Can't help but smile at this face. . .

I just wanted to share a picture of one of Tanner's first smiles. Somehow I was lucky enough to have the camera right next to me. Such a cute smiles, but I am bias of course. I cannot believe that Christmas is just 4 days away. I still have a couple little things to do, but for the most part I am done with shopping and what not. My goal next year is to be done with all this nonsense by Thanksgiving so that I can just sit back an enjoy the Christmas season. Merry Christmas everyone!

Fashion Island with the Yee's

On Saturday night the Yee's invited us to go out to Fashion Island with them. It is a Christmas tradition they have started with their kids. Brett and I had never been there, so it was a fun new experience for us. The highlight of the night was the 115 foot Christmas tree. It is over 20,000 pounds and has over 17,000 lights and decorations on it. If you look closely at some of the pictures you can see just how big some of those ornaments are. The kids had fun looking at the tree, as well as running through one of those fountains that spit water up in the air. To start out the evening, Sarah and I needed to stay in the car to feed the babies, so Justin and Brett took the rest of the kids to look at the fish in the ponds. Of course, luck would have it that Bailey would fall in. Brett took of her wet shoes, socks and pants and rapped a blanket around her. Unfortunately, she wouldn't keep the blanket on and ended up most of the night bottomless. So many people were giving us dirty looks for allowing our daughter to run around without pants on in the 55 degree weather. I guess we could have turned around and gone home, but we didn't, and it didn't seem to really bug her, so hopefully she won't have any permanent scares from the experience. We had a fun evening and are grateful for the invitation from the Yee's. If any of you have a free night during this holiday season, I would highly recommend going out to Fashion Island. The pictures just don't do it justice.

Rainy Days

The last couple of days have been cold, gloomy, rainy and beautiful. I love this kind of weather. I don't know if I would if it was like this all the time, but since we don't get it very often, it is awesome. It is perfect soup weather. It is the kind of weather that makes you want to make a fire in the fireplace and cuddle up in a blanket. The sad thing is that we don't have a wood burning fireplace in our house. We did in our house in Clearlake and we had fires almost every morning and night during the winter. But here we just have one of those gas fireplaces that you flip the switch and the fire comes on. Yes, it is nice and convenient to create a "mood", but it is miserable for putting out any kind of heat. Once Brett and I make our millions, we are going to build a house with lots of fireplaces! Ok, we probably won't ever make millions, but when we do finally sent down and have enough money to actually buy a home, I hope there will be a wood burning fireplace in it.

Christmas Decorations

We had fun decorating this year. It was hard with the new house knowing where to put everything. Our decorations are still a bunch of random things that we have collected over the few years of our marriage. Hopefully someday we will have enough to have things in every room of the house. As for now, it is just a couple things in the common areas. Having decorations up finally makes it feel like Christmas. It is so much fun to drive around and see all the Christmas lights and decorations around the neighborhoods, streets and shopping centers. Why can't it be like this all year round!?!