Counting Down (and up) to Christmas

Hey Gang!

It looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day here in California, and we're relieved because we're heading over to My Aunt Lisa's house this afternoon to hang out, and it's no fun being stuck inside the whole time.

Before I get going though, I wanted to backtrack to last weekend, as I didn't get to mention what a wonderful time we had at Rick and Sandy's (Adam's parent's) house last Saturday night. We headed over there for a second Thanksgiving meal, and let me tell you, it was great! It's actually very funny, but Landon has become super attached to his Uncle Adam. Adam came over Friday evening to hang out for a bit and Landon really enjoyed reading and playing with him. In fact, when it was time for Landon to go to bed, he absolutely refused to go, crying out for "Uncle Amon" the whole time....it got to the point where Michaela had to yell from the back of the house "Adam, go hide in the kitchen. I'm going to show him that you left!"...when Landon came out to look for him, he got very teary-eyed to see that Adam was gone. Then on Saturday Landon was being his typical crazy self and since we needed to get him ready to go to Rick and Sandy's we told him that he had to behave if he wanted to go see Uncle Adam...at which point he was a perfect Angel child....so there's my shout out to Adam...congrats on being Landon's new flavor of the week...just another reason for you to move back to Sacramento when you can! ;)

Also, I wanted to give a heads up, I've mixed in a couple of pictures of Landon from a recent outing to the park with a couple of Christmas-centric pics. Hope you don't mind. ;)

The two big things that we managed to accomplish yesterday both involved Christmas, and both were immensely fun (for me at least). We started out the morning by heading over to Sunrise Mall to get Landon's picture with Santa. This is a wonderful Santa, and he's been there for as long as I can remember. Landon was extremely fascinated by the jolly old man, even though he really had no idea what was going on. This year Landon knew who Santa was and was very excited to go see him (the whole car trip in it was "Yay Santa!")...When we arrived there was already a huge line in place, so I took up my spot while Michaela chased Landon around the mall for an hour. Every so often Landon would cruise by and watch as the other little kids sat on Santa's lap for pictures...some were excited and happy, while others screamed their heads off!

When it was finally his turn, we could tell that he was a little hesitant to sit down with St. Nick. When he plopped down on his lap he had this look on his face like "Uhh...I don't know about this Mommy!"....but after a minute or two, he started to settle down, and while he won't always smile on cue, we ended up with a cute picture of him with Santa for this year.

The other big Christmas-type thing we did yesterday involved my very own Christmas present. We ended up raiding the Black Friday sales and I got a flat-screen TV that I've been dying to get for what seems like forever, and we're planning to mount it on the wall in our room next weekend. Anyhow, since we got the new TV, we needed another Directv box, so I managed to score a brand new HDTV DVR for our house at an awesome deal...and yesterday they came out to install HDTV in our house. Needless to say, I'm totally hooked on the new clarity and can't wait to watch my Cowboys play in HD later on today. Michaela thought that I was like a kid in a candy store yesterday, as I was patiently waiting for the Directv guy to come out and install it. I would get up and look out the front windows every few minutes (**okay, this is Michaela editing the post...it wasn't every few minutes that Dustin was getting up. It was every 15 SECONDS!), and even got to pacing back and forth at one point...Michaela finally told me to sit down because I was annoying the crap out of her. Oh well, it was my Christmas present and even though it came early, it was an awesome gift and I'm very thankful for my loving wife (and Santa) who made it happen!

As for the title of this post, I think the counting down to Christmas was fairly evident, but the counting up deserves a little explanation. So Landon has learned how to count to ten without being prompted. We have both been working with him on his numbers, and we can now show him a number 1-10 and he'll say what it is. He can also count (in order) up from one to ten...so that's pretty fun.

Other than that, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff to report this week. Our dog Jack had to go in for some surgery on his mouth, but everything seems to have gone smoothly and he's back at home and his normal self....although our checking account is still recovering (why does it always have to happen around Christmas time)?!?!

Landon has also been extra "lovey" lately....when I say that, he just has been more inclined to come up to both of us and say "Hi Mommy" or "Hi Daddy" and then give us a big hug from out of nowhere...it's a very fun little habit he's getting into, and makes my heart melt every time.

I think that'll be it for now...Enjoy the rest of your weekend and we'll see you soon!