Christmas 2008

Well here is our Christmas...

Here is us waking up. Jensen's more of a morning person than the two of us put together.

Jensen opening his presents. He definitely got the hang of ripping off the paper pretty quick.

He loved his toys...

and his books.

He played and played and played.

My new Golden Gopher sweatshirt. Thanks honey!

On our way to Chinese Buffet. Can't wait!

Our friends, the Chrysler's, have a Christmas tradition of going to a Chinese buffet the day of Christmas. And they invited us to join them, and we can't pass up a buffet. There's nothing that says Merry Christmas like a Chinese buffet.

After the buffet....very, very full.

Needless to say, we had a great Christmas. We can't wait to go to Utah in a week and have the sequel to this great Christmas with our families. See you guys soon. Merry Christmas!

Jack Frost is not just nipping....

...he's full on biting. Well here we are at the beginning of a wonderful Minnesota winter. This morning is a whopping -10 degrees, but feels like -30 with wind chill. I don't know what that means anyway, "feels like". You would think if it feels like -30 it would actually be -30. But who am I to question this great logic.

Last night was my first, You've-got-to-be-kidding-me moment. I walked outside from work last night at 2 am with my snow boots, ski coat, gloves, scarf, and hat (I don't think I even wear that much skiing). But you can't mess around when it comes to this weather. It was snowing a little, but the worst part was the wind. It would just pick up the snow from the ground and whip you in the face with it. It was actually pretty impressive. I had to walk sideways to my car, because the second I turned to face the wind the tears in my eyes would freeze. The wind pierces your coat and your pants and it's like you can feel it in you bones (I'm not being dramatic, that's really what it's like). By the time I got to the car (50 feet away) I couldn't feel my hands.
I went out 15 minutes early to start my car. That's what everyone at work does, we designate one person to go start the cars and they are the suckers that have to go out first and start 4-5 cars. I get off at an odd hour, so I'm on my own. This is where a key chain car starter would come in handy (hint, hint).

I came home (safe and sound) to 3 inches of snow covering our door. This might not sound like anything, but it's pretty impressive considering we have a screen door and the snow was between that and the house door. Needless to say that was a first for me.

But I really can't complain, Reed has to take the bus to school. He wears more layers than an onion and you can barely recognize him when he steps through the door. All you can see are his eyes. We'll see how he does this winter, because everyone keeps telling us we haven't seen anything yet. I know this must sound pretty terrible and all our friends and family in CA and AZ should be feeling pretty sorry for us right now, but we're really enjoying ourselves. It's a great adventure and we are loving it.

Visiting Santa

Today we decided to go check out the Macy's decorations downtown at Nicollet Mall. We took the rail so we didn't have to deal with parking and it's so close to our home. It was quite chilly, hence the heavy winter garb. We were all fairly toasty. Jensen's coat is way too big, but it has to last him all season (which apparently is about 6 months here).

Every year Macy's decorates the entire 8th floor and this year's theme was "A day in the life of an Elf". Jensen just loved it. It showed the Elves waking up in the morning, getting the mail for Santa, and teaching the reindeers to fly. It was very well done. Then at the end we had Jensen sit with Santa. At first he was a little weirded out, but ended up really liking his beard. All in all we had a great time.

Finally!

So Jensen FINALLY decided to start walking. I say decided, because he walks just fine holding our hands and holding on to other things. But he is just very cautious and has not done it on his own until now. He actually took his first steps a few days ago with the coercion of food (again, very much like his father). And it was so cute, he's so proud of himself. Here it is, Enjoy!

How 'bout them UTES!

So another great Utah vs BYU encounter. The Utes killed those Cougars. I get a bit spirited when it comes to cheering for my Utes. I'll talk trash and get in brawls if I have to (just kidding). Needless to say, we're big Utes' fans. It's been a little difficult to cheer on our Utes here in Minnesota, but I'll hand it to Reed, he's done a great job to make sure we either watch or listen to every game. Especially this last, most important game of the season against BYU. He called several local sports bar to see if they would be playing the game. One said they would play on a small TV if we had a party of 10 or greater. Well, we did resort to watching the game with some Cougars, but you gotta do what you gotta do. We actually had a really great time and got to see the Runnin' Utes kick some Cougar butt.

We're training him early. He's already a Ute fan!

Here's our group: The Chrysler's and the Brodegard's. Thanks guys, we had a great time.

Little, little Boy

When Jensen does something naughty, instead of putting him in the naughty corner we just put him in this box. I'm totally joking. That was mostly for my mom. She gets so mad when I say stuff like that. Anyway, our little boy is an angel (as much as can be at this age) and we are so lucky. He loves to play with his dad and his dad loves to play just as much as he does. Jensen is on the smaller side of things so we like to see what we can fit him into. Like this baby wipes box from Costco and the Huggies diaper box. He actually really liked it. We did it at first just to be funny, but then he didn't want to get out. This last picture is after 10 minutes of being in a box and he still wasn't about to get out. So now we know what we're getting him for Christmas, lots of empty boxes.

Halloween

Jensen was a dragon for Halloween, the freakin' cutest dragon you've ever seen. We had a ward Halloween party which we got there kind of late for, but let's be honest it's not like he cared. He did have a lot of fun though with the other kids. He thinks he can play with the big kids, but he just ends up crawling around. It's really cute. Then on Halloween I had to work and Reed was without a car so he just went around our little complex here. We have some really good neighbors and the weather was pretty good. So all in all it was a pretty good Halloween.