Christmas

Merry Christmas! We had a pretty good day today...as good as it could have been without Dave. Of course it would have been a million times better if we could have spent today (and every other day!) as a family.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took after Santa had made his stop at our house...


Not all of it would fit "under" the tree...


I bet Santa about passed out as he was blowing up that ball pit! *lol*

We woke up this morning and had breakfast and then we started opening presents. Dawson opened half a present and then he decided he didn't want to do anymore. So I unwrapped everything as he played with all of his new toys. As soon as I would get something unwrapped I would take it out of the box and hand it to him and then start unwrapping the next present.

Dawson loves his ball pit! He is so cute in it. He'll throw the balls around and sometimes throw some balls out of the pit, but then he climbs out to pick them up and then climbs back in.


He loves his new pillow with a picture of Daddy on it, too. He sleeps with the daddy doll that we got a few months ago. I'll probably sleep with the new pillow but I'll bring it out into the living room so Dawson can play with it during the day.


We stopped by my dad's for a little bit this afternoon to exchange presents and just hang out. (Ha! I wish I could just "hang out" when I go to visit family. I usually spend the entire time chasing Dawson around because he gets into EVERYTHING. Being at other peoples houses is really stressful and overwhelming most of the time. It takes everything that I have not to break down and start crying and we usually always leave early. I can't wait for the day that Dave is here and can help with Dawson so I can actually sit and visit with people. Of course when Dave gets back we'll be moving back to San Diego where we don't know anybody to visit!)

After we left my dad's house it was nap time for both of us. Then we woke up, ate dinner and headed over to my mom's to exchange presents and "hang out."

We both got pretty spoiled this year. It was hard to spoil Dave because there isn't a lot we could send to the ship. He did get packages from me and Dawson, my dad and Carrie and my mom and dad. He got some hand held games, jeans, shorts, a hoodie, a shirt, a pillowcase with a picture of me and Dawson on it, 3 seasons of Scrubs, mac and cheese and bacon bits, some sweets and other junk food... I'm sure I am forgetting some but he is extremely happy with what he got. :-)

I got a BEAUTIFUL KitchenAid stand mixer, a bread maker (I am totally making bread next week!), a cook book, a winter coat, a couple of cake/cupcake caddies... and again I am probably forgetting a couple of things!




Dawson got a ball pit, a chair, Fisher-Price laugh and learn vacuum, Cars ride-on toy, hooded towel, SpongeBob pillow and blanket, SpongeBob coloring book and crayons, V-Tech laptop, V-Tech hammer pad truck, Elmo cell phone (I was able to hook his cell phone up to the computer and program it to say his name, it's so cool! Elmo says "what's up, Dawson?" along with many other phrases), Elmo TV remote, barn shape sorter, an outfit with a cute matching coat, Elmo and Sesame Street look and find books, some little cars and trucks, LeapFrog learn and groove radio... I think that is all that we have at the house. We didn't bring any of the toys home from my mom's house because I wasn't able to carry them all in by myself, so they are going to drop them off tomorrow. (I wasn't able to carry in all the stuff we got from my dad's either, but my sisters were nice enough to stop by and drop everything off on their way home.) I'll have to write another post tomorrow and include a picture of all the toys he got from my mom's. Then Dave will know everything he got. :-) I meant to do a post like that after his birthday, I know I posted about some toys but not all of them so I don't even think Dave knows everything he got from his birthday!

I am going to have to spend a few days organizing all of Dawson's toys. I need to box up all of his toys that he has outgrown and make some room for the new ones. I was thinking about getting a toy box for his room, probably this one:


I want to keep half of his toys in there and half of them out in his play area (the living room) and then switch the toys out every couple of weeks or so. He doesn't play in his room so the toys will just sit in his toy box for now, but I will make sure to keep rotating them so he still has a chance to play with everything. This will keep down on the clutter in the living room and he won't get overwhelmed by having so many toys to choose from.

That is it for now. I hope everybody had a great Christmas!

New Words and New Tricks

Dawson has been learning so much lately! It seriously amazes me how smart he is. And I am also amazed by how many words he can say. He added a few more words to his vocabulary over the past week or two. He can say "shoes" and I LOVE the way he says it, it's so cute. I'm not sure if I should be bragging about this, but he can also say "SpongeBob" I really, really need to get that on video because it is super cute, too. He LOVES to watch SpongeBob. I try not to keep the TV on too much during the day, but when it is on, SpongeBob is usually on. And today he started saying "no." I don't know if I can count that as a word yet because he has only said it a few times so far. This morning while he was eating breakfast he started throwing his toast off his tray, I asked him to stop doing that and of course he didn't listen so I said, "No, no Dawson." And he replied with "No no no no no" How can you not laugh when stuff like that happens?! I don't want to encourage him saying no to me but it's so funny!

Another thing that he learned all on his own, I definitely did not teach him this... is to open doors. He has been trying for awhile now and yesterday after he got up from his nap I was in the kitchen getting lunch ready. I couldn't hear him playing so I turned around and looked for him in the living room...he wasn't there. So I started walking towards the hall and the office door was open. And there was Dawson, pounding away at the keyboard. Before he got up from his nap I was in the office so I thought maybe I had accidently left the door open, even though I knew that was highly unlikely. I know better and always shut the door behind me when I am leaving a room.

So a couple hours later I was sitting on the couch and I heard a noise in the hallway...I went to check out what he was doing and he had the pantry door open! I was totally shocked. You have to turn the handle and PULL on the pantry door. That seems hard for somebody who can barely even reach the handle! The bedroom, bathroom and laundry room doors seem easier because you turn the handle and PUSH on the door.

He tried a few more times to get some doors open but was unsuccessful for the rest of the day. But today he seems to have mastered it. He keeps opening the laundry room door. It's where the vacuum is and he LOVES the vacuum! (We got him a Fisher Price vacuum for Christmas!)

Here he is opening the door on video: (Yay! Blogger let me upload a video!)

I'll probably have a Christmas post up tomorrow night. :-) Merry Christmas!

Crafts

I can't really remember what crafts I have posted in our blog so I thought I would post a few that we've done in the last few months.

Fall tree

Then we added a turkey!

A different turkey.
A Christmas wreath.

And a Christmas tree.

As you can tell I like using Dawson's little handprints for our projects.

Letter from Santa

Dawson got an email from Santa! I printed it out so I can save it for him, but I thought I would post it here for you to see, too! I wonder if he is going to get everything that he wants... ;-)





Hello Dawson!!

Thank you for sending me your email all the way from West Jordan! I sure do love the Net because now I never feel lonely all the way up at the North Pole. An email from you, Dawson, really makes my day!

Well call me the King of Jing-a-Ling, Dawson! I can't believe you are 1 years old already! Are you getting excited about Christmas? Everyone at the North Pole sure is! Are you looking forward to Santa Claus visiting your home? Rudolph said he's really excited about visiting your home! I also hear you've been a REALLY REALLY good boy. (Of course, you won't mind if I do a little checking, will you? HO!! Ho!! ho!!).

Let's see what you put in your letter for Christmas wishes: 1. toy car; 2. ball pit and; 3. coloring book. I think that's wonderful that you are interested in books. I love them too! Of course, the only book I ever seem to have time for is my BIG, BIG book of who's been Naughty & Nice. HO!! Ho!! ho!!

Oh yes, before I forget Dawson, the elves really want you to visit my new blog! It is called Santa Claus' Christmas Blog. My blog is all about Christmas, life at the North Pole, and me, Santa Claus ! You can even write messages to me and see what others have written. I can hardly wait to see what you write!

HO!! Ho!! ho!! Rudolph wants to take me for another test ride in the sleigh so I better get going! The new sleigh is 'Internet-equipped' so I can even get your emails Christmas Eve when I fly around the world! Take care Dawson and don't forget to come back and visit me here at EmailSanta.com on Christmas Eve!! And remember... only 5 more sleeps until Christmas!!

With All My Heart,

Santa Claus

Risky Business

A few days ago we had a family Christmas party with my mom's side of the family. It was a lot of fun! I took my camera with me, but Dawson kept me pretty busy so I didn't take any pictures. I did, however, get some pictures of Dawson after we got home. I had him all dressed up and he looked so handsome!


My Grandma gave us this big tin filled with popcorn and Dawson had a blast carrying it around the house and playing the drums on it. I couldn't get him to sit still for a picture (of course!)


He's so strong!

As I was undressing him so I could put him in his pj's I realized that he looked like Tom Cruise in Risky Business...


I couldn't pass up that photo opportunity!


Next time I have him dressed up like that I am totally going to put on "Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger and get video of him dancing to it. :-)

Sesame Street Live

Me and my mom took Dawson to see Sesame Street Live: When Elmo Grows Up and it was AWESOME! I pretty much knew that Dawson would love it and that he would sit through it because he has been to 2 of my sister's musicals and sat pretty well through those. I think it's because he loves music so much and he loves to dance.

Our show didn't start until 4:30 and I was nervous about the weather all morning long. It snowed and snowed and snowed. I've never driven in the snow with Dawson before so I was hoping and praying that it would stop! And it eventually did and the roads weren't bad at all so that was good.

Before we left I made sure to bundle Dawson up! He wore his winter jeans (they have some extra insulation on the inside to keep his little legs warm), a long sleeve turtleneck, a long sleeve shirt over the turtleneck, his jacket/hoodie (he doesn't have a winter coat because they are not safe to wear while in the car seat, so I would have to take it off him anyway before strapping him in) and socks. Unfortunately I still haven't found any shoes that will fit his chubby (wide!) feet yet. Oh! I almost forgot my favorite part! He was wearing his puppy hat, too! He was mad at me when I first put it on him and was trying to take it off...


Once we got outside he didn't seem to mind the hat at all. :-) I tried to put mittens on him too, but he wouldn't let me.

After he was all bundled up we headed out. We had really good timing! After we bought our snacks and started heading towards our seats they announced that there was 3 minutes until the show would start. That worked out perfectly because I don't think Dawson would have liked sitting there too long if nothing was going on.

We had AWESOME seats. We were on the floor, right in front of the stage, row 4. I wanted really close seats because I figured Dawson would enjoy it more if he could see really well.

When the show started Dawson got so excited to see Elmo and hear the music! He started clapping and dancing, it was so cute! Even all the parents around us were looking at Dawson and saying how cute it was that he was getting so exciting.

Here he is really getting into watching what's going on. I guess I was pretty into it, too.


Look at that cute little face! He is totally into it!


I don't know how I didn't get any pictures of him dancing! Maybe my mom has some on her phone, at least I hope she does!

Here is what Dawson was watching:



During the break they brought out these Elmo balloons:


Dawson LOVES balloons and he LOVES Elmo so of course I HAD to buy him a balloon. A $10 balloon! He loves it though, so it was totally worth it. Since we got home he has been carrying it around everywhere and has even given it a few kisses.

My mom bought him a really cute Sesame Street ball, I don't think I have a picture of that though. He loves the ball, too!

After the break was over they started up the show again by singing "Elmo's World!" That is like Dawson's favorite song! He was so excited!!!


Even Dorothy was there! (His goldfish)


And Mr. Noodle...

And even his computer was there!


Some more pictures...


Dawson sat (and danced!) through the whole thing so well! He did a lot of clapping too. He started to get a little restless when there was about 5 minutes left, but I am so proud of him! I knew he would love it and I am so glad that we were able to take him.

Thank you Mom! :-)

Dawson's New Tricks

Dawson has a few new tricks! One I am really excited about (I'll save that for last)...the other 2, not so much. One of them he hasn't really mastered yet, but he is close and I am so not looking forward to when he really figures it out. I'm talking about opening doors. We have door handles, not door knobs and he has started turning the handles...it's just a matter of time before he realizes that he just has to push or lean on the door to get it to open once he has turned the handle. Hopefully he won't try to figure it out when it's just me and him here. Hailee slept over 2 nights in a row and every time she would go to the bathroom, he would follow her and try to open the door. If I ever go into a bathroom or bedroom I leave the door open so he can find me (he's always just a few steps behind me) so he has no reason to even try to open the door when it's just the 2 of us.

Another new trick...taking a drink of milk or water out of his sippy and then slowly spitting it out. He lets it run down his chin and he thinks it's pretty funny. I usually leave his sippy down where he can get it, so whenever he wants a drink he can get one. Now that he thinks it's funny to spit it back out, I want to make sure I am watching him every time he takes a drink. So now his sippy sits on the edge of the counter where he can see it and if he wants a drink he will point to it. As soon as he is finished I put it back up. He's such a little stinker!

And as of last night, he can now blow kisses!!! It is so sweet. I need to get it on video so I can post it on here. I've been asking him to blow me kisses for weeks now and I always show him how to do it, but he's never really tried before. Last night I was watching TV and he walked up to me and I asked him to blow me a kiss and he did!!! I was so happy that I cried. Twice! I don't know what it is about it, but it is so sweet. He gives real kisses, too and I don't think I cried when he started doing that. (Well, now that I think about it, I probably did, everything makes me cry.)

I'll get some video of him within the next day or two so make sure to check back soon!

Just Showing Off

Ugh! Blogger hates me right now. I was trying to upload a video and it just wasn't happening. It was "processing" for 2 hours! So I gave up and uploaded 2 videos to YouTube in less than 3 minutes! That means Dave can't see the videos, though. I'm not sure if he would be able to see them anyway because they are both over a minute long. I'll try to upload them to Blogger again in a few days.

So, anyway... The other night Dawson was being really talkative at dinner so I decided to pull out the video camera and see what I could get him to say.




Here is a list of the words he knows how to say...and he knows what they mean/are:

• Mama
• Dada
• num-num
• all done
• hi
• wow
• Santa
• dog
• right there
• that
• what's that?
• Nana (Grandma and banana...does that count as 2 words? *lol*)
• Kaka (Arika)
• Papa (He has said that twice so far when looking at a picture of Papa...not sure if I can officially count it as a word he can say yet, but I'm sure it won't be long)

I'm probably forgetting a couple...

And the list of words that he understands, but can't say is way too long to type out. He understands SO much!!!

The other day I was getting ready to vacuum so I was pulling all the chairs out from under the kitchen table and putting them in the living room. I told Dawson that I was going to vacuum and he walked over to the laundry room door (where I keep the vacuum) and pointed to the door. This gave me an idea... I decided to see what else he knew. :-) Oh, at the beginning he is playing peek-a-boo. :-)



He also knows to go to the bathroom when I ask him where the "bath" is. I don't know why I chose to say "potty" for the video. *lol* He knows where the potty is, because I always tell him "Mama has to go potty" and then he follows me in there. I can't wait for the day that I can use the bathroom by myself again. *lol* 4 more months to go!

Dubai

30 NOV - 02 DEC

Dubai was a little different than Bahrain , only a little. One big difference is there was no base in Dubai . There is only a little area on the pier called “the Sand Box”. Basically it was a spot with a pizza place, a Burger King, Popeye’s, Baskin Robins, a coffee shop and a couple of electronic stores that sold over priced, off-brand crap and boot leg DVD’s. It also had a stage for a band or DJ they brought out at night and a place to charge laptops and get on the internet. They aren’t the best but here’s a couple pictures of the sand box.



All of my time the first day was spent here. We got off the ship late morning or early afternoon sometime and I went over to get something to eat and get on the laptop for a little bit. The food was not that great unfortunately. They tried to make it like home, but the chicken had too much and different spices and the BK was plain. It was still better than the ships food though. Then I went into the trailer to get on the net and delete all my useless yahoo e-mails and text with Jamie some. The computer of course had some updates to get, too. Even though I was plugged into the net there it was slow! The estimated time for the updates on a 56k modem was a couple minutes & they were taking over an hour. So I went back to the ship and relaxed for a little while and napped. I didn’t have anything else to do so I went back and tried to get more updates, I was stubborn and wanted to finish so I think I was over there pretty late.

Then next day I got up at about 9 to shower and get ready to go on a bus tour. We ended up waiting for a guy that was wasted the night before and didn’t even end up going. So me and the other two guys took off at about noon. We had to take a bus from the ship to get to the mall where the tour left from. That was about 45 minutes from Jebel Ali where the ship was to Dubai where everything else was. We walked in and it was a huge mall like in the states really. Even the food court had the same places. I had probably some of the best Papa Johns I ever had before we went back to the ship later in the night. Here’s a pic of the outside of the mall.


The big metal tube going down is the inside ski resort that’s part of the mall. I’ve heard about it but it wasn’t built when I was here in 1999, most of the stuff wasn’t. It was pretty cool though. The tickets are about $100 though, it’s not that impressive! This is the view from the inside, as good a view I could get with the camera at least.



The rest of the mall was a mix of American Stores and local stores. They did have a huge toy store with some crazy toys. I know we have a couple Alligators for Dawson back home and I almost got him one but after I got a closer look I decided against it.

I know I don’t get many of me in here so here is a couple from the same toy store for you.


I would have loved to get the big Koala for Dawson if I could.

After eating at Chili's at the mall we headed out to the bus tour. It was a double decker bus with 23 stops along the city and you can get off and on as much as you want for 24 hours as many times as you want. They run about every 20 minutes. We didn’t know the last one started at 5 so we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked but we got to see most of it with a stop at another mall and Planet Hollywood for some souvenirs.

Just some random pictures of the city.



The mall where Planet Hollywood is.



And finally the worlds only 7 star hotel, we got lucky with the timing of the sunset here.


There were a few other things but I don’t want to over do it on the pictures, those are the highlights though.

We made it back to the mall we started at and took a look around some more and had dinner. Even after that I don’t think we saw everything in the mall. They love shopping there. I guess they even have holidays devoted just to shopping.

We got on the bus back to the ship from there and after settling in I took the laptop back over to the sand box to try and upload the pictures I took to photobucket since I have some pretty small limits for my ship e-mail. I think I got almost half of the pictures uploaded before I had to leave.

The next day I had duty so nothing to much to talk about. It was a very busy day and night since everyone was trying to drink all the beer in the sand box before we left. I didn’t get to sleep until sometime the next night. I think I was up for somewhere between 30-40 hours. I did get about 10 hours of sleep since we didn’t have to work until after noon the next day. I don’t think I’ve had that much sleep since before Dawson was born.

These things always end up longer than what I think they’re going to be. I hope they don’t bore you guys too much. Hopefully it won’t be as long between them for the rest of the deployment now. Speaking of that we are officially more than half way done now! There are times it seems like it’s taking forever but I think over all it seems to be going by pretty fast. Hopefully that keeps up.

Here’s one last picture before I go just for fun.

Silly Little Stinker

I've got a funny story that I'd like to share. Yesterday morning after I changed Dawson's diaper we went into the kitchen and I gave him some milk in a sippy and started making breakfast. He drank a little bit, threw the sippy on the floor and then started hanging on my leg. He was making it really hard for me to move around so I told him to go get his drink. He actually listened and let go of my leg! About a minute later I heard him giggling behind me. I turned around to see what he was doing and he was laying on his belly licking up a drop or 2 of milk that had dripped out of his sippy onto the kitchen floor. It was so funny! And his little giggle made it even funnier! It was a I'm-proud-of-myself giggle.

Little things like that (and many other things!) I hope I never forget. I'm sure as time goes on, I will forget and that's one reason why I love to blog!

All Things Christmas!

Dawson saw Santa today! He didn't seem to like him very much, but it could have been worse. At first he just looked up and stared at him and then we (my dad went with us) got his attention so he'd look forward for a picture. And that's when I noticed he wasn't happy. :-(


I picked him up after that picture was taken and then the lady asked if I wanted to try and get a better picture. I figured we might as well try. Bad idea. Right when I sat him back down on his lap he started to cry. :-( I picked him right back up and he must have been mad at me because he continued to cry and then wanted my dad to hold him. Poor baby. :-(

I thought he would like Santa, but I was wrong. He is usually super friendly and playful with everybody, even strangers! He did good, though. :-)

I checked Santa's List when we got home and Dawson is on the Nice List. That wasn't a surprise, he's a pretty good baby boy. :-)

While we were at the mall we stopped in the Hallmark store and picked out a new ornament for the tree. Actually Dawson picked it out. I love how he is able to show me what he wants and likes. He kept pointing to the Bolt ornament and since I was buying the ornament for him I had to get one that he wanted. :-) So far he has 2 ornaments. Last year we got him a Baby's 1st Christmas ornament and now he has the Bolt ornament, which is perfect because it will always be a reminder to how much he LOVES dogs even at a really young age.

These are not the greatest pictures, but here is Dawson's new ornament:


He did a pretty good job picking out his ornament, don't ya think? :-)

We left all of our Christmas stuff in storage in San Diego so I don't have his other ornament here but that's ok. We'll have our regular tree next year and I'll have all my ornaments back! I couldn't go without a tree this year so I bought a 4 foot tree and a few decorations for it. It's cute. And it's probably the perfect tree for us to have right now because I put it on the end table in between the couches and Dawson can't reach it. If we had our regular tree up, he'd probably pull the whole thing down 20 times a day. *lol*

I also bought Dave an ornament for the tree a few days ago. I think he'll like it. :-)


The snowman's face lights up and turns blue and orange when it's turned on. It's pretty cute...I mean it's pretty cool. ;-)

Here is a picture of our little tree. :-)


I also made an ornament for the tree. I forgot to take a picture of it while it was on the tree. If you look closely you can see it hanging towards the bottom...

Or I can just show you this picture that I took before I put it on the tree! :-)


The one on the right is on our tree. I gave the other one to Becca because she wanted to make them with the daycare kids that her mom watches and I didn't need 2 of them. :-)

That's it for now! Hopefully Dave will be sending me something to post about his stop in Dubai soon. :-)