Say Uncle!

It took a day or so, but finally Dan (my 16 year old brother) decided that Tanner was a fun little sprout. He even fed him, which was amusing for everyone. You can't tell by Tanner's face in this picture, but Tanner absolutely adored Dan. Dan could make Tanner laugh so loudly, even when Tanner was tired.

Aunt Whitney

Tanner finally was able to to meet his Auntie Whitney at the airport when we got to Salt Lake. We are looking forward to when she is able to visit (she definitely missed out on seeing Portland though, but this is just my own completely un-biased opinion) when we were living there.

Stowaway!

Hmmm, now here's an idea that might make traveling with a baby a little easier......

Actually, Tanner did fantastic on the flight to Salt Lake and again on the flight back to Seattle. Our little guy is going to be a great flyer, which is a good thing considering that his daddy is only 65 hours away from being eligible to apply for SkyWest Airlines!

Tanner's 1st Christmas (part 1)

We opened some of our presents here in our apartment before we left for Idaho, since we couldn't take most of the presents with us on the airplane. So, Tanner celebrated his first Christmas twice!
Needless to say, he was much more interested in our little Christmas tree and in the bags and wrapping paper than in the actual gifts. It was fun though.

rAnDoM aGaiN!

Don't worry, Nathan and I have not lost our sense of randomness!

Like Father, Like Son

Nathan and Tanner just chillin'.

Nativity

Can you believe it?? We were able to travel back into Biblical times to the first Christmas! Pretty convincing picture, eh? This is actually at our ward party where Nathan and I were asked to play Mary and Joseph, and Tanner was, you guessed it, Baby Jesus.

Hungry baby!

Without clothes and a bib, and With clothes and a bib!

No we didn't get fed up halfway through feeding and decide to strip the little man down. These are two separate feedings. We started mixing Tanner's rice cerealwith baby food a few weeks ago and he absolutely loves it. He also loves to try and eat his vinyl covered bib (not pictured here) and any leftovers that may be caked on. Sometimes he gets more excited for the bib than the food, which can be pretty funny to whoever is watching, but a pain to whoever is feeding him.

Kitty Litter Cake

My mom sent me this recipe as a joke (I think). I loved it and convinced the recipe group I get together with to have a get together with the theme "Things that taste better than they look." Our get-together was this week and I was told that my creation won. It really is pretty tasty, and according to one of Nathan's flight students, it smelled wonderful. I promised him that he could have some after the recipe night was over. What do you think? Doesn't it just look yummy and appetizing?
HAHA! Don't you worry, this genuine (brand new) pooper scooper will get plenty of use. Once we finish the cake we plan on re-using it as it was originally made for....since Tanner has recently discovered a new talent: sinking submarines in the bathtub!

Tanner and Aunt Sarah

Tanner loves his aunt Sarah! We all had a lot of fun when we came to visit. Hopefully next time Tom can come too! Can you see evidence in these pictures that Tanner definitely inherited Nathan's hairline?

Seattle Skyline

The Seattle skyline complete with a ferry, just like the one we rode on.

Ferry ride to Seattle

We took Sarah to see Seattle when she was here, which was kind of funny because we had yet to go up there since we moved to the area in September. We took the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle so that Sarah could see the skyline of Seattle at dusk (one of the prettiest sites in my opinion). Nathan had the brilliant idea that we should bring our car and just drive back, so we did. We took Sarah to see the Space Needle (we didn't go to the top though--we decided to wait until Tom could join us), drank carmel apple cider at Starbucks, and tried to go to Pike's Market, but it was closed for the night. We also saw the fields where the Mariners and the Seahawks play. On the way home we went to Ikea, which is an adventure in and of itself.

Santa's Little Helper

We received this outfit as a baby shower gift, but had yet to put Tanner in it. We decided to be festive and dress him up when we went and picked up Aunt Sarah from the airport, since she'd never seen him before!

Apple Pie

Here we have Daddy cutting apples for the apple pie filling, while Mom worked on the crust. However, Tanner didn't want to miss out on action so he fussed until Dad picked him up and let him "help" with cutting apples.
Note: no babies were harmed in the making of this pie.

Teeth

Well Tanner got his Christmas gift early...his two front teeth have already poked through! They are the bottom front teeth, and they just came in this week. The poor guy had to get 5 shots on Wednesday, plus battle the teeth. Now we are all a little under the weather with colds, but other than that we are doing well and keeping our heads above the water! For those of you who weren't aware, western Washington has received a LOT of rain this past week, and many areas were flooded. Our apartment, being in a forest on top of a hill though, did not wash away.

Visit to Portland

I'd been begging Nathan to go back to Portland for a quick visit and finally, the 1st week in November, he was able to sneak away from work for a couple of days.
It was so much fun visiting our old ward and seeing friends and family--I felt like we were back home again. The picture of the two boys is Tanner and his cousin Grant. Grant is the one on the right in the plaid shirt. he is actually 3 1/2 weeks older than Tanner but right now Tanner outweighs him.

Little Pumpkin

Nathan's sister Kiersten gave us this adorable costume for Tanner, so we had to dress him up. We actually dressed him in it for our ward party on Friday, and then again for Halloween. Our Halloween wasn't too exciting, but it was fun. Nathan didn't have to work, which was great--we were able to do whatever we wanted, which actually felt really strange. We ended up visiting a few people in our ward (aka taking Tanner trick-or-treating), and we rented a movie to watch. We realized we hadn't gone out and rented a movie since way before Tanner was born! We decided to rent "Suits on the Loose," which actually turned out to be rather comical and amusing. Overall I think we all enjoyed our Halloween.

Rice Cereal

Tanner was fascinated with sitting on Nathan's lap and watching Nathan eat, so we seized what seemed like a good opportnity and introduced him to rice cereal--which we've been wanting to do soon. We couldn't believe how much he liked it--he was ready for more of the stuff. Hopefully he will be a good eater for us! Anyway, we didn't actually let him feed himself, but we did let him hold the spoon, and put his hands in his mouth, which is how the cereal ended up all over his face!

Mommy's Favorite outfit!!!

We were given this outfit from some friends of ours, and I just love it. I think it's so cute! Plus I found Tanner some shoes at a yard sale in Tacoma yesterday. Yep, Tanner and I made it to Tacoma all by ourselves! Anyway, Tanner's not used to denim yet, so he doesn't like it all that much....oh, this outfit has a matching jacket, too, but he isn't wearing it here (obviously!)

On a roll

Just thought I'd make a note on here that Tanner worke hard all of last week trying to roll over from his back to his tummy, and on Friday (October 20th) he finally did it! This morning Nathan woke me up and told me that Tanner was rolling over--and doing it a lot and doing it well--and he thought i might want to come join him and his parents watch Tanner. This weekend he also learned how to put his toes in his mouth! From the looks of it, he must have pretty yummy toes!

Our little chub

This picture does a good job at showing off Tanner's cute smile, as well as his chubby legs. So what do you think, does he look more like me or Nathan? We can't see either of us in him--can you?

We love...our shirts!

When I went to NYC in February, I bought Nathan and myself "I Heart NY" shirts, and then proceeded to look all over the city for a onesie that matched the shirts. I finally found one in Chinatown! Anyway, I was excited to wear our matching shirts and get a picture, which we did.

Tanner and Callie

Here is Tanner with his friend Callie. They are ony 10 days apart but he looks huge compared to her! Tanner is the one in blue, on the left :-)

Reading Fundamentals

Here is Tanner with his Auntie Natalie, who
came and spent a weekend with us in August. We all had a lot of fun, and Tanner enjoyed being doted on by his 2nd mommy. Natalie even taught Tanner to read, as you can see here, where she is reading him one of the best books ever--If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!

rAnDoM

At BYU-Idaho Nathan and I had several friends tell us that we were the most random people they knew, so when we found this shirt even before 'Corndog' was born, we knew we had to get it. Stay tuned to see the other one we got him when he is a tad bit bigger.....

Never a dull moment

When we were sitting in the doctor's office shortly after Tanner was born, Nathan received a phone call from a flight-training company he had been trying to get a job with for over a year. They were calling to offer him a job! However, this meant flying back to Jacksonville, FL for training, and then staying there for as long as was necessary until there was an opening at one of their offices (they are a nationwide company, so it could have been anywhere in the U.S.). So, as if things weren't already a little hectic with a new baby, on August 6th they got more hectic when Nathan left for Florida, and Tanner and I stayed behind in Portland. We feel incredibly blessed, because he was only in Florida for 11 days, since there was an opening in their Seattle office (the same office we were hoping for because it was so close to Portland) while he was there. However, Nathan had to start work in Seattle almost immediately, so he was up there while I stayed in Portland until we were able to find an apartment in Seattle.

We moved up to Gig Harbor the 2nd week of September and it has been wonderful being together. We never realized how much we took being together for granted until we were apart for almost a month. It is very pretty here, especially down by the Puget Sound. We also get to go across the enormous Narrows bridge a lot, which is fun for me, being from Idaho--where the only bridge to cross is over the Snake River.

More of baby Tanner

We were so excited to meet Tanner we just kept taking pictures of him. Here are some of them...

It's a BOY!

I was scheduled to be induced at 7am on Saturday July 1st--the same day the baby was due--but at 4:00am I started having contractions on my own! When Nathan opened his eyes at 5:30am I told him I was in labor and he woke up right away! I told him we could just wait and go in when we were scheduled to, so he took his time getting ready, much to my dismay. We walked into the hospital at 7 am and at 2:32pm that afternoon, our son Tanner Mark was born. He weighed 7lbs 15 oz and was 20 inches long. Everything went great with his delivery and I was just happy to not be pregnant any more.

A baby on the way

Okay, fast forward a little ways to Spring 2006. We were getting closer to the due date of our baby, and we decided that we needed to take some pregnant pictures, since we hadn't taken very many. The picture of me in the blue shirt is in late May at about 36 weeks, and the picture of us at the temple is in early April, not quite at 30 weeks yet. The one of me in the pink skirt was taken at about 24 weeks, the first week of March.