Roche Children's Christmas Party

What a dapper little gentleman, indeed! This is my latest favorite sweater on Gavin, and my favorite part is that I picked it up on the "pass along" (aka, free) table at MOPS recently. So cute!
Here we're making a little reindeer craft out of a candy cane.
This amazing balloon artist blew up a "King Louie" (monkey) balloon for Gavin, after his request for a hamburger was kindly shot down. I think that the amazing creation just found the trash can yesterday after Gavin had popped every part of it over the last week.
I will never get this precious image out of my mind. This incredibly authentic Santa asked Gavin how old he was, and as usual he crossed his first two fingers and said, "two," to which Santa incredulously replied, "No, you can't be two." Perhaps the funnier part, though, was when Mrs. Claus asked Gavin his name when he was in line. Also the norm, Gavin candidly replied, "Dabin." Thus he was known as "Dabin" the rest of the day.
Is this adorable or what?! It would have been the picture on our Christmas card this year if we'd written/sent one, so here it is: Merry Christmas!!!!

Children's Museum

Isn't this a great picture? Brent caught this shot at the Children's Museum over Thanksgiving week when he was off of work all week. It was the first time--since his childhood--that he'd been, and Gavin and I had fun showing Daddy around.
Here's our little train engineer. It was a rare day to have this room so vacant!
He loves the train room!
A new favorite has become the little supermarket. Gavin fills his cart to the brim and stands in line to get checked out.
I assumed the role of cashier that day, and we had fun with that. Gavin has been practicing being a "gentleman" lately, so he let a little girl go before him in line, which was precious. That was a fun day!

Mountain get-away...

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of the "Hearty Party," we recently spent a night up in Frisco. Gavin's sense of anticipation was adorable to witness. For at least a week we talked about going to the mountains. He did really well up there, and it was nice to have a change of scenery.
We went on a little nature walk from the condo, and Gavin was in his element.
He thought it was fun to crawl along through the snow, and we took turns being afraid that he would slip on the ice at any minute. At least he doesn't have too far to fall!
There he is: our own little tree-hugger....and he wasn't even born in Boulder!
Here we are coming back from the nature walk, and Gavin is carrying a large stick he found along the way. I'm lucky that this coat will even zip at this point!

Just the three of us...

Gavin's latest favorite has been to hug us both at the same time and pull our heads together like this, so this time we took a picture. He's so funny! Totally on his own, he started saying to me recently, "I want to give you a hug with no arms." So he waits for me to put my arms to the side and then he gives me a great big hug. So precious! He's my snuggler, for sure. It's so hard to imagine that pictures like this one capture a time in our lives that's quickly coming to an end. Soon it will be "just the four of us!"

November snow...

I love watching Gavin in the snow! He does pretty well if he's really bundled up, but he often doesn't realize that he's freezing until it's too late.
How cute is he in Daddy's winter hat?! Maybe there's no need for him to have his own.

31 Weeks!

Ok, so judging from the title of the post, you can tell how far behind we are on this. We regret that we've typically been about a month behind even when we feel like we're "keeping up." These pictures of the pregnancy are so good to have around because they really show the process. Now I'm in my 36th week and looking significantly bigger than I did in this earlier picture. So we're closing in and still have no name for Baby Boy Koel #2 (and we're thinking that maybe he'll need a better name than Gavin's constant proposal: Baby Brother) so please send us all of your best suggestions. Don't be shy! We need the help. (I, personally, lean toward two syllable names that don't start with the "K" sound or have a long "A" in them....just to help you along in your process.)

Hangin' out...

I love all of these "Daddy and Gavin" pictures on the couch. I think that we could feasibly create an album of just these pictures.