Happy 30th!

Yesterday Damen turned 30! 


I am so thankful for such a wonderful, loving, supportive husband! He is also a great father, and Mason spent the day happier than ever having his dad around.


Happy Birthday!

First Christmas

Much like my last post, this one is about a month late. But, I still want to record what I remember about Mason's first Christmas...so here we go.

We spent Christmas in California this year. The week before we left, we were able to spend some time with my family which was really nice. We had so much fun in fact, that I didn't take a single picture. Oops. On Saturday morning we got together with my mom and sisters to have brunch, exchange gifts, bake some goodies, and play games. It was great. Later that week we got together with my dad for dinner. I love being with family!


Then it was off to sunny California! I wasn't sure how the drive with Mason would be. We bought a new carseat since he had nearly grown out of his old one. It seemed to sit a little too upright, so we stopped in Scipio before the sun was even up. Damen about froze his toes off readjusting the seat! After that it was fairly smooth sailing and all in all Mason did great. We made the drive in 12 hours 15 minutes, just over an hour longer than it normally takes us. 


I don't even know where to start! The house was decorative and very festive. It was nearly 80 degrees the first day we were there and outside was green with flowers growing. Not the Christmas I am used to, but certainly a welcome change! 


Here is Mason peeking under the tree on Christmas Eve. We had a great dinner with the missionaries joining us.

On Christmas Day we went to 9 am church. It was a lovely morning, and it was nice to spend some time reflecting on why we celebrate Christmas. Afterwards we went home to open gifts. Mason got some great stuff, but of course he LOVED crinkling all of the wrapping paper. 

Here he is, yelling at the top of his lungs...

And playing with his new toys.

It was such a nice and relaxing day. We had a great lunch, played games, and watched movies. 


The rest of the week was also very relaxing...for me anyway! It was so nice to have so many people around to play with Mason. Damen's dad stayed up a couple nights with Mason so I could sleep, and Damen's mom took Mason most mornings so I could go back to sleep. After a six week stretch of rarely more than 1.5 hours of sleep at a time, it was a welcome break! Most of the vacation is a haze in my mind, I spent so much of it asleep and resting. 


I even got an afternoon to myself to go take a swim in the pool...

I tried to get out and enjoy the weather aside from the resting. Most days we took a walk at least to the park. Here we are one day playing in the park. Mason loved going out in the stroller.

Mason was scared of Joe the first night, but they soon became friends and hung out on the floor together. Joe occasionally licked Mason's face but was pretty gentle with him. Mason seemed to really enjoy watching Joe run around at the park.

On one trip to the park, we took Mason to the playground and by the time we left the four adults were playing on the playground while Mason watched from the stroller. 


Towards the end of the week we took a trip out to Ventura Harbor. I was determined to take Mason to the ocean. He was teething that day so he wasn't super happy but the trip seemed to be a good distraction for him. He now has two front bottom teeth! He just stared at the ocean and didn't quite know what to make of it. He didn't like the cold waves on his feet. 

We stopped and got ice cream, and of course Mason grabbed my hands and pulled the cone to him. He made sure I knew he wanted to share it with me!

We did NOT want to come home, but after 9 days it was inevitable. I'm so glad we got to go!