Christmas, Part IV

Now begins Christmas, part IV where we open the rest of the presents with my parents and grandpa, having a quick lunch, and call it a wonderful day. We are now at the point where holiday fatigue is starting to set in and the idea of zoning out watching football on tv is starting to become incredibly appealing. Here is Elena gearing up for the next round of present opening.
Here is Elena checking out her new doll. According to Lisa, I have Luis to thank for trying to find loud, obnoxious toys. Sorry to inform him that it's not that loud and the songs are short. Sprout really enjoys playing with this new toy.
A group picture.
Sprout with Oma opening up her presents.
Here is Sprout playing with her new ball popper from Nana and Pops. It plays music and little toy balls pop out. Sprout doesn't like to share, and she tries to keep all of the balls in her little hands at one time. It's quite comical to watch.
I think it's safe to say that she loves this one.
We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday.

Christmas Day

The great thing about Sprout's young age, is that she doesn't yet comprehend Christmas and opening presents. It was nice being able to get up at the usual time in the morning, have leftover pie with coffee, and then have a leisurely time of opening up a few things.

Barry and Sprout are showing off a few of their new goods.
Sprout still needs a little assistance with the opening part.
She really enjoys the wrapping paper.

Christmas Eve, Part II

After we opened stockings with my family, we headed over to spend some time with Barry's family. We didn't take too many pictures, but here are a few on the ones we did get. Here is a picture of Marlene with her hand-crafted napkin holder (more on that later).
Here is Barry with Sprout enjoying dinner. The food was excellent (as usual). We had prime rib- yum.
Everyone had a chance to visit after eating.
Kory & Sylvia
I think that Sprout has decided that the best part of Christmas is the wrapping paper- even better than the box the gifts come in.
Sprout is working off a little of her dinner by trying some standing exercises.
We had to call it an early evening- goes with the territory of getting Sprout to bed at a decent time. Despite the quick departure, it was a wonderful evening.

Christmas Eve

We are a little delayed in posting the Christmas pictures, but that's probably because we are still recovering from all the holiday joy. Here is a picture of Barry and Sprout before the chaos of stocking opening.
Mom & Dad

Alex & Katie in front of the tree

Sprout is sporting her "I love Santa" shirt- and is actually looking somewhat happy at this point.

Sprout and I are checking out her stocking haul with Katie's assistance.

Luis & Lisa

Sprout decided that she couldn't wait any longer and had to eat the yogurt melts. She absolutely loves these freeze-dried yogurt bites. I think they suspiciously taste like chalk, but who am I to argue with Gerber?
Dad has finally decided that he's had enough Christmas cheer for one day. Lisa and I decided that this captures the essence of all our family gatherings- we need alcohol and lots of it to get through any event.

Just kidding- sort of.

Naughty or Nice?

Many of you know that I've been on the quest for the perfect Santa for Sprout's first picture with the big guy. I have issues with paying $10 or more for a snapshot. It was starting to get down to the wire, and little did I know the perfect Santa was over the hill the whole time.
Lisa mentioned to me that the Orchard House was having a holiday extravaganza and Santa would be making a guest appearance. They have a beautiful outdoor garden and everything was made festive with lights and decorations.

We had a hectic day leading up to the big event and I forgot the camera at home. I didn't want to drive the two miles back home, so photos are courtesy of Lisa. As you can see, Sprout was being a little naughty when she met Santa in person.

And it went down hill from there.

Santa was kind, wonderful and incredibly patient. I think we've found the perfect Santa.

Ten months

Sprout has rolled over the ten month mark. In the last month she's learned to pull herself up and is starting to take a few tentative steps using furniture or helping hands. She's beginning to get a little more hair and still doesn't have any teeth.
With her increasingly mobile status, it's getting trickier to get a picture with her and puppy.

Amazing how fast the last 10 months have gone.

Winter Wonderland

Earlier this week Elena and I went with Lisa, Alex, Katie, and my mom to the Idaho Botanical Garden for the Winter Garden Aglow. We took advantage of carpool Monday and the discounted admission price. Here is a picture of the group.

This was during our break. We enjoyed the cinnamon almonds and hot cocoa- Yum!

Sprout even had the opportunity to meet Prancer in person. She was quite smitten with his antlers and shaggy coat. She wanted to go to Bogus Basin for a test flight, but his handler wasn't going for that.

It made for a very enjoyable evening.

Stay-cation

I've been planning a bird hunt in Montana for over six months. As the time to leave drew near, it became apparent that our host wasn't up to hunting just yet. He is still healing up from an encounter with a grizzly bear (the bear spooked his horse). So yesterday we hit some of our favorite quail and pheasant spots. Here is a picture of Kenny and Dustin with our bounty. The fancy dog box you see in the background is my early Christmas present from Karen.After we had our limit of quail, I stopped to take a few pictures of the dogs on point. Here are Dustin's dog Stryker (top) and Guinness working on some quail.Today we planned to hunt ducks, but Dustin's daughter came down with a fever so he stayed home to take care of her. I took Guinness for a quick chukar hunt and managed to get a few chukars and huns. We haven't determined what we are going to do with the remaining two days of our stay-cation, but it will likely be more of the same.

Standing Tall

Elena has learned how to pull herself up in order to get toys out of her box, play with dirty dishes, etc. Now we'll be baby-proofing an additional two feet of vertical space around our house.

In other news, dog ears are irresistibly yummy. It's a good thing she doesn't have any teeth yet!

Basement Remodel Begins!

We finally started our basement remodel project. I've been horrible about documenting our other remodel projects, so I figured I could make a blog post and then just update it as we go. We're updating our furnace, replacing the wood paneling with sheet rock, updating the electrical and lights, taking out the dreaded wall, and widening the stairs. The dreaded wall is the first thing you see when you come down the stairs. The problem with the wall is that it is load-bearing and concrete. Eight inches of concrete. I want to take out about 5 feet of it.We moved some of our furniture into storage and donated some of it. I also rearranged our storage room to make room for the rest of it. I then removed the wall around the furnace we plant to replace.


This is where Karen works out. She's going to take over my old "Man Room," and we're going to make this into a living room.
Part Two: Nuclear Fallout

This weekend we got serious about taking out the wall and getting everything else ready to remodel. I have hired a contractor for some of the work, and together we removed the dreaded wall this weekend. Harold (the contractor) reminds me Sam Elliot in The Big Lebowski
So Harold built some temporary walls to support the floor above us on Friday and sawed through the concrete. Even though he used plastic to reduce the dust, I literally couldn't see the end of our hallway upstairs when I got home. The dust was nasty. Anyway, Saturday we jackhammered out the wall.We then installed a beam to support the floor joists. After that we finished gutting the basement. Miraculously, Sprout slept through most of the noise we made while tearing out the wood panels and furring strips.
Here are some pictures from before and after we gutted the rest of the basement.

Next week we plan to widen the stairs and basically destroy the utility room (upstairs). We've also got some electrical and plumbing things to take care of, then we'll start rebuilding.

My plan is to update this post as we go, then I'll re-post it when we're done

Christmas Tree

Today we made our third annual trek to the mountains in search of a Christmas tree. We nearly canceled the trip due to snowy roads, but fortunately the roads were dry once we hit Eagle. We went to a new spot this year, and found the snow to be about 2.5 feet deep. Karen quickly decided that Sprout needed lunch (even though we just fed her at a gas station like 5 minutes prior), so I set out to find a tree. I think Sprout had three bites of her lunch when I returned with a tree in hand. It's amazing how efficient I can be without Goldilocks the tree hunter. Here are some pics of the family showing off our magnificent tree.
On the way home we opted to stop by some hot springs. The hike in was a bit treacherous (icy), but it was worth it. The camera fogged up, so this was about the only decent photo we have of the soaking pool. Sprout and I are almost there...The hot spring was a great way to relax after the strenuous hike we made finding our tree. I was excited at the outset of our hike to the hot spring because there was a van with BSU coeds in the parking area, but unfortunately they did not conform to the spirit of this particular hot spring (see below).