All Things Christmas

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!
Well another year almost gone.
First and foremost...I never posted anything about our Thanksgiving and I wanted to say that I am SO thankful...

For my family

great friends
health
a roof over our heads
food to eat
happiness
the greatest gift, God's Son
freedom
and so so much more.

This month started off with my company holiday party at The Riverplace Hotel.

It was a very nice hotel. We arrived and mingled a little and then sat down with Randy and Bobbie. They had a slide show going of this years events and at one part they showed all the 2007 babies (there were A LOT) and Gabe was the cutest one out of the bunch (not biased whatsoever). The food was good, the program was good although long...we had our first retirement of the company and they weren't sure how to present it so that took a long time. After the speeches were made, the gifts given out (which NO I didn't win anything. I never do) and the food was eaten, Bryan and I left to get Gabe at my moms. It was a fun little night out together, but I wanted to get home.

Sunday, Sunday
We had baby dedication on Sunday the 2nd. This was so much fun as Gabe was getting dedicated and with his cousin Jaden and with Marcia's little Mia and Kate's little Lily. 2nd service Gabe had fallen asleep right before and it was hilarious when Pastor was holding him up. Here are some Pictures of the event (By Teresa thank you)


This has been such a fun time being Gabe's 1st Christmas! Teresa got a very fancy camera for her birthday and I asked if she would be willing to also take our family Christmas picture. So her and Kambrie came over that evening and took a bunch of pictures.

Here's the one we went with. (I'm sure that most of you have already seen it)

I ended up leaving work early on Monday the 3rd. My mom had Gabe and she had fallen down the stairs and hurt herself really bad. She couldn't even really walk. Thankfully she wasn't holding Jaden or Gabe and she is fine. She ended up going to the Dr's and nothing horrible happened, thank God, she was just going to be really sore for a while.

Bryan had the JR High Christmas party on the 5th and then he had the rest of the month off...well Wednesday nights anyway.

Gabe had his first haircut on the 8th. His hair was driving me bonkers. He was starting to look like a miniature Donald Trump with a comb over and on one of the sides a piece of hair would stick out and I could not get it to stay down. His hair was also growing over his ears too. SO I buzzed it. YUP I did...and may I say he looks DANG cute! I am hoping that it will grow back a little more even?

That evening I went to our Young Marrieds Christmas party over at Randy's and Bobbie's by myself. Not cause I wanted too, but cause Bryan had two major finals the next week and Gabe had still been napping when I left. The party was fun! We all stood around talking and eating and just enjoying one another. We played a white elephant gift exchange and then people started leaving. Teresa and I helped Bobbie clean up and ended up staying till around 10 I think.

O' Christmas Tree, O' Christmas Tree
That Sunday we went to church and then quickly went home to change and then back out again. We met up at my parents and we went to Vancouver and had lunch at Red Robin. As we were eating we noticed that it was snowing outside and it didn't stop the rest of the night. We went to the tree farm that Nathan and Julie had gone to in past years and we picked out our trees. The farm was big and actually really busy. They had animals and a little barn that you could go into and get hot coco or hot cider and they had a little store too. After we got the trees and paid for them we ended up on a small adventure (like my family ALWAYS does). We ended up getting lost and we had to back track to find our way out of Vancouver.

We had the Montavilla Staff Christmas party on the 13th and Friday we picked up Gabe from my moms, chatted for a little bit and went home. We made dinner and Bryan left around eight to hang out with Dan since they were in town that weekend. Gabe and I hung out and played. He is so cute...he takes everything out of his toy basket one by one, puts each one in his mouth for a second or 2 and moves on to the next. He is going to crawl any day now. He's getting up on his knees and rocks back and fourth. He just needs to get over his leg and take off. I gave him a bath and rocked him to sleep. After I put him down for the night I worked on some laundry and getting my pictures organized. Bryan got home around one and I was actually still awake.

I got up around 8:30 the next morning. Gabe slept till nine. I got some more laundry done and picked up the house. I need to do some deep cleaning ASAP! At around 11:30 we left to do some errands. We went to TRU and picked up some presents for Gabe and Jaden. We went to 2 banks, the post office, two other stores and then Safeway. When we got home we unpacked and while I fed Gabe Bryan made us lunch. At around 5ish we left to meet my family at their house to head downtown. It's a tradition that we've done since I was little. We got really good parking spots right next to each other and we went straight to Macy's to see Santa. We weren't sure what the line would be like so we wanted to do that first. Everything looked way different than I remembered and no monorail...well they had a memorial for it and the boy's got to sit in it. AH memories. Funny thing is I remember always having to ride it alone when I was little. I was too big when my sisters were riding it. Gabe and Jaden liked looking around at everything. When it was our turn to see Santa, Gabe went first. His eye's got really big and he was touching his beard. He was SO serious...no smiles at all.

We added Jaden so that both boy's were together. It was SO cute.

We took Gabe away so that they could get Jaden alone with Santa. They did pretty good if I do say so myself. I think that in one of my pictures with Santa I was crying because I thought my mom was going to leave me, but she actually was just walking back to take a picture. We walked to the mall and ate dinner there in the food court area and then shopped around. Jaden had fun on Grandpa's shoulders hitting him on the head and he also said "HI" to all the bald men in the mall. Grandpa's bald so he gets excited cause they're like Grandpa. hehe Me and Gabe played hide and seek in American Eagle and had all the workers in stiches because he was laughing so hard. We left the mall, got some Starbucks and went to see the HUGE Christmas tree in Pioneer Square.

When we got home we all went straight to bed. Although SO much fun, the night was very exhausting.
Sunday we went to church and then we came home and just puttered around. I made a salad and we all went to Dave and Kate's for dinner. Gabe had a ton of fun hanging out with the girls and it was nice getting to hang out with friends.



The 21st was my last day of work for the rest of the year. YEA! I go back on the 2nd and I have a feeling it will be hard. I have SO enjoyed this time off with Gabe. I miss him SO much when I am away from him. :o( I actually worked from home that day too. My mom ended up having to go into work so I drove to work, got some work to take home and then made sure my area was cleaned up and shut down for the week.
We went to Peacock Lane with Nate, Teresa, Kambrie, Dave and Linda. It was a really chilly night out and we had an adventure kind of night with them (just like our family adventures). Dave and Linda had locked themselves out of the house and Patrick was on his way to get them in so we waited for them. We walked to the little mart and stayed in there for a while as it was warm in there and Nate and T got coffee. Gabe was So tired by the end and come to find out he absolutely HATES the stroller that I was using. It is my moms and a lot smaller than ours, so we borrowed it. My mom told me afterwards that Gabe hates that stroller. I guess she has tried to use it other times and he has thrown a fit. I think just being tired and then having to be in a stroller he hates pushed him over the edge. It was fun over all though!

Christmas Eve Bryan and I just got things ready, He wrapped my gifts and I wrapped more of Gabe's and others. Bryan's parents came over around five and we had pizza and salad for dinner and opened gifts. They got Gabe the Laugh & Learn Puppy and he absolutely loved it. He was laughing at it and just having a great time. They left around 7ish and we headed over to my parents to open our Christmas Pj's . We didn't stay the night. We went home around 10 I think and went to bed. The next morning we got over to my parents around 8:30 and we started opening gifts. It took us forever. The boy's got a lot of stuff. They had fun but weren't really interested in opening the gifts. They just wanted to see what each other was getting. Jaden wanted to play with Gabe's new toy's and Gabe wanted to play with Jaden's new toy's. I love this time of year and I just LOVE that it was Gabe's first Christmas. I look forward to many more.

Christmas Eve Jammies

Christmas Day

Couple funnies...
At night I put Gabe to bed and most of the time he doesn't have his bink in his mouth. A lot of times he'll wake up in the middle of the night and just want his bink and we'll have to go into his room and plug it in and he'll go right back to sleep. Yes, he is obsessed with his bink. Well, Kate told me to put some in his crib and because he knows how to put it in his mouth he'll find one and put it in himself. It's been funny a few nights he'll go to bed with one bink in his mouth and then wake up with a different one.

On Christmas Gabe became a poser. Every time he knew the camera was pointed at him he would stop what he was doing and look up with the cheesiest grin on his face. He's been doing that ever since. We have a lot of pictures of him posing for the camera. SO CUTE!

Have a great New Year everyone!