Christmas Tree Temptations

We told you in our last post that we ventured out in the elements to find the perfect Davis Christmas tree and now our beautiful tree is up in our living room and looking very festive. Bryant is drawn to the tree for even reasons he isn't sure of and for some reason cannot help but unplug the tree at any given moment. He is actually really good about the ornaments and ribbon and has only tried to pull a few things off. Even as I type this he's leisurely hanging out against the wall, next to the outlet and plug for the tree's lights, oh the temptations of a one year old! :-) The actual tree decorating was lots of fun, albeit messy, Bryant really enjoyed the whole process. As you can see, he even cleans up after himself. He pushed the heavy Rubbermaid bin with all the decorations in it all over the downstairs and enjoyed emptying the box and see all the cool stuff we have. We are heading out this afternoon to start, yes I said start, our Christmas shopping, nothing like waiting until the Christmas rush, huh??

We have this little tradition we started last year with my friend Regan where we go out and make a day of shopping and hanging out, it really gets me in the holiday mood and the three of us had a blast together last year, so we are really looking forward to our outing today. Our weather forecast says snow today, so that would definitely put me in the holiday mood! Love you all!

What's This?

Bryant is really starting to develop in his communication just in the last couple of weeks. I taught him to use sign language to say "please," mostly because I wanted him to ask nicely for things instead of whining or crying, it has worked like a charm. He is also getting very good at saying "No" and walks around playing with his toys singing it over and over again, as of now I think it is really cute, ask me again when he is almost two! He says, Mama and Dada, Duck, Dog, NightNight, and my favorite What's this? No joke, he was in Les Schwab with me the other day and there was a stack of studded tires and he walked over to them and said "what's this?" and the lady at the counter said that was the cutest thing she'd ever heard. I was validated, he really does say it!

We have been very busy traveler's since our last posting, traveling over to the Vancouver/Portland area twice in the last week. We spent Thanksgiving at Jeremy's parents house in Vancouver and had a really nice time. Bryant got to meet some new cousins and see his Great-Grandma Viola, it really was a wonderful day. Jeremy's cousins Bart and Cheri came to dinner with their three kids Riley (8), Brooklyn (6) and Lexi (4). I didn't have high expectations for the kids playing with Bryant, after all he is 1 and has a 10 second attention span, but they really had fun together. Bryant would chase the two younger girls Lexi and Brooklyn around the house and at one point he had Lexi up on a chair and was pounding on the chair and screeching at her, it was very entertaining to watch and the kids really seemed to have a lot of fun together.

We traveled back over to Portland last Thursday morning for a holiday dinner for my work. We had a very nice dinner at the restaurant at the Heathman Hotel and Bryant spent the evening playing with his cousin Cortlyn (2) and hanging out with Grandma (my Mom this time!) Bryant had a little bit of a rough night on Thursday, waking up three times and finally getting up on Friday at 4am, which of course meant Mommy and Daddy were up at 4am as well, nothing like 4 hours of tossing and turning to energize your day! :-) We decided to go ahead and head home on Friday because there was supposed to be a snow storm making travel over the mountain passes a bit treacherous on Saturday. I helped my Mom get some Christmas decorations up around her house and then we headed for home.

Today we took our annual trek out to locate the Davis family Christmas tree in our nearby forests. We can get a Christmas Tree cutting permit for $5 and go out and have our pick of the best Deschutes National Forest has to offer. Jeremy's sister Jill and her family went out with us and we did end up finding nice trees, but the weather wasn't very nice at all. As you can see from the pictures, we were definitely in snow, but the weather was slightly warm today and so we were getting rained on, not fun with little kids! Bryant had a really good attitude despite his coat and gloves being way to BIG and the snow too deep to walk in. His face was soaked both from several face plants and the rain, but he hardly cried, what a trooper. This was his first experience in the snow and although i don't think he was all that impressed, I do think he had a fun adventure. I was able to find little infant snow boots and snow bibs at Target so he stayed nice and toasty warm despite the rain.

Well that brings us up to date for now, hope you are all enjoying the holidays!