Busy Busy Winter Time

December was a slow month...travel, birthday, holidays, family, running, anniversary, sickness, injuries and surprises. You know... the usual.

Garrett's the first grandchild in both mine and Brad's families so the poor boy just didn't get a thing for his birthday!


Garrett didn't quite understand the concept of "opening presents" but he had fun and loved his new toys, books and clothes. It's so convenient that most of the toys he received made lots of noise. Months later as I'm writing this, after having endured many long days with said toys, I wonder to myself "What did I ever do to you?!" referring to Garrett's grandparents. They were so wonderful in spoiling our boy. But Garrett loves those noisy toys and still plays with them. In fact he got a race track that causes the cars to spin in the middle of a big circle...Garrett has removed the cars and puts his snacks in the center to spin out and fly all over the room. That's been this weeks favorite activity!

Brad and I celebrated our second anniversary with cake from our favorite German bakery and then saw Disney's Tangled. Brad's praying this isn't a tradition as we saw Disney's Frog Princess the year before.

Just before we left for our big trip to Idaho for the holidays Brad split open his chin during wrestling.

One of the three scares he has on his chin from having it split open. I can't remember if this was before or after he hurt his knee or his ankle... typical boy. I'm so glad we'll have two of them. Oh that reminds me...moving on to our trip to Idaho.

So we decided to DRIVE to Idaho with our one yr old. The drive was a bit torturous but holidays with so much family was a blast. On our way we stopped and stayed in Utah, making it possible to connect with wonderful family members and friends. We stayed with Brad's Aunt and Uncle and cousins in northern Utah. They didn't tell anyone we were there so when they invited several other family members over for dinner we got a big warm welcome! It was so much fun to see all of them! We just love them so much! Like I said, no one knew we were coming...not even Brad's parents. In fact we didn't even tell all of Brad's siblings until we were about an hour away so they could clean a teenage boys room up for us to sleep in. It was quite the spectacle when Brad's parents found our we were there! We stayed for two weeks and enjoyed the time...for the most part. One morning I found Brad's sister throwing up in the front yard... and it was down hill from there. Within days EVERYONE was throwing up.
So here's a side story... my brother and his wife live in Boise as well and invited us over for dinner. They served us chicken tortilla soup. The last time Brad and I had chicken tortilla soup was the day we found out I was expecting our first child. With me being so sick I didn't think much of it...until I missed a cycle. So after having chicken tortilla soup with my brother and his wife, we returned to Brad's parents house and took a test. Well, according to our doctor I'm extremely rare because there's no way I could have gotten pregnant by their standards. We will NEVER...EVER be having chicken tortilla soup EVER again. August 19th 2011 we are expecting another little boy.
Garrett was walking and running by this time and making lots of messes along the way. We were very blessed to have had the time with family and also to have received the surprise gift of a camcorder. I'll post some videos once I figure out how!