18 months

18 months and off we go into the Christmas season. As ever December turned out to be busy month but this year we made a special effort to kick back and enjoy the season. It was worth it. My mom and Charlie came out to visit for Christmas and New Year's, which was both fun and productive, as Charlie is the home project king.

Here we are enjoying the Zoo Lights at the Phoenix Zoo as a family. It's a fun event every year, and being Phoenix, it's totally fine to spend a few hours outdoors at night. As you can see we still bundled up (ah, how the blood gets thinner when you've been here 7 years), but I like to think it was all in the spirit of the season.

This was a highlight: watching Evan enjoy the wonder of the lights (never mind letting my child blatantly get so close to the wonders of electricity!)

And this I thought was pretty cool: It's the giraffe enclosure. Obviously they were sleeping but what a pretty place to lay your head, if you're a giraffe.

One Sunday evening we went to our favorite local Christmas tree farm (read: the parking lot of Home Depot) to pick out our Horne Family Christmas Tree. Surprisingly those suckers stay alive for a reeeeealllly long time in Arizona - we had our tree up 'til well after the New Year this year. One could state laziness as the reason, but again, I like to chalk it up to keeping the Christmas spirit alive. Evan had a lovely time running around, but stopped short of actually touching any branches. Apparently spiky pine needles don't look like much fun to play with. Maybe next year.

Then one day we got Evan bundled up in his new jacket, for no reason other than to pretend it was winter. He loved it and Mommy got a cute picture. A win-win if you ask me.

Christmas time was fun fun fun with Gramma and Grandpa Charlie in town.

Here is my favorite Christmas picture...

And here's Gramma helping Evan get over his fear of pine needles.

Christmas morning was a hit, but very a 'la toddler. Evan was fascinated and very pleased by his first gift, a push toy from Uncle Jony, but then didn't understand A) that there were more presents to open, and B) why on earth he would want to open another present when the toy he just got from Uncle Jony was the coolest thing ever.

Eventually Gramma convinced him that Thomas the Tank Engine is equally cool and worthy of opening on Christmas morning. Then Grandpa Charlie showed him his new matchbox cars and both were in auto heaven.

And the family by the Christmas tree.

After Christmas we took my Mom and Charlie to the Desert Botanical Garden for the Las Noches de las Luminarias which is a beautiful lantern and musical event they hold every year. The evening was beautiful and enchanting, though at the time marred by my mmm...impatience with Dave, as he neglected to check that the camera batteries (both camera and video camera) were charged before we went. This is the only picture we got of the event. Looking back perhaps I was not at my highest point of joy and forgiveness and grace that night, though to his credit Dave was, and took it in stride. (Seemingly he's seen this side of me before?) In any case two months later I'm over it and can now simply enjoy the pretty picture. :)

The other news of the Christmas season (which everyone who is reading this will likely know by now), is that I had another little present growing by Christmas as well. Which made Christmas actually quite a nauseous day for me, and I couldn't even blame it on rum cake. We had Evan march out in a "Big Brother" t-shirt to announce to news to Mom and Charlie, though they'd already been suspicious (they wondered why I kept refusing wine at dinner) and the news wasn't a big surprise. But baby news is happy news in any case. And my mom did a great job keeping the news a secret for the next couple of months until we were ready to spread the word.

So that's the real instigation for me to get this blog up and running again. I much enjoyed having pregnancy blog for Evan, and far be it from me to start the favoritism early, so I shall make every endeavor to keep pregnancy updates in this blog as well. To that effect, here's me at 5 weeks. Nothing much (nothing at all, actually, except me at baseline), but bigger bellies to come...

17 months

Getting into the holiday season already! We were fortunate enough to have a visit from Grampa and Grandma Sharon in November, and then to spend Thanksgiving with them and Steve's family in California. Lots of fun times, good (sometimes cold and windy) weather, and good memories.

First, Evan enjoyed all his playtime with Grampa and Grandma Sharon. Here we have our little civil engineer in the making, and also Evan wanting to fill some big shoes.

On Thanksgiving we all (or most of us) enjoyed wearing hats my mom sent:

The weather was nice enough to spend a good bit of time outside on Thanksgiving. We had our own version of the family football game, and Evan and Landon jumped on the trampoline for seemingly hours at a time. Evan thought the trampoline was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

One afternoon in California we had a little family field trip, on base, to some place with lots of planes. My brother will probably roll his eyes that I can't describe that any further, but that's what it was, in a nutshell.

Evan for the first time turned into a real little boy on the trip, getting down on the ground, into rocks and dirt, and quite happy about it.

A couple of days after Thanksgiving the whole family trooped outside to help put up Christmas decorations. Evan didn't help too much, but Landon did, and Evan had a grand old time riding around in Landon's cool push car toy.

And, of course, the cousins enjoyed some time just hanging out:

Landon prepares for a future on the runway...the fashion runway, modeling his spiffy clothes.

We took some time out for family pictures too...

First the hosts...

Then the guests...

Then the grandkids...

Then the grandparents and grandkids...

16 months

Ahh, October. The month when fall sort of comes to Arizona. It was still pretty hot, but there were lots of fall festivities to explore, which helped us get in the mood.

We started out the month running the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K as a family...an early but worthy start to the day.

We had a fun playdate when my friend Brianne came to town. Evan and her daughter Corinne are two weeks apart. My friend Tracy came over too, with her daughter Cassidy, who is wise beyond her years and was so good with the kids.

We took Evan to a local farm, complete with pumpkin patch, corn maze, petting zoo, and various farm-related miscellany to run in and around and on top of. Evan loved it, though quickly went into overload mode...maybe we shouldn't have gone right before nap time? Oops.

The therapist in me was quite excited to see how much Evan was into helping Mommy carve our pumpkin. What a nice ooey gooey sensory experience for little hands!

For Halloween this year Evan was a bear, and for the first time went trick-or-treating. He had no idea, of course, what it was all about, but he did enjoy carrying his bucket. He didn't quite get the concept of taking the candy home either; he often tried to hand it back out to those passing by. He was, however, fascinated by our own bowl of candy we had for the trick-or-treaters who came to our house. Very shiny and colorful stuff indeed.

Mommy and Daddy also got a "date night" in October...we went to see the U2/Black Eyed Peas concert for Dave's birthday. It would've been fabulous...except for starting out late, then getting stuck in traffic, then having to leave early to get back home for the babysitter. All in all we stayed for only about an hour a half for the concert, but it was fun to get out nonetheless! And both bands were amazing, for what we did see.