Zadie and Skip Hit the Ranch!

Last weekend, Zadie, Skip, and Tori all had their very first taste of the family ranch. It was my first time visiting since 2001 and it was great to be back. The weather was a bit of a drag, but we still got to have one night by the campfire. Zadie loved every bit of tromping around in the mud. Thanks to my parents for putting us up in a motorhome!

A bunch of family in front of my parents' new shipping container that they converted into a high-end trailer. They're such die-hard environmentalists that they even recycle their home. Haha.

Me and Skip with my Aunt Nancy and Aunt Kay. Best part of Texas? My aunts live there.

Hanging out by the campfire on the night it didn't rain. Skip was so bundled up you can't really see him. I call this Tori's Amelia Earhart hat.

Zadie had fun getting dirty. I interrupted her shoveling long enough to get this photo with my dad. "Shovel" was her very first two-syllable word (besides "mama").

Thanks to Cousin Mark for letting us borrow his Polaris. Zadie started out really excited about steering, but then eventually fell asleep at the wheel.

Thanksgiving in Washington

A few weeks ago we spent five days in Washington to celebrate Thanksgiving with Tori's family. Thank you to Tori's brother Zach for hosting all of us (I think there were 20 people at the house). As usual, a grand time was had by all. The photos above are from a day we spent ice-blocking at the park and then playing kickball. It was a tense competition, but Phoebe ultimately beat Zach in the ice-blocking Olympics.

The time we spend with Tori's family is quite a bit different than with mine. Both have their benefits, so it's nice to alternate holidays and experience the best of both worlds. It would be pretty fun to get my parents out on the field for some kickball, I have to admit!

And Now Zadie Zoo

Kim did a great job getting good photos of Zadie, especially considering the fact that she was in a difficult and annoying mood on this particular day! The one on the top is my very favorite.

In a terrible development, we seem to have lost the $40 hat that Zadie is wearing in one of these photos. Ack! We haven't seen it since our San Francisco trip. :(

Smiley Skip

These are my favorite photos of Skip. As you can see, he is a super smiley baby! And he looks pretty cute in overalls, too.

Family Photos

I never had the chance to blog about this, but we had a GREAT family vacation to San Francisco for a week. We spent part of the time celebrating my sister's 35th birthday with her family, our family, my parents, and Nick. I really love for Zadie to have time with her cousins. We spent the rest of the week in the city with Tori's friend Nika and her family (thank you, Nika, for the kind hospitality!). Hanging out in the city is always great, but this time it was even more special because Nick is now a freshman at San Francisco State and he accompanied us just about everywhere we went. Aside from being good company, he's a huge help with both kids.

Kim was kind enough to take some family photos of us, which I was very excited about. These are the first good photos we've had of Skip and we really treasure them. I will post more in upcoming posts of each kiddo, but I thought I'd start by posting the family shots. Kim had her work cut out for her since Zadie was in the worst mood ever!

Thank you, Kim, for your awesome photos! You can check out more of her photos on her blog.

Halloween

It took me a while, but I'm finally posting Halloween photos! This was really the first Halloween Zadie was actually engaged in the whole event. Tori made her a tin man costume from The Wizard of Oz. Most of you probably know that Tori has dressed up as a tin man practically every single Halloween. It was nice that she passed this costume along to Zadie this year. As you can see from the photo, it turned out pretty cute and we got a TON of compliments. We went to the "walk streets" in Manhattan Beach, which is packed with tons of families. Given the locale, it's fairly well-to-do. Zadie's costume was the only homemade costume we saw ALL night!! Nice work, Tori!

Maybe Skip will be the tin man next year and Zadie will be the lion. If her hair is longer she can be Dorothy. Anyway, this year Skip was a skeleton. I'm not into gory/scary costumes, but it just so happened that this little pajama outfit was amongst some hand-me-downs that a friend sent and so it went perfectly. Not sure why Linda painted his nose black, but it looked cute.

A prize to anyone who can tell me what Linda is dressed up as. She's wearing a footed pajama outfit that she found at a garage sale (who knew they came in adult sizes?) and her nose is painted black and her hair is in little pigtails. It's the nose that throws me off because otherwise I would guess she was dressed as a baby or something. Whatever the case, it was enough to get her a bag full of candy and she had a good time.

It's really funny to me when I think about what must have been going through Zadie's head this Halloween. We hadn't told her anything about the holiday at all, but all of the sudden one day we start dressing her up in a box with shiny stuff on the outside, paint her face silver, and ask her to carry around a silver axe. She duly complied, but she was really taken aback when she looked in the mirror and saw her face painted. Anyway, then we walk a few blocks and take her from house to house to trick-or-treat. There were lots of other oddly dressed people and they were all going around getting this stuff in little wrappers. See, Zadie has never had candy and I really don't think she understood what people were giving her. She never asked to have a piece. But she was still very interested in getting more of whatever people were giving and kept doing her infamous "Mo!" at all the houses. She didn't seem to take a lot of joy in getting the candy, which was just fine with us!

Thanks to Tori's sister Katie for taking these photos. She and her husband Leo are pictured above with their brand-new baby boy, Gavin.

He's a Looker!

I've really been enjoying Skip lately. He's almost four months old and is full of smiles and coos. I've actually decided that I'm kind of over that 0-3 months stage because this is way more rewarding.

I'm also loving how CUTE Skip is! This photo is Exhibit A, with more to follow. I find myself always telling him how adorable he is, but then I think of Grandma Linda and how she always tells children that they are resilient and quick to laugh and kind and all that stuff and so I tell him those things, too. We don't want him growing up thinking he can skate by on his looks!

Oh, and the other thing that makes Skip like 500 times more adorable is that he has been sleeping through the night for past few weeks! The Kate and Tori training program has been a smashing success and he typically sleeps from 7:30pm to 6:30am. This makes me like him (and everyone else around me) much more because we are finally getting our much-needed sleep! As of yesterday we put Skip on a new training program so that he can fall asleep on his own, rather than us having to put him to sleep or having to give him his pacifier every three minutes when it falls out. He fell asleep tonight -- without his pacifier, which was only by accident -- within about five minutes!

Okay, sorry to brag if you're reading this blog and your kid is keeping you up at night (Jenna!). I'm just pretty excited about all this. I'm a much better parent when I'm rested!