valentine weekend at nannie & papa's

Lucy's valentine - Reggie.

christmas!

long overdue - photos from oren's 1st birthday!

Here are a few photos from oren's bday back in december. apologies for the long delay...

not a baby anymore...

oren is walking. he's been tentatively taking steps for a few weeks, but last week he just started going from room to room like it's no big deal. and he gets a big kick out of this new skill...it's super cute.

Playing piano with grandpa garriott

this is the best.

Phoenix visit

Oren and I flew to phoenix for a quick visit to grandma and grandpa garriott. oren was a rock star on the plane - i really had nothing to worry about.

This series of photos is so cute. Oren was clear across the room when grandpa began to play. He quickly took notice, crawled right over and pulled himself up for a better view. He was fascinated. :-) I sure hope he has grandpa's talent.

this photo cracks me up because there are SO MANY photos of us as kids totally attacking grandpa. he was always on the floor rolling around with us.

oren is such an enthusiastic eater. i think grandma got a kick out of feeding him.

We had a nice lunch one afternoon at the clubhouse. I didn't get any photos, but afterward oren and I tried to go for a swim with grandpa - he just was NOT going in that pool. poor guy. we'll have to work on that.

Woodlawn Coffee and Pastry

We have a fantastic new bakery in our neighborhood! We met Sarah and Oscar there on Friday before our flight to Phoenix. so nice to hang out a little bit and play together in their toy corner.

Portland Christmas tree lighting

Yes, we went down for the lighting ceremony. It's something we try to do each year. I love Christmas carols and don't get many chances to hear them, and it's something we love about living in the city and getting into the holiday spirit along with 25,000 other portlanders. I'm choosing to ignore the whole 'terrorist bomb' thing...it was never a true threat and i think it's unfortunate that they had to publicize the thing they way they did. let's scare folks just for the sake of drama. boo!!

regardless we had a good time.

haircut!!

this one was hard for me. i put off scheduling oren's first haircut as long as possible, until ian threatened to do it himself! so it was time...

and his hair looks great! kassandra did a super job.

coast hike

lovely day for a little exercise!

apparently the remains of a 'big foot' was discovered on the beach below us!

mom - can i eat now????

shem, noelle, and elijah braving the wind.

great coastal forest

Halloween and the coast!

ok - there are a lot of teasers here...the cute costume is at the end.

proposal rock, neskowin, oregon

gorgeous sunset

playing football with shem!

cute hat elijah!

hanging out with elijah

ahhh....time to read

we hosted our annual pumpkin carving and it was a ton of fun, although quite different from years past in that the adults were almost outnumbered by babies!!! chaos...but so great!

here are a few of the results:

ok -- here you go!

roar!!! (oren really liked practicing for his costume)

playing in the living room

news!

I'm so sorry...i've really gotten behind on my posting. so much has been happening. just this past week oren is finally crawling!! it's just the cutest thing to watch, and totally melts my heart when he gets excited to see me and crawls across the room to me. yay!

i'm just going to post a ton of photos with maybe a random caption where needed. enjoy.

nice day at the park

a first!

we were working outside in the yard today...oren was adamant about NOT taking a nap so we set him up in his pack-n-play so we could continue to work. he's been working at pulling up for awhile, but today was the first time he made it all the way up to standing! and once he figured it out, of course had to repeat it several times, laughing the whole time. way to go oren!!!