Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner!

So this year I decided that I would finally try to make a turkey. I think that I was always intimidated by this rather large task and the added pressure for the turkey to turn out good! So I bought a turkey and had to go through the disgusting process of cleaning it and then adding some different spices (under the skin, double yuck!). Then I popped it in a bag, set the oven and the timer and prayed it would turn out good!

Here is the turkey in the bag all ready to go into the oven!

Turkey cooking in the oven!
Finished product (I was told to put it breast side down, so that is why it looks a little strange)! Even with it looking strange, it tasted good and let's just say we will now be eating turkey for two straight weeks in a row.
Thankfully we didn't have to eat the whole turkey because we had Brett and four of his friends over for a little Pre-Thanksgiving dinner, complete with mashed potatoes, corn, crescent rolls, sparkling cider, and chocolate pie! It was delicious! Mission complete. Here are a few things I learned through this turkey process:

1. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

2. It was as gross as I thought it would be.

3. This was a long process.

4. I finally got to have the turkey left-overs at my house and the bones to make soup with!

5. Last but not least, I will continue to let my mom make the turkey and I will just enjoy it :)!

To end on a much sweeter note other than a picture of a turkey, here is a picture of my sweet little man, one of the top things I am thankful for!

22 Months :)!

Our little boy turned 22 months today and we continue to see so many changes! Cayden is currently 33 inches and growing, and 25 pounds. He doesn't gain weight too quickly, probably because he is always so energetic! There is rarely a dull moment in our house! He continues to sleep well, usually 7 pm-7:30 am and still takes one good 2 hour nap. Cayden is still a pretty picky eater but he is starting to eat some new things including eggs! I was so happy when he started to eat eggs (oh the little things in life :)! )! Cayden has started to change his interests from Elmo to trains. So now we have to watch Thomas the Train instead of Sesame Street :)! He wakes up every morning saying, "All Aboard, Choo Choo"! Finally, Cayden is really starting to enjoy playing with other children. When we go a few days without having a play date, he starts to name off all his friends (our little social butterfly, must take after his Mommy :) )! I will leave you with this picture! I can learn a lot from this little boy . . . to enjoy life!! Have a great week!

A weekend to remember!

Sorry everyone, no pictures on this post and none of Melissa's fine writing because I am taking this opportunity to thank Melissa's parents, brother and Melissa for one of the best weekends I have had in a long long time! I (Matthew) am into the home stretch of this fall semester and it is going to be a doozy; but having the past weekend with Melissa and the "Weekend to Remember" marriage conference put on by Family Life was the best way I can think of to get my mind off of my studies right before hitting it hard to finish up the semester! Melissa and I had an awesome time of reconnecting and strengthening our marriage! I know many of our faithful readers have seen the fine job Melissa does with taking great pictures and keeping our friends and family up to date on our daily lives. I just wanted to quickly note how thankful I am for Melissa and the job she does of keeping both of our families and all of our friends up on our lives! She is a wonderful wife, mother and all around beautiful young woman and I am so thankful that God gas given her to me! Melissa may provide another more detailed update at some point but I just want to say thanks to Uncle Brett and all his friends for watching Cayden while we were gone, thanks to Stan and Diane De Yager for encouraging us and paying our way to the conference and thanks to Melissa for being my wife and my best friend! I love you Melissa! It was a great weekend and one I will remember for a long time!

Our Little Monkey . . . I Mean Train Conductor!

Wow! What a weekend we have had! It has been filled with lots of dressing up, Trick-or-Treating, family time, and of course the dreaded candy. We now have a entire grocery bag full of candy sitting on our kitchen cupboard and to be honest I might just have to end up throwing it away . . . there is just way too much. I will probably not be giving anymore of it to Cayden and I do not want to eat it all so that just seems like the most logical option at this point! Anyways it has been a crazy weekend but we also had a lot of fun making a lot of fun memories with Cayden.

So the first picture is of Cayden in his cute little monkey costume. Notice the dramatic tears and screaming. Hmmm . . . he didn't want to wear this costume. I thought that I would practice putting this on him and by the time Halloween came around, he would be ready to wear it . . . NOT! It was so bad that on Wednesday when I tried the monkey on him I was pretty much convinced that this would not work and we would have to switch up the costume to a costume that would be "normal clothing".

So after some last minute shopping and a lot of stress (for me) I came up with this little Train Conductor outfit! It seems to fit the stage he is in right now as he LOVES trains, so I guess it all worked out. And what a cute Train Conductor he made :)!

On Friday morning, downtown Glendora was doing there annual candy walk where all the little shops handed out candy. This was a good practice for Cayden to gear up for the real thing!

Looking at all his candy after the first half of the walk!
He pretty much became a pro at this and would walk up and say, "Trick-or-Treat" and take a candy . . . how do they learn so fast?

Some of Cayden's friends enjoying there candy (this was a good way to get them to sit for a picture . . . moms are pretty smart :)!!).

Ahhhh my precious little Train Conductor!
Still working on the candy . . .
"More Candy Mommy" . . . too bad I had to say no to that cute little face.
Walking to get more candy!
When Cayden was finished walking his friend, Jonathan, let him share his wagon! We had a lot of fun and came home with LOTS of candy!
Saturday we did some last minute pumpkin carving, Cayden was acting crazy!
Wasn't too thrilled about touching the pumpkin guts though!

The finished product, simple but it does the trick! (Sorry the picture is blurry and this was the best one . . . booo!).
On Saturday night our first stop was at Uncle Brett's house! Cayden was surprised that Uncle Brett was giving him candy!
With our Train Conductor!!
Feeding Uncle Brett some candy!
Awww . . . thanks Uncle Brett!
We then headed over to APU to one of the dorms that had trick-or-treating for kids. This was a nice safe place for us to go!

Still didn't want to wear his hat. . . so Daddy did!

Jumped right back in and got more candy!
He had a lot of fun doing this!
He loved carrying his pumpkin around and even when it was so heavy he still wanted to carry it! Putting more treats in his pumpkin!
A cookie to end the night with!
One more pictures with his friends!! What a great time we had!!!

The Sawdust Factory!

Today we went on a Pint-Sized Adventure with GUM (Mom's group)! We went to the Sawdust Factory and had a blast! We sent in our child's hand print last week and when we arrived, there awaiting us was our child's hand prints cut out of wood. We had already picked the projects we wanted to do so all we had to do was paint it and bring it to the different stages to create our beautiful projects.

Here is my little guy in his paint smock (the pretzels are to keep him happy, since he was unhappy about having to put on his paint smock . . . oh my child!)!

Working on our project (or Mommy working on Cayden's project)
Mommy and Cayden and cup of pretzels!
Here is a full view of his smock . . . my little Artist!!
He was thrilled when I let him take off the paint smock and play with the Lego's with Emma and Audrey!
Then on to coloring, I guess we will stick to crayons and work him up to painting!
Being silly . . . what a character!
The finished project! Super cute and super fun! I will have to go back there again for sure!!!

Fall and All Our Activities!

Once again it has been awhile, I have been procrastinating uploading all the pictures on my computer so I am a bit behind! I think it is safe to say we are entering the "cooler" weather phase and I am thrilled about this. There is something about getting to wear jeans again that makes me so happy! I also love being able to stay inside on a cooler day and not feel like I HAVE to go outside because it is sunny and warm out! Whenever it is nice and sunny outside I feel obligated to go out and I figured out why I feel like this. Growing up in Seattle where it rained all the time, when it was nice out, you had to take advantage of the nice weather. So when I moved to California where it is sunny a majority of the year, I have always felt like I need to take advantage of the sun and go outside. Needless to say, I welcome those cooler days where I feel like I can stay inside (even if it is partly sunny!)!

Anyways, I have realized that over the past few weeks, Cayden is starting to try new things. Although this is usually sports related, he has been trying other things as well, such as helping me bake or coloring, etc. This has been really fun to see as he develops his own little (big) personality and really start to play what he wants to play. So here are just a few of the activities he has been up to:

A few weeks ago my Uncle Del, Aunt Diane, and cousin Chelsea were in town looking at APU/visiting my other cousin Caleb and his fiance Ellie. So we went to the park and had pizza and played a wonderful game of Frisbee Golf, always enjoyable! Cayden of course wanted to play too so thankfully there was an extra Frisbee!

Trying to throw the Frisbee at the target . . . just like everyone else!
Cayden needed to help figure out the next hole!
Playing Frisbee with Aunt Diane!
Checking out the next target!
Daddy and Cayden . . . awwww!
Finishing up before it gets too dark! We had a great time visiting and catching up!!
Recently Cayden has been wanting to help more in the kitchen, so I let him help put the ingredients in . . . he LOVES putting the eggs in and always says, "more eggs please"! So cute!
Maybe this is his favorite part :)
Or maybe this is his favorite part!
YUMMY!
Thanks to one of my friends, we have discovered a new Train park-which is enclosed-love it! Since Cayden absolutely loves trains, he has a lot of fun playing on this one at the park!
"All Aboard . . . Toot! Toot!" (Cayden's favorite saying these days, no joke!)
They also have some great basketball hoops!
Looks like he is going to be Left handed, Matthew's dream come true!
Now it is time for Soccer!
First had to watch the train go by!
I think he just might be a soccer player someday!
What do you think?

Pumpkin Patch!

This past Monday (October 12) Cayden and I visited the CalPoly Pumpkin Patch with GUM (my mom's group). We had a lot of fun exploring the pumpkin patch and finding a pumpkin to take home with us. Cayden had a blast playing with his friends . . . he is my social butterfly :)! Here are some pictures!

There were so many pumpkins . . . it was like a sea of pumpkins and looked very cool!

Happy Fall!
"I did it" (meaning he climbed to the top by himself :) )!
Most of the children!
First walk through
"I want that one up there"
Or he just wanted to make it to Audrey and Emma :)!
Acting silly :)
Having so much fun!

This is his "dorky" smile and we think it is funny!

Playing with Emma, he had so much fun with her that day and followed her everywhere!

Mommy and Cayden :)
Running through the fields
Trying to find the perfect pumpkin
Instead he found more of his friends Elliot and Libby!

They were all being non cooperative in the pictures but this one was pretty cute :)
Sharing snacks
So funny!
We found a tractor for Cayden to play on, he LOVED it!
He thought he was pretty cool "driving" the tractor!
All the children played Red Light, Green Light
Green!
Still Green (I think for the most part it was always Green Light)!
We had a lot of fun, when I returned back home Matthew said, "that was the best pumpkin you could find?" It was a little lopsided but in all the chaos of chasing Cayden around the field I was unable to snatch up the perfect pumpkin, this will have to do for this year :)!!!