In the last couple months we've traveled to Tucson for thanksgiving, found out the gender of Thing 2, celebrated our 5 year anniversary, moved, had loads of visitors, had Christmas and New Years celebrations, vacationed to Disneyland, and have had so much fun keeping up with all of Sara's new tricks and milestones.
Thanksgiving was an exciting one this year. It was a very... I repeat... VERY long drive, but worth every moment. Tucson is about 11 hours away from Vandyland and we split the trip up a bit to make it a little easier. Sara did a great job, and loved getting out of the car to push her cart around the parking lots we stopped at. Almost all of the cousins were together again in Tucson and Sara finally got to meet some special family members in her life. She is a well loved child. I miss being around family. It's fun to watch them play and interact with your kids. Jason and I were a powerful Corn Hole team to compete with and the night ended with the usual Thanksgiving tradition... Surprise sparklers. (Obviously not really a tradition) I love my family.
We weren't planning on doing a 4D ultrasound, but when we started
talking about our 5th anniversary we thought it would be sweet to find
out the gender for our anniversary. I didn't have any real "motherly
instincts" as to whether it was a girl or a boy. However, we did already
have a boy name picked out, plus our families both have way too many
girls. I think everyone and their mothers were expecting a boy. So I'm
sure we disappointed loads of people when we said... "It's a girl!" I
know people aren't really disappointed, it's just funny that so many
people were wrong. haha So here's Thing 2 (because she is still
nameless! ahhhhh!) and the gender reveal we did.We are so happy to welcome a little sister for Sara into the family! She'll be the 5th girl out of 6 children on Jason's side and the 7th girl out of 7 on my side! So many girls! haha So why is it that Sara only has little boy friends? hehe
The next big event was that we moved from our one story house on Cameron to a two-story house on Chaparral with more living space! It's still the same amount of bed rooms, but in this house, Sara and the piggies get to share a little playroom off the kitchen. It's really fun. Sara has lots of room to play! We picked a bad time to do the move. It was RIGHT before Christmas. But
as soon as we moved in we went out and got our Christmas tree, which
Sara surprisingly didn't even care to touch, and put up some Christmas
things! We are very much enjoying our new home for however long we get to stay here!
My parents came into town and then a day later Jason's parents came into town. Christmas this year with Sara was fun! We got here a couple Ikea presents and books. Kept it simple. Of course all she wanted to do was play with her books. I'm excited to really start some fun Christmas traditions with her and Thing 2 in the years to come. It has been exciting having Christmas with a kid, I feel like it makes it special again.
We did a lot of venturing around the Central Coast over the break. It would seem that Sara enjoyed herself! Many visits to different beaches were involved in our adventures, basking in the sun, Mama making Sara stand for lots of photos. We went to the Christmas tree farm just to go... and then felt very guilty for going and not buying a tree. Then while Jason's parents were here we took a trip up to Hearst Castle. Our celebration for New Years was little. We've been throwing around ideas for little traditions to do with the kids when they're older. We both didn't really do much when we were growing up. We decided on silver dollar pancakes for breakfast and the night before we would open and read all our notes in our "blessing jar". It was fun to see what moments of the year stuck out to us and I definitely want to keep doing that in the future. It'll be so much cooler when the kids can actually write some notes themselves.
Disneyland!! I know some people are like "blah blah poo poo Why are you wasting a trip to Disneyland when your kid is only 1?" I say you people are stupid. Not really, that was a little mean... Yes, I agree, she won't remember... so what's the point. But it was so much fun watching her watch everything around her. She LOVED it! We rode on as many rides as we could take her on and she was taking it ALL in. Dancing, clapping, smiling the whole time. And when she saw the real Mickey mouse... she just could not contain herself! We met my brother, sister in law, and niece there. They were good tour guides for us and knew which rides Sara would REALLY like. My favorite moment with her was the Small World ride. She had a smile on her face the whole time and swung her head back and forth while pointing and yelling. It was just priceless. So... YES it was totally worth the money, time, and effort to go while she was this tiny.
It's been so nice and fun to have the last three weeks off. I think I've enjoyed myself a little too much and really don't want to go back to work. I know I'll feel differently once I get back into it, but for now I will enjoy the last day and a half of Christmas break while I can!
