Lights, Cameras...

A big part of my job decorating for Christmas this year (besides talking Kathryn into waiting until the tree lot had trees) was the lights outside. It's the first year that we've had a house where it made sense to put up real lights, so I thought I'd post some pictures of my (ok, our) handiwork. Sorry the pictures aren't any better, but our real camera is getting fixed right now.

The Christmas Tree

By the first of November I was begging Caleb to let us go get our Christmas tree. Despite my constant requests we finally got it the Friday after Thanksgiving. I was soooooo excited. It is always my favorite part of every year to get a tree and decorate the house for Christmas. Since we have been married we have gotten the best deal on trees at Home Depot, so with our tight budget we went there again and got a great tree. The trees had all been shipped in that morning and were still bundled so in normal Kathryn reasoning I looked for the tallest one, which is 9 feet at Home Depot, with a nice point. The lady unwrapped and fluffed it and it was perfect I didn't even have to unwrap any other ones. So we tied it on the car and drove home.

After getting the tree on the stand and in our family room we found out that an almost nine foot tree doesn't fit so well when you have 8 1/2 foot ceilings. As my dad will testify I always pick out trees way to big for the house. Caleb had to cut some off the top and clean the scratch off our ceiling :) Once we got the tree upright it looked great, but it kept getting wider and wider as the branches relaxed, so it is a huge tree. I love big trees though so I was very excited. I put the lights on and Caleb and I put all the decorations on.

Joshua kept busy on his play mat, and loved watching the twinkle lights move around as I put them on the tree.



After we finished decorating Caleb was so excited that he started wrapping all our presents and putting them under the tree. Joshua loves all the lights and bright colors.



We also put Christmas lights and garland all over the front of our house and up the stairs, but our camera is broken (as you can see by our blurry pictures) and getting repaired so we will post some later. Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving with just the three of us. We missed being able to be with the whole family at Holly and Billy's house this year for the traditional Thanksgiving feast, but we did make our own big dinner. Caleb made a really good Turkey, actually Caleb made the majority of the dinner, and did a really good job. I tried to make things, but kept getting interrupted with diaper changes and feedings, which is why we ended up with dry crusty rolls :0). We ended up cooking together all morning and listening to Christmas music, and ate dinner around two. After dinner we went to the bishops house with all the other med student families for dessert. It was really fun to visit with everyone it made us not feel so far away from family.

My Two Teeth

Joshua got his first tooth on October 30th, and his second on the November 12th. He has been a little happier now that his teeth are through.

The Excellent Hair-do

So Joshua has this great hair-do. He has about the same amount of hair everywhere on his head, except the back half just sticks straight up in the air no matter what we do to it. We love to try to style it, but it is pretty stubborn and coarse, like my hair.

A walk in the Woods

So Saturday we decided to go on a nice family hike. I had seen a trail once near Smugglers Notch that looked pretty, so we drove up there in search of it. We parked and started wandering down this trail, and it starts getting steeper and really rocky. We'll just say it wasn't the easiest with the front carrier. It was so beautiful. We got up a ways and ended up at this waterfall.

It was really cold so Joshua was nice and toasty with three layers on while Caleb and I froze.

The leaves are all off the trees now and were covering the forest floor.

I love being with my daddy.

The funny story of the day was an experience with some apple cider. In Vermont fresh apple cider is sold everywhere, including Costco. Caleb loves it so we get it all the time, before the hike he went to take a sip of a brand new bottle, but it was all big and bloated. We decided to take it with to return it on the way home. The problem is as we climbed the mountain the pressure in the bottle rose, and sprung a leak. So it sprayed all over the car, and caused our whole car to stink of beer, from the fermented apple juice. So now our car smells like a bar! Hopefully we don't get pulled over by the police any time soon.

Haloween

Halloween started out with the church trunk or treat party. They had dinner and had set up some of the rooms in the church with candy so the kids could trick or treat. Joshua was a cute little pumpkin so Caleb and I went as pumpkin farmers carrying our harvest. We decided to go home before the trick or treating, since Joshua was more interested in my apple and getting home to bed.





The night before Halloween we carved our pumpkins. I think pumpkin carving is one of Caleb's hidden talents, every year he gets so excited and into his carving.



This year we used some Martha Stewart tricks and made our own templates. Joshua helped me carve mine, so it took a while. Although we still finished before daddy.




Joshua loved the drill, he really wanted to see what it tasted like. Then I turned the drill on and started drilling holes in the pumpkin, he didn't like that part as much. We had to let daddy do the drilling why we stayed in the other room.




To celebrate Halloween I decided to make a fun dinner in pumpkins, since we weren't going trick or treating. Joshua just wanted to eat the napkins, and play with the pumpkins. The dinner turned out okay, and it was fun to eat out of pumpkins.




We lit our pumpkins up and dressed Joshua up for the trick or treaters. He didn't last very long, he kept giving us funny looks like saying "why am I in this big orange thing". So I dressed up in a big clown costume to answer the door. Joshua thought it was funny for about ten minutes and then got very worried about what mommy was wearing. We got a handful of kids, but Caleb was left with way more tootsie rolls and junior mints than he wanted.





Hope everyone had a happy Halloween!