December's Christmas Songs

For the first time, December is participating in our church's children's choir! They are doing some songs in the Christmas choir concert a few days from now, and so December has been learning her songs. I tried to record her singing them here. She didn't do them completely right, but she gave it a try! Good thing she's got more time to perfect them. :o)

Here are the words:

Sing and be joyful the Savior is born

Sing to the Son of God, Sing to the Son of God

Sing to the Son of God, Alleluia

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed

The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head

The stars in the sky look down where He lay

The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay

A Birthday Boy!

It was Isaac's first birthday about a week and a half ago. This is Isaac on his birthday with a present he got from Grammie and Grampie! He needed something to help him walk better, and he absolutely LOVES to push this around!

Stopping for a quick cuddle with Daddy before continuing his shopping cart marathon.

December loves Isaac's shopping cart, too (especially since her long-time broken, three-wheeled shopping cart lost a second wheel and now more resembles a wheel barrow. I keep putting it out on the porch to get thrown into the dumpster, but she, without fail, runs out and rescues it before I can sneak it away.) Sometimes Isaac doesn't get alot of play time with the new shopping cart because he's not quite big enough to wrestle it away from his older sister. Just wait, Isaac. Soon enough he'll be taller and heavier than she is and he'll be able to wrestle anything he wants away from her!

I thought I'd take this picture just so you know Isaac is occasionally awake in his high chair! He did fall asleep within ten minutes of this picture being taken, though...

December posing for a picture

Daddy and Isaac hanging out on the couch together. Brad has turned in all of his papers, yay! And now he is in the midst of finals. He has three exams this week and his last one next week. And then the week after that, we leave for a Calgary Christmas!

There's a large holly tree that grows right next to our steps outside, and the holly berries get red right around Christmas time. It's absolutely beautiful!

I wonder if I'd get in trouble if I went outside and started trimming away at the tree, just to get some decorations for us...

Isaac Learning How to Walk

Here's a video we took on Saturday night of Isaac trying to walk! He took his first steps on Halloween, and has ever-so-slowly been getting better and braver with his walking skills. Every week I can see improvements on how much and how well he is walking. The night this video was taken was the night he decided he actually likes to walk -- and since he has been doing it WAY more than he used to! Right now I'd say he spends about 30% of the time walking and the rest crawling. It's so different from how December learned to walk -- she was 100% walking, as in, tearing around the house, within two or three days of taking her first steps (are we surprised about that?!?). Isaac's taking the more gradual approach!

Happy **Sick** Thanksgiving!

Here we are on Thanksgiving morning. For two weeks around Thanksgiving, both children were sick with croup. Isaac has only just finished getting over it (and he's still finishing up his medicine for the ear infection that accompanied his croup). The children's sickness meant that we were quarrantined from having Thanksgiving with anyone else, so we had our own Thanksgiving! While the turkey cooked in the oven, we went out and played outside. The temperature that day was really warm (86 degrees F / 30 degrees C. -- that was unusual, though. Right now it's hovering around the upper 60's / around 20 degrees C).

Brad teaching December how to roller skate.

Happy Thanksgiving! We really had a wonderful, cozy time, and while we ate we listened to Christmas music.

This is Brad's Mom's recipe -- called Strawberry Bavarian Cream. December tried to eat the entire bowl of it, she loved it so much!

This is what Isaac was like for close to two weeks. He changed from his usual happy baby self to a super cranky, needy little boy -- understandably so. He just felt so sick, the poor guy. His croup was ten times worse than December's, because his airways are so much smaller and get much more inflammed. Isaac's fever lasted for about six days straight, while December's fever lasted for maybe 6 hours. The doctor gave Isaac an anti-inflammatory shot so that his airways wouldn't close up on him.

Both kids were run-down and tired, as you'll be able to see from these next pictures. In this picture, I had woken December up from her nap, but she just walked right to the chair and went back to sleep.

Isaac asleep on the floor with his blankie.

Isaac asleep while eating Sunday lunch.

Isaac asleep during lunch again...

Haha! This is one of my favorites. Isaac is really asleep laying like that!

Here's Isaac when he was starting to feel better. His newest favorite thing to do is sit on the couch like this, just like all the big people do. If you lift him up and sit him next to you, he'll grin and grin and feel quite proud of himself.

December, feeling all better (as you can tell), and Isaac, who is getting there.

The Most Gorgeous Rendition of "O Holy Night"!

I just love listening to this beautiful version of "O Holy Night." It just gets better and better as the song goes on! Ha!

My only question: where can I get this guy's number to invite him to do a special music number at our church?

Fun with December and Isaac

December continues to be Isaac's greatest source of entertainment, as you can see from this video! She loves to play silly little games, and Isaac is always more than happy to indulge and encourage her...and I'm the one who is blessed to be able to watch it all happen!

Aww, Isaac...

As I was finishing up that last post about sleeplessness, I stopped and realized that I hadn't heard Isaac meandering around for the past few minutes. When I looked around me, this is what I found. Aww...isn't he sweet?! Hehee. I guess I'm not the only one who's tired from our sleepless nights! :o) He really is a good baby and a joy to have...we love him very much!

Sleeplessness & Stickiness

Here's Isaac at breakfast this morning. Brad and I had left the table for a minute to get something, and while we were gone December poured out Isaac's baby food all over the table in front of him. He immediately began playing with it and getting himself entirely covered in a pear-rasberry goo.

Look at his hair! It's a sticky mess that stands out straight from his head. Haha! It's a peachy color so that you can't see it very well, but he was extremely sticky.

December wanted her picture taken, too, so this is her after we had finished breakfast...and right before she had gotten a sliver from our railing. Yikes! She freaked out when we tried to use the tweasers and remove it...as in, we had to physically restrain her in order to get it out! The poor thing. In the words of December, "I didn't like Daddy doing that! I thought he was going to cut my finger off!" But she's fine now.

Things have been a bit rough here lately. We haven't slept though the night for close to a year now (not since before Isaac was born...he has never slept through the night), so we've finally decided enough is enough! What I desire most in the world right now is to lay my head down on my pillow at night and not wake up until the morning. I can't remember what sleeping like that would be like! So we have been intentionally sleep-training Isaac for the past week and a bit. I admit it -- it's rough going!

He did very, very poorly the first few nights (as in waking up at least once per hour), but then he started doing longer stretches, with Sunday night as his best night (a 6-hour stretch!!!). But the past couple nights have been horrendous again. This time he has a new trick up his sleeve. He is getting up in the wee hours of the morning, and instead off going back down again, he decides to stay up -- for one to two hours. And that means I am awake with him, standing at his cribside...there is no sleeping while Isaac is awake!

Boy, that makes for exhausted days. This morning I was on the verge of giving up this whole sleep training thing -- we were getting more sleep before we started all of this! But I'm currently thinking that I'll persevere...and wildly hope that we see steady improvement soon.

Brad is in the throes of end-of-semester busyness. Papers, quizzes, final exams, etc. Not to mention mechanical troubles with our van. So we're seeing less of him than we usually do! December is doing well, though, and she just learned how to whistle yesterday. :o) So that's life in our world at the moment...

December's 1st Fishing Trip

A blast from the past...

Here's a post I was in the middle of working on when our computer crashed a few months ago. I thought I'd finally finish it and put it up, although all of these pictures were taken in July, when we were out visiting my parents for Klynt and Marie's wedding! But December loved doing this, and she still talks about it and wants to go fishing with Grandpa again!

My Mom and Dad have a pond in their backyard that has tons of fish in it, so Dad took December out for some fishing! As you can see, Belle (my parents' dog) loves to fish, too.

December caught her very first fish! Kind of. What would happen is December would get Dad a piece of corn (which was irresistable to the fish), and Dad would cast into the pond and catch one in a matter of seconds. Then he'd thow the fish and line back into the water for December to reel in herself, and she "caught" the fish! It was GREAT fun for her to do and for us to watch!

Isaac playing in the grass, trying to get used to the weird feeling of it.

I think Isaac's playing with a rock in this picture. Maybe it's a leaf.

Brad and Isaac having fun. Isaac adores being up on Daddy's shoulders!

Mom's Visit! Part 2

Here we are playing in the hot tub. Brad is teaching December how to swim.

Mom and Isaac by the hot tub

Brad letting Isaac kick away in the water (one of his favorite things to do, predictably, is splash like a banshee!)

Mom playing Humpty Dumpty with Isaac. Both kids love this game!

The day before Mom left, we decided to take one last trip to the beach, and I'm glad we did! It was a beautiful afternoon.

Brad and December running into the waves. The ocean temperature was really comfortable still (we decided it was surprisingly warmer than the unheated pool at home), and Brad and I tried to body surf the waves...with varying levels of success. It's much, much easier to catch the waves on a boogie-board (which, unfortunately, we don't own)!

Isaac and I

Brad and December used shovels and buckets to dig out a pool. Brad mostly did the digging, and December used the buckets to bring water from the ocean to the pool.

Then we tried to put Isaac in the pool. As you can see, he clearly loved it! ;o)

He did get more used to the idea over the next few minutes, and he played in it with a shovel for a while.

The sun started to set...

Brad rinsing the sand off Isaac in the waves. I don't know if you can see his face very well, but he is NOT impressed!!

Brad rinsing December off in the waves.

December watching the ocean

We watched the sun set, and then, just as we were leaving, a pod of dolphins came and started jumping and playing in the waves. Some of them were jumping completely out of the waves, so you could see their entire bodies out of the water before they went back in! It was really exciting -- and rare. We've seen an occasional dolphin jump, but never like this!

These next few pictures are badly out of order. They were taken on the day Mom arrived, and we had gone straight from the airport to the beach. As you can see from this picture, the beach had some sort of marine layer of fog on it, so there was no sun when we went.

Mom and December playing on a beach-side playground

Isaac hanging out in the stroller.

We loved having Mom out to visit, and she is certainly welcome -- as are you!! -- to come and visit us any time! We'd love to have you out.

Camping at the Beach

This past Tuesday, we decided to do a bit of a whirlwind camping trip. Some of our friends were really wanting to get out and go camping, so we went with them. We just did one night, since both of the guys had to get back to school the next morning. But it was fun! We left when Brad got out of school on Tuesday, and his Wednesday class didn't start until close to 11:00am, so it worked out well! Here's a little video of where we were...

Mom's Visit! A Trip to the Zoo

Mom came out and visited us for ten days, and we had an AWESOME time with her! Each day we did something fun and exciting, and on one day (a day when Brad could be with us), we went to the San Diego Zoo! We all had fun, and I thought I'd share some pictures with you from that day...

Here's Mom with the kids on the day after she arrived, right before we all headed to church

Our cousin Danielle had given December some clothes, and Mom had brought them out for her, so here's December in some of Danielle's clothes, right before we left for the zoo.

Isaac at the zoo, being mesmerized by the fish

Mr. Crocodile. They hold so still that they look fake!

A beautiful flowering tree

A waterfall in one of the bird atriums

This was cool. This is in San Diego Zoo's new Elephant Odyssey exhibit, and what Brad, December, and Mom are looking at is this pool-like thing that water alternately fills up and drains away. There are some animal skeletons (I presume fake ones) of now-extinct animals (like a saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth, etc) at the bottom of the pool that are entrenched in mud. I guess San Diego used to have some sand pits that animals would get stuck in -- and their remains would get very well-preserved in them. So it's a demonstration of that.

December loved this pool, although she didn't understand it at first. She didn't know why they animals were stuck in the mud at the bottom, so I explained to her that they fell into the sand pit because they didn't listen to their mommies when their mommies told them to stay away from sand pits. For the rest of the trip to the zoo, December kept begging to go back to this pool, saying, "I want to see where the animals didn't listen to their mommies again! Why didn't they listen, Mommy?"

Llamas and capybaras (the largest rodents in the world). So yes, it's true -- ROUS's really exist!

The elephant care center. The cages are enormous!

A life-size replica(!) of a now-extinct bird. Can you imagine a bird of this size wandering around your backyard?!? I think it could've carried small children away and ate them for lunch!

A red panda. His little face was so cute!

Here we are waiting for the sea lion show to start.

The sea lion show. It's alot of fun to watch! They do some fun tricks.

Pretty good balance!

The sea lion show must have really worn Isaac out, because he fell asleep shortly afterward while we walked around.

Mom and December in the children's part of the zoo.

Haha! December was barely tall enough to stick her head in this one!

A parrot that just sits in the open air in this part of the children's area.

December next to a cute little house (you couldn't go inside, though, which upset December)

Good morning, Isaac! This was right after he woke up. Brad is taking some pictures of beautiful hibiscus flowers. The picture that follows is what he was taking.

And Mom took a picture of this one with her camera. Beautiful!

You can see in the backround Mom taking some pictures of December. And what follows here is what she was taking...

I like this one of December.

So these were just our pictures from the zoo. I'll put up more next time about the rest of Mom's trip...