Santa Barbara

Tyson and I took advantage of having Bridget around for a month and got her to babysit Nina so we could have a quick getaway to Santa Barbara. With the upcoming baby and school semester we knew it would be our last chance in a long time. We stayed in SB for 2 nights and couldn't have had a better time. The weather was beautiful and it was nice and quiet without all of the usual tourists.

Seriously one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The harbour

It was so cool to see the pelicans in action catching their breakfasts. I thought this pelican was pretty cool.

The cute little hotel where we stayed.

A great little seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean.

I was afraid of riding a bike by myself and being almost 9 months pregnant, so we rented this little beauty and cruised around for a bit.

What a horrible picture, but I guess it's the reality of my 34 weeks pregnant look.

SISTER WOOD

Here is my cute sister Bridget with her friends Kelly and Laura on the weekend of her mission farewell. She was called to serve in the Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission. We are so proud of her decision to serve a mission. She will be an amazing missionary. We will miss her, but know that she is where she is supposed to be and will touch the lives of many people. I can't believe that it was 9 years ago that I was in the MTC leaving for my mission.

Fun with the cuzzies!

My side of the family is becoming more and more fun as more kids are being added to it. (hint, hint K & J...no pressure) There is just something about having kids around that brings energy and life and noise, of course. Nina absolutely LOVED spending time with her cousins and can't wait until she sees them again. They had fun doing everything together for a week.

Here are the four cousins. We were attempting to do the impossible: get a decent picture of all of them.

This is how most of the pictures turned out....couldn't get them all to look/smile at the same time.

The morning tradition of breakfast in their pajamas. By breakfast, I mean picking out all of the marshmallows from their Lucky Charms cereal.

Nina and Billy

Tricia and Billy

Christmas Continued

I just wanted to put up a few pictures from Christmas morning....

The girls sporting some of our gifts.

The grandkids loved their pillowpets!

Billy's 1st Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010

Tyson was lucky enough to get Christmas Eve off this year, so we headed down to Castaic to enjoy the holidays. It was awesome because my WHOLE family was there, which is an amazing feat. We spent Christmas Eve at my Aunt Karen's house (a long-standing tradition in our family).

Nina was in heaven having her cousins around to play with. She absolutely loves her cousin Tricia and still talks about her every day. We need to devise a plan to get them to move closer. Iowa is just too far away!

The pregnant ladies: Betsy (boy due in May), Leslie (? due in April) and me (girl due in March).

It was so nice to have Mayer, Billy and Tom back from Columbia early so we could spend Christmas with them too. Little Billy is an adorable angel child!

Great Grandma Wood just loves being around all of the great grandkids.

Some of the cousins: Tricia, Squeaky, Billy, Madelyn, Nina and Haley

Halloween (I know it's a month late)

It really does feel like Halloween was a week ago to me. I swear the time is flying like crazy. Well, here's the recap of what we were doing over a month ago.

Getting set to carve pumpkins. Nina was interested for about 5 seconds, which didn't bother me. I didn't quite trust her around the knives. Luckily the Halloween Charlie Brown movie was on TV which kept her happy and let us carve away.

Here's my finished pumpkin and for some reason we don't have a picture of Tyson's. Sorry bud, you spent such a long time on it too. :(

We met up with Nina's friend Sadie at the mall for trick-or-treating. They were more interested in the candy machines than the actual trick-or-treating.

We ran into their friend Atley there, too. Aren't the three Disney girls so cute!

Belle, Tink, and Alice

Sadie met up with us on Halloween to do actual trick-or-treating.

Grandma Beth helping out with the trick-or-treating.

Grandpa was a trooper and manned the door while we were out. Thanks for doing that two years in a row!

*Side note about Nina's costume: She was supposed to be a chicken this year. I thought this was the last year I could decide what she was to be. I started making her costume and wanted to try it on her to make sure it fit. She took one look at it and started screaming "no, no, no". She wouldn't even try it on. Who knew she had such a strong opinion. Oh well, she ended up being a really cute Alice.

Disneyland with Grandma and Grandpa

Nina and I have been trying to take advantage of our Disney passes and it sure helps that Grandma and Grandpa have them too. We took a trip to Disneyland at the end of October. I just love all the holiday decorations and the Halloween ones did not disappoint.

Waiting for the Tiki Room. Grandpa was NOT excited to go, but Nina loved seeing all the birds sing.

Hmm...she begged to see Mickey but got a bit fearful when we got too close. I love the look of absolute terror on her face.

Jesse wasn't as scary, especially when Grandma acted as a buffer.

Nina thought this "Little Mermaid" carousel was the "Nemo" ride because she got to ride a fish. Worked for us because it probably saved us an hour of waiting in line for the real "Nemo" ride.

Disneyland really does seem magical and I'm glad Nina loves going so much. She talks about all the rides and even Mickey Mouse every single day!