Birthday Celebrations

At the end of last month we had the chance to go to Victorville and celebrate Amanda and Wendi's birthdays. Had a nice relaxing time hanging out with everyone, opening presents and having some cake!

Ethan had a great time playing with Amanda's birthday balloon. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

Wendi made an awesome chocolate cake with raspberries and Amanda managed to blow out all the candles.

Grandma had a great birthday also. She got a whole bunch a FRIENDS DVD's for her birthday and now she has the whole set. Anyone who knows the Hodgson girls knows they LOVE FRIENDS and still watch them on a regular basis. In fact we often play FRIENDS Scene it at our family gatherings.


Overall it was a great time. The trip up there was much to fast, but it was relaxing. Here is to another great year to Amanda and Wendi.

Ethan turns 1!

Has it really been a whole year since Ethan was born?!? It has and boy did the kid party. In fact he had three parties.
Party number one: Ethan's birthday with his Grandma and Vis Avo (Portuguese for grandpa; Chris's family is part Portuguese). He got to go to Balboa park and ride the merry-go-'round and the train. He had a fun day!



Birthday Party number two: Ethan had his first birthday party at a local park in Santee. He had lots of friends come out to play.

He had a great time playing on the swings.


Ethan got a lot of wonderful presents and he was so greatful (he is currently working on his thank you cards. So if you were wondering where they are, they are coming soon. We promise).
His good friends Gabriella and Kainoa helped him open his presents. So cute!

Dad was the Bar-B-Que master. He made mean burgers for the party!

Ethan had a dinosaur cake. He seemed to enjoy his cake, but was a little reserved with the frosting. Mom had hoped that the frosting would get everywhere. I think he was a little timid with the large crowd watching him eat.


Auntie Sammy was the official photographer for the day. She did a great job. She will be an awesome photographer when she grows up! Click on photographer over there to see her blog!


Auntie Em and Uncle Walt where there as well. Ethan can't wait for his little cousin to arrive.


Grandma and Grandpa helped out a ton with everything. Thank you!


Don't think we forgot Chatzski, even she got to join in the party action. She had a blast chasing tennis balls all day long and getting way more attention than she could handle. It was a little piece of heaven for her.


Birthday Party number three: Actual birthday with mom and dad. Ethan seemed much enthusiastic about his cake (cupcake) with only mom and dad around.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY ETHAN! WE LOVE YOU!

Ethan's First Christmas

Well now we know what it's like being parents during Christmas. It's a lot of fun and a lot of work, we have a new respect for all parents. Even though Ethan is only 11 months old and didn't really know what was going on he seemed to have a great time, mostly just shredding the wrapping paper (we should have just bought him that).

We started everything off with a Christmas Eve dinner at our house with the Dufour side (Mom, Dad, April and even Jolene and David who we video-chatted with from Korea)

Not to bad for a tiny condo eh.

The food was great (of course).

We opened presents with Jolene and David over the computer (gotta love technology sometimes).

Ah, our little family.


And of course what's Christmas with one little mishap. We accidentally left our plastic cutting board on top of the stove not realizing the back burner was still on. So after a couple minutes we heard a weird crackling sound, and from then on the cutting board and the burner became one.


The Christmas Morning scene.

Ethan's first stocking.


Yes yes, we gave the dog a stocking too.


He seemed most excited about the food in the stocking.

And the big present from Santa was his Rocking Giraffe.





After Christmas morning at our house we went up to the Hodgson's for Christmas night where he got a rolling Giraffe (we didn't plan the whole giraffe theme, it just happened).

Ethan loved the lasagna we had for Christmas dinner as demonstrated by the tomato soaked hands.

Then on Friday we visited Ethan's cousins at my Aunt and Uncle's house. Elijah, Ethan, Westin and Bodie had a great time together (names in order from left to right).

Halloween

So we discovered what you do when you become too old to dress up and go trick-or-treating, you have children and make them dress up and get candy. And when they're just babies you get to eat all their candy (what..? We're good parents and don't want our child to have cavities before he's one okay).

Anyways, then you post the pictures online (poor kid never had a chance).
Ethan was a turtle because he crawls so much, lets be honest it's just cute. Chatzski was of course a Korean Taekwando Master because she has a crazy hi-kick, okay it's really because Jolene and David sent us an awesome dog-taekwando robe.

It's been a while

I know, I know all you friends and family out there who are mad at me for not posting in a long time. I'm sorry, but mostly I'm just disappointed with myself. Okay, so lets see if I can recap the last couple months, I guess that's pretty much all of summer.

First, I need to go back to before summer because I forgot to post a couple things.
For April's birthday a bunch of us went skydiving... Well ok, so we didn't get to jump out of a plane because of the cloudy weather. But we got to do the simulation wind tunnel, which I have to say, is really fun, and not as easy as it looks.Dad got the best face award for his flying Squirrel impression.




We were also able to see Shane and Karen Before they left us to go live with the French people. Good times were had by all. Check out their blog over on the right.
We're very serious rock stars.


Ethan took his first swim this summer. He's still deciding what he thinks about it, i'll let you know his verdict later.
My Dad turned 50 this June, so naturally we got him a wig and threw him a beach party.
Yes, that is him hula hooping, 50 and he's still got it.

Sam took some awesome family pictures of us.


Ethan ate his first solid foods, ummm liquid peas.

We hung out at the beach for Sam's birthday. We did not go as often as I wanted to, but we managed to pack the family up a couple time and enjoy San Diego.



Ethan went swimming a second time. I think the inflatable crab helped, but if nothing else it's looks fun.

Sam did another photo shoot with some props, man this kid should be making some money for us.
We also hung out with the family for Glen's birthday. That's basically it, I'm sure I forgot some stuff, oh well. The other big news that most of you already know is that I quit my job at the Ad agency. Now I'm running my own design shop; crazy huh. It's good, now I get to spend a lot more time with my family and I'm not working 80 hour weeks any more. If anyone needs design work let me know. www.du4designs.com