So Thankful for Family

This week was all about food. Leave it up to the Americans to have holidays centered around food, like we need an excuse to eat more than we should.
Wednesday my sister Shawna, her husband Matt and daughter Sabine (3 weeks younger than Kaleb) came to hang out with us. Thursday was all about the food. We spent half the day making food and dirtying every dish we owned, and the other half eating it all. Only 4 of us and I think we had enough food for 10 people (at least)
~14 LB Turkey
~20 potatoes, mashed
~3 LBS green beans
~3 yams - baked and brown sugared
~1 dozen homemade wheat rolls
~Apple Salad
~Green Salad
~Grilled Mushrooms
~Cornbread Stuffing
~2 Bottles of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider
~2 Bottles of Martinelli's Sparkling Apple-Grape
~Pumpkin Pie
~Lemon Meringue Pie
and Chocolate Cream Pie
Using my favorite quote from Jake's sister Shawna (there are two of them, don't get confused here) we gobbled until we wobbled.
They brought their Wii gaming console and we battled it out for fame and glory - or just the last piece of pie, and Austrian chocolate that they so kindly brought us from their world travels.









Even the babies were very fascinated with the Wii (what are we doing to our poor children!?)


Friday we spent the day being lazy and wandering Glendale and the mall and shopping complexes...this is us white trash people - sitting on the sidewalk putting together a stroller. Sabine was getting too heavy to carry comfortably very much longer.

Saturday we made the drive to Santa Barbara and enjoyed the day wading in the ocean and wandering the town and pier. (aren't all you people that are freezing in Utah jealous?)













This was by far one of our better Thanksgivings in a while. This was the first time we've been with other family in the last 4 years. We had so much fun hanging out and are so grateful they came for a visit. I love family! This makes me even more excited and anxious for Christmas to get here when we get to be in UT. and see more of the family.

A Slice of Life

There isn't much new going on in our lives at the moment. Everyday is about the same.
Kaleb is growing so quickly. It seems he is doing something new every day. Today was one of those moments. Kaleb will sometimes roll from his stomach to his back but I've never seen him go the opposite. Today I laid him on his back and then I came in to see him on his stomach with a toy that had been a few feet away from where I had laid him down...how did he get that? I let him do his thing and just watched him from a distance. He ended up on his back again, and then rolled over to his stomach and started the army crawl...just a few scootches (that is now a word in my book), but enough to reach another toy. I wish I could have caught it on camera, but, I'll be ready next time! It's so fun and amazing to watch Kaleb grow and develop.
Our life right now is so predictably unpredictable.
Yesterday I was in the laundromat and a gentleman asked me if it was worth it to have kids. In more words or less I let him know it depended on the day but that parenting is the hardest job you will ever do, and the best. Some reasons why I think it's amazing is because they look up to you, and make you laugh. They make you remember what it was like to be that young, to have an endless fascination with a world that is completely brand new, and thanks to them we get to revisit that world every day with them. They remind us to have fun and make us realize that sometimes cloud watching IS more important than doing laundry. There’s no doubt that having kids changes your life forever, but I wouldn't change having Kaleb for anything in the world. Sometimes I do miss those selfish things, endless sleep whenever I wanted, me time whenever I wanted, leaving the house at the last minute with maybe just my drivers license in my pocket. But, having Kaleb has definitely changed my world for the better.
I enjoy being a mom. I do not always enjoy parenting, but I do enjoy being a mom.
P.S. - A huge CONGRATS to Jake's brother Daniel and his FIANCE Hannah- they are getting married in January - we are so excited for them!

A Babies Laugh is the best remedy

I have a few videos of Kaleb from a few days ago. I wish I would have come in at the beginning when he was really laughing, but, I got a piece of it. Jake made this random noise when commenting about something and Kaleb started laughing. We both looked around trying to figure out what he found so funny, and then realized, it was the noise Jake had just made. Of course, we had to try it again, Kaleb was laughing so hard he was choking. I've only ever heard Kaleb laugh one little 'Ha' not this full on gut laughing. Again, wish you could have seen the best part of it, but, here's what I got. A babies laugh is so infectious. A remedy for a cloudy day. Enjoy, and see if you can keep a straight face!

Finding our Mark in History.

I wanted to give a quick shout out to my mom and thank her for teaching me how to sew. Which means I guess that I thank grandma Gubler also because she probably taught my mom how to sew, and actually had a huge influence in teaching me since we're both left-handed. This is probably a weird thing to be grateful for but I am so grateful that I am able to take a much needed perfectly good pair of pants with a broken zipper and replace said zipper with a new one. Thank you to those patient ones who taught this backward left-handed girl a very valuable skill that has come in handy more than a few times.

"There is a moment, a simple moment, before history gets recorded.
Before it goes in the books.
Before it appears as a question on a game show.
Or on a midterm exam.
A moment right before the headline is written.
There is a moment when history lives in the present.
When we can watch it unfold in real time, right before our eyes.
When we can all assume our place in it."
-- Maria Elena Fernandez--

I assumed my place in history by casting my vote of unyielding hope for a better future for my children and grandchildren. This was the first year that I've cared enough to vote. This was the first time I took a moment to study all the issues. I felt so proud as I handed in my ballot to know, I did what I could to hope for a better tomorrow. We are so blessed to live in this land of choices and decisions.

Adventures of parenting...
We started on a new journey of parenting and introduced rice cereal to Kaleb's diet this morning. It was a rather messy adventure. He did pretty well and seemed to enjoy it. I do wonder how much he actually managed to swallow, but he didn't seem too hungry afterward so I guess he got enough. Now we just need to get him a highchair and baby sized spoons. I still can't believe Kaleb has grown so fast!

I figured out something about our camera...and I can post it! Cool!

Cuteness is his only saving grace

This is mostly pictures...Kaleb is so cute, I couldn't decide which one to post - so I posted a lot of them.
Thanks to some wonderful friends in our ward we got to go on our first date without Kaleb. We walked over after work to get a slice of pizza and then to share some Cold Stone Creamery Nutter Butter icecream - YUM! (Although they were out of the two mix-ins that we wanted, Oreo's and Reese's, is that what we get for going at 8:00 at night?)
The night before Halloween we decided to carve a pumpkin (maybe next year Kaleb will care and we'll do it before he goes to bed)



Jake designed the really cool eyes - we played nice and shared the knife. It's hard to get a picture of a glowing pumpkin! I got the duty of picking out all the seeds......and then I roasted them. They were a bit heavy on the salt but tasted pretty good after you rubbed them between your hands to get rid of the inch layer of salt. Not too bad for a first time trying roasted pumpkin seeds.

For Halloween we were invited to a friends party and trick-or-treating in their neighborhood afterward. Kaleb was having an ornery day so it just wasn't worth it to take him. Jake and Kaleb were going to go by themselves anyway since I had to work. I put him in his costume for some pictures and then sent him to bed. Who expects a first Halloween to be fun anyway?
Didn't Grandma Stevens pick out the cutest costume ever?

note to myself~
Kaleb can't quite sit up unsupported yet.

I hope this costume counts as scary...this is one scary bear huh?












And, just because Kaleb is cute...



And more, just because Kaleb looked like the cutest little man all ready for church today.