Home for the Holidays

Here is an epic photographic journey through our Christmas Day festivities, complete with pics of all Mac's gifts for grandma's viewing pleasure.

Mac mounts his wheels for the first time. This gift came courtesy of the nice man on craigslist who just wanted it to go to a good home and that happened to be right in our price range.

Mac's love hate relationship with the train set begins. He will laugh with glee one moment only to be in tears the next foiled by those darn magnetic train cars.

The power wheels is located in our snug living room and since Mac can't reach the pedal he entertains himself by climbing in and out of the car every few minutes.

Looking fun in the face and not backing down.

Mac and Cam at Grandma Patty's party where we finished up the day visiting with family and eating large amounts of pasta salad. Overall it was a great relaxing Christmas and though we missed seeing Grammy Nicole we're hoping she'll be driving up sooner rather than later to visit Grandson number two.

At long last

We are in the home stretch of our house project and should be moved in by next Monday, fingers crossed!

Trick or Treat

Mac's Halloween adventure began Friday afternoon at Cam's work. It was here that Mac discovered the joys of going door to (office) door and taking candy from strangers. Initially he found just as much joy in taking candy as he did in depositing what he had just received in the next office and starting over again. Eventually I did allow him to eat a piece of candy and at this point he smartly began to hoard his loot.

Here he is in his last-second home-made Bam Bam costume, dropping off his treats with Mom. We dressed up as the Rubbles from the Flintstones this year, mainly do to the fact that cavemen outfits require very little sewing and/or hemming.

At this point I don't think he'd even eaten any candy, instead he was enjoying a natural high from the spinning office chair ride.

Saturday morning Cam and I worked on the new house a bit and took some time to play in the leaves with Mac.

Then it was off to the ward trunk-or-treat where Mac got to hang out with his buddy Javin in his very cute and more weather appropriate monkey costume (note to self: the next time it's 40 degrees on Halloween avoid small cavemen costumes).

And finally to ensure a fussy-free Halloween car ride to Aunt Dana's house that night Mac was finally able to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Farm Boy

Mac is officially a lover of the farm life, (that is once he gets over his initial displeasure at being deposited there by his parents for a long weekend) trucks, tractors, (mini)cows, (mini)horses, dirt, chickens, cats, you name it and Mac loves it.

After the fall party at the farm, Mac and Lucy enjoyed a nice drive around the supermarket, while their parents enjoyed waiting a half hour for a supermarket sandwich slightly less.

A classic shot of Mac's joy at being held by grandpa Hatch. They happen to be good buddies but for some reason Mac takes a good ten minutes to warm up to him each time we visit.

And finally some shots of our family stroll around Manito Park on Sunday.

The house rises from the dust...

Mac and I recently returned from a late summer vaca to visit grammy and see old school friends. Upon our arrival home we discovered that we have some semblance of a new home standing in place of the enormous hole in the ground that we had left behind. Here are some pics of the vacation and the beginnings of our new home.

The Dunster Funsters Reunite in Deer Valley

Mac preps himself for a nice dip in the (not)hot tub.

He takes a moment to consider the situation...

And then decides he wants no part of it.

Lest you think I'm some crazy mom who dunks my kid or tosses them in not knowing how to swim, he's been in pools dozens of times and I was holding the silly little man the whole time. For some reason he decided that it was more fun to have mom continually take him in and out of the tub and when that ceased he let me hear about it.

Oh the joy, Mac discovers an electronic tractor in Park City.

Dad also deems this to be an excellent toy and suggests that we find one on ebay for the backyard.

These next two are a pre-vacation pics of Mac after he decided to try drinking dirt out of his bucket.

Finally the new front door is finished (minus paint).

Making way for the new house.

Digging a hole for the new house.

And finally the beginnings of a new house!