Hi gang. This is Jake. I just wanted to brighten your Holiday spirits by providing this little video. Mason can be so cute sometimes he just makes me laugh out loud. When I laugh, he laughs back and says "money" (his version of funny).

I don't even know where he is picking up all these words now. Often Steph and I will look to each other as if to ask, "did you teach him that?" So far it has never been a bad word but some words seem a bit rare for him to just learn on his own.

I am trying to teach him ornament now. He says "nunamimn". Oh yes and poinsettia too. There are no letter to describe the word he states back to me for that one. We will keep trying.

Mason is much more interested in snow now. We went out and shoveled the walk together. Well, I shoveled and he ran into the garage and got a broom. He then pushed it all over the snow in the driveway. Then he jumped in the slush and got all wet. We made snowballs and threw them till our hands were cold (translation: My hands were cold).

He seems to be waking up every morning saying "Kuhlure" (Color) like a million times in a row. It would seem that he wants to color with markers and crayons every waking moment and probably every sleeping moment as well. He really likes it when I take his hand, put a crayon in it, and help him draw something like letters, shapes or numbers. We keep a very close eye on him when he has his coloring stuff. He will try to hide it because he wants desperately to color on the walls but he can never do it while we around. He is very forward thinking. He plots. That is scary. :( He thinks about 3-6 hours ahead for now but soon it might be days in advance. I don't know if I can keep up with that.

Thats all for now. I hope everyone has a fantastic Holiday.

Peace

Fun with Dad

Every year Jake gets Omaha Steaks for his birthday and every year he gets ridiculous amounts of joy out of filling the kitchen with the "smoke" that dry ice emits when in water. This year he got to share this pleasure with his son and found out that this already enjoyable adventure is made even more enjoyable and funny when you add a 1 year old. Mason loved every second of it until the end when he started yelling "Eye! Eye!" That's when we wondered if maybe having him a foot from the dry ice might be a bad idea. Not to worry though, we did what all good parents would do. We backed him up a little.

Is it too late for a Thanksgiving post?

Our Thanksgiving was awesome this year. We only had to drive 8 miles, I only had to make deviled eggs, and the company was great. Favorite cousin in the world hosted it at her house and we had a small group of our two families and our parents. She posted pics of the festivities here.
Mad props to Jen for pulling off a beautifully decorated and tasty meal.

The day after Thanksgiving also happened to be Jake's birthday. We sure did celebrate it this year! Yep, we got up and went shopping at home decor places and then we hit a matinee of Twilight, which he loved even more than shopping. To assert his masculinity he chose Outback Steakhouse for his birthday meal. We watched Boise State finish a perfect season and then went home to fresh apple pie.

On Saturday we went downtown to Festival of Trees, which Mason really enjoyed. Since I canceled Christmas last year he really hasn't seen many decorated trees so he was pretty impressed. I will say that we have put our own tree up this year and aside from the initial fascination, he has left the ornaments alone.

It seems like December is just flying by. It's always hectic for us at the end of a semester because Jake has to study more than usual but he does have the encouragement of this being his last semester in a very long time to get him through. 2 more weeks!

I can't get pictures to load and Jake has gone to bed so it looks like this will be a photoless post.