Year of the Snake

Happy Chinese New Year! Jordan and I had an amazing weekend to start out the Year of the Snake. My parents watched Emmett and we had an overnight date night in Tacoma.  This was technically the first time we had both been gone from him overnight, but he was fine.

We decided to do an early Valentines Day celebration and go look for Monkeyshines. It was fantastic! We came home with a glass ball and a medallion.  We actually ended up finding five glass balls, but of course didn't take more than our share. Its just so fun to find them! And, its so funny to see everyone out of bed early in the morning searching around the city.  Everyone tries to act all nonchalant and tries to act like they're not really looking.  I can't wait until Emmett is older and can come along with us. We learned our lesson from last year and didn't drag him out of bed.  Only thing I would change is that our one night away, we got out of bed at 5am and didn't even sleep in. We're nuts.

Four Day Weekends

Emmett is lucky enough to get four day weekends every week. He gets to hang out with Grandma & Papa every Monday & Tuesday. Here are some snippets from Grandma's phone:

I don't know how she got him to wear that helmet. He's been refusing to even put it on for me.

Breaking Binky

We decided that Emmett's new years resolution should be to get rid of the binky. I really wish we would have done this a few months ago - when he wasn't so attached to it.  But, we didn't want to make him get rid of it right before the big change of starting daycare. Since then he's just gotten more and more attached to it. Anyway, we're on day two of going cold turkey with no binky. I felt really bad yesterday. When we laid him down for nap he looked at us like "wait your forgetting something" and he kept pointing to the dresser in his room where we used to keep them. Then he screamed bloody murder for over a half an hour. The naps have been really rough (like non-existent), but I think it's getting better. I'm torn about what to do when he goes to daycare. I think it's going to be really hard on the teachers to eliminate it completely. And, getting him to nap there is really hard even with the stupid binky. I know, I over think these things!

Zoolights

This was the second year in a row that we decided to hit up zoolights. Last year was slightly miserable, but we blamed it on the fact that E was little, it was cold, and super crowded. This year it was still miserable. I feel horrible saying this. I want to love it. E was bigger this year, but it was still cold and super crowded. Emmett wasn't really that into it either. He liked the deer a lot, but other than that he made his super serious face the whole time. It didn't help that I forgot E's shoes and that Jordan and I got into a fight over the self timer on the camera. Oh well. Looking back at the pictures makes me think it wasn't that bad. I'm sure we'll forget all about this and go again next year.

 This was his face...the entire time. 

 This was Jordan's face the entire time. 

E better not grow up to be a hunter. He is seriously impressed with deer lately. My uncle sent us a Christmas card with some deer on the front and that was his favorite card. We still look at it everyday and wave to the deer out our window.   

Incident Report - "Got Bitten"

This little gem has been displayed on our fridge for the past few weeks. We can't get over how hilarious it is. I'm so thankful that E was not the perpetrator and did not actually do the biting. Hopefully, this was a good lesson for him and he won't stick his fingers in anyone else's mouth from now on.  

Just in case you're wondering, he wasn't hurt. There we're no marks or anything on his fingers when we picked him up. I hadn't thought of this before, but I wonder if this kid was getting him back for the hair-pulling? 

Merry Xmas 2012

We're creatures of habit and we stuck to our routine again this year. We celebrated with Jordan's family on Christmas Eve at the "Big Fat Mexican Christmas Party" (that's really what it was called). When we got home from dinner that night, I opened the fridge and discovered that my parents had done a sneak visit and brought the breakfast casserole and all the food over. My mom was freaking out that there would be too much snow and they wouldn't be able to make it over for breakfast in the morning. So she delivered the breakfast to us...just in case. That's so my mom. :) Anyway, the snow didn't come until later so my parents we're able to join us that morning and watch E open his gifts. We went to their house for dinner and then celebrated my birthday the next day. Big number 33!

 J's stocking was on the ground because Santa left him some booze. 

Emmett loved the advent calendar this year. Every morning we opened one of the boxes and talked about the special treat that Santa left for him. He was a little perplexed when the boxes disappeared and he didn't get his treat after Christmas. The holidays are so much more fun with kids around! I'm not going to lie, I'm looking forward to doing the "Elf on the Shelf" thing next year. Jordan and I tried to hate on it and make fun of all the crazy crap people do with their little elf, but it just looks fun. I bet E is going to love it. I'm ready for 2013. I think it's going to be a great year!

The Tree

Decorating the tree with Emmett was really fun...for about the first five minutes. I had visions of E actually hanging some of the ornaments and thought he would enjoy watching us decorate. What was I thinking? All he wanted to do was touch all the breakable ornaments, pull everything off the tree, and rip Santa's head off. We eventually gave up and finished decorating while he napped. My mom is a genius and she bought Emmett a bunch of soft cloth ornaments to hang on the bottom half of our tree. He really enjoyed touching those ones and we would find them hidden all over the house.

 Santa lost his head...shortly after this was taken. 

This is one of our very favorite ornaments. It was a gift from Genie, Jordan's mom.