Noah's 1st Christmas - Take 1

Every year we take turns spending Christmas with my family and Dan's family. This Christmas just happens to be a year we spend Christmas with my family. Being Noah's first Christmas, we still wanted to see Dan's family so that they could enjoy watching him open presents for the first time too! 

 Noah had a great time getting re-acquainted with grandma and grandpa, Aunt Charlene and Uncle Kyle, and their dogs too!

He also did a great job opening up presents!

He got lots of new clothes, books, and toys! Thanks everybody!

 Saturday night, we headed to Christmas at Parkwood, a performance at our church. It was excellent! Here we all are after the show:

As always, we had a great time with everyone. I think Noah made grandpa go up the stairs about a hundred times! Grandpa was timing Noah and helping him improve his time with each run up the stairs!

Thanks to everyone for making the trip and for all of the thoughtful gifts! It was a great start to Noah's first Christmas!

Trouble...

That pretty much sums up life around here lately! Noah is crawling, pulling up and getting into EVERYTHING! He loves to climb up the stairs - I think he would do that all day long if I let him!

And when he isn't doing that, he enjoyed climbing on the dishwasher, pulling out all of his diapers, and climbing on everything!

He also loves the toilet! Needless to say, I've learned my lesson the hard way a few times about closing doors and turning my back for even a second! 

He is a sneaky one, but keeps me laughing all day long!

Shower for Baby Siskos in New York

The first week in December, Dan, Noah, my mom and I all got on a plane and headed to upstate New York for Sarah's baby shower. Noah did great on the plane, although when we landed at JFK for our connection at 10 pm he was WIDE awake

 After walking around JFK for quite some time and all of us taking turns, Dan finally got Noah to sleep!

Needless to say, we were all pretty tired!

We stayed with my cousin Matt and his wife Kristyn, who have 2 boys. It was awesome - the pack n play was already set up and Noah was in heaven with all the new toys to play with!

 Noah also loved meeting his cousins. Here is Nolan singing to Noah before bedtime!

And here is Noah pushing Tyler around

Poor Tyler was sick most of the weekend and not very happy, but we did catch a few sweet smiles!!

 Saturday was the shower. It was very simple - burlap and lace with some lamb accents. 

 Here I am with my 2 sisters, Sarah the beautiful mommy to be, and Suzi too!

We got the food from Wegman's and it was delicious!

 We also did a hot chocolate bar with lots of different things to put in your hot chocolate - caramel, marshmallows, candy canes, etc. made the hot chocolate a little bit more exciting and a fun touch to the shower!

 As always, it was great to see family! I wish they all lived closer! We had a great time catching up and celebrating Baby Siskos, who is expected to arrive in early February. Below is my cousin Kelly, me and Kristyn with our babies. There are only 12 weeks between all three of them! It sure will be fun watching them grow up together!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We headed down to Atlanta to Aunt Charlene & Uncle Kyle's house for Noah's first Thanksgiving! It was just the 5 of us, very low key and relaxing, just what we needed!

Kyle and Charlene are always great hosts and fabulous cooks and Thanksgiving dinner was no exception! 

And here was Noah's first Thanksgiving dinner - a little bit of turkey and some potatoes.

He LOVED it!

He is loving being able to feed himself now!

The rest of the weekend we watched some football and hung out. Charlene and I even went out and let the boys babysit Noah while we went and saw Mockingjay - it was great to get out and the movie was awesome! Looking forward for part 2! Thanks for hosting us Charlene & Kyle! Hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving too!

8 months old

Noah is 8 months old today! He is crawling around everywhere and into everything! He has also just started pulling up. Today, he even made it all the way up the stairs by himself! We just introduced meat, and he isn't the biggest fan so far, but I can't say I blame him - the stuff smells terrible! Hopefully as we introduce solids he will do well with those and we can introduce some real meat instead of the pureed stuff soon! We continue to enjoy our sweet, happy boy! Here he is pulling up (you can tell he's proud of himself!)

Palm Springs Part IV - Miscellaneous

We really had a great time in Palm Springs, the weather was beautiful and there was so much to see. Above, is Noah and I outside our hotel with the grapefruit trees! The first few days we were busy doing lots of stuff, but then Noah and I pretty much just hung out at our hotel during the day.

At night, we ate lots of good food and had dessert almost every night (which we never do!) The best was this salted caramel milk shake from Great Shakes!

We also did some shopping at night, I'm not gonna lie, I'm still a little bummed Noah and I didn't get these hats!

Noah was amazed with this phone at the hotel. I kept laughing because this is probably the only time he will ever use a phone with a cord!

Noah and I also hit up the pool while Dan was at his conference.

The views around the hotel were very cool. It's always amazing to me how different the other side of the country is. 

On the last day, Dan's conference was only a half day, so we got to go to the pool as a family. Noah loved splashing around in the water with Daddy, and I enjoyed some Mommy time in a lounge chair with a book!

The last meal we had in Palm Springs was probably the best! We ate at a place called Trio. The food was excellent and the waiters were incredible!

Then it was time to get on the plane and head back home. Noah did great on the way home too! 

Praise the Lord for good travel and a wonderful family vacation!