11 Months, 8 Days: Holiday season is in full swing!

I hate starting off with apologies, but I'm sorry for being away for so long!  Whenever it's a major holiday or friends or family visit, my blog entries slow down.  I'm back with lots of fun photos, mainly of our cute little kiddo who is just constantly changing.  Here we go!

Sunday, November 23

Football day!  Our friend Daryl came over to watch lots of football (since we have DirecTV, we have every football game plus the Red Zone).  Our pup absolutely adores Uncle Daryl.

I get so antsy just sitting around at home that I have to always be doing something.  I ended up making spiced carrots for Leif and crockpot beef marinara for stuffed spaghetti squash for dinner; then I cleaned up a lot, did some art projects for Leif's room, and played with Leif (which of course took precedence).

He got a kick out of my headband.  :)

 Later when Leif went down for a nap and after all the football festivities, we broke out Settlers of Catan Star Trek style.  I finally won a game!

Tuesday, November 25

Leif was in a mood when he got home.  Hubs had his first class of the winter semester that night, so I had to manage my little melt-down baby alone.

Look at this sad face!  No, I do not enjoy seeing my son miserable.  But I was trying to take photos for the hubs since he sends his folks a "Leif A Day" photo.  

Sometimes he has his off days, but who doesn't?

Wednesday, November 26

Since our campus calls the day before Thanksgiving a "Reading Day" and no classes are held, my boss gave me the day off.  Woohoo!  It was nice spending the morning with Leif, and when it was time, the hubs tried to get him down for a nap.  Leif was fighting it, and when it got quiet in his room I had to check up on them...

Such a sweet moment.

Later I went and got my hair trimmed as the hubs dropped Leif off at daycare so that we could run a few errands before my folks arrived!  We got some lunch, bought a few things for the house then went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving.  We didn't get home until around 6pm and my folks were waiting for us!  My mom went to work right away on making lumpia, yum yum.

Left over lumpia I get to freeze/cook later on!

Finished products

My pa was put on the cooking station

My mom relaxing/eating filipino food after making lumpia.  Miles is diligently waiting for my mom to drop anything.

Thursday, November 27 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving morning arrived early as I had to wake up at my normal work day time to get to Simi Valley for the Thanksgiving 5K race.  Before meeting up with my friends, I dropped off Leif with Grandpa & Lola at their hotel so they could spend some quality time with him.

Chewing on a coffee cup...

My friend/co-worker Michael and his partner Alan picked me up at the hotel and we parked on the other side of the park in case it was crazy where the race started.  The lot was full, but it wasn't as crazy as we expected it to be.  I was glad it started at 8am-if it started any later, I would have been sweating like crazy; nothing beats 80 degree weather on Thanksgiving, am I right?!

Before the race, chipper as can be

And after, tired and sweaty

The course was fairly flat and there weren't too many people running, but it was a hard one for me.  Probably because I haven't been training as much as I should have!  My goals were to 1. Beat my PR and 2. Not stop running.  Well, I think I came in around my PR which isn't bad, AND I ran the whole thing.  So all in all, a good run!  I was definitely feeling it though later, my quads were killing me that evening.

And then I had a serious realization when I was picking Leif up and showing off my new fancy turkey medal...in our previous apartment, I had all my medals and race bibs on a board behind our walk-in closet door.  I'm pretty sure we didn't look there and I did not pack them which left me devastated.  We do still have a few boxes in our bedroom closet I haven't touched since I thought they were wedding boxes, but I honestly do not remember packing them.  This means I left behind my favorite medal-my Stitch medal from the Disney 10K!  :(

We drove back to the house and I arrived around 10am; folks got lost and didn't get there until 11am. Leif was in a bad mood all day-I think because he fell asleep at my folks' hotel room, and slept in the car which isn't the best rest.  He slept for only 40 minutes.  He just was unhappy most of the day...

Frowny face

Sad little guy! But...

He tried some turkey and mashed potatoes and his spirits picked up.

Getting ready to eat, eat, eat!

Later on, Leif's mood turned around and he played with Grandpa a lot.  Grandpa is really good with babies/kids!  I captured them playing in a few videos, it was really cute to hear him giggle so loudly.

Friday, November 28

This sums up Friday morning

 We never learn and we ventured out on Black Friday to THE MALL to meet up with my folks.  I don't know why we did it, but we figured it was a good meeting place. The parking lots were crazy of course, but we put our patient hats on and ended up finding a spot sooner than later since we camped out in one lane.  We hit up Target, walked around and saw the food court was insane, and decided to grab some lunch else where before heading home.  Well, the Thai restaurant we wanted to hit up was closed, so we ended up getting bad Panda Express and taking it home.  Then our folks agreed to watch Leif while the hubs and I went out to a movie-we saw the Hunger Games and both agreed that was a waste of time...the special effects were great, but they should have just combined this one with the last one.  There were too many shots of Katniss looking moody.  It was silly.  My folks had a great time with Leif and then they left right when we got home since their flight was early the next day.  It was nice to see them for a quick visit, and in just a few weeks we'll see them again!

Saturday, November 29


We decided to attempt to take photos of Leif for our Christmas cards this year.  He is constantly fidgeting, and even though the hubs took lots of blurry photos, we got a few good ones.  I won't spoil our Christmas card and put the one up we are using, but here are some really nice ones!

While I was working on Leif's room, hubs was on Leif duty for a little bit and he decided to take photos of him again.  Here's a cute one.  :)

His teeth are changing the way his face looks now!

 And this is what I was working on and didn't finish until yesterday:

Happy Tree!  They stick really well to the wall and peel off just fine.  I'm finally decorating Leif's room!  I'll post the final product soon.

Sunday, November 30

It had rained all night and morning, but I wanted to get out of the house in the morning before football started.  We stopped by the Dollar Tree for a few holiday decorations, and then since we were bored and wanted to stay out, we ended up at the mall right when it opened.  It was so nice-no one was there due to the crazy rain!  After eating an early lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, we did a little bit of shopping...and little being just one item was bought:

The cutest fuzzy hat from Baby Gap!

 I couldn't get enough of the hat...

The Asian in me loves Leif in cute animal clothing/hats.  Or maybe it's just a mom thing.

Monday, December 1

Leif woke up at 3am WIDE AWAKE...It took him almost an hour to go back to sleep and it was rough, but of course when I woke up to get ready for work, he was super passed out.

Hubs took this photo while I was getting ready

This is a long entry, so summing up Monday: it was the same old, same old.

Tuesday, December 2

Nana made this fun sweater for Leif:

An Amazon box had come in the mail, and Leif decided it was a good climbing box.

Wednesday, December 3

Leif learned how to blow some serious raspberries, and of course when I try to take photos of him, he gets shy and stops.  But he was still being quite cute...

So my awesome pal Barbie has a blog herself that she revamped and is inspiring me to rethink my own blog.  As much as I love posting photos of Leif every week, I'd like to organize this a little differently.  So be prepared for some delays and reconstruction, but I'll definitely be back, I'm not going anywhere (except up to Washington for the holidays!)...