Baby Bear is 2!!!

My little Baron is now 2!  I really wish he would just stop growing up.  I would be happy if he was my little baby bear for 10 years or so... then he can grow up :) .  Nevertheless, his birthday is today and he is now 2!!  I can't even begin to try to explain what a joy and how much fun Baron is to have in our family.  Besides starting to go through a new terrible 2 stage and new independency battles, he is the one that keeps us laughing constantly.  He is really funny, super sweet and a big time flirt.  He's got little girlfriends all over the place, and has been told (well told to me), that he already has great comedic timing. :)  I just can't say enough how much FUN he is!! We LOVE our little Bear!!

Bear also is a GREAT talker for his age.  It always amazes me the sentences he is already putting together. Some of my favorites include:

"Mom, my nose is all snotty! Need to wipe it."

"Change my bum mommy.  I go poo poo."  (I really need to start potty training him!)

"We're making a ship mommy!"  (which usually consist of piling up the couch pillows)

"Puppy dog is hungry" (meaning he is hungry.... he sometimes uses his doggie to speak for himself)

"No, don't help me.  I do it myself"  (so this one is definitely not one of my favorites, but more just one I hear ALL DAY LONG now).

Some other fun facts about our newly 2 year old:

He is REALLY into trains right now and got a new green one for his birthday.

He loves dogs.  He has a stuffed puppy dog that he sleeps with every night and carries around all the time.  Go HERE to read a post about him and the Graham's dog, Maggie.  And here's a cute picture of him putting his puppy dog down for a nap.

He LOVES nursery- anytime he hears someone say Amen in sacrament meeting he yells out, "Time for Nursery!"

He is getting really interested in learning ABC's and anytime he sees letters on a sign, store, street, etc, he always points to them and says, "Look Mom, ABC's!!"

Tomatoes are still one of his absolute favorite foods.  Those along with fruit snacks of course.

He LOVES watching Mickey's Clubhouse and has a new obsession with Mickey Mouse.  In October I was able to make a quick trip with just Baron to Southern California to visit my older sister, Shannon and meet her new little baby girl, Kaylee.  Baron stayed with my parents.  They took him and Shannon's son, Deacon to Disneyland.  While there, Mickey was walking around and Baron went right up to him and gave him a hug.  He was way more excited than scared.  My parents also bought him his own little stuffed Mickey Mouse while there and he has slept with it (along with his blanky and puppy dog) every night since.  Which leads to the cake I felt he would be the most excited about for this birthday:

 And boy was he excited! He kept pointing to his mouth and nose and eyes and ears and say, "It's Mickey Mouse!!"  Made the 2 hours we spend on it last night plus the hour the day before totally worth every second!

 And here he is opening his presents!

 New choo choo, new Buzz Lightyear Backpack, Mickey Mouse pj's and Rex and Slinky Dog toys from Toy Story 3.

Playing with the new toys

And one last random, funny bit about Baron.... he is the funniest sleeper! Whenever we check on them before we go to bed, Jackson is cuddled up in his blankets in the same position we left him, but Baron is always all over the place.  I just recently started taking pictures to try to capture this:

Here he is sleeping on the floor next to his bed again... he started to wake up when I took the picture though. 

Oh, and he loves to stand on his head.... he does it all the time.

 And he loves to make messes.... BIG messes.

 This was all the styrofoam from the train table him and Jackson got together for their birthdays from Grammie and Papa.

LOVE THIS KID!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARON JAMES!!!!

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a very relaxing and fun Thanksgiving!  John was able to work a half day from HOME on Wednesday (one of the many wonderful things about his new job that is SO much better than PwC...never would have happened there!) so we were able to leave after lunch this year and miss most of the traffic! Wahoo!! The past 2 years we have sat in hours of traffic since we would leave around 6pm like everyone else on the busiest travel day of the year, so it was such a nice break to leave earlier this year, miss traffic and get to the Grahams in Glide by dinner time instead of around midnight!  So nice.  Anyways, we had a great weekend away with family:


***Thursday- THANKSGIVING DAY!!


Got to sleep in, watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, make the super yummy Baron family recipe of Guliver's Creamed Corn, play some basketball with Heather and Gale and headed on down to Eugene to have the feast with the Graham's up there!  Unfortunately, we didn't even bring out the camera the entire day :(.  I guess we were too busy having fun, especially with the traditional Bingo games after the feast :).  This year I am very thankful for:


*John's hard work and continued patience.  He is the best.  Honestly don't know what I would do without him.  SO glad I decided 5 years ago to marry him and follow him to Oregon! 


*John's new job!!!! Can't even begin to explain what a HUGE blessing his new job is and what a great place it is to work, especially compared to PwC.  The people he works with are a million times better and more honest and fun!


*My two little guys that are honestly sometimes the only way I have been able to make it through some difficult times and come out on top.... they really do keep me laughing and smiling and make me proud.  I feel so blessed to have such sweet and good little boys!!


For family night before Thanksgiving we talked about the things we are grateful for and each came up with 3 of our favorites for this year.  The above 3 are mine, but here is what Jackson came up with (and I promise he came up with them on his own!):

Jackson is grateful for:


*Swimming
*Baseball
*Baron  (made me so happy to know how much he truly loves his brother!!)


back to our weekend though....


***Friday- Shopping, Christmas Tree Hunting, GAME DAY, & some B-ball!


Didn't get up and make it into town until after 7:30, but still got all the toys and good stuff (like nice new sheets for John and I that were SO needed) that I wanted! Walmart wasn't even packed at all- in fact I have seen it way more packed than that in Roseburg.  I just went to Walmart and Fred Meyer and that was good enough for me- I am really not a huge Black Friday shopper- my family/parents never went growing up.  John stayed home with the boys of course. 


 Friday afternoon we went and chopped down our Christmas Tree! It's always a tradition to get it from the same place out in Glide the day after Thanksgiving and it is always fun, especially with the boys being old enough now to really enjoy it! Then, we got back home just in time to watch THE DUCKS play some football and extend their winning streak!   After the game and dinner we all headed back over to the gym to get some more basketball 2 on 2 in.  It was fun (even though I still have to hop around on my knee like a gimp) to shoot some hoops again.  I really miss playing.  John and I met playing ball.  It is something that comes naturally and is fun with being an awesome workout, so I really really miss playing and being in shape (and having the full use of my left knee).  

Aunt Heather and Baron

Grandma Sue & Jackson with Papa in the background going after a tree

These 2 are good buddies

Bear kept wandering off on his own to explore

Heather with her sweet beanie (that's her beanie, not her hair)

The whole Christmas Tree Hunting Gang

Eating ice cream and watching Elf (the ice cream always seems to happen at Grandma's house now :) )

***Saturday- HP7, Christmas Music and More Good Food! 

Saturday we got to sleep in a little again, hung out and then the Graham's were super nice and watched the boys so John and I could head into town and see HARRY POTTER 7!! It was SO intense and SO good! It was my favorite by far and we both absolutely loved it and would definitely recommend going to the theater and seeing it if you read the books or saw the other movies or just want a good movie to see.  I thought they did a great job staying with the book and getting the most important parts in there.  The rest of the day we hung out, turned up some Christmas music and just had fun not having the work or worry about anything! That night Sue made yet another mini Thanksgiving dinner for us.  It was wonderful and so delicious once again!

***Sunday- Pictures, Church and Going Home!

Tried very hard to get a decent picture of the whole family before church... did not have very much success. It is really hard with 2 little boys!  Went to church with the Graham's in Roseburg (Jackson loves going to their primary because Grandma Sue is their music leader!), came home and had a delicious dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers and then packed up and headed home! 

Playing the piano before church

Our attempts at a family picture... impossible to get both to look and smile at the same time! (Hopefully some photoshop magic will do the trick so we can send out some Christmas cards this year

I sure love these two!! 

One last try... it was just not going to happen!

It was a great weekend!! Can't wait to head back down to Glide for Christmas in just a few weeks, especially because we found out that NICK AND CHRISTI and their CUTE CUTE GIRLS are coming this year!!!!!! It is going to be SO SO SO SO much fun and we are so excited!!  Hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Rocket Ship Cake

When asked what kind of birthday cake Jackson wanted, he responded with, "A rocket ship cake!"  So, not being all that experienced in making cute cakes, I turned to my good friend, Kim Janeway, to help me out! Though it took a few hours and a lot of, we'll say "learning experiences" with the fondant, this is what we came up with:

No, it definitely wasn't perfect and the real reason there are so many stars was to cover all the rips in the fondant from making it too thin. BUT, it was a ton of fun to make, we were pretty proud of the outcome, and most importantly, Jackson absolutely LOVED it!!  After singing to him his only request was for the rocket ship on his piece of cake, though I got him to settle on the cool flames and part of the bottom of it since it would have been a ginormous piece had all the rocket been on it! 

I also made some chocolate cupcakes (his cake was 3 layers of confetti cake) spent a long time frosting them dark blue and put some cut out fondant stars on top to match the cake!  The kids mostly ate these.

We took him to Our of This World (indoor space themed playground) with a few friends and him and his buddies were running around like crazy having a blast! He talked about it for days afterwards!! I cannot even tell you how much fun he had! He kept saying, "Mom, Dad, you're the best! Thanks for my birthday!"  We had a great time celebrating with him!  He definitely deserved to have a great day!! 

 Singing to him

 Blowing out the candles

He sure was a happy little 4 year old!!

 Going down one of the slides on the playground... him and his buddy Jack had a lot of fun racing each other down!

Going down the blow-up slide... he was a little scared at first, but once he climbed up it and slid down it by himself once, we couldn't get him to stop! 

It was a very very fun night!!

A BIG BIG thanks to Kim for helping with the cake!! You are awesome!! It was so fun to learn how to do fondant!!