Thanks Karyn and You're Welcome RIO

We finally made it home from Lodi late last night...after 8 exhausting hour in the car. And, we vowed not to make to do that road trip again ANYTIME SOON! It was all so we could take Rio with us for Christmas...(how could we leave the Good Boy in a kennell?? or with a stranger dog sitter?) I know what you are all thinking...such dedicated (ridiculous?) dog owners we are. He had a good time at the Conner house, bugging his cousin Sherlock (my mom's dog :) YOU'RE WELCOME RIO!!!

Luckily, for this trip, Aunt Karyn volunteered to take Hannah on the plane with her instead of us having to endure 8 hours of baby screaming to get out of her carseat. THANKS KARYN!!!

Church

We went to the Fairmont SDA church while at my parents' house in Lodi. Hannah even got a new dress from Grandma, and a BOW for her hair! She looked like such a grown up little girl! She was up to all her old tricks in cradle roll, climbing on the seats, etc etc.

Before the sermon, there was a special guest speaker in church. Stephanie Brown Trafton was the olympic gold medalist in the women's discus in Beijing. She lives in the area and she is a Christian so she was there talking about how she smuggled Bibles into China during the olympics! haha She was nice and we got to take a picture with her and even touch her gold medal! She is a big girl, at 6 feet, 4 inches and 225 lbs, she even dwarfed my tall husband!

Go Niners!

I got Hannah a little 49ers cheerleeder outfit to wear while up in 49er country for Christmas! Daddy was helping her practice her cheerleading and she was having the time of her life! Daddy got a workout, too:)

Hannah meets cousin Jake

Christmas Day our cousins Royal, Vikki, Julianne and Jana-lee and came over for a party. The Ahns were also in attendance, as well as assorted old people :) Jana announced her engagement to Richard (yeah!) and we all got to meet Julianne and Randy's son Jake for the first time. He is 16 months. I guess since she is my cousin that would make them....third cousins? Hannah showed Jake all her toys and they shared sippy cup germs and had a good old time!

The TRIKKE

My mom has become quite the infomercial shopper! She got Randy and me a TRIKKE for Christmas this year! If you have seen the commercial, it looks like it is really easy...but it is NOT, as we all found out pretty quickly.



You have to weave back and forth and lean back and use your legs to get it going. Randy is the only one who seems to have mastered it so far...but
we will keep practicing! Even my Dad gave it a whirl..a sight I will not soon forget :)

Christmas Eve

Our family is a little different from most...we like to open up all our presents on Christmas EVE rather than waiting until Christmas morning. Don't ask me how this got started. I guess we are just impatient! haha This year, pretty much every other present was for Hannah, but she needed a little help opening them. I think she had more fun dragging around boxes and ripping up paper than anything else!

New Ball

Hannah got to open a few of her presents early, basically because I didn't want to lug them up to Grandma's house for Christmas, and so the kids at the party would have some new toys to play with. Most of them are older than Hannah and I was afraid all her baby toys would bore them to death :) I got her a few things including a ride on top car and a stroller to push. So far her favorite is the $3 ball from Walmart. She loves it! I should have known...she seems to love all Rio's scummy tennis balls lying around the house and she likes to pick them up and take them to him all the time.

Here is a video of Hannah with her new bouncy ball! Merry Christmas Bug!

New Ball

Flood Warnings in Carlsbad

No sooner did we get our landscaping done, than we had several days of torrential downpours! There was a river running through our new front lawn :) Luckily it doesn't rain too much around here or we might have to think about redoing the drainage system. Hmm. things you don't think about while do-it-yourself landscaping :)

Landscaping

We decided our landscaping needed a little improvement. Randy was the chief engineer of the operation. He found a little nursery in Carlsbad called Plant Play where we got all new plants. We also had new sod put in the front and back yards, and had the back patio restained a terra cotta color with an acid based concrete stain. The whole project took us about 2 weeks and was A LOT of work. But it looks great now!