and she's off!

Our wild little girl has finally decided to add walking to her talents! She started taking about 6- 10 steps between people last week and this week she has taken off. She will walk at home about 75% of the time. She is even attempting it at the park. Watch out Ethan because Morgan is NOT to be left behind! Here are a couple videos of her hard work. She has also learned (from watching brother) that she can push the kitchen chairs to the counter and then stand by the counter to get what she wants down. I have to start being careful where I put my knives!

Ethan's favorite thing to do lately is to pile up all the pillows from our couches and run at the pile and jump in. Now that Morgan is walking she is not to be left out of the fun. She would start way back by Ethan and then fall into the pillows. It's pretty cute and funny that she won't start any closer to the pillows than Ethan. You will also notice Ethan's choice of clothing. He loves to wear "running pants"(aka shorts) inside, even though it is winter outside and he likes to pair them with a "running shirt" (aka tank top) or he'll settle for inside out pj shirts. At least he still lets me dress him when we go out in public:)

The Great Blizzard of '09

The last time I remember it snowing in my home town was when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. It didn't stick to the ground then and it didn't this time either. But it was snowing this past Monday! We had heard that there was a chance of snow but I was pretty surprised when I looked out the window early Monday morning and I saw big flakes falling. We Californian's that live in the valley get pretty excited about odd weather because it is usually so mild here. This week has been cold though. Well below freezing most nights. I'm just hoping the new plants I planted will survive and that our orange tree makes it.

Ethan had to call Opa and Oma in the morning to tell them that it was snowing. It took a while to get them to understand him that it was snowing at OUR house! Then he had to go outside with his umbrella and play in the snow. In the top picture you can also see the buck that we added to our outside Christmas decorations this year. We have to keep up with the neighbors!

Morgan loves to put hats on her head and lately she has been putting them over her eyes and crawling into the wall and then laughing. It's actually pretty funny:)

Just trying some different things with my camera. I thought this one turned out pretty good of my little sweetheart.

Thanksgiving

We had another awesome visit to the coast. We headed up on Monday after Kevin's meetings The kids were fairly content so we decided to just drive the 2 1/2 hours straight through. We were making good time and actually headed towards getting there in 2 1/4 hours. When we were about 20 minutes away Morgan started to get pretty irritable. I figured she was hungry because it was dinner time. I tried to get her to eat something but she wouldn't. A few minutes later she started puking...all over everything. I felt so bad for her. We pulled over at a gas station and cleaned everything up the best we could. As Kevin said, thankfully we always travel w/ baby wipes. We made it the rest of the way and when we got to the house she was her normal self and chowed on some dinner. Unfortunately I think both kids may have inherited my tendency towards motion sickness. We had a similar incident with Ethan when he was about Morgan's age and again when he was 2. Thankfully car seats are washable. Needless to say we stopped for a nice break on our way home.

We headed down to the beach one night at sunset to get some family pics for our Christmas card. Here are a few of the 40 pictures we took. A 3 year-old and a 15 month old sure complicate things:)

Brother and sister discussing how far Ethan can throw that big rock.

I think both kids reserved their best smiles for the picture with Papa and Nana, either that or Mommy was a little more crazy than Papa.

Such a beautiful evening and a beautiful little girl.

How's that for a pose? The kids were helping us get our Thanksgiving dinner ready. We ate Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday afternoon because my parents headed out early Thursday morning for a family wedding in the Midwest. The meal was fabulous and way too much food for the 6 of us. Ethan ate a bun with butter on it and Morgan just had a few bites of turkey. Someday they'll help us polish off more food.

Working off our Thanksgiving meal with a walk at the beach.

We decided to go to the aquarium on Thanksgiving morning. My parents gave us a membership to the aquarium for Christmas last year so we've been taking advantage of that every time we're at the coast. Each time we go Ethan enjoys something different. This year Morgan really enjoyed it too. As members we can go a 1/2 hour before the doors open to the public so we were there at 9:00 and pretty much had the place to ourselves for a good hour. It was great because the kids actually got to enjoy the interactive kid's areas. Usually those sections are crazy full so it was nice to have some space to enjoy it all. They had a blast.

Morgan trying to catch fish.

Ethan pushing buttons to hear the different sounds whales make.

Touching the sea stars in the touch pools.

Yep, this is the best one we got. For some reason turning 3 means you must give your cheesiest smile any chance you get. And Morgan is copying me making silly noises trying to get them to give real smiles.

After the aquarium we walked around Canery Row for a while They already have their Christmas tree up so we stopped for a picture. It was fun to take the time to enjoy a different part of Monterey. We also had lunch outside at a restaurant and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. It was a great day!

The kiddos cuddling with daddy after our fun day.

Golfing Pebble Beach (sort of)

For Thanksgiving week we headed over to Monterey. My parents were there with us until Wednesday. We had a great time as usual. This time Ethan got to golf at Pebble Beach, twice. He had a great time and thought he was pretty hot stuff! The first day he went with Nana, Mommy and Morgan while Daddy and Papa golfed another course. The next day Daddy and Papa took him.

Teeing off on number one.

Ethan actually pushed his own clubs over most of the hilly course.

Putting.

Nana tending the flag.

And, picking up the ball like a real golfer.

Morgan was Ethan's number 1 fan. She was a trooper, hanging out in the stroller for an hour.

Finally, a picture in front of the course. It wasn't the "real" Pebble Beach course, just their 9 hole par 3...but it's a start:) I foresee many more rounds of golf on this course.

More pictures from our vacation to come.

Another update

It seems as though we are just "doing life" lately. We've had a couple fun family things the last couple weeks so I thought I'd share some of those pictures as well as some around the house pictures.

"All aboard!" Every one's taking a ride on Conductor Ethan's train.

We have a little stripper on our hands. I had Morgan in a little turtleneck the other day, and when I went to get her up from her nap she had pulled it off. Later that evening she kept taking it off, I think she has her mother's dislike of a strangling turtleneck.

My Grandma Bulthuis turned 90 this year! We had an Open House for her where a lot of friends and family dropped by to wish her a happy birthday. There were a few of my cousin's that also came in from out of town. We spent sometime together at the Open House and then the next night we all went over to my Grandma's house for dinner. She came as well, it was nice to see her in her house again.

All my mom's siblings were able to be in town for Grandma's birthday. It was great to see all my uncles and aunts again too. It doesn't happen very often that they are all together since they are living all over the US.

Here is a fun picture of Miss Personality. Never a dull moment when she is awake!

Kevin's parents were here last weekend. It was great to see them again and way too short of a visit. Ethan and Morgan LOVED being spoiled by Opa and Oma and I enjoyed the extra time to run errands ALONE! This is one of the only pictures I have of the weekend, the boys playing poker. I think Ethan was the big winner that night! I'll have to take more pictures next time.

Here and There

Here is a little bit of what we've been up to.

Our town's police department has an ultralight that they fly around in to help scope out what is going on in the town. Ethan (like most 3 year old boys) is obsessed with airplanes, helicopters and the "parachute" that flies around town. Our neighbor is a part of the volunteer police so he called us one morning when the ultralight was taking off and Ethan got to sit in it and even wear the helmet. We packed a lunch and watched the police officer take off. It was pretty exciting!


There he goes!

For whatever reason we seem to get a lot of preying mantis' in our back yard. One morning when Ethan was playing in the back yard he got this guy to climb on top of his chalk. It was pretty "amazing" as Ethan would say.

"Helping" daddy rake the leaves!

Before Halloween we went and visited my Grandma in the nursing home. Ethan and Morgan are always the center of attention when we go there. All the nurses and the old people love to see them. They were especially entertaining in their Halloween costumes.

Happy Halloween

Here's our Bob the Builder and Cow. We headed out to a couple houses to trick-or-treat and then we went to our church for more treats. Ethan was quite overwelmed by everyone dressed up in bizzare outfits. After being at church for only 10 minutes he was ready to go home. Needless to say we didn't have much candy to hide. But they sure are cute:)

Our little Moo cow.

Ethan borrowed his Bob the Builder costume from one of his friends, and he sent along two more just in case Ethan wanted to be something else. So Ethan had a great time the few days before Halloween dressing up in his different costumes. He took Morgan on a train ride and put out lots of fires for us.

He has a DVD that is a collection of different movies. He wisely picked that movie to watch one night and he had to wear all 3 costumes to correspond with whatever movie was on. He watched Bob the Builder, in his B. the B. costume, Thomas in his train conductor costume and Fireman Sam in his fireman costume. It was pretty cute.