Merry Christmas and Happy 1st Birthday Gideon!

The holiday season always fills my heart with gratitude. We have so much to be grateful for!  It's a season to remember Jesus Christ, his birth, and his life. His selflessness and compassion for others. His generous heart and sacrifices for others. After Christmas we celebrated the gift of another life, as Gideon had his first birthday on the 28th. What a blessing it is to have him in our lives!  How fortunate we are that the Lord trusts us with the care of his little one. How glad we are that he is in good health and spirits. And then to round off the season with the New Year, the opportunity to look back on the year and see all the blessings we've been given and to reflect on the future and make goals. For me, the New Year is also a religious holiday, because it is only with the Atonement that we are given the opportunity to repent, change, and become better. It is one of the gifts we give our Lord to be the best we can be and the New Year encourages us to take advantage of that. May we all be a little better this next year than we were the last!

Gideon had a lot of fun with his birthday cupcake, although he wasn't sure about the candle. He has gotten very good at opening presents over the past week and was excited to rip open his presents. Even the card envelopes got opened like they were gift wrapped!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 We had some fun times this Thanksgiving Holiday. It was nice to have a break for Trevor since he's been working so hard. On the left there, they're spending some time reading together one morning. On the left you can see that it started to get chilly. We've wrapped Gideon up with layer upon layer to keep him warm.

 We had a lovely Thanksgiving at my mother's parents house. This particular picture is of Trevor helping Gideon sample the pumpkin pie, which is one of Trevor's favorite foods, especially during the holidays.

At the end of the night, we dabbled in the Black Friday (Black Thursday? Black Thanksgiving?) shopping and were able to get some much needed things for the house to put under our Christmas tree (which we probably won't put up until a week or two before Christmas since our little fellow is so curious about everything he shouldn't touch).
 We have so much to be grateful for. The Lord has been very generous with us in giving us lots of loving family and friends and each other. I hope you all had a great holiday season!

We have ourselves a Reader!

Gideon loves books. He loves flipping the pages while I read, he flipping the pages alone, he loves turning them over in his hands. He loves books we sing to, like "6 Little Ducks" and "the More We Get Together" and he loves the board books that are easier to turn pages. He also loves repetition. He can bring me one book and just keep reading it over and over until I can't stand to read it anymore. Ah, the joys of discovering the world of reading!

Happy Birthday, Cowboys!

                       

Today we had a surprise birthday party for Trevor and my younger brother, Matthew. I think Chelsea was the only one who remembered to take pictures, but we kidnapped the birthday boys and took them to Cabelas where we had them change into cowboy apparel and played a tag/mafia-ish game around the store using dart guns and rubber band guns. We also filled out a fun questionnaire about things we saw around  the storeThen we sampled their fudge and headed to my parents for a game of Steal the Flag with marshmallow guns, had some target practice (Matt was the winner of our tournament) and had BBQ sandwiches for lunch. Then we had cake and ice cream. Chelsea made this amazing peanut butter cup cake for Trevor!  She's pretty much an amazing baker.
               
                                         

Pictures, yeah!

 Ahh, pictures. I love pictures. They mean I don't have to write as much :)

We fed the ducks a couple of weeks ago. There were sooo many. They were fearless in coming right up to us if they knew we had food for them. Gideon was captivated by them. One of his favorite books is "6 little ducks". I don't think he connected the two, but it was cut nonetheless.

We Sharpied a pumpkin for Gideon's first jack-o-lantern. It's about all he had the patience for and made a fun FHE.

 Gideon is still a huge fan of being outside. Autumn leaves are one of his favorite things outside and grass is right behind leaves.

Below you can see our Halloween costumes. The thing on my head is the mailbox and I'm holding shovel and pail. Then Trevor is Steve and Gideon is Blue.  It was a blast.

Fall!

So, my camera still isn't working, so Trevor has most of our pics on his camera. He's kind of busy (when I say kind of, I mean enormously, monstrously busy) so I don't know when he'll be able to post pics of our Halloween costumes, etc. Anyway, this week he had an interview out in TX with Capital One. Then Thursday was Halloween and we dressed up like the Blue's Clues team: Gideon as Blue (cross-dressing, yikes!), Trevor was Steve, and I was the mailbox. We also carried a notebook, shovel, and pail as props. Ahh, the joys of Halloween. This weekend we're hoping to carve our pumpkin. We figure Gideon won't know that it was supposed to happen previous to the holiday, so we'll get away with festive faux pas while we can.

Gideon is in the full swing of teething. His top middle 4 teeth are all on their way, the outer two having already poked through. Poor kid is uncomfortable and its making him clingy and irritable. Good thing he's such a good natured kid most of the time.

Tooth #3

Tooth #3 is showing!  We (Trevor) actually noticed it on 10/8 the day of my last post, but I'd already edited in that tooth #2 was joining the party, so I thought I'd add it now.

The other day we were walking home from campus and there were a bunch of ducks in the stream beside the walking path. It was so fun to see them and hear them quacking (see Trevor's Google plus for photos, my camera isn't really working very well right now). It's been really beautiful weather recently and its nice to be able to enjoy it with Gideon. I guess when I was working I was too busy to take a look around or just go for a walk and now since I've been there I take special note when its nice. I also particularly enjoy Mondays and Fridays when my work was craziest and now I can just breathe and not have to worry about/dread them.

Gideon just had a doctor's appointment and he's 29 inches long and 19.8 lbs. According to BabyCenter, that puts him in the 50-75 percentile for height and the 25-50 percentile for weight. Doctor says he is really pleased how healthy Gideon is.

Gideon is a great eater and loves just about anything you give him, including mango, spinach artichoke dip, guacamole, wheat bread, etc. Trevor and I were just talking earlier today about how he eats much healthier than we do, probably because I'm more conscience of him. Bountiful Baskets (a basket full of random fruits/veggies every week) helps too because we get foods I don't usually buy and have to figure out what to do with them!