My Birthday

I had a wonderful Birthday this year! Mckay spoiled me. He had a wonderful early surprise present for me. While we were in Denver over Christmas break, we left Dallin with Mckay's parents for one night and stayed in the Westin Hotel in downtown Denver.

It's a pretty nice hotel. This is what our room looked like:

We ate dinner at the restaurant in the hotel.

I had the most delicious peppercorn crusted Salmon and Mckay had Chicken Parmesan that was as big as my face. We walked around the snowy downtown area for a bit and then went back to the hotel for room service dessert: Bruleed Lemon Bar with fresh strawberries. It was so yummy! I had such a nice relaxing time and I've never been away from Dallin overnight before. Dallin had fun with Grandma and Grandpa Easton, but he was extra clingy when we got back.

We celebrated my Birthday early while we were still in Denver with the Easton family. We had dinner, presents and ice cream.

In the picture, I'm wearing the birthday outfit I got from my mom: a really cute skirt and sweater.

I got Dr. Suess books, a necklace, a "Green Eggs and Ham" water bottle, lotion and bath salts, mint chocolate chip ice cream flavored gum (thanks Alex!), and pie pans.

But not just any pie pans, these are personalized using glass etching.

2 pans say "PIE-licious" and 2 say "PIE-tastic." Thanks to my wonderfully creative siblings-in-law who made these for me. I love them!

On my actual birthday, we were finally back in Indiana. It was a pretty low key day. Dallin let me sleep in and we all relaxed at home. We watched some of the new movies we got for Christmas and I made a delicious dinner: Lemon Risotto.

People always tell me that I shouldn't have to make my own birthday dinner, but I really enjoy making it. It's a birthday present to me to be able to try out a new fancy recipe. The Lemon Risotto was pretty tasty, but not quite as lemony as I expected it to be. And I think I added a little too much rosemary. I'll tweak things when I make it again.

For dessert I decided to go against my tradition of having a Boston Cream Pie for my cake. (Sorry Joseph, you guessed wrong.)

I felt like having a Raspberry Streusel Pie this year.

It's a recipe that my mom used all the time when the missionaries would come over for dinner. It had been a long time since I'd had it so I made it and boy was it delicious.

And when you top it with cream,

...you might even call it PIE-licious.

Denver

After Christmas in California, we spent a week in Denver with our Easton family. We always have so much fun with them when we all get together.

We went to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. We went because they have this bison you can sit on.

We may have also gone to see the really cool red rock formations.

Mckay's parents have a dog and Dallin loved playing with him. Samson is a really good dog and he's used to putting up with kids playing with him.

Example:

Dallin was trying to play tug-o-war with Samson like he saw the adults doing, but the dog knew better than to be growling and wrestling with a baby.

He couldn't figure out why the dog wouldn't play.

We got family pictures taken while we were there. All the grandkids played with blocks while we waited for our turn.

We rang in the new year with Cheese and Chocolate Fondues. On New Years Day we went bowling.

Dallin even got to try one time.

I think he did better than I did.

We played in the arcade for a bit. Mckay and I rocked at the "Deal or No Deal" arcade game. We picked the winning 1000 ticket case a few times.

We had so much fun with all our family over the holiday break. It was a very fun, very relaxing 2 weeks.

Big Basin and more Christmas

Here are some more Christmas pictures of Dallin that my sister sent me.

All the boy grandkids got matching outfits, so we had to get a picture before church.

Lucas didn't want to be in the shot. That's ok because you can see him in the next picture.

Dallin climbing up the stairs and playing with his cousin. Dallin and Lucas are less than 2 months apart. They missed each other so much for the last 4 months, even if they didn't realize it.

Dallin surrounded by presents. There were A LOT of them.

Dallin really enjoyed being loved, snuggled and held by his aunts and uncles

especially aunt Julie.

One of the days we were there after Christmas we went to Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

There were a lot of really big Redwood trees.

Dallin got a ride on John's shoulders.

The whole group by a "gnarly" (hee hee) tree.

A lot of the trees grow in a circular grouping.

A fire burned this tree entirely through the center and out the top, but the outside of the tree still stands. You can walk inside the tree and look up into the sky.

I conquered this tree.

Here are John and Dallin coming out of the Mother of the forest (the tallest tree in the park).

And here is the Father of the forest (the widest tree)

I'm glad the weather was pretty decent while we were in California so we could enjoy it's beautiful scenery.

Children's Museum

My parents got a Grandparents pass to the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum for Christmas. They can get in for free along with any of their grandkids. Unfortunately, the rest of us "kids" weren't free, but we still had a fun time.

I think my favorite part was making imprints of Dallin on the pin board.

This one looks really cool with Dad's face in it too:

I think Nate and Mckay were having a little too much fun.

There was a water exhibit and Dallin liked dropping balls into the water tornado.

Dallin sitting on the arch we built.

I love his face in this picture. He looks so bored but I promise he was having fun!

Notice the difference in Mckay's facial hair in this picture from the beach pictures in the last post:

He hadn't shaved all of November and December, but then he shaved on Christmas Eve as a present to my mom. It was really a present for me too!

They had a room that was made especially for young crawlers and walkers under 2 years old. There was an obstacle course of sorts for Dallin to crawl on.

It had steps, ramps and hills for him to maneuver across.

He's recently discovered that he can push buttons, so he loved this thing.

When you push the button, air blows through the tunnel and the leaves inside it swirl and fly around. He thought it was pretty awesome.

We finished our adventure with a trip to Panera Bread for Lunch. You can't go wrong with a Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich.

Santa Cruz Beach

I'm really glad we got to go to the beach while we were in California. I was born in Santa Cruz, and while I don't remember living there because we moved when I was 2, we've gone back to visit many times. I love going to the beach. There's something so peaceful about the waves crashing up against the sand and rocks. I love looking out into the horizon and seeing nothing but water.

The big reason our group went to the beach was to see the tide pools.

The rocks are normally under water, but during low tide, you can walk on them and see the little pools in the rocks. The pools are filled with beautiful sea life like star fish...

...sea anemones...

...and sea urchins.

We also saw crabs and lots of other cool creatures.

Dallin loved the beach.

He liked looking at the waves

and running before they could get him.

He LOVED playing in the sand.

I wasn't looking forward to cleaning the sand off him, but how can you deny that face? And it's good for him to play with different textures, right?

I love this picture because when I was a little baby, my parents got a picture of me crawling on the rocks on this very same beach.

We decided that we'll have to go back to the beach when it's warmer so we can play in the water.

Christmas Fun

We're finally back from our long Christmas break. We had a great time with family. I have tons of pictures so I'll be doing a bunch of posts over the next few days. Make sure you check back so you don't miss out on the Christmas fun!

We opened some presents to each other before we left Indiana. Dallin loved his present: Beans!

I got the idea from his occupational therapist. It's a plastic container full of dried beans and it has measuring spoons and cups in it. Playing with the beans and feeling the texture is supposed to help with his food sensitivities. He loves playing in the beans so much! He will sit contently for an entire hour playing with the beans. It's the best cheap present ever!

We spent the first week of our Christmas break in San Jose, California. We stayed with my parents at their new place. All of my siblings were there for Christmas (except for Joseph who is on a mission in Micronesia) so we had a big group and we had lots of fun.

Dallin really loved the foosball table.

Dallin loved waking up every morning to play with his cousins. He also loved the huge canister of cheese puffs that grandma got for him. He amazed us all by learning how to climb up and down stairs. I know it's a shocker, but we don't have stairs in our tiny apartment, so Dallin has never really been around stairs. It took him a few days but he figured out how to climb up them, and towards the end of our break was getting better at going back down.

Dallin didn't seem very interesting in opening presents this year. He was much more into ripping paper last year. He loved the presents inside the paper though.

He really loved this squishy ball from uncle Bret.

And he liked sitting in the trash box full of paper.

With 19 people around the tree on Christmas morning, it took quite a while to open all the presents. Dallin was the first one up on Christmas morning (making me the second) so he got worn out pretty quickly.

Grandma and Grandpa Crapo brought out the train set hoping it would entertain the kids. Unfortunately it turned out that it only entertained Mckay. Here is the evidence:

Clearly, an engineer has built this.

Stay tuned for posts about our trip to the beach, the Children's Museum, and Big Basin.