Ezzy's First Christmas

Ezzy's first Christmas passed by in the blink of an eye. There's only a few more "first holidays" for Ez before he turns one. I know. I may be exagerating. But it really feels like his first year is flying by so fast. 

Ezzy's first Christmas was pretty low key, with just the three of us on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, followed by dinner at Joe's mom's house. This was my first Christmas away from my mom. I really missed holidays in Modesto, but Ezzy and I were fortunate enough to have two separate visits with Gangy and Grampa this month. It probably worked out just as well, since Joe wound up getting sick on Christmas Eve and after an hour at work he came back home before Ezzy or I had even gotten up for the day. 

Thankfully Joe was feeling better by Christmas, and the day was absolutely perfect. Joe and Ezzy were up really early while I got an extra hour of sleep (Santa must have known just what this mom needed!) Once I woke up around 8:30 we dove right into present opening. Ezzy had already had a little bit of practice in that department, so he was a seasoned expert at ripping the paper, waving the paper in the air while screaming at it, then trying to eat the paper. You can watch a video of him enjoying the paper and some of his toys here:

Santa brought Ezzy exactly what every little boy wants: his very own remote control. As far as actual gifts go, I'd say that one tops the list. Close seconds are: wrapping paper, tags, a bottle of vitamins from Joe's stocking, and an Amazon box. Babies are so easy to shop for. I have a feeling it only gets harder/more expensive from here. Here's a video of Ezzy enjoying his remote.

Santa was pretty good to me as well this year. Not only do I have this amazing family (which is the best present), I also got a ring AND the laptop that I'm writing this blog post on. I love both. I'm one lucky girl. After presents we had a lazy morning eating breakfast and baking cinnamon rolls. Then we were off to Grandma's for more presents and yummy food. Food + family = what Christmas is all about.

Since it's possible one day we'll look back on Christmas Eve 2013 and laugh, I'll recount just what a mess the day really was. Joe spent pretty much the whole day in bed or in the bathroom feeling awful. Since it didn't make sense to cook dinner for just myself, I decided to satisfy a nacho craving and hit up the El Pollo Loco drive thru for dinner. That was a big mistake. There were only two cars in front of me, but I was stuck in the drive thru for 20 minutes. It turns out those two cars were basically ordering a catered feast in the drive thru. Seriously, the amount of food that was passed through the window was enough to feed a 50 person party, times two! Very considerate, people. Oh, and did I mention that Ezzy was very vocally unhappy with the drive thru situation? He started wailing after about two minutes of waiting. 18 minutes in an enclosed space listening to your child cry will pretty much kill anyone's appetite. So 18 minutes later, when I finally got to the window, I was so annoyed/distraught that I didn't even stop or roll down my window or anything. I just kept driving right past the El Pollo Loco employee hanging out the window and got the two of us home and out of the car as fast as possible. I know I said I'd write some good online reviews of my favorite businesses for my 25 Days of Giving, but does it also count to NOT write a bad review of that El Pollo Loco? Anyway, water under the bridge. So, to sum up Ezzy's first Christmas Eve: we had one screaming baby, one sick "gurgly" dad, and one frazzled mom. As my mom pointed out, it isn't Christmas unless someone gets sick, so it looks like we managed to keep that tradition going this year. The very end of the day was somewhat salvaged though. After Joe's long day spent napping, he felt better by the time we got back from our nacho fiasco. And after Ezzy had some food and snuggles, he was back to his smiley self. A glass of wine, half a box of cookies, and the movie Hook cheered me up. So Christmas Eve ended with our lil family of three snuggled on the couch watching Hook (which, by the way, IS a Christmas movie) - exactly the way I'd envisioned our evening.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas filled with family and food.

Merry Christmas!

I already shared the other photos from our JCP shoot here, but now that our Christmas cards have hopefully reached their destinations I wanted to share our Christmas photos on the blog too. That photo of Ez in the Santa hat is one of my favorite photos of all time. It was also one of the two photos that he actually smiled for at the shoot. But hey, one great shot is all you need, right?

I'll be back with more photos of Ezzy's first Christmas, but in the meantime, I'd just like you all to know that we are so blessed and grateful to have you in our lives. I hope you're having a cozy, merry Christmas spent relaxing with loved ones. Love you guys!

One of My Favorite Traditions - Christmas Lights!

Every year one of my favorite traditions is driving around to check out all the Christmas lights. This will be mine and Joe's third year checking out Pasadena's hotspots, and we were so excited to see Ezzy's reaction to the bright lights and decorations. He loves staring at our Christmas tree, so we thought this would be right up his alley. The only house Ezzy actually stayed awake for was the Balian House, and once he stopped looking at all the cars driving by and actually noticed the lights, he loved them. It's crazy to think that by this time next year he'll be walking around and pointing out which decorations he likes the best. But anyway, it's Christmas eve, so it's time to get to sleep or Santa won't come! (That's what I told Ezzy, anyway. It finally worked...on the third try.)  

PS - For a trip down memory lane, here we are checking out the lights last year.

Weekend Recap: Ladies Night & Hiking

On Saturday evening my lovely friend, Jen, hosted a girl's wine glass making party. It was such a fun and creative idea. Joe and Ezzy had a boy's night, and I spent three whole hours drinking wine, catching up on gossip, and getting my creativity on. Painting is so relaxing, it's hard to think about much when you're busy painting a dozen tiny snow flakes. I wish I had gotten pictures of all the girl's wine glasses because they were all so unique and adorable. Here's my finished product (sorry for the bad photo):

And in the meantime, this is what the boys were up to:

For our Sunday Family Funday, we took advantage of our mid 70 degree weather and went out for breakfast then a hike. First day of Winter, what? California didn't get that memo. I see my friends all over the country posting pictures of their snowy Christmases, and as pretty as it looks, I can barely handle when the temps in our house drop to the 60s, so I'll stick with the sunshine, thanks. 

A few things about our hike:

• Even though we stuck to nearly-flat terrain, I was huffing and puffing the entire way. Some kids ran by us having a conversation and giggling - how do they do that?? I remember when I used to jog that same trail... maybe it's time to dust off the treadmill?
• Ezzy is obsessed with running water. He LOVED staring at the stream and tried to dive headfirst into the water to get a closer look.
• Joe and I have a thing about bees, so when one landed on Joe's shoulder, the hike was over.

One of the few pics we got of him looking at the camera.

Gorgeous.

What's this???

Water??

I wanna see...

Must touch!

Still mesmerized.

Ez! Over here!

Tuckered out from a grueling hike.

After the hike we met up with a friend to return some baby stuff she had lent to us. She has two kids, ages one and five. Ezzy seemed to like the five year old (despite his extremely awkward expression in the pic below), but he burst into tears at the sight of the one year old. Twice. We thought he would like babies, or at least be indifferent. We thought wrong.

Ezzy meets another baby. He's not impressed...

Excuse me. I did not authorize this.

One thing we did not do this weekend was step foot in a mall. I hope you were all fortunate enough to avoid that as well!

25 Days of Giving, Days 12 - 22

Three days till Christmas!!! And even more mind-boggling, there's only nine days left until 2014. Where did time go?? Other than a few late gifts I'm mailing out tomorrow, I'm as prepared for Christmas as I'm going to get. As far as this 25 Days of Giving goes, I'm about ten days behind.

For days 1-11, I completed six "days of giving" - including a few clothing and toy donations, and some Christmas cards for soldiers. The past ten days have been pretty jam-packed with a trip up North to Modesto, and some Christmas shopping and festivities, so I've been checking off some of the less time-consuming things that I wanted to get done off of my list.

7. Clothing donation for Planet Aid (#19 on my list) - I've been rummaging through my closet (for about the tenth time this year) and found a few more things I doubt I'll ever wear again. They're all bagged up and ready to be dropped off at the Planet Aid clothing bin conveniently located at the end of my street.

8. Sign Change.org petitions (#28 on my list) - I got lost on this site for awhile, looking at all the animal cruelty and food safety petitions. I actually enjoyed writing my comments on why I felt these petitions were important. In case your interested, here's a link to all the animal petitions and you can find the food safety petitions here.

9. Donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Their commercials get me every time, especially now that I have Ezzy.

10. Toy donation (Toys R Us gift card) + Christmas card to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Here's the address, if you're interested:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Donor Services
Attention: "VOLUNTEER SERVICES"
595 North Parkway
Memphis, TN  38105

11. Donation to March of Dimes, per Zshnette's idea. And, if you donate before the end of the year, your donation will be matched. Win/win.

12. I drove out of my way (only a two-hour round trip) to buy my brother a special edition video game that he really wanted and they only had a few copies left in California. This may not be for the greater good, but I'm including it because giving and generosity should really begin within the family.

13. I've gathered up a collection of canned and dry goods to donate to a soup kitchen in Monrovia. Those will be dropped off tomorrow (along with the clothes).

Ok, so I'm actually 12 days behind, with only 3 days to go. Could be worse, right? So far I haven't done anything involving Christmas cookies. I'm afraid if I make them I'll just wind up eating most of them. Also, Joe said if I deliver cookies to firemen, then he's volunteering as a Cheerleader laundry person. Not really sure what that is or if such a thing exists, but we'll just skip the whole cookies for firemen thing. I also haven't done any of the random acts of kindness on my list, and those look really fun, so I plan on crossing a few of those off in the next few days.

I hope everyone's enjoying this merry season with loved ones!

Cousins

On Wednesday evening we had family over for dinner and a little early Christmas present opening. Logan is Ezzy's closest cousin in age, and it was so cute to see them interacting. Ezzy was absolutely mesmerized by Logan. He barely took his eyes off of him. They got Ezzy a little rolling, light-up, music-playing snail that he absolutely loves. He kept yelling at it and knocking it over and Logan would patiently pick it back up for him. You can watch video of them playing together here:

Of course, all that ended when Ezzy faceplanted into the floor, but it was fun while it lasted! I have so many great memories of sleepovers and play dates with my cousins. They were my first best friends and I still love hanging out with them to this day. I hope Ezzy and Logan create lots of adventures and memories together.