First Day of Vacation

We arrived yesterday in Maui and were greeted with gorgeous weather and leis by Dad and Mona at the airport. We wasted no time and went to the pool then the beach as soon as we dropped our luggage off in our condo. Evan did well on the 6 hour flight here but he did not take a nap as we had hoped so he was exhausted by the afternoon making him a bit tentative about the pool. The beach was a bit cold and really windy yesterday so we didn't stay long but today is beautiful out so we are headed there right now!

Recap and tales of an interesting day

Today turned out to be a very interesting day. Evan and I had quite a little 'adventure' when stupidly I let him hold my car keys as I placed him into his car seat after a trip to the grocery store. I forgot he had them and just as I closed his door to start loading my groceries into the car, I heard the sound of all the doors locking (my cell phone was also in the car). Fortunately just a few panicked minutes later he hit the unlock button and I was able to get into the car. He seemed to think I was playing a game with him - waiving to him from the outside of the car begging him to press another button on the remote. He was smiling and waiving at me from inside not realizing how badly I was freaking out. Then this evening when I let Hili outside for the final time of the day she returned with a furry gift for me in her mouth. I ran screaming away from her as she desperately tried to give me her gift. I tried to hurdle the baby gate and failed, falling on top of it causing it to crash to the floor all while Evan was sleeping. Aaron and I got a good laugh out of it!


















































My little boy also turned 18 months old today. Although we certainly have those challenging toddler moments he is a ton of fun. He surprises us everyday by learning something new. Today he said "Daddy at work" out of the blue, it was very cool. We had his check-up this morning and he is doing great. He is still a little guy according to the charts (height and weight) but I guess his parents are not huge people so a career as a professional basketball player may be out...

Evan's cousins and Aunt Amy spent the last couple of weeks visiting and Evan adores them all! He says their names repeatedly throughout the day. It was great being able to have them with us at Christmas and New Years, particularly this year. Christmas was more fun this year since Evan is older and could enjoy the excitement of the holiday. He was really into Frosty the Snowman (which is why I was so damned determined to build a snowman for him) and our Christmas tree (the poor guy is a little confused why it has suddenly disappeared). He was not interested in opening the gifts but he loved everything he received. He seemed a bit overwhelmed at times as to why we kept throwing more toys at him.

I have been bad about posting lately so the following are some snapshots of what we've been up to. Happy New Year to you all.

Merry Christmas!

Snowman Weather

Jared, Harrison and Amy are in town for Christmas and as they arrived a big snowstorm hit (well big for Seattle). Before the second storm hit we packed up the dogs and all of Evan's gear and headed to Dad and Mona's to get snowed in together. We've been having fun sledding and building snowmen. Evan has been keeping us awake all night which is not fun but it is great to be together. We've had almost a foot of snow here in Seattle and I think we may be here through Christmas.

16 Months Old

Evan turned 16 months old today. He is talking extremely well, he has over 75 words in his vocabulary now. (I am a big dork and out of curiosity I started compiling a list and it was surprisingly longer than we thought!) Lately at the end of each day he likes to rattle off some of the words he knows. It is so cute how proud he is, while Aaron and I are rocking him he'll shout out various unrelated words like 'Papa!' or 'pumpkin!'. He is a very happy child with A LOT of energy - he constantly keeps us on our toes!

*This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago but I just wanted to have something cute to post along with this entry!

Harmonica

Check out Evan's harmonica debut! Joy took this video on Halloween of Evan getting down with the harmonica. You'll hear Clara in the background asking where her 'monica' (aka harmonica) is. They were both running around the house shortly before this was taken playing to their own tune. Very cute but also very noisy!

Afternoon at the Farm

Aaron, Evan and I drove up to the Farm this morning to hang out with my Dad for the day. Evan and Papa went exploring for cool leaves, sticks, rocks, and smelled lavender. At one point while we were hanging out in the living room my Dad noticed that someone was watching us, we looked out and there was a young deer eating apples right outside of our window - pretty amazing!