Random Happenings...

Here are some pics from Jackson's first real encounter with Santa. Last year doesn't really count. :) Santa came to our MOMS club Christmas party on Tuesday night. I don't think J knew quite what to think of him. Here he is checking Santa out after he first arrived...


Santa had a gift for each kiddo - J didn't want to take his from him, so Mommy had to help.



It was a Mr. Potato Head!! (Daddy helped Santa pick it out.)


Here's this year's picture with Santa... J sat there for about 10 seconds and stared at him and then really wanted down. He didn't cry - just clearly wanted out of there!



Onto another subject - I stole my friend Rocky's idea and made holiday biscotti for some of our neighbors. I loaded Jackson up in the stroller last Friday and trudged through the snow to deliver it. It was actually kind of fun! By the time I got each of us all bundled up in our snow gear I was sweating and panting, so it actually felt good to be out in the cold. And my jogging stroller's big wheels just pushed right on through the deep snow. The delivering only took a few minutes, so after all of that bundling we stayed out to play in the snow for a little while longer. We are all LOVING the snow that we're getting!


And finally, a few pictures from my trip to Portland with my good friend, Aree. She's pregnant, too, and our due dates are less than 3 weeks apart. Jackson and her daughter, Evangeline, are only six weeks apart in age. She lives in Alaska and flew down to meet me in Portland. We had SUCH a wonderful weekend!! It was rainy, windy, and cold, but that didn't dampen our spirits.


We ate lots of great food (we decided to replace the cocktails we couldn't have with cupcakes), stayed at a wonderful hotel, and of course, did lots of shopping!!!

We both bought new peacoats on sale at Nordstrom. I can only button the top button on my coat right now, but that's okay. I still love it!

And our hotel had an artist doing free caricatures in the lobby one evening so, of course, we had to partake! It turned out really cute.


Now Phil, Jackson, and I are getting ready for our big trip to Florida for Christmas. I cannot wait to see my family, but I'm really nervous about keeping an overly-active 18-month-old entertained on an airplane for 3 hours at a time. At least Phil will be there to help - he's so good with Jackson. We were pretty bummed today when we looked at the weather forecast and noticed that it will be 82 degrees on Christmas Day in Florida - YUCK!! It's good to know the snow will be here waiting for us when we get back.

One last thing - just to document this: Jackson has been saying "Mommy" for about a month now. I guess that's officially his first word! We've been trying HARD to get him to say "Daddy" - Phil said it was a little discouraging the weekend I was gone to be called Mommy all the time! :) We think he might be getting the hang of it - the past few days he's been saying something that sounds like "Ya-eee" or sometimes even clearly "Daddy", but not consistently. Phil says maybe that will be his Christmas present from J - for him to walk up to Phil and say, "Daddy". Here's hoping! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Rubbin's Racin'...

Jackson and I have the opportunity to enjoy another guys weekend. Heather drove up to Portland to visit Aree and do some shopping. I took leave this weekend (it's a drill weekend) and we've done the tri-fecta here in Klamath Falls. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Fred Meyer have seen a lot of the Gilcreast boys this weekend. We got some snow last night and a little more today although it's not much. We were planning on making our first snowman, but we still don't have enough snow. So, we've been doing things indoors mostly. Jackson received a new toy from Santa and since we're not going to be here for Christmas, I elected to open it up and let him give it a whirl. Judge for yourself, but I think he likes it. (Thanks Papa Swoop and Nana Charlene!)



As you can see, the dogs were curious as well....

Jackson's trying to figure out how to get his new ATV unstuck. Maybe dad should rig up a winch...

Once he figured out the button to make it go, I couldn't get him to stop. He hasn't quite figured out how to steer, but we're working on it.

Ok I confess, I put his bear on there with him. He stayed on for <8 seconds but not before I could take the picture!


Jackson's lucky his dad is a borderline gourmet chef. He got a ham and cheese omlet with buttered toast. We ate like that kings that morning...

That night we enjoyed meatballs, spaghetti, black beans, and carrots. He didn't have much for the carrots or meatballs, but liked the rest.

Jackson loves Heidi. She's the perfect height and will eat anything he gives her (he likes to feed the dogs given the opportunity). I'm trying to nip that one early, but it's hard to keep eyes on him all the time. It's very tiring, I have a lot of respect and appreciation for what Heather does every day. Thank you Heather!

"Little Full... Lotta Sap!"

"This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Gilcreast family Christmas..."


We had SO much fun at our squadron tree-cutting party on Saturday. We were out in the woods, it was a gorgeous day, we had a fire and grilled hot dogs, etc., there was awesome hot cocoa to drink (thanks to my friend, Rocky), and lots of great people were there. We even brought Hank along and let him run around off the leash. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. When we first got there we just hung out around the fire and ate and talked for a while...



Here are my friends Rocky and Lana. It was pretty cold that day - we were all bundled up. Rocky's little dog was so cold and shivering that Lana put him inside her coat for a while to warm him up. He loved it!


Later we all wandered off and started looking for trees. You could pretty much pick any tree you wanted as long as it wasn't more than 20 feet tall and had a trunk less than 6 inches in diameter. Oh, and you weren't allowed to cut down a really huge tree and lop off the top of it. We also had to buy a tree-cutting pass from the forest service for $5. Phil, Jackson, and I wandered around near our campsite at first, but we didn't find any that we liked. Since these are real forest trees and not Christmas tree lot trees, they were a little more sparse and oddly shaped. So we ended up getting in our truck and driving deeper into the woods to walk around and look. We eventually found two that we really liked.


The first one came down really easily. Phil didn't even use a chainsaw - just a good, old-fashioned hand saw. I was very proud of his lumberjack-like manliness.


Here is Phil dragging the first tree through the woods back to the truck...

The second one (I wanted two trees this year, since they were basically free and we have two rooms to put them in) was a little tougher to cut down. It was smaller, but the trunk had a big knot in it that Phil had to chop through. He did it, though!

Here are Jackson and Hank just hanging out waiting for us to finish loading the trees into the truck...


Once we started loading the trees into the truck, we realized that we might have gone a bit overboard. They totally did not look that big just hanging out in the forest!! We were cracking up while Phil was stuffing them in the back of the truck to haul them back to the campsite. We put the biggest one in our friend's truck for the ride home.


Here is Lana with the tree that she and her family cut down. We were all dying laughing at how see-through it was. It's really hard to tell how the tree actually looks until you get it out of the forest and by itself.


Okay, then we get home and reality sets in. The bigger tree is almost 15 feet tall and the smaller one is about 10 feet. AAGGHH!! Next year we're totally bringing a tape measure with us. We had a real Clark Griswold moment when we got the big tree into our great room. The top was smushed against our vaulted ceiling and even with the twine holding the branches in, it took up way too much space. I was laughing so hard! After sawing about 3 feet off of the bottom of the tree and pruning back some of the branches, we managed to make it work in our room. It is still totally huge, though! I do love it, though, even if it was really hard to decorate. We had to hack off about 2 feet from the smaller tree, too, but it looks really pretty right in the middle of our front window.


So, all in all, it was a really fun, successful trip! Thank goodness I have such a wonderful, patient husband who is happily willing to accommodate my love of holiday decorating. He never complained once the whole day. Thank you, Phil! :)
(And thank you, Fremont-Winema National Forest for growing such beautiful trees!)
*disclaimer: The pictures don't do the trees justice. They are so much prettier in person with the little white lights glowing and everything.

Snowflake Parade

We went to KFalls' Christmas parade last night and had a great time. There were so many people there and Phil remarked at one point that he didn't know there were that many people in the whole town! It was pretty cold outside, so we bundled Jackson up from head to toe. Here he is sporting his new snow bib, boots, and hat for the first time. I was afraid he wouldn't be able to walk well with the boots and bib on, but he did fine and didn't seem to mind them.


Check out the crazy reflectors on our jogging stroller - wow! J was so snuggly in that stroller - he didn't make a peep or move a muscle. But we took him out after the parade started so he could see better.



Jackson and I were snuggly warm almost the whole time. I bundled myself up, too - complete with long underwear under my jeans and my new J.Crew snow boots from Mom and Becky. Thanks guys! I finally got to wear them! They were really comfortable and kept my feet really warm. Phil, however, was not so snuggly. He just wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a medium-weight jacket and about halfway through the parade he actually admitted that he was FREEZING! I gave him my scarf to wrap around his head and warm his ears. As we were leaving he said next year he would be sure to dress warmer! Here's Phil and J tasting a candy cane...


And check out this cutie-cutie all ready for our MOMs club meeting and playdate yesterday. He looks more like a little grown-up boy every day. I just love it. I can't wait til his brother is born and I can dress them both alike in cute preppy clothes - FUN! (Baby #2 is another boy for anyone who didn't know yet.) :)



Tomorrow we're going with our squadron up into the mountains to attempt to cut our very own Christmas trees (2 of them) right out of the woods! We've never done anything like that before and I'm so excited! It was going to be a tree-cutting/sledding squadron trip, but we don't have any snow, so it's just a tree-cutting trip. I think it will be a lot of fun. I hope we get two good ones!

Snips, Clips, and Thanks

Someone got a haircut from Daddy last night (Phil actually did a barber-quality job), but didn't want to hold still long enough for a picture of it! He held still wonderfully for the actual haircut, but then was on the run again. These shots were taken in between bites of cottage cheese and running around the kitchen island.


Here we are before church last week. J did not cry at all in the nursery this time!! Yahoo! Phil took him down there after the first song and he just sat right down and started playing. Oops, I forgot - he did cry a little right at the end when we came to pick him up. He was the last one in there and might have thought we forgot about him! This picture was pre-haircut. I like his short hair so much better! We'll have to clip it more often from now on.

Okay, one picture is obviously enough - now he's on the run again...

This is a great idea I got from my MOPS group. I decorate this dead branch with spiderwebs for a spooky tree for Halloween, and then spray paint it white and hang ornaments on it for Christmas, but I didn't know what to do with it in between those two holidays. One older mom at MOPS was telling us how they had a tradition in their family of writing down things they were thankful for on paper leaves each day during November, and then hanging the leaves on a dead branch. I thought it was a neat idea, so Phil and I have been doing it. Next year J should at least be able to tell us something to write on his leaves. I'm sure that will be a hoot. We have so much to be thankful for - it's hard to think of just one thing at a time to write on a leaf. Thank you to everyone who helps make our lives so blessed! Happy Thanksgiving!