Snow!

Snow! We've finally had our first snow and we couldn't be more pleased about it. We took Evan outside to play, and he was very excited about his boots. The snow...not snow much. (ha ha, pun intended) I don't blame him though, snow is cold, and his mittens kept falling off (why can't someone invent mittens that actually stay on toddlers?) and the snow was almost deeper than he is tall.

He enjoyed helping daddy with the snow shoveling though.

So, our snow play was short-lived, but we enjoyed the snow through the window for the rest of the day anyway. Back to Evan's snow boots though, he loves them. Yesterday, he put them on (all by himself!) and continued to wear them around the house for at least an hour. I think he likes that he can stomp with them. He also can say "boot", so I'm sure that makes them somewhat more interesting.

On Friday, as it was snowing outside, we watched "White Christmas"--my favorite Christmas movie. Evan sat on the couch with me for the majority of the movie and was mesmerized, which is amazing because he usually only has the attention span for a few minutes of TV--even Sesame Street. He even danced around to some of the music. He has good taste in movies, I guess.

I'll leave you with a video. It's not exceptionally exciting but like I said, Evan enjoys boots--even those that are not his own.

Cabelas, eat your heart out.

We had a fantastic weekend. First off we got our tree, and Evan even helped decorate it. We put all of our unbreakable ornaments down towards the bottom, but he apparently thinks that they're there for him to throw, so now theres only ornaments on the top half of our tree. He gets so excited every morning when he comes out into the living room and sees the tree. I like that.
Later, we decorated ornaments to put on our tree, which was pretty fun and they turned out great.

We also went to Bass Pro Shop this weekend which is now officially my favorite store ever. I think I can say that for the whole family. We had a blast. I know there's no Bass Pro in the west , so if you've never been there it's a sportsman's/outdoor store--kind of like Cabelas (assuming you've been there...). I took some entirely terrible pictures, but I'll use them anyway. Evan loved the fish the most--they had a little pond with some fish and a big aquarium with all sorts of big fish--I think he could have watched them all day.

Everywhere you look there was some stuffed animal (taxidermy, not the cute kind) or wilderness display or some craziness, and Evan was constantly pointing things out to me.

You see over in the top right corner of the picture? Theres a whale hanging from the ceiling. Why was there a whale? I have no idea. But it was AWESOME. Oh, and they sell cool stuff, too. minor detail. We even ate lunch there. Crazy. Best part though--Santa was there. And Evan got to have his picture taken with him.

I wonder if Evan will ever look happy in a Santa photo? Here's last years:


Stone-faced. I think he's making the exact same face in both pictures. Wait, whose teeny little baby is that? Evan was never that small.

I'm so proud of him though--at least he's not crying. (unlike these kids--thanks Ellen) So brave.

Another reason why Bass Pro rocks--our santa picture was free. And we only had to wait in line for 15ish minutes. Last year at the mall we had to wait in line for at least an hour listening to the woman in front of us yelling at her kids (remember that Holly?) and then had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for our photo. ($20? I don't remember). Never again. This year we got one picture for free (which is all you need really) and they gave us a code to use online if we want to order more. So, let me know if you want a santa photo.

Now I've gone and gotten myself all excited and lost my train of thought. Oh well. Moral of the story: we had a fantastic weekend.

One last thing: our christmas tree is a balsam fir, which is kind of bushy. Being from Oregon, we're used to a douglas fir, and I can now say from experience that the doug fir is highly superior to all other christmas trees. Ha! take that world. Go Oregon.

One more thing...

One more thing--I just wanted to post this picture of Evan's awesome outfit from yesterday evening. It made my day, he was so stinking cute. And yes, he's wearing his jammies.

A boy and his dog...someday

Poor Cody. He's such a good dog, and over the past year he hasn't really been getting the love and attention that he had grown accustomed to. And if you know Cody at all, you know that he seems to demand an exceptional amount of love and attention. His world was turned quite upside down when Evan arrived--with most of our attention going to Evan--and since then Evan has slowly developed a huge interest in Cody. Mainly, Cody's eyes, ears, paws and tail. And when I say interest, I mean wanting to poke or pull these things. Needless to say, Cody hasn't been too fond of Evan, and aside from being quite protective of Evan in the beginning (or just watchful and wary, I'm not sure) he mostly just tolerates him. By leaving the room when Evan comes near him.

However, it seems that Cody and Evan are beginning to get a long a little bit better.(Cody looks worried, I know, but it's a start!) Evan really likes to throw Cody's toys for him, and even though they don't get thrown very far, sometimes Cody will run after them. Also, Evan has learned how to do "nice touches" (instead of poking) and is getting pretty good at petting him. Sometimes Cody even seems to enjoy it a bit. Evan especially likes to give Cody hugs, which is adorable.

I have a feeling that someday soon, they are going to be inseperable.

I'm off to go cuddle with my dog.

P.S. How cool is Evan in his Jerry's shirt? (it finally fits, Grandpa and Kate!)

Good Times

Whew. We've been having a good time here in the Smith household. Heres a rundown:

Mike got a new uniform. Doesn't he look handsome? I think so--I'm a lucky girl. And aren't the patches sewn on nicely? (is that what they're called? I have no idea) I know they're hard to see, but i'll tell you, someone (me) did a very good job of sewing them on. A labor of love.

It's getting cold out (very cold-we added mittens to this ensemble shortly after this picture was taken-brrrr)

but Evan still loves the playground.

Here's a picture with me in it, simply because I wanted to join the other members of this post.

Mike and I have learned that Evan will snuggle with us when we read books with him. Otherwise, he's too busy too slow down and snuggle. Needless to say, we read books a lot in this house.

We went to Fourth Cliff (a military recreation area at the beach) with some friends this weekend and had a blast. We rented this little 3 bedroom cottage and spent the whole weekend doing nothing and hanging out. And playing Pictionary. We ate a lot too.




I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, so here's a picture of Evan. He likes his car seat.

Mike has this entire week off, and thats pretty exciting. We don't have any plans yet, but we don't really need any. It's nice to just see how things pan out. Although we do seem to have HBO (and Starz, and Showtime, and Cinemax, etc.) free for a month for some reason, so I plan on watching as many movies as possible. If you need me, I'll be on the couch.

Yes, we're still here

Ugh. It's been a while since I've posted. Really, nothing has happened that I think would be even remotely interesting to talk about. I don't think we've even taken any pictures since Halloween. So we're boring. But boring is good. We like boring.

Whats Evan up to, you may ask? Everything. I made him a little playroom in the basement, with a slide and a fort and lots of toys--all of which I just moved from upstairs, so bonus for me, extra room--and he seems pretty happy with it. A few times throughout the day he just stands at the gate at the top of the stairs yelling "BA BA BA BA" and pointing downstairs--apparently that means he wants to go play.


He especially likes to play with Rodney, whom some of you may have met, and everyone thinks is creepy. Except Evan and I, we like him. Evan likes to carry him around, sometimes uses him as a pillow, and really likes to make him go down the slide.

See, even at a young age Evan loved him. My Grandma made Rodney for my dad when he was little, and I played with him when I was little, and now, apparently, Evan plays with him. I think it's cute, and Mike thinks it's scary. But then again, Mike also thinks Elmo is scary, so I don't know if his opinion can be trusted.

So we're boring. However, if you want something exciting to do, and it's before 11:59 pm PST on Friday 11/14, go to Oprah.com (or click this link) to make a free photo book from snapfish. Yet one more reason why I love Oprah. You can upload your pictures and customize each page with text and photos to make a really neat book. On the show, they used pictures of kids' art work as a way to save the art and de-clutter. Pretty cool. Thanks Oprah!

Halloween!

We love Halloween in this house. Evan, apparently, is no exception. He had a blast this halloween, seeing all the kids come to our door, showing off for our friends who came over, and eating sugar cookies and punch. Best of all, he got to go trick-or-treating! He was really good at it, and he had a wonderful time. We only made it to three houses, but that was better than we expected. He even carried his little pail (which he picked out himself) and held it out for candy.

He especially enjoyed chewing on his candy after he got it. I think he was pretty surprised to learn that candy was actually something you can eat after you get through the wrapper. Mostly he just chewed on it for a second and then abandoned it somewhere. Although, he did seem to enjoy this tootsie roll pop, which he then proceeded to smear all over the floor and furniture. Needless to say, his time with the lollipop was short-lived.

You might have noticed, from the previous post, that Evan has two Halloween costumes. He had two last year as well. We just can't help ourselves. Actually, we thought the monkey costume was pretty creepy, so we had to buy it and take pictures, but putting it on Evan turned it from creepy into cute so our plan backfired.

It is creepy, however, when you think of it in the context of this:

...which was what we were going for. Oh well.

On another note, Evan is now officially a climber.

Notice how a) he is trying to get to the halloween candy, and b) he is using his little car as a step stool. A few days ago, I watched him carry his car over to the coffee table and use exactly this method to climb onto the coffee table. Then he danced. On the table. I am simultaneously proud and worried by his newfound upward moblity, which is why I've decided to turn the basement into a playroom.

I just recently cleaned out our basement (a feat not for the faint of heart) and am very proud of myself. I actully enjoy spending time down there now. I've been looking for a climber to put down there for Evan so he can use the basement as a space in which to climb and run around, and I finally found one on Craigslist. Fantastic! So now we're off to Natick to pick it up--wish us luck!

While we're out, want some candy?

We've got plenty.