Happy Holidays!

We have had a pretty hectic holiday season. Thanksgiving was great – we spent time at Lady and Paw-Paw’s house with Aunt Monkey and Uncle Worm. We did some Black Friday shopping and got some new furniture for our new house. And we got all of the Christmas decorations hung – inside and out. Juan has always wanted to hang Christmas lights, and now that we have a one story house he was able to go all out – has to keep up with the neighbors! Grandma and Grandpa Ortegon have been in town for the past two weeks and Aunt Edith has been here for one, while Juan and I went to Playa del Carmen for our friends, Cassie and Brady’s, wedding. It was a very beautiful wedding and a relaxing trip, but after a week without our little man we were excited to be home. It’s amazing how much you can miss somebody! Things Mateo likes now: • Dancing! He dances like a rockstar every time music starts playing. I’m going to say he got this from dad – however I taught him to put his arms up. • Jumping – He tries so hard to jump. With all the determination he can, he squats really low, throws his arms back, and shoots upwards, but his feet never leave the ground. He doesn’t know though, so he looks so proud when he does it. It cracks us up! • Reading – His favorite spot is my lap. He will grab book after book, and he backs up into my lap and we can read all night long. • Pull toys – He still loves his pull toys. You can see in the video below he likes to pull multiple toys at one time. These are some pics we took trying to get some pictures for Christmas cards. I liked the one with the mouth full of goldfish! But it didn't make the final cut!

We went to the holiday parade a week ago. It was Mateo's first parade. It was nice although Mateo was more into people watching than parade watching.

Mateo likes to play on my exercise ball. Funny since it is the same ball I used to bounce on to soothe him when he was a little baby (a trick courtesy of Josie).

We are thrilled to finally have a gas fireplace that we will actually use. Our last house had a wood burning one and we never once used it. This one turns on with the flip of a switch and actually heats the house.