Sunny Arizona

What a WON-DER-FUL vacation! I could honestly leave it at that, but I know you'd rather see some pictures and hear a few of the details...

We flew down Nov. 4th and pretty much had non-stop fun. On the 5th we were able to be there for Cam & Sheri's sealing in the Mesa Temple (separate post to come). The first few days it stayed over +90 F so we loved being able to hangout outside and soak up the SUN. My parent's place has a great backyard with a beautiful pool, and we had a blast enjoying it. You should have seen Nick and Cam - they were like 8 year old boys running around, doing tricks off the slide, and playing all sorts of games in the water. Hilarious.

Nice action shot, huh!

I loved getting Nixon all decked out in his hat,
flip flops and sweet shades. Too cute!

We also decided to give Nix his first taste of rice cereal...

If I had to guess, I'd say he loved it...

ha ha! Yeah right.

My awesome Dad bought us tickets to go see the Phoenix Coyotes play the Pittsburg Penguins and the game was SO much fun! Nick and I were definitely cheering for the Penguins (umm hello... Sidney Crosby???) plus our buddy Melvin (who was also at the game) is best friends with the Penguins new rookie, Mark Letestu, so it was fun watching someone we'd actually met before. And the best part was that the Penguins came from behind to tie the game, go into overtime, and then onto a shoot-out where Mark scored the game-winning goal! We were cheering so loudly that it scared Nixon half to death and he started bawling....oops. After the game, Nick & Melvin got special passes to go down to the team area and visit Mark and see a few other players. Nick LOVED it (to say the least...).

The seats were super steep, but it was a GREAT view!

Nick, Nixon and I - first family NHL game

My parents after the game

Just chillin after the game waiting for Nick.
Nixon was O-U-T

One day we drove out past Apache Junction to see some cactus's (cacti?) and check out a quaint little 'ghost town'. The buildings were so rustic and they had a bunch of great little shops where I bought myself some authentic souveniers.

Nick, Nixon & I
ps. baby carriers are the BOMB.

The last 6 or 7 days of our vacation, the weather cooled down to more average temperatures for this time of the year (+70s) so we just relaxed outside, read, watched movies, did some shopping and ate at a bunch of yummy places.

Our last three nights were spent at Cam & Sheri Watkin's house so we had a blast hanging out with them. It was nice to just hangout with no agenda. Getting to sleep in, eat MORE great food (In N Out, Cafe Rio, Cold Stone, Texas Roadhouse etc....) and just spend quality time together was all a girl could hope for. Oh - and a bit more shopping ;) Thanks for showing us such a good time!

My Mom gave me this outfit, it was one my older brother,
Shane, wore when he was a baby (circa 1978). SO cute!

Nick & Nixon

Nick & Cam enjoying some 'Big Buck Hunter'

While waiting for a table we noticed this sweet picture and
were reminded of our good friends, Tyler and Erin. Ha ha

Cam & Sheri and Nick & I at Texas Roadhouse

Oh and ps... My baby travelled like a dream. He is amazing!

A Few Frustrations

So the other day I mentioned how sucky our Halloween weekend had started out to be and here's why. (Disclaimer: this is mostly for me to vent a bit....don't judge) Out of the past 21 days, Nick has worked 20 of them. And previously to that he's been working more than normal as well. Now this is not just a cushy 9-5pm job, but he's leaving the house at 5:30am and getting home at 6pm. Because his days are so long he's usually pretty tired when he gets home and doesn't want to do much. He usually ends up falling asleep on the couch by 8pm. I get it, I really do - and I appreciate all his hard work. But for someone who's home all day and just wants to spend quality time with her husband, it's been a hard pill to swallow. It's been tough feeling like I've had to do 99% of everything for Nixon and keep our home running smoothly all alone. I have so much respect for all the single moms out there.

Don't get me wrong - we are glad he's been busy at work and has been able to pick up some overtime. I know this job isn't going to last forever, infact he'll probably be starting somewhere else before the year's done. But.... it just gets a little lonely sometimes. I'm a big fan of holidays, and pictures, and traditions so I was pretty excited to be celebrating Nixon's first Halloween and had a few plans (which I had cleared with Nick). But when he got home from work on Saturday he crashed on the couch and said he had had a particularily tiring day and didn't want to go anywhere. Now a good wife would have probably rubbed his feet or something and said nothing, but I didn't. I'd really been looking forward to going to our ward activity to see all the cute kids in their costumes and to socialize with some of our friends. I wanted to have fun with Nick and get out of the house. I was really disappointed and didn't want to just take no for an answer, so we ended up getting into a huge argument and fighting about it. Needless to say we ended up just staying home and I was mad at him for half the night. Why?

I don't know why I have to be so stubborn sometimes. I hate that I got so bent out of shape and let the issue ruin my night. But I am thankful that I have a tender hearted husband who is a great communicator. I'd say that 9/10 times Nick is always the first one to apologize and be the peacemaker. After we talked later, Nick decided that he wasn't going to go in to work the next day. It was a double time pay day, but he decided that it wasn't worth it. When he doesn't work the weekends, we never fight. We just needed some good old fashioned time together and I'm grateful we had it. It was so nice to just have him around to talk to when he wasn't tired or edgy, and I wasn't worn out. We did infact, have a Happy Halloween.

Here's to learning from our mistakes and moving forward. As well, we are infact going to have a FABULOUS November. We are heading to sunny Arizona for 10 days to spend some time with my parents and visit some of our bestfriends, Cam & Sheri Watkins. It is going to be such a fun trip and I am SO looking forward to days and days of uninteruppted, restful time with my husband and son. Here are a few of the other perks I'll be enjoying:

Mesa Arizona Temple

A Hockey Game!

Phoenix Coyotes vs. Pittsburg Penguins
GO Crosby!

These are just a couple examples of my absolute favorite foods (found only in the glorious USA)

Hockey and Halloween

I know there are going to be about 50 million blog posts about Halloween in the next 24 hours, but too bad. Here's another one. But at least I'm throwing in a little hockey for good measure...

Nick is back on a Men's League Hockey team this year and couldn't be happier. That boy sure loves himself some hockey! A lot of his games are later in the evening so when Friday's game was at an earlier time, I decided to pack Nixon along so he could watch his Daddy play. It was fun to get him dressed in his new winter coat and his fuzzy mitts, booties and bear toque (I'll have to get a picture of that later...).

Watching Daddy play hockey

Getting a little tired.....

All tuckered out between the 1st & 2nd period - perfect time for a nap.

Nixon & Nick

We love watching Nick do what he loves!

Now on to Halloween. For reasons that shall remain undisclosed at this time, our Halloween weekend started off and continued along pretty sucky. Nick was supposed to work the whole weekend, which is super lame. But he decided to not go in to work today and we were able to salvage a little bit of the holiday spirit. After church we came home and had a relaxing afternoon while Nixon napped. I even had a cat nap myself. I was about to bail on the whole idea of carving pumpkins this year, but since I'd already bought them I figured I should get off my butt and just get carving. Nick was a little skeptical too, but we both ended up having fun.

The Voravongs invited us over for a delicious early dinner and we had a great time stuffing our faces with yummy carrot soup, homemade buns, and lots of other finger food. Thanks Bishop family for letting us crash your par-tay! After that we stopped by Nick's parent's house quickly and came home to hand out candy. Nick's mom stopped by after work to get her Nixon fix - and we loved seeing Nick's little cousins when they came by trick-or-treating. In the end, Nixon's First Halloween turned out pretty great :)

Halloween Family Pic

The fruits of our labors..

The fruits of Nixon's labors landed on Nick's pumpkin.... ha ha

Jaylin, Kyla, Nixon and Uncle Brad

Turkey Time

For Thanksgiving this year we headed down to Southern Alberta to spend time with my family. We got together with some of the extended family on Friday night to have treats and play games. Lots of fun, hopefully we can do it again next time :) It was SUCH a perfect fall weekend - not actually warm, but not snowy yet like it has been in past years. So we went down to Ryan & Jill's one night and had a big bonfire in their backyard. We enjoyed the crisp air, snuggled under blankets, and roasted s'mores. Yum!

Jill & Max, me & Nixon and Nick

Grandma Hull, Grandma Betty and my Mom

Levi & Dani (clearly enjoying their s'mores...haha)

Mmmm... marshmallows...

Since Ryan & Jill decided to bless their new baby, Max, that weekend as well, we were able to get together with Ryan's family and have one big turkey dinner together. Ryan's parents hosted everyone at their house and the food was delicious.

Nick enjoying his dinner
Nixon doesn't look too impressed with that grown up food...

Yum

Dani and her cousins had a great time (literally)
swinging from the trees and playing in the fall leaves.

Nixon's First Thanksgiving!

Nixon & Levi just enjoying some football

Some of our September

Yep. Still with the surprised eyes. Always.

I won't lie... I have been feeling pretty lack-lustre towards blogging lately. I've felt like this past month hasn't been overly eventful for us so I haven't been very motivated to blog. But it's the end of the month, and I don't want this to be my first month of not posting since I started this thing....so here I am. I thought that I'd just be posting a few snapshots I've taken of Nixon recently but as I got looking on my computer I realized that I actually had quite a few pictures from September, and even a few from the end of August when I went down to Cardston to see my family and meet my newest nephew. Enjoy!

New cousin Max (5 days old) and Nixon (3.5 months old)

Great Grandma Betty and Nixon

We went up to Waterton for an evening to walk around, take in the beauty,
and eat dinner at Zum's. Oh - and of course we got ice cream at Big Scoop. Yum.

Ryan, Jill (& Max) and Me (with Nixon in his stroller)

We got together with Nick's Mom's side of the family at the start of the month for dinner and to celebrate some family birthdays.

4 Generations of Gagnons: Nick, (Nixon's) Great Grandpa Cyrille, Nixon
and Grandma Teressa. Don't you love his little "tie" - Thanks Linds!

Andrea (11) and Kyla(8)

Olivia and her son Cairo flew out to Alberta to visit for a couple weeks, and I had SO much fun catching up with her, and just having fun hanging out. We looked at pictures and reminisced about the good old YSA days and went shopping with the kids. It's so fun that we are both married now, and have sons less than a year apart. And the good news is, her little family is moving back to Alberta next weekend!

Olivia, Nixon, me & Cairo

Kay and Melvin had a bunch of family and friends over to celebrate Bennett's 1st birthday and we had so much fun visiting with everyone and eating delicious food.

Bennett, Nick & Nixon

Finally a picture of Nixon and I where I'm ready for the day!
(don't mind the burp rag or the typical expression on Nixon's face)

The birthday boy and his plethora of presents!

Isn't this the cutest picture of Bennett & Kay? I love it.
(Kay & Julie did and awesome job on the Alligator cake, huh)

Some might think that at 4 months, Nixon was too young for his first haircut.
I do not.

His newborn hair was so dark and long, but the hair that's growing in now is
a lot more blonde and it looked really funny. So I pulled out the clippers,
and I love how much more even it looks now.

He can stand up in this thing by himself,
just needs a pillow to help with the wobbles.

We often hear slurping noises around our house, and it's because
this little guy is slobbering all over at least one of his fingers
ALL DAY LONG. Maybe he's teething?

Yesterday as I was feeding Nixon he up and grabbed the bottle and held it.
Then he took it out of his mouth and started trying to put it back in.
You better believe I'm going to be working on getting him to master that skill!