Getting Ready for Christmas

It was really fun this year to have Gavin help us get ready for Christmas.

The first step was decorating the house. We bought our tree a few days after Thanksgiving and Gavin was so excited to have a tree inside our house! We told him that he was not allowed to touch the tree or the ornaments and he actually did a really good job of listening! Every morning he would run out and ask us to turn the lights on, but he would never touch the tree!

Helping hang the ornaments.

Putting the star on top of the tree.

He needed a little help from Dad.

Hanging our stockings.

Our first year having a fireplace to actually hang our stockings from!!

Of course a big part of getting ready for Christmas was visiting Santa. Gavin learned to recognize who Santa was and would get excited every time he saw him, a picture of him or anything that looked like him. Luckily Gavin had a few different opportunities to go see Santa. He never understood that you had to tell Santa what you wanted. He would just climb up on his lap, look at the camera and say "cheese" and then want to get down. We would usually tell him something that he should say that he wanted.

Santa at our Ward party: Asked for a baseball.

Santa at Americana: Asked for a baseball glove, a truck, and a train.

Santa at Gateway: Asked for a dump truck.

Santa at the Grandparents: Asked for a baseball glove (left handed).

Giving Santa a hug!

Santa, his elf, and all the cousins.

We were definitely ready for Christmas!!

A much needed update

I figured it was time to post some sort of an update on here. When I sent out our Christmas cards this year I didn't even feel like I could put a link to our blog because I am so bad at keeping it updated. But I really do have a good excuse, which I will get to later.

We have been keeping busy and I have a lot to post about, which I will get to someday. Gavin is growing like crazy and keeping us on our toes all the time. We have definitely entered the "Terrible Twos"with him though. He has a mind of his own and is very opinionated about everything he does. I am grateful that I have Andrew at home with me everyday to keep up with him. I don't know how I would do it otherwise.

Andrew is still looking for a job. I don't think either one of us ever imagined that almost 7 months later, he would still be unemployed. It has been a very frustrating experience. He is looking for jobs all day long (using the computer ... which means I don't blog). He has had a few leads here and there, but nothing has come up yet. I am grateful to have him home all the time, but it would definitely be nice if there was a paycheck, insurance and a future career to go along with it! We just keep looking and praying and holding on to the faith that something will come up, soon. Andrew is enjoying the time that he has to spend with Gavin and they are quickly become inseparable. Gavin is always asking for Dad and I have to force him to spend time with me sometimes! Andrew is also having a lot of fun running and biking and doing other crazy adventurous things!

I realized that I never did officially announce my pregnancy on this blog, so in case you didn't know ... I'm pregnant! And just because we have had people ask ... yes, I was pregnant before Andrew lost his job. We found out I was pregnant just 4 days before he was laid off. But we are very excited and are having fun preparing for our new baby girl to come in February! This pregnancy has been a lot different than with Gavin's. For the most part everything has been really good. I am healthy and so is the baby. We have had a few ultrasounds and she is always moving around like crazy! I was really tired at the beginning and am starting to get that way again now. Andrew is so sweet and usually lets me sleep in every morning when he gets up with Gavin. It's been especially helpful lately because I am having a really difficult time sleeping as I get bigger and bigger. I have also been having really bad problems with my back and ribs. It is just on my left side and it wraps around to my front. In the last week I have had a massage and gone to a chiropractor, but neither have really seemed to help much. I guess it is just something that I will have to deal with for a couple more months. I am still coaching swim team. I plan on coaching up until the day I have the baby. I only have one group so I am not spending a lot of time at the pool. It is entertaining to hear the questions that my group of 7-10 year old boys ask me about the pregnancy though!

I think that probably covers all of the big things! We are having a lot of fun and we are enjoying all of this time that we get to spend together (although I think there are days when Andrew and I both could use some time apart ...). I know that when he does go back to work that I will miss having him around so much!

I really will try to post more updates. I have lots of pictures and fun things that we have been doing over the past 6 months or so!

Here are some pictures of our latest trip to Huntington Gardens.

Positano Day 5 and Travel Day

Our last full day in Italy was very casual. I think we all needed that!

Our hotel had a great continental breakfast every morning. They had a lot of delicious fruit, pastries, cereal, etc. It was also on the rooftop terrace which was beautiful. Here we are on the last morning, enjoying our breakfast.

The whole Positano group.

We then spent the day doing some last minute shopping and exploring of the town. Here we are walking down the street.

We stopped for some lunch at a small cafe. The pizza was amazing.

Here are a couple pictures of the streets in Positano so you can see how narrow they were. We were behind this bus and I was amazed how it was able to go around those tight curves. At one point the bus did get stuck and we had to wait while they found the owner of a car who had parked a little too far out in to the street.

These are some of the stairs that we would have to walk up to get from the beach to the hotel.

After a very successful day of shopping we had our last dinner in Italy. We went back to the "Happy Women" restaurant that we had gone to a couple nights earlier. It was a very cool setting with the whole thing dug out of the mountainside. They had the wine bottles coming out of the walls.

Unfortunately we weren't sitting underneath the big bell, but the owner would walk around with a small bell and ring it. Annette and Margaret posed for a picture with the "Happy Women!" guy.

This was the catch of the day that the boys all shared for dinner that night.

The next morning we had to wake up REALLY early so that we could drive 4 hours to Rome to get to the airport. On our way to the airport we finally figured out how to work the air conditioner in the van! We made it to the airport and we spent all of our remaining euros on Haribo gummy colas!! You can't find the lemon fizzy ones here in the U.S. so we stocked up!

We were supposed to fly to Chicago to Dallas and then to Salt Lake. Unfortunately when we got to Chicago there had been bad weather so they were delayed. We would have still made it out on time but a plane had hit some birds on the runway so we had to sit there while they cleaned them up. By the time we made it to Dallas we missed our flight by about 10 minutes!! It was the last flight out that night, so we were stuck there. Luckily the Jarvises got a hotel room right there in the hotel so we were able to get a really good sleep before we flew home in the morning.

I was both happy and sad to be going back home. We had a great time. A fabulous time. But I was ready to see Gavin!

Positano Day 4: Pompeii,Vesuvius and Naples

Day 4 of our trip we headed out towards Naples. Our first stop was in Pompeii. Pompeii was the city that was completely destroyed and buried by the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, in 79 AD. It was then lost for 1700 years! It was amazing to see everything that they had uncovered and what they have discovered about the people that lived there so long ago.

The first area we saw was the Forum. We then explored through bath houses and other various buildings.

Joe acted as our official tour guide, using his Rick Steves book. It was actually really helpful and had a lot of interesting information.

This area was a "fast food restaurant." The holes were the cooking areas.

I realized that I was exactly 14 weeks on that day, so I made Andrew take a profile pic of me to show the little baby bump.

Each little area was a separate home. Very small living areas!

I thought this spider web was very cool.

They had their own mini coliseum, their amphitheater.

Pompeii was very interesting. It was extremely hot that day and we were walking around for a long time, so it was a little miserable, but it was worth it.

We then drove up to Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano. Unfortunately with the really bad heat, being crammed in the back of the van, and driving up a mountain, I got pretty sick. I was really grateful when we finally got to the restaurant and I could get out! We went to lunch at one of the most popular pizza places in the Naples area. The pizza definitely didn't disappoint! It was delicious. You can also see the Coke Light can. We drank plenty of this on the trip. Andrew was also extremely happy because everywhere we went they had Coke Zero. His favorite!

We then drove the rest of the way up to the top. It was a beautiful view.

We then drove to Naples to spend a couple hours there. We didn't spend much time there, but I have to say that I was not very impressed. Maybe we just didn't explore enough, but it was pretty dumpy! We mostly just wanted to do some shopping. Naples is known for their handmade Nativity sets, so that was what I was determined to find. Unfortunately a lot of the shops were closed when we went, so we didn't have a lot to choose from. The shops were all in these alleys that were pretty creepy. I just made sure to keep Andrew close to me.

The Fuhr boys quickly got tired of the shopping. But they were good sports.

We did find a great Nativity set that I am in love with! So I guess it was worth it!

A couple pictures from Naples:

We then went back to Positano for a delicious dinner. We went to a place that we had been to before but the food was great, so we were happy to go back.

It was a busy day, but another great one.