It's the most Wonderful time of the Year!

Luke's favorite pic of the 3 of us lol

Merry Christmas everyone!!  This year has flown by soo fast for us!  I love this time of year and all the feelings I get from thinking of Christmas' past and present and what the future holds for us with each passing year!  I had the opportunity to participate in my Stake's Christmas Concert this year which was so much fun!  I absolutely love singing Christmas songs!!  I was able to record most of the concert so that Luke could see it (he had to work a 15 hour shift that night) as well as family and friends that aren't here with us too.  I'll post the clip with my duet and trio on it since it's the shortest one out of the whole event (which is still almost 10 min long I think. And compared to almost an hour of video total, that's short) so you can see me doing something I love with some awesome friends :)  Just remember, it's a loooong clip so you can skip ahead if you want and I promise I won't be hurt :)

Christmas Concert (Duet & Trio) 2010 from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.





The week of Christmas was busy for us.  My friend Joy and I had started going to Hot Yoga the week before as a start to a New Year's resolution kind of thing.  I have developed a love/hate relationship with the practice, but I will keep going because I know it's good for me :)  We had a couple of friends over for dinner on Christmas Eve (Joy being one of them).  We drank 4 bottles of sparkling cider (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE that stuff?  Well, I LOVE IT! ha ha), ate pecan topped sweet potatoes (Thanks to Shelly for giving me that 3rd Ward Cookbook many Christmas' ago!),  ham loaf and cheesy (funeral) potatoes too!  Everyone seemed to enjoy the food too which made me happy :)  After dinner we played a game of Settlers and a couple games on the Wii, too.  All in all it was a fun night with friends and I'm glad we got to enjoy it together :D

Christmas Day at the Sullivan Home was most wonderful and I attribute that to our sweet little boy, Carlos.  It was his first Christmas and he was so fun to watch as he opened his gifts and played with his new toys!  We recorded him opening his gifts (see clip below) and watched him play with his toys (and the wrapping paper too ha ha).  We ate breakfast first before introducing him to his gifts, but once we did all he wanted was the wrapping paper until we traded him for a toy instead.  As of right now his favorite toy to play with is the activity table Santa got him.  We forgot to show him his stocking, but retrieved the toy car from inside of it later for him.  I also forgot to turn on the lights on the tree before we opened gifts and I usually have The Forester Sisters playing softly in the background, but forgot that too.  Oh well, there's always next year.





Carlos' First Christmas from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


Well, that's it for December and the end  of 2010!  Can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for us!  Love you all and see you next year! :)

my baby boy starting to walk at almost 8 months old

    

all about November and then some

Looks like life caught up to me and I am once again behind in my blogging.  Here's what happened in November for us.

The first half of the month was spent counting down the days until we left for our vacation to New Mexico to see Luke's family for Thanksgiving.  Carlos has been figuring out that he can climb up onto things lately.  I caught him doing so and took a pic to show off how tricky he is.

he knocked those wipes over so he could stand on them the stinker

Before we went on vacation we did a few activities with some friends.  On the 6th we went to the Laie Temple Open House with the Downer's.  We stopped for lunch in Haleiwa first before heading out to the Temple.  Here are a couple pics of Carlos showing of his latest trick: eating his foot.

After the tour we took some pics on the grounds.  Here they are.

this would have been a great pic if Luke hadn't decided to yawn

Carlos also turned 7 months old on the 21st of the month (holy cow, it's been that long?!?) I got to attend the rededication of the Temple on the 21st as well which was such a neat experience.  After the ceremony I had to come home and get everything ready to go to the airport to fly to NM.  We were in NM from the 22 to the 29th and had a blast while we were there!!  Carlos was smothered with attention the moment we arrived by his Aunties and his Grandma :)  He loved all the attention too ha ha.  We spent almost everyday over at Luke's Grandma's house and saw all his family almost every day.  Luke got to enjoy some of his favorite foods (since we don't get the ingredients out here in Hawaii for most of them).  We occupied ourselves with bowling, snowboarding and playing lots of games of Risk on the computer (oh and Scrabble too, but that is my LEAST favorite game in the world so I did not play that one).

playing Risk

hanging out with his cousin Zach

Crawling around in Great Grandma's kitchen
He loved that rug lol

hanging out at the ski lodge with Auntie Debby 

Thanksgiving day came and we got to enjoy quite the feast!  I stuffed my face with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed taters, rolls and then I made sure to save room for cheesecake and some apple crisp too (that Stephanie, Rachael and I made).  Carlos looked all handsome in his little sweater vest outfit I had put him in, but he had a diaper malfunction during his nap so I had to change him out of it before I got pics of him all dressed up.  The ones I got were still pretty cute though.

loved his socks :)

His cheeks were super rosy by the end of the trip due to the cold dry NM air poor thing.  He also cut one of his top teeth while we were there (for a total of 4 by the time we left) and a third top tooth cut shortly after we got back home.  Now he has 4 on top and 2 on bottom!  The flights to and from were not the most enjoyable with him, probably thanks to him teething.  Lucky for us we didn't have to be pat down or go through a body scanner this time around.  Won't that be a fun little addition for our next flight?....  Anyway, our flight out to NM was somewhat nice because we flew first class using our miles (even though my headphone jack didn't work for my seat so I didn't get to watch any movies), but the return flight wasn't so nice because our seats were messed up due to our flight being delayed.  We ended up being seated in the bulkhead instead of first class (don't worry, we were refunded our miles for that flight).  Bulkhead was still better than any other coach seat we could have had so I didn't complain too much, especially since my headphone jack worked so I was able to watch Despicable Me (LOVED that movie!).   Overall our trip was wonderful and much needed.  Can't wait to go back!  Oh and the day after we got back I spent some time unpacking the suitcases (of course). One of them was completely empty and I was about to take it upstairs, but decided to get something to eat first.  When I came back to get Carlos to put him into his chair I found him like this:

He wanted to play with the zippers on the front so I guess he thought it would be a good idea to climb into the suitcase to get a better angle at them ha ha.  He was quite proud of himself to say the least.


Now for December so far.  Carlos has been taking more steps on his own lately and has recently started to say "baba" alot along with dada and dadee and any other baby babble he feels like saying to us that day. We decided that he calls Luke "baba" since it's the closest to Papa.  Here's a video of him babbling and "walking" that we took this past Sunday.


babbling and such from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


He also does this weird clapping thing where he plays the slapping game with his hands (the one where you trap your friend's hand under yours and then you stack your hands over and over...).



"clapping" from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


He also loves banging on the boxes that are everywhere in the living room (makeshift barricades for the Christmas Tree and the TV center) like you would on a drum.  He is so stinkin cute!!  I love watching him play, especially when he thinks I'm not watching :)

Anyway, that's all I have for now.  Have a good one!  Later!