecrow so we could be a Wizard of Oz family. 

It turned out really fun.  We (especially Paul) were a big hit at the ward party.  A little princess told me I was really pretty too, though.  And, our primary class kids mostly didn't even know what the Wizard of Oz is (kids these days). 

The ward Trunk or Treat is a huge deal, with hundreds of people including members friends and families and people who never come out to church so it was pretty crowded.  We had dinner and  a little carnival where Paul tried the fishing game and caught a glow bracelet.  Then we did trunk or treat. 

Then tonight, Halloween night, we got together with Nathan and Erica for dinner and passing out candy.  We decided to do it at our place since we have a real house now and hoped to get some trick or treaters.  We got Sophie and Paul into costumes for a few pictures but it was just too hot in the house to stay dressed up.  Then we hung out and waited for the masses.  We got about 70 trick or treaters! Good thing we over prepared with the candy.  We have been in apartments for the last few years so it was really fun to see all the kids dressed up and get to experience that part of Halloween again. 

Happy Halloween! Now we wait till next year when the kids are old enough to trick or treat!

Fall Break Fun

Last week was Cliff's fall break.  We were trying to think of fun things we could do that didn't involve flying, hotel stays, lots of money, ect.  A while back, I had seen someone share some pictures of 10 things to do in Prescott, AZ.  It looked awesome.  One lake in particular, Watson Lake, looked like it would be a beautiful hike.  With it being only 2 hours away and considerably cooler than Phoenix, it made the perfect day trip.

The hike around the lake was about 4.8 miles and had a lot of changes of scenery.  We hiked through some trees, around the lake on rocks, across a bridge, by the dam, next to a green algae creek.  This was Paul's long awaited first hiking trip (you just don't take a baby out hiking in 110-120* summer).  He loved it.  Cliff carried him facing out the whole way and he loves being outside and looking around.  He didn't even mind keeping his sunglasses on the entire day.

Ready to get hiking!

Last year for fall break, we headed to California and enjoyed a couple days at Redondo Beach and then visited my old mission comp Whitney and her husband Kyler.  We really miss living near the Ocean and before work trips to the beach from days past on Jeju Island so we decided another fall break beach trip was in order.   This time, we headed out in the morning, spent the afternoon at Huntington beach, and then headed to Whit and Kyler's for a couple nights.

This handsome guy HATED when the waves came in and hit his feet.

On the other hand, this other handsome guy loves playing in huge waves.

The waves look tiny in this picture, but there were actually way huge ones, too.

A quick group shot after church.

All in all, we had an awesome fall break.  We (mainly Cliff) got quite a few little projects done around the house, spent some much loved family time, and had a nice little trip.

Back to Adventuring

Last weekend, we finally went to do our first post baby canyon.  It has been a while, especially for me considering Paul is 3 months old and my last canyon was at like 30 weeks pregnant.  It was hard to leave Paul but it was awesome to get out on an adventure.

We spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa Swenson's house up in Payson and then met our friends in the morning at a canyon just a half hour away called Christopher Creek.  It was a fun Canyon with lots of swimming, some water slides, a few little cliff jumps, and some rappels.

Payson is so different from down here in the valley.  It was nice to be up in cooler weather and greener pastures.  

Paul had a fun day with Grandma and Grandpa and only screamed when she tried to feed him a bottle but he really enjoyed spending time outside with her since he barely ever gets to go out in the heat of the valley. 

All around we had a great weekend filled with adventure, fun, friends, family, and delicious home cooked meals from Grandma and even s'mores in the fire pit.  Can't wait for our next trip up there!

In Which We Post a Whole Lot of Baby Pictures

We did a fun little photo shoot (on our own, we didn't pay nobody, and that's obvious, but I think they're still cute) a couple weeks ago while Paul was still small. He's growing so fast! He's already gained more than three pounds and is still growing! Anyway, we just took some fun pictures in the house and now we want to show them to you!

This is him wearing the puppy hat that one of Nancy's coworkers crocheted for him.

Usually they do these kinds of pictures in a basket. We didn't have a basket and figured a big kitchen pot would work just fine.

Awesome.

I think he kind of looks like Gollum in this one. Nancy disagrees.

This one turned out AWESOME.

Nancy pointed out that this is perfect aside from the creepy pillow on my shirt.

CANYON BABY!

He was totally cool with wearing this harness. Give it a few years and we'll have him in a real one.

So, that's that! We love him a ton and he's so fun to have with us! So, for those who were looking for more baby pictures, maybe now you're satiated for a while. For those who are tired of baby pictures, TOO BAD! No one's forcing you to look at them for goodness sake! That being said, that's all I've got for the moment. This is Captain Danger out.