YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

Dean might be mad at me for posting this, but I just had to share. So this afternoon I got a rare opportunity to run to the store without Tanner. It's Saturday and Tanner was down for a nap, so I took off and left Tanner home with Dean. It was so great to be "free" for an hour or so. Not that I don't totally LOVE Tanner, but every once in a while it's nice to have a little break. So all day I've been very grateful to Dean for allowing me this moment of freedom, until tonight! I went to put Tanner to bed and looked at his crib and found this...

Yes, that is Tanner's crib, and yes that is POOP! What on earth!? How did that get there??? So I went to track down Dean to get an explanation for this strange occurrence. I'm still not entirely sure how you can get a huge chunk of poo stuck on a crib without noticing, but apparently Dean can. I knew he was a man of many talents, but this one takes the cake! Don't worry, the poop is cleaned up, Dean won't get out of changing diapers in the future (despite his best efforts to today), and we're all still alive. I'm sure we'll be laughing about this one for years to come!

Winter Birds...

Thanks to Grandma and PapPap Furin we now have a bird feeder outside our kitchen window. It has been SO much fun! Tanner loves to watch the birds with me and he waves at them as they fly in and out. Here are a few pictures from today. We love it when the cardinals come - they are so bright and beautiful. We also have our friend Mr. Fat Squirrel. He likes to snack on any thing the birds might have dropped. There's a squirrel guard to keep him from climbing up to the feeder itself, but that doesn't mean he hasn't tried!

Mr. Cardinal with a seed in his mouth

Mrs. Cardinal - (She's not as brightly colored, it's sad, but girl birds just aren't as pretty as boy birds)

All our little bird friends - I love the little black headed ones

Tricky Mister Squirrel packin' it away for the winter

Gingerbread Houses

For family home evening on Monday we went over to Dean's parents to make gingerbread houses. This has been a tradition for Dean and I every year since we've been married. Each year Dean gets more and more ridiculous and over-the-top. At least this year he didn't pull out his calculator.

(Last Year)

Dean and I didn't quite finish ours on Monday (I feel like I have to try and keep up with him) and he wouldn't let me post pictures until his was "done," so finally last night we finished them up and here they are...

Thanks Mom and Dad and Janna for a fun night!

Trying to outsmart our 10 month old

BEFORE:
AFTER:
I used to spend my days putting everything back on these shelves over and over and over again after Tanner had pulled everything out, but not anymore! Dean was thoughtful enough to come home and make this door to protect all our goods from the little monster. Today's the big test of whether it will actually work. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to open it, but until then, I'm one happy mom!

I just couldn't resist posting this. My boy is SO cute! I realize I'm biased and all mothers think their kid's the best, but hey, mine is! He's growing up WAY too fast and he'll be 10 months old tomorrow, so in honor of that here's this super cute picture of him! We love you Tanner!

Tanner met....

SANTA! He was a little curious at first...just checking him out.

Then he decided he's not such a fan of the weird guy in the red suit.

Dad came to the rescue! Maybe next year. Hopefully Santa wasn't too offended and he'll still drop by our house on Christmas Eve.

AHHHHH!!!

We've had a lot of these stinky bugs in our house and outside the past few months. I thought that with the cold they were done for the season, but Dean found one in Tanner's HAND today! Of course it had squirted it's putrid juices all over, so Tanner now smells like stink bug! We did our best to wash his hands with soap (good smelling soap) but he still stinks. I'm just grateful Dean found it not me, cause I wouldn't have reacted quite as calmly.

our friend the....

RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. I finally caught a good picture of him today. This guy frequents the trees outside our house several times a week. It's hard to tell in the picture but he's actually pretty big. There was actually two of them outside at the same time today. One thing that's been pretty different for me since moving here, is living in the "woods." I'm used to having to be in the mountains to see things like this. Now it's right outside my window! And it's pretty fun! We've also had a lot of cardinals and blue jays lately as well!

Elf Yourself

Every year we like to bring in the cheer by "Elfing" ourselves. But this year you can put multiple people on at a time and choose several dances! Plus the face uploading technology seems to be better. So please enjoy our dance and go ahead and Elf yourselves! Merry Christmas! (oh and pause our music first)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

H A P P Y T H A N K S G I V I N G
to all our family and friends!!! We wish we could be with all
of you today, but we're definitely thankful for you!

Thanksgiving

Today I put together these place cards for Thanksgiving. We'll be having an intimate group of ten this year (which is probably good cause they were more work than I expected). That's WAY different than we're used to, but it should be good. I'm just excited to enjoy good food, good company, and a chance to really think about all the many blessings we have. We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving too!

9 months

This week Tanner had his first visit with his new pediatrician for his 9 month checkup. He's totally healthy and doing great! We felt a little bad because we kept telling him before we went that he didn't have to have any shots this time, but when we got there they said they'd give him his flu shot this visit. Oops! Good thing he's too young to understand. He took it like a man and didn't even cry!

So here's his 9 month stats:
he weighs in at a whopping 18 pounds 8 ounces
and he's 27 1/2 inches long (we have a tall, skinny guy on our hands)

And of course this post wouldn't be complete without a picture or two (or three)!



Hopefully someday he'll forgive me for posting naked pictures of him on the internet! ;)

So I found this website that shows you what your baby would look like. Do you think they got it right? Funny thing is I could select "african" and have a black baby with Dean as well...interesting. Now I'm just thinking of who else's babies I could preview.

We're thankful for...

In honor of Thanksgiving season we made our "Thankful Turkeys"! I'm pretty sure I've convinced Dean to participate in this somewhat silly activity every year so far. And I think that secretly he likes it! In all seriousness though, we have been thinking a lot lately about how truly blessed we are. So, here you have it...



(Notice my turkey looks different cause I'm a girl! Also that Dean is thankful for "physics"! Of Course! And we upgraded this year from the usual hand traced turkey. More work, but they turned out cute!)

We have a dancer??

Well, Dean and I don't pride ourselves much on our dancing skills, as many of our friends will attest. But somehow Tanner sure likes to dance. We never taught him this, he just does it all on his own. Whenever any music comes on, it's time to dance. Here's a quick clip to give you a taste of his mad dancing skills.

Video of the Trailer...

Ok, so I realize this is almost 6 minutes long, and most of you don't really care enough to sit that long and watch footage of our place, but if you do, here is a video of the trailer. I know I already posted a million pictures, but sometimes it's easier to see how it all fits together on video. So, if you want to check it out here it is...

Disclaimer: I was carrying Tanner while I was videoing, so it's definitely not the best quality. But I tried!

Tanner Man

Tanner is pretty much on the go ALL the time these days. I feel like all I ever do is chase him and pull him out of things he shouldn't be getting into. He's mastered crawling and climbing up on EVERYTHING, and he has NO problem getting up any of our stairs. We're sure it won't be long until he takes off running. But he sure is FUN! Here's a few pictures from today...

Shoes are more fun to eat than to wear!

He's a smiley boy!

"Check me out, I can crawl!"

"Yes, I am pulling on the cords I'm not supposed to touch!"

Happy HALLOWEEN

It's amazing how having a kid makes you feel more like a family. This is Dean and I's third Halloween since we've been married, but it felt so different this year having Tanner with us. We had so much fun doing some of our own family traditions. Of course we carved pumpkins. We fixed Navajo Tacos for Halloween dinner. We had to listen to all the songs from "Nightmare Before Christmas" (a family favorite). And we LOVED dressing Tanner up to go trick-or-treating. Obviously Tanner's a little young for candy, but we thought this would be a good excuse to go down the street and introduce ourselves and meet all our new neighbors. It turned out to be so fun. Everyone was SO nice and excited to meet us. They were all so friendly and we're happy to live here. We also really liked trick-or-treating at Grandma and Grandpa Nelson's, and at Great Grandma and PapPap Furin's. Tanner even got some things he could eat! And man did he appreciate that! We hope you all had a great Halloween too!

Here's our pumpkins all lit up

Here's Dean with the little monkey and our pumpkins

We're just about ready to head out trick-or-treating

Tanner had NO problem getting his treats out of this bag - I guess he'll do fine at Christmas!

Our monkey with his Great Grandma and PapPap Furin

Grandma and Grandpa Nelson with Tanner monkey

Pumpkin Carving

So around here high school football is more important than Halloween, so lots of the townships decided to push trick-or-treating to Thursday night to avoid conflict with Friday night football games. We had some confusion as to which night we were supposed to trick-or-treat and for a while we thought it was Thursday, so we panicked and rushed to carve pumpkins before trick-or-treaters came. It turned out it wasn't Thursday night, so we were relieved when our pumpkins were done with plenty of time to spare. We had a lot of fun carving them together with our little family. Tanner enjoyed eating cheerios and watching, and he REALLY liked the pumpkin we carved for him. You'll have to check out the next post about Halloween to see them all lit up!




And you can't have Halloween without roasted pumpkin seeds! Yum! They actually turned out even better than usual this year.

Home Sweet Nelson Home

Well, here we go on a tour of our new digs. Right now it's just pictures, but I took video too that I'll do my best to post before the weekend is over. Hope this gives you some idea of what it looks like. I've had LOTS of requests for pictures so here it goes...

This is the oustside -
we live in a trailer(on the right)with
a garage/laundry room/living room added on

We LOVE having a two car garage!
We also have a wood burning stove - we haven't used yet but it's a cheap way to heat the house with all the wood around here. And a HUGE laundry room.

Our kitchen isn't huge
but it actually has
a LOT of cupboard space.
We have all the standard
stuff and we even have a
dishwasher. Just a small disclaimer that it's a little cluttered in these pictures, but we were cooking a bunch in preparation for Mom and Dad and Jake to come visit.

Here's our living room and hallway.
Dean's snoozing on the couch and
Tanner's annoyed that I'm taking
pictures and not playing with him.

Here's Tanner's room. He's a big boy
and sleeps great in his crib! He
adjusted really quickly to our new place.

Here's a couple pictures of the bathroom.
We only have one, but that's fine for now.








































Last but not least is our bedroom.
We wish our closet was bigger, but we'll deal.

















So there you have it. We are living in a trailer - something I never dreamed I'd do, but we're grateful for a place that suits our needs and allows us to save up for something a little more permanent in the future.