Merry Christmas!

We spent time with family......
We opened presents......
And we baked cookies for Santa....

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too!

The little tree

We finally put our tree up last night. After a long and enjoyable afternoon at IKEA where we were able to drop Anders off in the kid play area, we stopped by our local tree lot and found this cute little tree. (sorry about the blurry tree photo).

This year it was especially fun to hang the ornaments. Anders really got into the process and thought it was the best thing ever.

Tonight Chris' mom flies in from Cincinnati and I am really looking forward to a fun, relaxing holiday week.

Winter fun in L.A.

In order from the first pictures down...

We took public transportation today to visit Chris at work. In L.A. public transit is tedious to say the least. Anders was a real trooper! The third picture down was taken on Ventura Blvd during part of our journey.

The other day Anders and his little neighbor friend had fun being Spiderman. How hard is it to get a clear picture of Spiderman? Very hard!

Making marshmallow "snowmen" was a fun activity one day although Anders couldn't shovel them into his mouth fast enough!

Whittier Christmas Parade and other stuff

What a weekend! I'm sitting here enjoying some good Christmas music on Pandora rejoicing that the almost cold that I felt was coming on last night never turned into a real cold. (Thank you Zicam mouth spray...)

On Friday we Anders and I had to vacate the apartment to have a crack in our bathtub fixed. Chris rented a car so that we could have a car to drive out to my folks house while he did his normal work day. Anders and I ended up spending the night in Whittier and got to go to the 56th annual Whittier Christmas parade! Anders had a bit of a cold/cough but seemed to be on the mend so I bundled us up and braved the rain to get into the festivities. I have to say that there were a few parade entries that made it well worth our while including Critters for Christ, Isis belly dancing troop, some wierd Kung Fu group and of course many other eclectic hometown groups all who were deadly serious about this parade business! It was good to be back in Whittier.

I was also able to get a good nap in that afternoon before the long drive back home. On the way home Anders proved that he has picked up my knack for back seat driving. The whole way home he commented about how I should drive, entreated me not to hit any cars and told me that I needed my fog lights on.... The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

It's always good to get back into a normal schedule after a busy weekend and I'm looking forward to getting ready for Christmas, taking the trolley to the library and making play dates this week.

On another note I am very excited and proud of Chris for landing a new job! We found out on Thursday that he'll be starting around the new year and although it will be a bit longer of a drive the pay is better and there are some good opportunities for growth. He'll still be doing Audio Engineering but will be working much more with music instead of voice over. It really seems to be just the right fit for him and he is looking forward to the transition.

The pictures at the top are taken from a Facebook fan group of the Whittier Christmas Parade. My friend Kristy organized a fabulous group of fans to wear matching tees and cheer for the parade. Local parades need to have some #1 fans!

Ps. Quick add on here.... I got a ticket the other day. The first one in over 10 years. When the Police Officer was done citing me Anders let out a big sigh and said, "I love Policemen!!".

Thanks a lot kid!

Christmas gift ideas

I am looking at the Laser Level that I bought from Avon for Chris. Yes Avon carries laser levels.... I have to admit that I'm pretty excited to have found this particular item since we can't find the one that Chris' dad got for him a couple of years ago. It just up and disappeared. This one isn't as swanky as the first one but it will do the job. This was one of those gifts that was under 10 bucks but will be just right.

And no I'm not worried that Chris will find out because he doesn't read this blog! So don't any of you tell him!

If you are looking for some good gifts either for a guy or a gal go to my Avon site and see if you find anything worth while!

http://youravon.com/gretchenjensen

Persistency

Have I ever mentioned that my kid is VERY persistent? He will ask and ask again and not let a subject go until he is satisfied. Chris and I figure that it will be a good trait when he's the CEO of some big company someday.....

Tonight while driving home from picking up Chris at work Anders got on a "persistent jag". He wouldn't stop talking about some little thing and he was getting pretty demanding. I was starting to lose my cool very quickly so Chris looked back and said, "Anders, you need to stop talking about (whatever it was) now because mama is getting frustrated." (I love my dear husband who steps in sometimes when he knows I need it).

Anders replied, "But MAMA, PEOPLE NEED TO TALK SOMETIMES!!"

I think I'm raising a persistent extrovert.

Life moves on

Yesterday I realized that all of a sudden Anders is a "big kid".

He doesn't wear diapers at all anymore.

He doesn't need a high chair at restaurants (we enforced that for a LONG time).

He's talking all about everything and tries to get us to laugh. And he has lots of opinions about all sorts of things!

I can leave him alone for a minute or so while I take out the trash. Sometimes he even tells me that he wants to stay home alone instead of coming with me on errands. Of course that won't happen anytime soon!

The "little" potty chair now needs a new home.

In general I can trust him to stay by me and play safely.

I was so taken aback when I started listing these things off in my head! It's amazing how much easier life is when a toddler starts being a big kid. It makes me want to cuddle him more knowing that he'd be less likely to let me snuggle him up as the years march on!