The Holidays of 2006 (in a nutshell)

Okay, so I've been pretty lame about keeping up on all the details that occured with our family after Halloween. I'm sure you were all checking back to see if I had updated the posting but kept seeing Jaxon's cute monkey costume. So, even though we are well into 2007, here is a quick update on everything from Jaxon's birthday to the New Year.

Turning 2...

Jaxon's 2nd birthday was much less eventful than his 1st I have to say. There were no balloons, goodie bags, a huge plethora of food from Costco, and no crowd of people in the house. Jaxon and I spent the day with his best friend Tenley and her mommy, Michelle. We took the kids to Victoria Gardens and let them run around. Lunch was had at The Yard House (I think) and we walked around and did some window shopping. After spending most of the day out there, we headed home in traffic to rendevouz with our hubbies so we could meet up again later that night at the Rainforest Cafe in Ontario Mills for a birthday celebration dinner. Unbeknownst to us, it was Family Night at Rainforest Cafe so there were many families with small children as well as a couple of birthday groups already there. After waiting for 30 minutes for a table we all filed in and sat down. Our waiter, a real moron, who probably should have been working at Chuck E. Cheese's happened to be training two newbies (lucky us). After taking our drink orders, which included a $7 Icee drink in large plastic container with a rubber gorilla in the bottom for Ian, he disappeared for what seemed like an eternity before returning with newbies in tow with our drinks. Instead of taking our dinner order, he left again promising to return right away. Of course, he did not. Long story short, we spent over 2 hours at Rainforest Cafe, not including our wait time for a table. For those of you that don't know, Jaxon's bedtime is 8 pm. If you do the math, we were way past his bedtime and it was becoming obvious as the night wore on. I fully intended to contact Rainforest Cafe corporate and complain, letting them know that they needed to be better staffed on Family Night and to let them know about the cruddy service we received. Still haven't done it. Oh well, you can't expect much from a restaurant that serves overpriced food in a jungle motif.

Jaxon made out like a bandit for his birthday and recieved a tee ball set from Uncle Jeff, Auntie Michelle, and Tenley, a ball, small toys, and of course CARS from the Harshbargers, and a ginormous Hot Wheels track, complete with motorized car launch from Grandma and Grandpa Kaplan. He also received the new Leap Frog interactive remote that works with your DVD player. We're watched the program many times and unfortunately, as a result, Zak and I now know the words to almost all the songs. I don't know how many more times we can "drive on an adventure" and "feed the piggy" grapes. Brother! The nice thing is that once he outgrows it, we can save it for the next one.

Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Dinner.....

Thank goodness Mommy knows how to cook. We hosted both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner here at our house and with a few exceptions, had the same people at both meals and the meals themselves were almost a complete carbon copy. (We're not picky about food here and if it's good, we repeat!)

At Thanksgiving I cooked my first turkey with much success with the help of my mom. See pictures below for the final spread.



Mom had been down taking care of Jaxon while Zak and I were enjoying being spoiled by the nice crew of the Norwegian Star on our cruise to Mexico. Thanks Mom!! Zak and I highly recommend cruises and you will probably find us on many more in the near future. Also, many thanks for Michelle and Jeff for joining us on said cruise while they ditched their child (Tenley) with her grandparents. All in all, the four of us had a magnificant time and probably each gained about 6-8 lbs from all the wonderful food we ate. :)


Zak's parents, my brother, Matt, mom, and stepdad, Bryan, joined us as did our friends, the Harshbarger's. Mark and Tina Harshbarger have become very good friends of ours since we moved to Corona 2 years ago. Mark and Zak work together and I must say are two peas in a pod. It's great fun to watch the two of them together, acting like 12 year-olds. Tina and I get along famously and they have two wonderful kids, Alyssa, who just turned 13 and Ian, who is close to being 11 soon. Alyssa and Tina have become my go-to babysitters when I work during the week and I am truly blessed to have them. Without them, my time at Brighton would have been very short.

Christmas was pretty much a rehash of Thanksgiving with the Kaplan Seniors and the Harshbargers with us. It was a quaint group and we had a nice afternoon/evening together.

Jaxon, of course again made out at Christmas but here is a picture of the culmination of GeoTrax toys he accumulated and has since taken over my space in our loft.

Everything else he received pretty much fell by the wayside once these were opened. (This is not to say that all other gifts that he received from those wonderful family members and friends that are reading this were not loved and played with.)

Mommy received a very nice necklace from Tiffany & Co. from Mr. Jaxon, see picture of "Blue box" being given below.

Daddy received a geek's paradise of video games, board games, and a year's supply of Best Buy gift cards. He also got a Playstation 3 thanks for luck and Costco. Thank you to everyone who so generously gave us gifts this year.

New Year's Eve 2006....

We went up to Sacramento this year for New Year's to spend time with my dad since we didn't see him for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. We had the usual plethora of food since that is the Nakayama way and the Japanese traditionally celebrate New Year's with a large feast. We saw lots of family and friends and had a nice time visiting with Dad and Coleen.

Zak and I managed to get away and have an "adult" night with our friends, Brian and Christine. Brian and Zak go way back to high school and lucky for us, have kept in touch over the years. We went out to dinner and then saw "Rocky Balboa". Overall, it was a good night and we managed to even stay up to watch the ball drop.

This pretty much sums up the latter part of our year. I celebrated my 30th birthday with very little hoopla and I still don't feel any older than I did last year or the year before. Maybe just a little bit wiser. :)

I know that we are already into March of 2007 so I will do my best to keep an updated blog for Jaxon this year and it encourages me to know that you all continue to check back, despite my lack of entries.

We hope you all had a great holiday and happy new year!

Counting One to Ten: Words of Jaxon wisdom

Today Jaxon surprised Zak and I by counting with us from one to ten. See, Jaxon has been very selective lately about the use of words and only in the past couple of weeks had a huge word explosion. Of course, being that he has been speech delayed for the past 6 months, we are ecstatic to hear anything the little urchin has to say that isn't "Ummm", "Ooooh", "Blkahidhektd", or something of the like.

Other recent revelations for him have been "Bob" for SpongeBob Squarepants (his new best friend), "Mine", "Eat", "Hungry", "Bau-bau", "Peerl" (for Pearl, our dog), "Cheez", "Apple", "Nana" (banana), "Go", "Feet".

Anyway, I digress. Jaxon counted with us, clear as day from one to ten except for skipping over seven which he seems to have a distaste for and jumping to nine. We're not sure what happened to seven but we will work on getting it in there.

On Saturday, Jaxon and I were naming body parts and he was reviewing ears. He pointed to his ears, Bauer's ears, and then picked up his stuffed frog, Pete and proceeded to look for Pete's ears. Puzzled, he turned to me and pointed to where Pete's ears should be and shrugged in confusion. I tried to explain that frogs don't have ears on the outside of their head upon which Jaxon threw his hands up and said, "Where'd they go?". I fell over laughing at his two-year-old honesty and for taking this so literally. Zak and I relish in these daily "priceless moments" and are having such a great time with him right now. Jaxon has turned in to quite the comedian and loves to play games with us and get into tickle spells with Daddy's goatee. He has become quite the little man and we no longer see baby in him any longer.

Mr. Sweet Tooth

Yesterday, Mr. Jaxon decided to take it upon himself to visit the world of chocolate. We had received a small package of Ferrero Rocher chocolates at Christmas and after eating a few, we put the rest on the counter and thought nothing of it.

Jaxon, on the other hand planned his line of attack and pulled the chocolates off the counter, into the living room, and on to the coffee table. All of this without Mom and Dad hearing a peep (of course we were upstairs, silly us!). I had noticed that it was a bit too quiet in the house with a 2-year-old lurking and decided to investigate. I came down and found the situation above. Since he had already skillfully unwrapped a piece, I took pity on him and he and I shared the chocolatey-goodness. See additional pictures for more chocolate fun.

I have to say that his gross motor skills are far above that of a 2-year-old and this kid has figured out not only how to unwrap chocolates but also has been unscrewing lids of all sorts (read: toothpaste and water bottles), opening doors with handles that turn, and artfully stacking small pieces of toast. What can I say? He takes after his Dad who is the master of video game controllers! Maybe Jaxon will be the youngest competitive video gamer. We can only hope he decides to avoid that road and actually be a productive citizen.