Holidays in the Desert

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We enjoyed ours at home. We don't like traveling during the winter because our weather here is so perfect this time of year (70's and sunny)! Although, we do miss spending the holidays with our families so we'll probably go somewhere next year.

Saturday morning at the park with Connor:

Wildlights! at the Living Desert: Every December the Living Desert (our local zoo and botanical garden) does a Christmas lights display throughout the park. They also have an animal show, arts and crafts table, and firepits where you can roast marshmallows and make smores.

The park intoduced a new attraction this Christmas, an endangered species carousel. Kayla loved it!

They also have a really cool model train display. It's huge and has at least a dozen trains running at once.

Christmas Eve: We took a morning drive up to Idyllwild and had breakfast at our favorite restaurant the Gastrognome. Unfortunately, there wasn't much snow for Kayla to play in.

Christmas Day: I struggled for weeks to keep Kayla from touching the ornaments and presents under the tree. Finally, it's Christmas morning and she doesn't want anything to do with the presents! Then she saw Devin and me opening our stockings and decided to join us.

Playing with her new toy from Santa:

Kayla LOVES to pet and play with the doggie!

She also LOVES to be outdoors!

Stomping on leaves is fun!

So is chewing on sticks!


Watching Daddy play with his remote control car:

Wow! It sure goes fast!

New Years Day: Kayla eats yogurt with a spoon all by herself!

Merry Christmas

Happy Halloween!

Here's Kayla on Halloween night in her 2nd costume. We had already planned on her dressing up as a cheerleader, but I was shopping at Old Navy one day and they had kids costumes on sale. And what do you know? They had a pink butterfly! So of course I had to get it.

Here we are going to trick-or-treat at the neighbor's house.

Kayla is just barely walking now, but she was a natural. She's going to love trick-or-treating next year. She walked right up and knocked on the door. When the lady opened the door, I said "trick or treat" and Kayla held up her pumpkin bag and tried to mumble "trick or treat!" Then she looked at the candy in her bag and smiled and walked away. It was so cute!

Time Flies!

Wow! I can't believe it's already November 1st! We have been very busy this past month. Here's a summary of what we've been up to lately....

Sept 20: Kayla and I drove to Orange County to visit Auntie May and Uncle Barry who were down helping Bryant move into his new appartment and get ready for his second year at UC Irvine.

Waiting for our sushi order after going shopping

Playing with cousin Bryant.

End of Sept: Kayla is standing, but not walking yet. The most she'll take is two steps and then she gets down and crawls.

Smily face! She has 5 teeth.

Kayla LOVES to eat vegetables!!!

And apparantly she likes to wear her vegetables too! I've caught her a couple of times putting pieces on her head. Silly girl!

Oct 1-3: Darn, I had to go to Las Vegas for an all expense-paid business trip! Seriously, we did spend most of the time meeting with clients, but found time to have fun and see a show too!

Posing with one of the Blue Man after the show.


Oct 9-12: Kayla and I flew up to Sacramento for the weekend for my Uncle Alvon's 80th Birthday party. Here she is playing with my old baby toys at my mom's house.

She loved climbing into the laundry basket and just sitting in it.

We had a play date with baby Daniel on Sunday.

Kayla with Grandma and Great-Grandparents.

Saying good-bye at the airport.

Oct 17: Hay, it's not Halloween yet! But our good friend Mike turned the big 4-0 on Oct 14th and he had a costume party for his birthday.

Would you believe it? There was another baby at the party also dressed up as a Chargers Cheerleader! This is Mary and she is 8 months old.

Oct 21: Our 3 year wedding anniversary! My friend Sonya came over to babysit so that Devin and I could go out and took this picture of us just before we left. We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Tiramisu so I could finally use the gift certificate I received as a Christmas gift last year! We had a very enjoyable romantic dinner and of course, we had the tiramisu for dessert and it was to die for!

Her favorite thing to do lately is to point at something and say "What's that?"

Yay! She's finally starting to walk!

Oct 30: My office always decorates and passes out candy for Halloween to all the employees' children so I had Devin bring Kayla in her cheerleader costume.

Go Chargers! Posing with Nick (who bought her the cheerleader outfit for her birthday) in front of my cubicle. I wanted to get her to wave her pom poms, but she refused to let go of the candy!

Playing at home with the ball Joanne put in her trick-or-treat bag from the office earlier that day.