Being Thankful

This year for Thanksgiving, Gabriela wrote notes to people telling them what she is thankful for about them. We are used to writing thank you notes, but usually for stuff. It was a nice change for Gabriela to just thank people for things like coming to visit us at our house, being snuggle bugs, or reading stories with her.

We also had our thankful tree this year.  I cut out leaf shapes on autumn paper and we wrote what we were thankful for.  Some days we wrote more than one thing, some days we didn't write anything. But the important part was that we took time to appreciate things in our life.

Here are some of the things we were thankful for:

• I'm thankful for Uncle David
• That Daddy works so hard so I can stay home and be with our babies
• Spending time with my brother
• I'm thankful for new places I've never been to
• I'm thankful for the president (on election night)
•  the milkshake restaurant, milkshakes, Christmas, flowers. Oh! And I'm really thankful for bees because they help make our fruit.
• spending time with my brother
• My friend was at school today. I didn't see any round brown things in her hair. I'm thankful for that.
• I'm thankful for my sweet wife who is the best mother to our children
• I'm thankful for Helen (one of G's friends)
• I'm thankful that all of our pets have a place where they can sleep to get their rest (all of our pretend pets)
• I'm thankful that my kids are healthy, smart, and happy
• I'm thankful for the flowers because they smell good
• I'm thankful for Mommy's cooking. mmm, mmm, good!
•  I'm thankful for a beautiful day celebrating Easton's birthday - lots of giggles, a trip to the zoo, the carousel, so much fun!!!
• I'm thankful I have a job and can provide for my family
• I'm thankful for our planet
• I'm thankful for spiders because they kill flies
• I'm thankful for a good listening day (mommy) - G was thankful for "you not getting mad at me"
• I'm thankful for bees because they make our honey, like for oatmeal
• I'm thankful that we have wonderful friends who help us out - like watching Easton so I could stay at school with Gabriela
• that my kids have so many aunties and uncles who love them to pieces
• I'm thankful for our family. Not only our family who lives in this house .... our WHOLE family
• I'm thankful for healthy stuff - plums, peaches, apples, tomatoes. Oh! And I love goldfish!
• for the farmer's market. I love taking our kids there every week.
• and my favorite, Gabriela wrote it all out herself:  I am thankful for mom!!

My Kitchen Helpers

Easton climbed right up onto this stepstool yesterday without any help or prompting.  So, I got out his brand new pirate apron and decided we'd frost some more cupcakes together.  Gabriela was not about to miss out on cupcake frosting. 

 Easton is doing his "please" sign here. He likes to enjoy a good snack while helping in the kitchen. Notice how he's on his tippy toes here? 

 Easton is like, "You ARE going to share that, right!?!?"

 And just look at the concentration on this big girl's face.  She is a pro already.  Love that she enjoys helping in the kitchen so much, and I am excited to share my love for all things kitchen with Easton too.  In fact, later that night, he helped me push the buttons on the blender for me while I made an enchilada sauce.

12 months old

Easton is one! Our sweet baby boy turned one. I can't believe it.  He has nine teeth, including one molar.  And, today he was a little fussy because he's working on pushing another molar out. 

Easton's airplane sign

He is still signing away.  Easton's new signs this month are car, bird (it finally looks different than the milk sign), book, hat, and his new favorite sign, by far, is the please sign. He totally made up his own sign for please and he does it all the time he wants something.  Easton signs please when we remind him, but he also just does it independently when he really wants something.  It is the cutest thing ever.  I am pretty sure I saw him do the "thank you" sign the other day, but I have only seen him sign that once.  He is even stringing signs together like, "eat more please".  The other day Easton really wanted a clementine. So he signed "eat" and then pointed to the clementine peel and signed "Please" after that.


He is getting more and more confident about taking steps. In fact, the night before Easton's birthday party, he started taking the most steps at a time that he ever has.  Of course, his preferred mode of transportation is speed crawling, but we keep catching Easton deciding to stand up without being supported by anything and taking steps on his own.  He also is a fabulous cruiser.  My favorite part though is that when he falls, he assumes the "let's do a somersault" pose as if to say, "I totally meant to fall on the floor just now".

Easton gives the sweetest kisses. I love how he assumes the position and just waits for someone to turn him over so he can complete his somersaults. His blonde hair just kills me, especially when a breeze blows it all over. He does this adorable milk giggle when he knows I'm about to start nursing him.
Easton's heart melts for dogs - statues of dogs, books with dogs, and of course, the real deal. He also loves the Little People Playhouse, and plays with it every single day.

Today we celebrated his birthday by going to the zoo.  He loved cruising along the exhibits in the amphibian and reptile house, pointing out all the brightly colored frogs.  Easton learned how to brush goats, and then when we were done, we took him to the carousel. The instant he saw it, he frantically signed "please" over and over again.  He had pomegranate seeds and pozole for dinner -two of his favorites, and then we ended the night with another round of happy birthday singing and cupcakes.

Easton Michael, we are so lucky you are in our sweet little family. Happy birthday, baby boy.

Easton's Birthday Party

So for Easton's first birthday, I thought we would have a simple party. Just family, cupcakes, and fun. Sounds easy, right? 

Well, just family in my family means Nana, Papa, Uncle Matthew, Auntie Theresa, cousin Andrew, Bobby, Uncle Tim, Auntie Kristie, cousins Mina, Caetlin and Wes, Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Nate, Auntie Liss, Chaney, Beau, Uncle Noal, Auntie Elizabeth, Auntie Ann and cousin Nolan.   

(can you believe we were missing 5 cousins, 3 aunties and 3 uncles?) 

And, we also invited a couple of Easton's little buddies.

I decided to make Easton a birthday crown and some birthday banners.  Only I ran out of time. Thank goodness for my amazing sister, Theresa. She came the night before for sister/auntie fun and also helped finish the banner I started sewing.  I also brought out the "Welcome Easton" banner that Gabriela made and brought to the hospital when she met Easton for the first time.

 I wanted to make sure Easton was actually awake for his party, so it ended up being at lunch time.  I had a hard time deciding what to feed so many people and decided on carnitas burritos.  It was funny because I didn't even realize until after the party that I had made a big pot of carnitas on the day I went into labor with Easton. How fitting.  And delicious. It was a hit.  Here is the table after everyone had a go at it.

 Our little present table (watched over by Frida and Don Quijote)

 Auntie Ann and Nolan came all the way from Sacramento to join in the birthday fun!

 This little decoration was my favorite and totally last minute, I hadn't even planned on it.  I made a banner of 4x6 photos for every one of Easton's 12 months. But then I had some extra photos made up from my Instagram pics and got wallet sizes.  I thought, why not make him a mini-banner too.  I even had these darling little clothespins to use.  So, I did.The best part was that since I had like 100 wallet sized photos, everyone was able to go through them and take several home each. 

 The kids played so hard and ran around like crazy in our tiny little home.  We rallied them for cupcake time.  Look how excited Easton is!

 He delicately tasted his chocolate whipped cream frosting and decided it was 

time to change his cupcake eating approach

 Yep, this is pretty tasty.

I'm going in!

 Um, isn't that the sweetest thing ever??? Look at Easton's face while he is getting a big sister kiss.

 These two.

Woo Hoo!! I love birthday cake!  Happy Birthday to me!

 Easton needed some milk to go with his cupcake.

 And then he passed out, like any chocolate cupcake eating almost one year old should.

 This little sweetheart took a nice long nap and then woke up for some present opening.

 Heather made him this sweet owl hat.  And I can hardly stand Easton's dimple in this picture.  Cuteness overload.

 Our dear friends' parents sent us this super darling handmade PIRATE Raggedy Andy for Easton.  He even has a tattoo!  And another outfit that transforms him into a chef.  We are so lucky to have people in our lives that love our children so much and shower us with such lovely handmade goodness.

 Easton rocked out on his new drum too.

How wonderful to live so close to much of our family so they can watch our children as they grow and celebrate these milestones along with us. We are so grateful for this.

Thanks to everyone for all their wonderful support throughout the year and also for helping make Easton's party a success.  We love our little guy to pieces.

Weekend with Nana and Papa

We went to Nana and Papa's house last weekend.  They just moved and we wanted to check out their new house. Of course, I don't have pictures of their actual house. But we sure had fun.  I mean, they live right behind a cotton field, which was cool for Gabriela to check out. I never even knew that people grew cotton in California. 

 Gabriela picked and picked her cotton and she was so proud of herself.

 My dad has a whole separate workshop in the backyard. He is in heaven.  Next time I will take a picture. My dad, Lane and Matthew spent the whole weekend out there. Here's a table leg that the boys made using the lathe.  It's their first attempt and they were proud of themselves, even though they admitted that the design was a little like a baseball bat.

 Nana always takes such good care of us when we visit. This time, she suggested that we just whip up some tamales. Who says no to that?!?!  Gabriela was such a good masa maker.

 I tried to get a good photo of the kids with Nana in their "I love Nana" shirts, but this was the best I could do.

 Gabriela and Nana did a Wizard of Oz puzzle together and Nana gave it to her since she was Glinda for Halloween.  She was thrilled.

We had a really nice visit in their new home and are looking forward to coming back over the Christmas holiday. I will surely take more photos then. 

Halloween - Instagram style

Some more Halloween pics from Instagram.

 A tasty and spooky Halloween treat. Apples and almonds

 The finished pumpkin in the dark, so you can see Gabriela's glow-in-the-dark jammies.

 Glinda, the Good Witch

Glinda rocks out at Farmer's Market (after winning the costume contest)

 Why Easton needs more tights. 

 Gabriela's spooktacular Halloween lunch. Bat sandwich and witch cheese

 Easton's Halloween ice cream cone.  He was a total fan.

The white chocolate mummy pretzels we made and gave to the neighbors