Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Part II

For the last two weeks, we have been basically snowed-in here in Portland. We got over a foot of snow, and church was even cancelled for both weeks. My parents and David came up the Friday before Christmas, and they both just barely made it in between storms. I couldn't believe how much snow we got! I guess it was the most snow in 40 years, or something like that. Even when we left to drive to Ashland yesterday morning, we still had to leave our chains on to get out on our street and to the main roads. Here are a few more pictures of Landon playing in the snow.

This was last Sunday, before we got another five or six inches to top this off.

Just after this picture, Landon came to the window with a sad, sad face saying he had lost his little rocket in the snow. We were worried at first that it may have gone the way of the blue boot that he lost at Grandma and Grandpa Malan's last Christmas that wasn't found until April when the snow melted. Luckily, Uncle David came to the rescue, and we had this picture from just a few minutes before with the rocket in hand. After a little digging, David found the rocket and was the hero for the day. :)

Merry Christmas!

For the first time since we were married, we spent Christmas day at our house with just our little family. It was fun to be there and let Landon and Davis just play and enjoy the day. For Christmas Eve, we acted out the Christmas story. Landon was excited to be a shepherd, but he wanted to make sure he had a shepherd's crook! The used wrapping paper roll came to the rescue and actually worked quite well!

Landon was very excited Christmas morning to see a train table for him and Davis that was "like Caleb's (our neighbor friend) but just a little bit different." He also was excited to see a small Wall-E in his beanstalk (a.k.a. stocking - he gets those words confused), but he wanted to know where Eve was. What was Santa thinking just getting Wall-E but no Eve? :)

Davis liked the train table too as it was just about the right height to walk around. He wasn't too into opening his presents. He liked climbing on top of them better! Landon loved the little table Santa got for him, and he wanted to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and do his new puzzle at it.

One of the other favorite toys was a ball-popper. We actually got it for Davis, but it was as big of a hit with Landon as it was with Davis. Here's a little video of the two of them enjoying it. What do you think, does Davis look up to his older brother already? :)

www.sjmalan.com/video/ballpoppingchristmas.wmv

Ten Months Old

Yesterday, Davis turned 10 months old. I can't believe how big he is getting! He is so fun to have at our house. Here are some fun things he's doing these days:

• He loves to laugh, and he even does this little fake laugh to get us all laughing with him.


• He has taken a new interest in cars, and likes to push them around on the couch and end table.


• He also LOVES to get into anything he can find. He unloads the drawer of sippy cups and plastic bowls at least three times a day, and he also likes to pull things out of cupboards. Stacks of paper are also a hot item; he grabs them and tosses them behind him, scattering a pile of paper before you know it (Literally! Before I even know what he's found!)


• He is very fast at crawling, and is getting more and more daring at trying to walk from couch to couch, or reach for one item from another to help hold him up!


• He still is saying "ah dah" (all done), and also is jabbering away more and more as he plays, although we have no idea what he is saying!


• He's a cheezer, and whenever he sees me pull out my camera, he turns to look at me and grins!


• He loves to eat, and to smear food all over his face and through his hair!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

We have had some unusually cold weather here in Portland this last week, and I've realized how babied I've been up here since moving from Utah as this week's weather has been in the 20's and it has about killed me. Saturday night, when we watched the news, there were predictions for snow, but when we woke up Sunday morning, there was nothing on the ground. Shane went to his early morning meeting (7am), while I was here getting the kids ready for church. During that time, it did start to snow, just small flakes at first, but by the time Shane got home the flakes were big and coming down hard, but still not much on the ground. We were making our final preparations for our 8:40 departure when at 8:30 we received a phone call from the 1st counselor letting us know that church was cancelled. If I had just known that two hours earlier I could have slept in a little longer! Shane had to get the Elders Quorum phone tree going, and before long, the whole ward knew church was cancelled.

So, we stayed home and after much begging, finally let Landon go out in the snow, even though the wind was blowing pretty hard and the snow continued to fall all day. When he was out there, he kept saying, "Dad, how come it's so cold out here?", or "How come I'm so cold!" Needless to say, he didn't last much longer than about 15 minutes out there (thank goodness for that!). Monday, Shane's office was closed so he worked from home. He went into work today, but there's another snow storm expected to begin at about 6 am tomorrow morning, followed by freezing rain, more rain, and then more snow again in the evening. Pretty much every combination of awful weather you can imagine.

Landon still wakes up each morning, and the first thing he asks is, "Can I go out in the snow?" I try to hold him off, but usually can't keep him inside much past ten. The poor boy doesn't have much to wear for this weather, so he has his rain boots on, sweats, and luckily, a nice coat and snow gloves. I guess we should invest in some more snow clothes for these very occasional storms!

God Jul!

About a month ago, Shane woke up with a bad back and a lot of neck pain. He set up an appointment with the chiropractor that same day. While he was in there, he overheard one of the employees say something in Swedish, and so he immediately spoke some Norwegian to her (Swedish and Norwegian are quite similar). The woman was excited to hear someone speak Norwegian so well, and even better, her fiance was Norwegian. She got Shane's email address, and over the past month, he has gone and done a couple of things with her fiance and practiced his Norwegian. In December every year, they have a big Norwegian Christmas party. Shane helped serve (thus the awesome chef's outfit), and we all ate some delicious food, danced around the Christmas tree singing Norwegian Christmas carols, and even had a special visit from Santa. It was a lot of fun, and we decided it would be a fun yearly tradition!

Beaverton Christmas Tree Lighting

On Friday night, we went with our friends the Lovelands to the Beaverton city tree lighting downtown. Neither of us had been before, so we thought it might be fun to try out. When we first go there, they were handing out free Whorton Hears a Who hats, so we all got one to put on. We sang carols, met with Santa, and then saw the lighting of the large Christmas tree.

All Done

At lunch today, I was feeding Davis some peaches and trying to decide if he wanted some more or if he was all done. I have been teaching him the sign for "more," so I kept asking "More? or All done?" I finally decided he was done, and said, "All done."

"Ah -dah" Davis echoed what I said! I wasn't sure, so I said all done again, and sure enough, he repeated it again. Maybe his first word?

Ashland Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we went down to Ashland for the weekend. I was going to say that for the first time in 12 years, we were all home together for Thanksgiving, but I can't even say that since Camille wasn't with us as she's in Chicago on her mission. Hopefully it won't be 12 more years before we make another attempt, but it might be. We had a great time playing together, and of course eating Mom's delicious Thanksgiving dinner! These pictures of us are downtown Ashland Friday evening for the lighting ceremony.

David put up Mom and Dad's Christmas lights on Saturday, and Landon went outside to help him. He now asks everyday when we are going to put up our Christmas lights! The boys had a lot of fun playing the Wii, especially the Olympic Games one.



All of us girls didn't just play all weekend because we had to work hard shopping! In this picture, we are all looking through the ads, making our lists and mapping out our route for Friday morning. We left the house at 5 am Friday morning and got home at 2, after visiting 15 different stores! It was quite the shopping trip! But we all got some great deals, and as Becky said on the way home, we were basically making money going shopping because of how much we saved!!! :)


The above pictures are of the boys playing in their "turkey bowl," and Landon playing in the leaves while watching the game. While they played, I was lucky enough to see Emilee and her cute three kids at my house. It was so fun to visit with her!!! We just wish we could have seen Dave too!

As you can see from these last pictures, we especially enjoyed having the two little babies around. Mom was quite the pro at taking care of both of them as it took her back to the days of the two little twinners, David and Camille. In the one picture, she has all her three grandkids tacklng her! I think Landon was laughing and the other two weren't so sure if they liked it. :) Davis and Kallie were pretty cute chillin' in their high chairs and double stroller together. In the high chairs, if one of them ran out of food, he or she would just reach over to the other one's high chair and grab some more! They seemed to get along pretty good, even after Kallie tackled Davis when trying to pass him while they were standing next to each other! We are so glad we could spend this vacation together and just wish we could have been with more of our family!