Christmas with the Dean's

This year we celebrated Christmas with Ken's family on Christmas Eve. Ken's parents, his brother and us met up at his Granner's house. We ate ham, potato salad, rolls and Ken's favorite homemade applesauce.
Here's Ethan eating his morning snack:

We decided to let Ethan start opening his gifts before his nap so we could open ours while he slept.
One of Ethan's gifts was a lawnmower which he immediately took off with and used all over the house. We had a hard time getting him back to open more presents after that.







My favorite gift of the day was getting my Kindle Fire! I've used it to read a few chapters of a book, but mostly have used it to play Angry Birds. I also loved the new desk that I got from Ken's parents. It fits perfectly between the pantry and the door to the garage. It's been so nice to not have to keep my laptop on the kitchen table.
Ken's favorite gifts of the day were a long sleeved 49er shirt and his workbench. It's not assembled yet, but hopefully it will be by tomorrow and installed in the next couple weeks.
Ethan's favorite toy was his lawnmower. He also received some books, movies and a parking garage to roll all his cars down. I was very happy for him to also get a picnic bench for our backyard.
We had a wonderful time and were excited to give Ken's parents and brother a custom calendar from Costco and his Granner a birdhouse.

I'll post more about the Schwiesow Christmas in the next couple days.

It's been a long time

I can't believe that I haven't blogged about something in 2 weeks. Ethan did a lot of cute things in August and I never posted them so here's a recap.


Ethan checking out the tupperware situation. It looked like he couldn't find the one he was looking for.



Ethan & Daddy blowing up the swimming pool and enjoying playing in it.


Hanging out on his beanbag watching tv.


Enjoying some time with Nana.



SUPERMAN!!!


Wearing CF bracelets as earrings.


Ethan playing with his best bud, Grant.

We had a fun August. We celebrated my sister, Kristin's birthday and my niece Brianna's birthday. We spent time in the backyard playing in the pool and water table and took a lot of walks.

I'll try to be better about blogging as I take photos. I know it's not as much fun to read when it's a string of photos.

Avila Beach Day 5 - Los Osos/ Baywood Park

On Thursday, we spent some time in the pool. Ethan screamed so loud to get in the pool. I was embarrassed and couldn't get him to stop until we put him in the pool. I guess he remembered that he liked the pool from swimming earlier in the week. It was in the 60's the whole week but we still got in the pool. He loved swimming around in his floaty and with Ken.

Later that afternoon, Ken and I were ready to get out of the hotel and keep Ethan active so we headed to the Los Osos/ Baywood Park. I forgot my camera on this trip so I don't have photos of the sun setting. It was beautiful. We walked on the beach and Ken skipped rocks on the water. It was quite a drive from the freeway but worth it. Next time we go we'll have to spend more time there.

On Friday, we headed home about 11AM. My grandma was along for the ride, since we were taking her back to my uncle's house. Ethan enjoyed talking to her and playing games in the backseat. He also watched Finding Nemo. He played one of his favorite games. We say "UP" and he says "DOWN".

This vacation was so much fun! We were ready to come home though by the end of the week. Keeping a baby in a hotel room is hard. We were thankful that he slept incredibly well on this trip. He slept in until 9AM some mornings and took 2 naps most of the week totally about 4 hours of naps a day. I guess we wore him out.

Avila Beach Day 4 - Atascadero

On Day 4, Wednesday we headed to Atascadero to visit the Atascadero Zoo. It only $5 to get in and was so much more interesting than the Sacramento Zoo. I think that we enjoyed it more because it was a new zoo to us. We saw wallabys, flamingos, a turtle family, lots of different kinds of monkeys and a tiger.

Wallabys



The family of turtles

My boys

Alpaca

After the zoo, we went over to the park & lake to play.

I forgot to show the photo of Ethan's "bedroom" during the trip.

We had a great day and we'll go back to that zoo next time we're down in that area.

Avila Beach Day 3 - Pismo Beach & Morro Bay

On Tuesday morning we figured we needed to get out of the hotel during the morning or else we would go crazy held hostage with a 15 month old. We decided to head to Pismo Beach and to the Splash Cafe for some of their famous clam chowder.
We walked around, but there wasn't much that caught our attention, except a cute Oscar the Grouch t-shirt that we ended up buying for Ethan. I don't think we got any pictures of him in it unfortunately.

After enjoying our bread bowls of chowder we headed to Morro Bay to take a look at the shops and whatever else we could find. On the way there Ethan fell asleep. He was so tired that we couldn't wake him. We opened all the car doors and talked to him but he just kept sleeping.

Here's a video of him while he was sleeping:

Finally as we were driving away from the aquarium he woke up. We turned the car around and took him into the small aquarium. There were seals to feed and lots of fish to see. The seals were very loud which scared Ethan.

Not a great picture, but proof that I was there.

Later that evening my parents and grandma arrived at the hotel. Ethan had fun playing with Great-Grandma.


I've heard that Ethan looks a lot like I did at 15 months.
It was a long day driving around, but we had fun. Ethan slept in the car really well as you can see from the video.

Avila Beach Days 1 & 2

We had such a great time on our vacation to Avila Beach, near San Luis Obispo, a week ago.
We took a 5 hour car ride and Ethan did very well considering we only stopped twice. He still wasn't walking so we stopped mainly to eat. He watched Finding Nemo for the 1st time in the backseat.
There was sunshine and wind when we got to the hotel, but it felt great outside. We were in pants and t-shirts all week even though it was in the 60's. We even braved the pool a couple times, which Ethan loved.
By the time we checked into the hotel we had to run out to buy groceries and get Ethan back to eat his dinner and get him to bed. His bedtime during our vacation was about 830 or 9pm, when it's usually 8pm. He had his own "bedroom", the bathroom. It was the quietest and darkest room to be in considering we were in a studio.

Ethan with his walker on our 1st day at Avila Beach.

Photos from our room:




We had a gorgeous view of the pool & the ocean. My dad set the whole trip up and made sure to get us the best view.
On the 2nd day of our trip we headed to Solvang to walk around and look through some shops. It took us 20 minutes to find a parking spot, we walked around for an hour, had some ice cream and left. It wasn't what we thought it would be.





Ethan was great in the car when we went on little trips throughout the week. He took short naps and jabbered to himself.
More posts to come.

CF Great Strides Walk

We didn't quite make it to our $5,000 goal, but we got pretty close with $4255. Ken was the #7 top walker and Team Ethan ranked #4 out of top teams!!! We are very proud of how much support our team got from our family and friends.
This year the new family I'm working for all came to walk, my neighbor and her family, my parents, my college friend and her friend, my niece, my brother in law and Ken's parents. I hope I didn't forget anyone. The walk was 3 miles to places around the State Capitol and took a little over an hour.



Thanks again to everyone who participated and to everyone who donated. The Sacramento Chapter raised over $144,000 this year!

Mother's Day

I know I'm almost a month late, but I was waiting for some extra photos to get to me.
For Mother's Day this year with my family we celebrated with my parents and my sister's family. We were excited to have a new family member at the party, baby Judah, my newest nephew.
The guys planned the whole thing. We ate tri tip and burgers and had a really good dessert, a chocolate mint cake. Everyone passed around Judah, my nieces played upstairs and Ethan tried to get into whatever he could downstairs. He loves my parents house since they only have a gate at the end of the stairs. He can roam freely, which he doesn't get to do at home.



Ken with baby Judah.


Nana & Ethan

We had a great time hanging out with the Schwiesow's. What a busy May we had. More posts to come. I need to get caught up.

Judah's Arrival

A few days ago my sister, Kristin and her husband welcomed Judah Robert. He was 7 lbs 14oz and 20 inches long. My sister was in labor for 6 hours and 2 of those hours were spent at the hospital. She went from 5 to 10cm in 20 minutes and in 2 pushes he was here. He came so fast that she did it without an epidural.
Our family is especially excited because Judah and Ethan are 14 months apart. We can just imagine what it will be like in a year or two when the boys can play together.

Easter Fun

This year for Easter we headed up to Ken's parents house for dinner. Since Ethan's the only grandchild and he's still so little we didn't have an Easter Egg hunt this year. Maybe next year when he's walking and can hold his own basket.
Here's Ethan with his football Easter basket:

Ethan with his Uncle Tim:




We had a wonderful ham dinner. Ethan had fun trying to get into everything. He barked at the dogs and ate some dessert. He loves ice cream!
Earlier in the week my mom gave him the cutest stuffed bunnies for Easter. I don't have a picture but Ethan just loves to play with them.
We had a great Easter! We look forward to next year when we can watch Ethan hunt for eggs with his 4 cousins.