Happy New Year!

So, this has been a wonderful week. Andrew has been off since my last post and it has been wonderful having him home during the day for a whole 11 days!

These last two weeks have been a week for firsts for Henry. Not only did he get to celebrate his first Christmas and New Years, we did a lot of fun activities such as bowling, hiking, Drive-in Movies and (not so much fun) lots and lots of yard work.

Christmas
Henry is very spoiled now. He did get mostly books, but he did get toys from all the relatives as well. He was still a little young to understand the whole present thing, but he did help in opening his presents. He has also enjoyed playing with them this week. There are a few that I put in his closet for him to play with later, but he still has more toys than I know what to do with! And yes, I made Henry wear the reindeer costume. I figure this will be the last time he will wear something ridiculous that I want him to wear.

Hiking
Andrew got a Camelpak (Backpack with a water bladder) for Christmas, and wanted to try it out. So we went hiking. Nothing like 65 degree Sunny weather for a nice hike at New Years! Beats having to dig your car out of the snow any day. I had Henry in the wrap, so he enjoyed the scenery for a while, then he decided to take a nap. I had to re-wrap him when he wanted to nap, because I was not sure how to get his head supported the original way I wrapped him. So I think that before we do another hike, I will have to go out and buy some other type of baby carrier. I want to get an Ergo backpack, but they are so expensive...we will see. Like I said in my previous post, I need to curb the spending! Anyways, back to the actually hiking, we hiked for 4.5 miles. But it was a beautiful day out and we had a great time. It had rained so there was more green than usual. I know, most of you will see the pictures and think "What Green?" but I guarantee you that there is green there. Unfortunately, I was not wearing good socks, so I have blisters on the backs of both of my heels. I am hoping that tomorrow I will be able to wear my tennis shoes again so I can go to the gym!

Bowling
We went bowling on New Years Day. We bowled for two games and Henry sat on the table and watched. I think he liked to watch the TV screen in between balls more than the actual bowling. This was a very nice bowling alley, so they had little cartoon shorts with pins and balls (like if you got a strike the pins would run from the ball and get knocked down and taken to the hospital all bandaged up.) The gutter bumpers (you know, the ones for the little kids so they don't throw an entire game of gutter balls that you wished you had) were incorporated into the lane, so if you had a family you could set the bumpers to go up for one bowler then down for the next. How Fancy!I do want to let you know that I bowled my best game ever. I bowled a 165. I have no idea how, but I did and it is a feat that I will probably never do again. Overall, not too shabby for not bowling for um...years...probably almost a decade. Andrew has said that we have never bowled together, but I am sure that we have...but I just can't remember when.

Henry
Henry will be 5 months old tomorrow (5th). Time seems to be passing so slow, yet so fast! He is about 26 inches long and weighs 17 lbs 12 oz. So he has slowed down a little bit with the gaining weight. He is still eating about an ounce or two a day. And now, he has been trying to drink out of people's glasses now.
He reaches for the glass when you drink. So, Henry does not like the taste of water, but will occasionally swallow some, but usually it just dribbles down his chin. He has also started to eat ice cubes, which helps with the teething, but it makes his mouth all red! Henry is almost pretty much sitting all by himself. He does tip over still, but he can sit for about 30-45 minutes unassisted before he gets tired. He just still hasn't figured out his arms yet so if he starts to tip over, he doesn't reach out to steady himself. He also still does not roll over, but today he started rolling from side to side by picking his legs up and grabbing his feet. So that is a step in the right direction. He is also sitting straight up in the stoller for the morning walks. He is awake most of the time and he is looking around and talking. We have also attached a toy to the front of the stroller if he gets bored, but we have "mittens" on him to keep his hands warm (hey it is 40 degrees in the morning, so we need mittens too!) I put "mittens" in quotes because he has such big "man(sson) hands" that the mittens we originally bought are too small for him, so we just use a pair of his socks. You can't keep socks on his feet anyway, so we might as well use them for something else!

Drive-In Movies
We decided to go to the Movies as well. We wanted to bring Henry with us, and I didn't want to be one of those people who has a screaming baby in the theater, so we opted for the drive-in in Scottsdale. It was about a 20 minute drive, but for $6.25 per person, you got to bring in your own snacks (Bonus) and were able to stay for two movies. I guess you could technically stay for three if you wanted to be sneaky. They have 6 screens and they all play double features, the play the first movie again. So you could watch the two on your screen then drive over to a different screen for a different movie. We saw Bedtime Stories, which was pretty good. And Bolt, which was okay. I know, we saw kids movies, but there were no other movies we could agree on seeing. They did have new releases like Marley and Me, Yes Man, etc...but we opted for the comedies. We were not even sure if Henry would let us watch the first movie, so we didn't really care about the second. But he got all snuggly with grandma and fell asleep. I did ask Andrew to get me some Movie Popcorn. Which also cost $6.25 and he came back with some cotton candy for me...MMMM...This is now Andrew's favorite theater because for three adults for two movies and a large, bottomless popcorn, it is the same price as three adult tickets with no popcorn at a regular movie theater.

Other than that, we have all been out in the yard getting it ready for our Orange Picking Party. We also got the grape vines pruned, Andrew's shed finished and the gardened cleared. So, we had a very busy and productive week.

So, this is be a quick post and I will end with some pictures of the events from the last two weeks. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and you are sticking to your New Years Resolutions!