Thanksgiving

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my parents, 5 sisters their respective spouses, and 5 nieces/nephews. Originally Robert wasn't going to come because of an exam schedule the Monday right after Thanksgiving, but they changed the schedule last minutes (much to his chagrin), and he was able to make it down to Vegas for my favorite holiday!

Calvin and I flew down the Monday before to spend some time with my sisters and their kids who came down from Idaho. I hadn't met my niece Eliza yet, so I was glad we got to have some bonding time. Calvin hadn't flown since the end of July, and his new favorite noun is "air plane". He gets so excited whenever he sees an airplane, so I was hoping he'd be a trooper for this flight, and he was! His favorite part was waiting to board and watching all the airplanes.

We got to my house by about 7 that night and after dinner Calvin was wondering around from room to room and found Eliza's travel bassinet..... I walked into the room and found him like this. My heart melted. After I took the picture he turned to me (I thought he was asleep), and said "nigh nigh mama".

We went to the Bellagio, the Children's Museum, and ran around like mad women trying to prepare for the Thanksgiving festivities. The children also bonded, pushing Emerson around :)

Our Thanksgiving day always starts off with a 5K run. This year I broke my PR (23:40) and took 2nd place for my age group. It was a great feeling! Calvin loved the race, and ran some of the way. Once he got to the finish line he heard the music and wouldn't stop dancing; it was a classic Calvin.

The Thanksgiving Feast:

Since we weren't going to be together for Christmas this year, we had our "Express Christmas" evening. We opened up our Pajamas from mom, had our white elephant gift exchange, and then went to Ethel M's christmas lights. 

 This is about the best you can do with 2 3 year olds, a 1 year old, a 2 month old and a 13 and 11 year old.

It was a fabulous Thanksgiving and I was incredibly grateful that this husband of mine sacrificed a lot of study time to spend the holidays with us! 

The Happiest Autumn

This Fall has been one of my favorite Fall's since I can remember. Having a little kid makes everything so much more magical. I can't even tell you how excited I am for Thanksgiving and Christmas with this child.

Celebrating the season with Calvin and friends has been an absolutely memorable. We went to pumpkin patches, halloween story times, Fall festivals, Halloween parties, Trick or Treating, and 'Meet the Turkey" days at our local park.

Andelin Family Farm
When Collette and Justin were here the week before Halloween, Collette and I took Darwin and Calvin to a local Pumpkin Patch. It was so well done, and the kids had an absolute blast. They even had a "train" made out of barrels!

Somersett Fall Festival
Calvin was able to experience his first costume wearing experience at one of our good friends neighborhood's Fall Festival. Calvin's favorite part was jamming to the music, but he and Emmeline were definitely the cutest pumpkins in the patch.

Halloween Story Time

This gem of a picture is the best we could do with a 3 2 and 1 year old.

Halloween
Calvin and I partied in the morning with some jack o lantern quesadillas. Later in the evening we went to our friends house and had a little party after we took the kids trick or treating. Our parting consisted of a lot of festive treats, chili, and Halloween episodes of Brooklyn 99 and Community. We are wimps.

We do love our friends, and holidays!!

Rancho San Rafael Meet the Turkey
Our last festive activity (before it snowed and turned the seasons from Fall to Winter), was a nice run down to our local park. We were going to let calvin play and enjoy the beauty of the colors, but then it turned out there was actually a Meet the Turkey event. Calvin had a lot of fun seeing the turkeys, but his favorite was definitely petting the bunny!

Happy Fall Y'all!

Yosemite

Two weeks ago Robert took his first final of MS2 year. Wohooo! A few of our friends here in Reno invited us to tag along on their camping trip to Yosemite. We were 1000000% on board. Plus we (I) completely splurged on a hiking backpack for Calvin, so we pretty much had to go.

We got there on Friday afternoon and hiked to a beautiful waterfall. Side note- we thought we were going on an easy 1.5 mile little stroll. False. Every hike in Yosemite, no matter how far the distance is going to be STEEP! You've been warned. But it's completely worth it.

After our hike we got to our campsite and had a lovely time setting up. Calvin was in heaven running around and rolling in dirt. That was until he was crawling into his little camping chair and flopped over and gashed his head down to the school on the corner edge of a cement brick. 

We were very blessed. I am not going to go into all the details, but the clinic was closed and the angel PA heard about it and came and stitched up our little babe in the middle of the night, saving us a 6 hour trip with a bleeding child. That night, once we got back to the camp sight he fell asleep and slept like a rock until 7:30 the next morning. 

We had a fabulous following day, hiking to Yosemite Falls. It was a 5 hour hike and Calvin did fabulously. Our hiking backpack was COMPLETELY worth the splurge. It was incredibly comfortable and the babe even took two naps in it during the hike.