This week marked a big milestone for David: he moved up to the Super Beast class at the Little Gym.  What’s so exciting about this class is that it’s the first class that’s not really a “mommy and me” class.  I was there the whole time, but I mostly sat against the wall.  David did a great job of following directions and participating.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our loved ones!  I’m sorry that it’s taken so long to update the blog.  (We’ve been a bit busy.)  We really enjoyed the holidays, although we really missed our Georgia family.  We celebrated Christmas with some dear friends on Christmas eve, and Paw-Paw and Gigi came to visit for New Years.

We’ve been really enjoying unseasonably warm weather.  This week in particular has been especially nice.  The weather has been ~72 and sunny every day.  It’s a little bitter sweet because we so desperately need the rain, but it’s hard not to enjoy it!

Ahh, recently, it’s been very difficult to get good pictures of David.  He’s really mastered saying, “No pictures, Mommy,” and waving his hands in front of his face.  As such, almost all of the pictures I have taken recently look like the following:

We have gotten a couple of reasonable shots, and please don’t let the lack of pictures fool you – David is still very active and adventurous little guy who is always up to something.  He recently got a hair cut and sat on the frog all by himself for the very first time.  He did great and even listened to directions.

David is really into fishing.  We’ve been reading a lot of books about fishing, and he pretends to fish all the time.  Here’s a picture of him fishing in the creek.

David LOVES train tracks.  Every day we create a new train track, and he’s been getting really good at putting them together.  Here’s an example of a train track design that he put together all by himself.

Some other recent activies include reading with Daddy:

Eating dinner with friends:

Swinging in the park:

Giving Mommy a foot rub:

“Building a campfire”:

Playing at the park with Daddy:

Happy Thanksgiving!  We celebrated with some dear friends and had a wonderful time!  On a somewhat unrelated note, here are a few recent pictures that Chris took of David at a park.

Thank you so much for coming to visit, Grammy and Grandpa Don!  We love you both, and it was so great to see you.  David really loved all of the attention.  He followed Grandpa Don around most of the time and said “I miss Grandpa Don” every time Grandpa Don wasn’t in his line of sight (like when Grandpa Don went to take a shower.)  During their visit, David provided lots of entertainment by singing his own rendition of “Sticky Bubblegum”  over, and over, and over, and over, and over …  We enjoyed taking a few excursions with Grammy and Grandpa Don, too.  We went to a few local parks, to the beach, and to the Hiller Aviation Museum.  We hope you enjoyed your trip, Grammy and Grandpa Don, and we hope to see you again soon!

On Friday, we went to the Goblin Walk in San Carlos, where the stores on Laurel Street give out candy to trick-or-treaters.  David had a great time and really enjoyed getting lots and lots of candy.

This week, David and I took our first trip without Chris – we went to Virginia to visit our friends Claire, Lin, and Eileen.  I was really nervous about the cross-country flights, but David did incredibly well on both the flight there and on the flight home.  We’re very thankful to Claire and Lin for making our stay so comfortable.  We had so much fun – and we really enjoyed staying in their beautiful new house.  It was great to meet Baby Eileen – she sure is a cutie!  Here are some pictures.

We’ve been getting into the swing of fall with weekly preschool and gym classes, but we’ve still found time to enjoy some less routine things.  Recently, we took David to Happy Hollow in San Jose.  He was finally big enough to ride the roller coaster there.  I wasn’t quite sure how he would react, but he LOVED it.  The laughed the entire time, and insisted on riding again. In fact, we rode a total of FIVE times before I managed to pry him away from the the roller coaster and onto something else.  Even as I’m writing this, he’s saying “I go back to roller coaster.  I ride that again.”  Here are a few pictures from our adventures in Happy Hollow.

In addition to Happy Hollow, we’ve also enjoyed a few other really fun and memorable times.  We recently went out to dinner to our favorite Japanese restaurant, where David insisted on drinking the miso soup with a straw.  A bit unconventional, but it was a very efficient delivery method.

David has also grown quite fond of playing hide and seek.  Here is a picture of him hiding with our neighbor, Madeleine, while Chris is seeking.  Can you find him?

We also went out to a chocolate festival in Belmont.  I was really concerned, because it wasn’t an event that catered to kids, it was late in the evening, and it involved a lot of chocolate.  However, the boys (David and his friend Ciaran) were extremely well behaved and enjoyed the live music and festive atmosphere.  A big thanks goes to Chris for watching and entertaining both boys all evening.  I know that I enjoyed the opportunity to slowly pursue the chocolate.

Here are some pictures from David’s recent adventures.

Throwing rocks into the water (note that he’s gotten really good at making a splash):

Helping Dad get money:                                                     

Doing the hula:                                                                   

Helping Dad build a play structure at Little Hands:

David’s preschool celebrated the beginning of fall with apples.  His teacher even brought an apple peeler corer slicer (which we’ve affectionately named an “apple torture” device.)  David LOVED it!  He peeled 5 apples himself (and he ate most of them, too.)  The next day, he woke up and said “Go see Teacher Lalaine.”  When I told him that we weren’t going to go to preschool that day, he replied “but cut more apples, cut more apples, please.”

Over the weekend, we actually had rain.  Considering that it’s rained for the majority of the summer for our family in Georgia, one wouldn’t think that rain should be newsworthy … but this was the first rain we’ve had in a long time.  David was really confused as to why we couldn’t go to the park to climb.  Instead, we passed the time by having bike races in the garage with our neighbor.

Sunday, Chris and I celebrated our 6th Anniversary by running a 10K.  Luckily, we had a beautiful morning without rain.  We both finished at around a 9:20 mile, too.