We had a lot of fun taking our Christmas pics this year. Jordan took our pics and got Tripp to smile everytime (no surprise there, the kid is pretty goofy;).
Tripp got to see Santa twice this year. This one is at a furniture store. Tripp even touched his beard. I think he was grossed out cuz his hand is still sticking up after touching it -like it was germ infested or something.
We visited this Santa at the High School where they had a free community dinner and all the kids got a present after sitting on Santa's lap. We went with Tripp's friend Gabe.
Something we've learned this year is that Tripp is way too smart and can find a way to climb up on to just about everything.
And that he loves egg nog milkshakes as much as we do. Look at the seriousness on his face. He wouldn't even share with us, the little stink! 
We went to a Festival of the Nativity a couple of weeks ago with Mike and Tina, and got to see Nativities from all around the world. There were a ton! We got to dress up in nativity clothes and get our pics taken. This was how it turned out:
I hope all of you are enjoying this holiday season. And good luck with 2010!
I didn't make the door large enough so he always hits his head on the top of the door frame.
other side window
Tripp has been playing with it nonstop. So if you need any gift ideas, get a big box. Inexpensive and lots of fun. Making this house reminds me of a house my mom made for us several years ago when my sisters and I were little. Her's was more blinged out than mine. She painted it to look just like a real house with flower pots under the windows and everything. I enjoy reliving those memories with my son. Thanks mom for the awesome idea! 
He reserved us a Luxury King Balcony suite. Man, that bed was huge! I couldn't even touch Randy on the other side. 
The first thing we did was play in the indoor waterpark. This is a pic of the kid area. Complete with a large bucket that dumps 1,000 gallons of water on children every few minutes. Yeah, we totally stood under it to get dumped on. The only mishap we had was going down the tornado water slide. When sliding up the sides and coming back down to the water in the middle, it creates kind of an entering-a-wake effect and my foot bounced up and hit Randy right in the knee. Hurt both of us pretty bad, but we kept sliding anyway. I have to say, I was really missing my baby when I was there. I kept saying, "Tripp would have fun on that." I even wanted to go pick him up from Grandma's so he could be with us.
My rexy hubby in front of part of the wave pool and other fun toys-that you can't really see in the pic.
As usual, very difficult to get him to hold still to take a pic of him.
He absolutely loves his sword. He chops and stabs everything with it, including us.
And our sweet trunk. Don't you just love my castle? 
Mike and Tina spent Halloween with us this year and were nice enough to man our car and pass out candy so we could go trunk-or-treating with Tripp. We also checked out our downtown street of treats where there were several live "scarecrows" lying all over the place in odd poses. Randy actually sat on one of them who was lying on a bench. It was pretty interesting.
Tripp's shield and sword pumpkin, to match his awesome knight costume.
And Randy's spooky ghost!
Tera, pretty sure my pumpkins are better than yours ;p! Now I must issue a pumpkin contest. Everyone needs to post their almost-as-cool-as-mine carved pumpkins. Good Luck!
Here he is taking a bath
We love when family come to visit! Can't wait to see you again!
Yeah, he really wasn't in the mood for his picture to be taken, hence the sad/mad face.
Now we'll see if he'll leave our cell phone alone.
We weren't feeling as ambitious as we were last year when Randy and I ran the half marathon. We ran the relay marathon which consisted of 6 legs of 4 to 4.5 miles each leg. Randy got us rolling with the first leg. He had to run up a hill and back down. (He's in the yellow shirt and blue socks, nice combo)
Tera (my sis) had the second leg. Which I think is the most beautiful one to run because it goes right through a park and along the river.
I hit up the third leg-the shortest leg at only 4 miles. We had a wrist sweatband as a baton to pass off to each other and after it had been on two sweaty arms I put it in my hair. Randy took this pic right as I was taking it out to pass it to Nick.
We were very glad Nick came at the last minute to run with us so we wouldn't have to run multiple legs. He ran the fourth leg which is the same hill Randy had to run (we went around the same course twice). Nick wanted to beat Randy's time so he started sprinting at the end and beat his time by a minute.
My mom, the birthday girl, ran the fifth leg (pretty one through the park). And we were so busy cheering for her that we forgot to get a pic of her running. so we took a pic of her at the aid station right after.
Joann (mom's friend) finished us off with the sixth leg. Here's a pic of her with our finishing time.
And of course we had to take a pic of all of us at the end. Tripp and Brielle were our mini-marathon support team. Way to go Team CHAOS!
Randy was able to talk Nick into trying the super hot sauce at the pretzel shop. This was the result: 
Another Ice cream shop 
We also decided we needed to eat some brats. Nick and Randy are sporting the jackets we got from the race.
We stayed in a cabin that had this awesome large chess set.
There were also farm animals there to look at. Tripp actually said "bock, bock" to the chickens. -first time he's ever said that. 
and the non-photogenic llama.
Tripp and Brielle ready for bed at the cabin