The Potato Thief

The other day I went grocery shopping, it was getting late as soon as we got home and so I threw open the bag of potatoes that we had just bought, scrubbed some and got them in the oven first thing. Then I started putting away groceries. I found out a little later that Charlie had 'helped'. The little potato thief had got into the bag of potatoes and grabbed a few out and 'put them away' for me. Behold the spots we now keep our produce:

The lazy susan:

The drawer:

The diaper bag:

Now is this the face of someone who's naughty?

Nahhh!

O Christmas Tree!

The first Christmas that John and I were married, and had no money, and lived in Cedar, I bought a little 3 foot tall artificial Christmas tree for our apartment. We decorated that and we used it for the next 4 years. After all, we were going to head to one of our parents houses anyway for the week or so around Christmas, and it was just for fun and being festive. Then started what turned into two years of living WITH parents during the festivities, fun fun. So as we set out to decorate for Christmas this year we realized we had never ever bought our own Christmas tree!

So this year it was our whole family's very first excursion to buy our own tree. The first snag we knew we were going to run into is that John and I have very different opinions about what a Christmas tree should look like.

For me, I like the classic, see them everywhere, obvious kind of Christmas tree.



For John, his family and his grandma always had a different kind of tree, thus that is the one that looks likes Christmas to him. He likes this variety:



Before I spent Christmas with John when we were engaged I had never even seen that type of tree used before. I was not its biggest fan. To me it reminded me of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree:



Despite our differences of opinion we set off. We scoured the nursery for something we could agree on. Luckily, Charlie and I wanted this tree right off the bat:


And we got Dad on board!!!



Good thing Charlie was due for a nap when we got it home and it was time to decorate. I have a feeling he'd have been a little TOO helpful. We put it in this corner being hopeful that we can somehow seal off that front area from our little monster. We'll see how it goes!

When he woke up Charlie gave us his seal of approval. He thought the decorations were so lovely he wanted to pull them all off and put them in his mouth for closer inspection....

Good thing we got unbreakable ornaments!

Thanksgiving

We went to John's sister June's house for thanksgiving this year. This was Charlie's very first Thanksgiving that he got to actually be outside my stomach and eat the meal himself! June lives out in Nevada, close to Lake Tahoe with her family. We had never been out to visit them before, so it was a fun time. Cousins Samantha and Ethan were so excited to meet and play with Charlie. Charlie loves attention so he was a willing participant. June made all of Thanksgiving dinner for us and it was fantastic!




Charlie ate some sweet potato and stuffing and a little mashed potatoes, and made a large mess. He seemed to think it was okay, but what he really loved was the second night when we ate pizza, haha, he honestly ate probably 3/4 of a large slice of pizza entirely by himself.


After Thanksgiving we went and spent one day exploring Lake Tahoe and the shops and town up there. Evidently we learned that Lake Tahoe is the 2nd deepest lake in the US. It is deeper at its greatest depth than the Empire State Building is tall. That was really impressive to me!