California 2011

DJ and I decided to take a trip to California to visit our best friends Chad and Joy in Vacaville (about 30 minutes south of Sacramento) for our summer vacation. We hadn't all spent time together as a group since our wedding and before that in 2006 when DJ and I went to California for Spring Break so it was a long overdue rendezvous. AND we had never spent time together as the families that we are now - Chad and Joy have 3 kids so along with our little family of 3 we had a much larger group then in years past!

We had such a great time - lots of laughing, which is what I will remember the most, great conversations, lots of golfing for DJ (Chad had to watch since he was due to have back surgery the following week), some fabulous girl time (even once without kids!) and delish food, oh, and some much needed down time.

We also were able to visit a couple of wineries, which was a first for DJ and I and we walked around Old Sacramento before our flight on the last day. It was fun to see some things that we hadn't seen before especially since I've made several trips to that area already both for fun and business.

The bad news is that after the first day there our camera battery died and then I lost my phone after the second day there so we were without any camera for most of our visit. (I did end up finding my phone before we left, thank God! Actually I didn't find it, a person on a tour of one of the wineries found it and turned it in. The world really is full of more good than evil.)

Here are some of the pictures that we did get...

I forgot to mention that we spent a couple of nights in Denver prior to leaving for California both for ease of traveling and for family pictures that we scheduled with a photographer in Denver. DJ was able to take Jayden swimming for the first time in the hotel's pool. Both DJ and Jayden had a GREAT time with that experience!

Since Chad wasn't able to golf, it was like DJ was being followed around by his own personal photographer on the first day he got to golf. Here are some of the best photos...

That was a gorgeous course set among the vineyards in Napa.

It kills me that we didn't get one photo with all 8 of us together. We went to a vineyard called V. Sattui and it would have been the perfect photo op but as it goes, when one has kids, those sorts of things just kind of get pushed to the side.

After V. Sattui, we went to another vineyard for the specific purpose of taking a tour. Someone DJ works with used to live near the Napa area and recommended this particular vineyard (Groth Vineyards). What they failed to mention before we went is that most people that work there really like the product they promote. And I mean they really like it, enough to consume it in great quantities while on the job. Needless to say our tour was quite interesting while our drunker-than-a-skunk tour guide meandered through the process of educating us on the finer art (or should I say science?) of making wine. We were quite thankful we had Jayden to turn our attention to during the, ahem, more detailed portions of the tour.

 I took pictures in an attempt to passively alert our guide that we were there for the short version of the tour. All was lost on our guide however.

 DJ doing a great job of acting like he's always wanted to know about the different species of grapes and hundreds of types of soil present in that particular valley.

 Joy is pretending to laugh at Jayden when really we are doing all we can to hold in our laughter at our guide.

 Our inebriated tour guide

 Best friends for life!

Before my camera died after our first day and I lost my phone on the above tour, I was able get a few pictures of the kids altogether. I'm so very glad the Files' kids got to meet Jayden. They all loved each other!

 Caden and DJ spent some quality Tiger time together on the Wii.

 As mentioned in a previous post, this guy officially became a crawler in California!

Miss Adalyn Paige, aka the next Pepsi girl (I'm convinced of this by the way. Just put a curly dark wig on her and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!)

Carter gave Jayden lots of love that week - it was sooo cute!

Thanks to Joy and Chad for being the best hosts friends could ask for! We had the best time!

Just needed to find his inspiration!

DJ and I had a date night this past week while we were in California (more on California later) and Joy and Chad watched Jayden for us. When we got back, Joy told me she had good news and bad news. The good news was that Jayden crawled while we were gone! The bad news was that we were gone. Ha! I wasn't too disappointed though because Joy was just as excited for him as I would have been. The whole week Jayden seemed a little smitten with his Auntie Joy and it seemed that he went the extra mile that night by crawling for her. Thankfully Joy took the time to get it on video so here is Jayden's first night of crawling!!

Watch "Crawling!!" on YouTube

Happy 4th!!

Here's a little video of Jayden at the Freedom Festivities here in Laramie. There were bands playing, booths, and lots of kids activities (which Jayden was too young for of course) going on. With the exception of a looming storm, we had a fantastic time and it was great to get out of the house to do something different!

Watch "4th of July Festivities" on YouTube

Learning to walk!

Watch "Learning to walk" on YouTube

If you click the link above, I think I've learned another new way of sharing my videos! Yay! I'm beginning to think there might be something to this technology thing after all!

Cheerios

So another attempt at a video... I hope you were able to enjoy yesterday's video even though it was dark, sideways and generally not very good video, other than the main subject of course!

This one is also sideways but at least the lighting is better! This is a typical cheerio-eating scenario. I love the faces that Jayden makes and the way that he bobs his head once a cheerio makes it way into his mouth. And of course the noises he makes are very entertaining!

Trying something new...bear with me!

I found that I can upload videos to Youtube from my phone so I'm trying that out and we'll see if I can get it to work on my blog!

So first a disclaimer... I'm new at this so sorry the video is sideways and the lighting is horrible and the fact that it sounds like I'm practically yelling into the phone (I didn't think I was at the time...I will speak softly or not at all from now on...) and please excuse the horrible commentary...

Now that THAT is out of the way, this is Jayden the other evening while we were sitting on my bedroom floor just chillin'. He was all ready for bed but he wanted to get a little more practice standing before getting some zzz's. One of his favorite new things to do is attempt to climb on me. He's getting better and better at pulling himself all the way up!

Enjoy!

Duck, duck, duck....goose!

I feel like I've been tagged "goose" and it's my turn to write a post. Did you ever play that game when you were little? I can't wait to play that with my sweet boy and any brothers and sisters he may have in the future.

Wow, I can't believe another month went by between postings. So sorry!! I have so many pictures and I can honestly say that the fact that it is not an easy feat to download the pictures off my camera is one of the reasons that I don't blog as often. If I could just figure out a way to easily upload some photos to this blog, I would so do it more often. I know I would. I want to!

Summertime is in full swing here in Laramie. Finally, might I add! It's still cool but that's a typical summer in Laramie and it's rather enjoyable really. We've had some great thunderstorms this week and that's just the cherry on top for me. We've been BBQing, taking morning walks in the sun, sitting outside on the grass, leaving the windows open at night and enjoying some much needed family time.

Jayden is 9.5 months old and a thriving, happy little man. And a little man he is. He's starting to look more and more like a boy rather than a baby. This momma's heart is not quite ready for that transition but it's coming like a train full steam ahead! Jayden is getting closer and closer to crawling but he's not mobile yet. And he's getting a lot stronger where I think he will be pulling himself up soon. As soon as he figures out how to pull himself up, I know he'll be cruising around the living room. He already knows how to put one foot in front of the other when we hold him up and walk him around. I'm not putting any pressure on him though. He can stay immobile as long as he wants...much easier for the caregivers!

Jayden is enjoying food so much more then he used to. We give him pretty much anything we eat as long as it's healthy. I'm trying to not give him anything with preservatives or lots of seasonings. I figure for the rest of us it's probably too late to undo the years of unhealthy eating but since he is just starting out, I want to give him every opportunity for a healthy lifestyle that I can. So that includes teaching him about healthy foods. My goal this coming week is to start getting him in somewhat of a routine where we are feeding him some solids every day. Wholesome Baby Food is a great website that has a list of foods that is acceptable to start feeding at each age so we have quite a list now that he's already almost 10 months old. We are a little restricted since Jayden still will not let us feed him with a spoon so that eliminates anything that needs to be pureed but we are going to keep working on that too. Maybe he'll even get to the point here soon where he can kind of get some food in his own mouth with a spoon. He just likes to do things himself.

Jayden is a good little sleeper although lately the second nap has been a little bit of a struggle. It seems that he is so into the world around him that he's afraid to miss anything by sleeping for awhile. Thankfully his morning nap usually lasts a couple of hours so if he misses his afternoon nap he doesn't dissolve into a complete mess later in the evening. He still nurses throughout the night but it's not a big deal to me since we've been cosleeping since he was teeny tiny. Most of the time he will wake up, nurse a little and then just go back to sleep. I think we are all getting more sleep this way.

As for DJ and I, I've already mentioned we sleep really well and we are also eating and walking really well too. Ha ha

We planned a more extensive family vacation kind of at the last minute a couple of weeks ago. DJ has a full week off in the middle of July so we have decided to spend a couple of nights in Denver and enjoy one of our favorite cities a little bit. We are also going to get our family photos done which I am really excited about. The photographer that we've made an appointment with seems to have some really creative ideas so I'm just hoping we have good weather and a happy son.

After Denver, we are going to fly out to California and visits our best friends Chad and Joy and their 3 kids. We'll spend some time in Tahoe and then who knows what else. We've got so many plans that we want to fit in but we may just end up hanging out and enjoying each other's company which would be just fine too. It'll be a bit of a whirlwind so I will need to continuously remind myself to fully enjoy each moment and not keep looking forward to the next thing.

AND NOW A SNEEK PEEK AT DJ'S FATHER'S DAY PRESENT......DJ..... IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED YOUR FATHER'S DAY GIFT YET, STOP HERE!!!
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I took these pictures of Jayden when we were visiting in Rapid City for Memorial Day weekend. I really think they turned out well even though it was mildly cool that day and they were really not ideal conditions for picture-taking. I put these pictures in a frame in the order that they appear; I'm so pleased with out it turned out! Enjoy! And Happy Father's Day to you dads!! (If any dads even read this, ha!)