2nd Christmas

We spent the day after Christmas with Ray's family in Bakersfield. It was nice to see everyone and Bodhi loves to spend time at his grandparents house especially because they have a pool table! I think Bodhi was more interested in playing with the pool balls than opening presents.

Later in the evening we made the trip to CALM for their annual light exhibit. It has a bunch of light displays and a train that takes you around the property to see even more exhibits. We had lots of fun.

christmas day

Bodhi usually gets at least one bad cold a year, unfortunately the bad cold came on Christmas Eve. It was so sad to see him sick on Christmas Day. Once we finally made him take some medicine and it kicked in, he felt a little better and opened a couple of presents. Of course we have our new tradition of turning the yule log on TV since we don't have an actual fireplace. It's so funny...


Later in the day we packed up presents for my family and met at my sister Christina's new house to celebrate. We spent the rest of the day eating and opening presents. It was a long day and Bodhi fell asleep laying in my arms - something he hasn't done for ages. He really loved Christmas this year, seeing all the Santa lights lit up on all the houses and the lights that we put up on the tree and in his room. We left the tree up a week later than we probably should have but Bodhi didn't want to take down our Christmas decorations.

christmas list

Bodhi has been spending some time working on his Christmas List by looking through the toy advertisements and when he sees something he likes points and says, "I wish I could have one of those."

gingerbread house

We went over to Sherry's house to decorate gingerbread houses with the kids. It was so much fun. Bodhi loved decorating the house with candy. Although I think he had more fun eating all the candy off the house after it was finished.

box on your head

Who knew wearing a box on your head could be so much fun. Bodhi received these colored boxes when he was just 9 months old. The boxes actually hold small soft toys of the same color. They were really good as chew toys when he was little and then later on to throw the balls around and learn colors and matching colors with names. But most of the time he just puts one of the boxes on his head and runs around being silly. He does look pretty cute with a box on his head.

These are some of the first pics I have of him with a box on his head.

Now he even gets his friends and stuffed animals to join in on the fun.

rootbeer mugs

Bodhi is drinking out of one of the mugs we used when we were kids and would stay the weekend at my grandparent's house. I remember drinking rootbeer from the tiny mugs. It brings back so many memories of my grandparents. It is so sweet to see Bodhi drinking his juice out of one of the little mugs. I think he loves them as much as I did and still do.

atlantis

Bodhi and I met Vivian and Kristi at this park in Garden Grove. It is only open for a few hours each day so It took a bit of coordinating our schedules to get there, but we had lots of fun once we arrived. The park is split up into several play areas most with slides or swings. By far Bodhi's favorite slide was the giant sea serpent slide. Although we were calling it a dragon slide. Either way Bodhi absolutely loved it. He had so much fun running up the big hill and then sliding down the slide. When we got home that night, Bodhi kept telling his Daddy all about the big slide and how he wanted to go there again. We will definitely have to make a trip back soon.



Oh my gosh, Look at that face!

Bodhi with his friend Vivian.

bowling party

Ray took Bodhi to a bowling birthday party the Saturday before Halloween. Unfortunately I didn't get to go since I had to work. Ray said that all the kids had lots of fun bowling. Of course they had the bumpers on the kids lanes so that they didn't have any gutter balls. Looks like so much fun. Here are just a couple of pics from the party.

halloween time

We had lots of fun on Halloween this year. First we met up with my family at a church carnival. We went last year and had great time so we decided to go again. Bodhi made the cutest Buzz Lightyear and he wore his costume the whole time. There were a bunch of game booths set up and the kids could participate in the games and receive candy. They also had lots of rides. Bodhi doesn't quite meet the height requirement for most of the rides even though he really wanted to go on them.



After spending a few hours at the carnival we drove to my friend Kristi's house to have dinner and then went out trick or treating in her neighborhood. I loved seeing all the kids dressed up.

Bodhi was very excited about all the candy he received trick or treating. Every day since he's been saying "want to see my candy" and then bring us his candy bag to show us all of his sweet treats.

pumpkin patch

I met my friends at Tanaka Farms recently. They have a pumpkin patch set up for the season. Its actually a working farm and you can go and pick out your own pumpkin along with picking other vegetables. We all enjoyed walking around the farm and going through the corn maze. We even went into the small petting zoo and took a wagon ride around the property. It was a fun day and Bodhi had lots of fun climbing over the big pile of pumpkins and running around the farm.

We ran into some interesting things in the corn maze...

Bodhi actually got to visit two pumpkin patches this year as my sister Christina was nice enough to take Bodhi along on trip with his cousins. He got a cute little spider painted on his face and came home with a pumpkin which of course we carved into our jack o' lantern on halloween.

Songs in the key of Bodhi...

A few months ago I was remarking how Dahlia, who is 4 months older than Bodhi, was already singing and Bodhi didn't really sing at all. So now, of course, a few months later, Bodhi is singing pretty much non-stop. Here are a few of his favorites:



Ring Around the Rosie


The Alphabet Song
And finally, a song he actually sings in French. I'll put the lyrics with it so you can see how close he gets.



Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques
Dormez-vous?, dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines
Din dan don, din dan don.
So there's our little vocalist... so cute!

Sandcastles

Until this summer, I had forgotten how fun it is to build sandcastles. So, when Jen told me that there was a sandcastle competition down in Newport Beach, I thought it sounded like a whole lot of fun! So we headed down to take a look.

It took a while to get there so the castles were already well under way. We checked out the other entries, then Jen, Bodhi and I built our own competition entry!

Of course it's a train, what did you expect?

Okay, we didn't really build that one, but we did build some castles of our own down by the water. After that, we ate some snacks and played around in the sand some more. We didn't actually see who won, but we had a great time seeing the castles and spending the whole day together.

family vacation

I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures from our family vacation. We make quite a group. Of course we went to the Colorado River. It has actually been three years since I've been there though. Last year we didn't have a family vacation and the year before I couldn't go because I had used all my vacation being on maternity leave. This year we traveled with my parents in the RV. It was quite a long drive (over 5 hours) with only one stop, but Bodhi did really great and everyone took turns entertaining him.



We had great weather this time, in the low 100s. I know that doesn't sound great but it's usually 115 or so when we've been there in the past. And of course you spend most of your day in and out of the river to keep cool.




It was really cute to see Bodhi enjoying playing in the water and getting to spend so much time with his cousins. We would spend the mornings down by the river and spend the afternoons at the pool that was at the campsite. They don't normally have it open during the week, but since we were practically the only ones at the campsite, my Dad asked if they would open it up for us, which they did and it was so nice.



Of course we had to make a trip to the store on the campsite to get popsicles and then another day went for a short boat ride to get some pizza and play some video games. It was so great to have a relaxing vacation. We all had such a nice time. All the kids were sad when it was time to pack up to go home. And I don't blame them, I wanted to stay too!