Nathan’s having more fun playing with his cousins now that he’s a little older. This last time they were together they all played hide and seek and it looked like they had a blast.

A belated Christmas post…this is always a fun holiday, with lots of time spent with Gary’s family, and lots of food. It starts with Christmas Eve at Gary’s Grandmother’s.

Here’s Nathan getting ready.

Playing with Opa after dinner.

Gary and I managed to get a nice picture of just the two of us. This might be the first one since Nathan was born!

Christmas morning is spent with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Jake & Ben. After coffee and opening presents, we have breakfast. It might be one of my favorite meals, partly because its a warm and happy morning and partly because it includes a contest to see who can eat the most. I think Opa took it this year.

Nathan broke into the candy cans before we even started on the presents. Eh, what’re you gonna do, it’s part of the holiday!

Oma has jingle bells, and Nathan made sure we all had them.

Nathan playing with one of his favorite new toys.

We got some cute pictures of the cousins this year. Nathan really loves them and it’s awesome to see them playing together. Jacob is especially good with Nathan and has a lot of patience.

Family portrait.

There aren’t any pictures from Christmas Day Eve because about an hour in to the family party the day caught up with Nathan and all that junk food he’d eaten came back up. We made a quick exit because even though Nathan seemed to be feeling okay afterwards, he’d been sitting on Gary’s lap…so, yeah, you get the picture.

Hanukkah was fun this year. Nathan was of course excited about the presents, but the best part was that he was really excited to light candles every night too, and by the last couple nights he was singing the prayers with us too. We got him a wooden menorah with candles he could put in himself and he helped us light the menorahs too.

We had Latkes on the first night and he liked them a lot. Also liked dipping them in his applesauce.

Oma and Opa came over one night, and Grandma and Grandpa Bob came for the last two nights and stayed for a few days. I think Nathan had fun celebrating with them and I loved having them all be part of the holiday.

Nathan had fun helping Grandma bake cookies.

I’m glad that Nathan is getting old enough to start to understand things about the holiday. He loved reading Chanukkah books throughout the week and even still likes to now. And we got a Rugrats Chanukkah movie that Nathan loved and wanted to watch over and over. Lucky for us, it was surprisingly not bad!

October was a fun month. We went to Zoo Boo at the Maryland Zoo, something we’ve done the last three years and hope to continue to do each year. All the kids dress up in their Halloween costumes and can go trick-or-treating at various booths. It’s been a fun time to get together with friends and have a fun family day.

Nathan looks like he’s plotting some serious trouble.

Feeding a giraffe.

Buds. These two had such a fun time together.

Getting a ride.

Carousel Ride.

Halloween was fun too. Nathan, thankfully, was always excited to put on his dinosaur costume. I think it helped that he got to pick out what he wanted to be and gave the final approval on what we ordered. After the first house Nathan wanted to eat his candy immediately. And after about 7 houses Nathan said he had enough candy and was ready to go home. Silly boy doesn’t know what he’s missing!

Practicing in the costume before Halloween.

Roar!!

Checking the loot.

Checking out our Jack-o-Latern

Chocolate!

We made our third trip to Dallas in October. Nathan did a great job on the plane rides…he played and watched videos on the way there, and slept most of the trip home. I think it helped that he had his own seat without a carseat this time.

It was great to see my grandma (”GiGi” to Nathan) and so special that she got to spend time with Nathan. My Uncle Allen took us out to the Arboretum in Dallas, where we had a really neat opportunity to get professional pictures of Nathan taken. The weather was perfect, and there were gorgeous flowers blooming and pumpkins everywhere. It was a really great day.

Frontier Village. Nathan loved running through here.

Pumpkins

Running through the frog fountain

We also made our 3rd trip to the Dallas Aquarium, which we love. Nathan still talks about some of the animals we saw. Uncle Allen bought him “Curious George at the Aquarium” and he loves pointing out the octopus and penguins to tell me “I saw that at aquarium!” He also thought it was pretty neat to see a jaguar there.

Uncle Allen feeding birds

One morning my Uncle brought over his guitar and played Itsy Bitsy Spider for Nathan. Nathan was interested in checking out his guitar, but the neatest part was when he hopped up to the piano and they played some music together.

My Grandma invited some family and friends over one afternoon, which she often does when we come. We were surprised and happy to have so many people come. I know it meant a lot to my grandma and I love seeing as much family as I can while we’re there

Can’t wait to go back next fall!

Grandma and Grandpa Bob came to visit recently. Unfortunately my camera stayed in it’s bag most of the time because I was really sick, but I did catch this one of Nathan in his new cowboy boots. My Mom and Bob just drove cross-country and picked these up somewhere in the mid-west. Awesomely cute and Nathan loved them.

Nathan, Oma and I went to the Maryland State Fair this weekend (unfortunately Gary had to work.) It ended up being a lot of fun. We visited the animal area first and saw lots of baby animals, including adorably playful piglets and some just born chicks. Nathan got a big kick out of hearing the pigs oink…he kept telling them to do it again and then he’d giggle.

I think the rides were his favorite part, even more than the corn dog and cotton candy (he didn’t seem to quite know what to do with that.) But I knew he’d love the rides, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to take him to the fair in the first place.

Nathan’s first corn dog. He seemed to really like it, but then quit halfway through, so we’ll have to give it another try.

Rides!

Nathan loved this boat ride at first, but after a few minutes his face went from smiling and excited to a little scared and maybe feeling a little ill. And unfortunately the ride kept going and going and going. I felt so bad for him, but Oma and I just kept cheering him on whenever he came around. I was proud because he got off, wobbled a bit from turning in circles for so long, smiled, and told us he wanted to go ride the motorbikes.

The motorbikes were a big hit. Nathan went on them twice and would gladly have gone on again, but by then it was obvious he was getting tired and it was time to head out.

We enticed Nathan to leave the fair by telling him we’d go look at the helicopter out front. The Medivac had landed earlier and we ended up getting there at the perfect time…right when it was about to take off. They warned us it’d be windy, but I had no idea it would be THAT windy!

Wind blown and watching the helicopter fly away.

We made our first trip to Ocean City a couple weeks ago and had a great time. This trip was with Gary’s family, and we’re going back later this month with just the three of us.

Nathan loved playing in the sand, but wanted nothing to do with the water. He and Gary built lots of sand castles and Nathan and I took walks to collect seashells.

Nathan was introduced to his first fresh Fractured Prune donut. I’d say he was a fan, but who wouldn’t be?!

As usual, we had fun feeding the ducks (and even geese!) on the canal in front of Oma & Opa’s condo. The seagulls were quite bold.

(Note: having your two year old throw bread to ducks off a pier with no railing is really nerve racking.)

And we took Nathan on his first mini-golfing adventure. He was a fan, especially when we got to the water and he started throwing his ball in. The place we went had several different courses. We did the safari with all the big animals, but he was really fascinated with the pirate themed course and couldn’t stop talking about the pirate ship.

And! We actually got some nice family pictures! It’s a rare thing.

Many more pictures from our weekend here.

My brother came for a visit recently. It was great to see him, but most of all I love when Nathan gets to spend time with him because he lives so far away. Plus Nathan loves Uncle Ethan because he’s so much fun.

Besides just hanging out, we took a trip to the zoo. It was mildly successful…Nathan wasn’t as in to most of the animals this time and had more fun petting the goats than anything else. It was a little hard because he wasn’t the most cooperative toddler, but we had some fun.

We tried the carousel and started to get Nathan on an animal, but ended up with him clinging to me in one of the seats. Afterward he said it wasn’t scary, so we’ll definitely try it again soon.

Nathan will occasionally pick up one of the play phones we have and call Uncle Ethan. It’s very sweet and we can’t wait to get to see him again!