i love fall

i love this picture! it totally represents fall here in the bay area. a lot of trees are deciduous and changing colors and losing leaves while palm trees and evergreens stay simply as they are. can you see the green palm behind the colorful trees?

this doesn't necessarily represent fall - just a beautiful fountain in a beautiful courtyard at stanford.

fun with dad

jorgen loves to be with his daddy. justin was checking some sports scores on the internet and jorgen grabbed his stool and brought it over to dad and climbed up to see what he was looking at. it looked so funny to me - like jorgen really was interested in the scores or something.

justin had fun taking pictures of jorgen in his robe. the people i nanny for gave this to us and it looks so cute on jorgen. he looks like he warming up or down for boxing or something.

maybe he was warming up for his circus performance or his motorcross competition - he loves to balance on his harley rocker.

'tis the season ALREADY!

yes, that's right, i already put up our tree! i actually just bought this tree today and couldn't be more happy with it. i've never had so much fun 'fluffing' a tree. maybe because i've never had my own family tree. it's actually an 'entry way tree', but it suits our apartment just perfectly (who's entry way has room for this big of a tree - well, maybe my parents' old home;D) jorgen enjoyed the Christmas music and watching me put the tree up - with the occasional 'don't touch, jorgen.' ;) this last weekend i actually put up all of our nativities. most people think that the day after Thanksgiving is when you start thinking of Christmas decorations and music but i like it the day after Halloween! justin is sweet to let me do all of this despite his instinct to do it closer to Thanksgiving. i just love love love this season! i do miss utah's weather that makes it feel even more like Christmas time but i can't complain with the weather i'm in now - simply pleasant!


my parents gave us a little people nativity scene last year and i saved it until now to open it and it is jorgen's new favorite toy. he loves pushing the angel and hearing 'away in a manger' and seeing the star light up. thank you so much mom and dad for giving that to us! i am going to take up one of my mom's hobbies - collecting nativity sets. it started with the first one i bought in ukraine and now i have eight so that's a good start. i won't come close to the number of nativities as my dear mother though:D.

hope this gets all of you into the Christmas spirit! (although i know my parents have already started - they put up their tree in Russia two weeks ago...they're so funny! - i guess we all know who i get it from).

this was our first annual tree decorating fhe. for our activity we decorated our tree with the few ornaments we have (courtesy of dr. and mrs. bennett-last year's office twelve days of Christmas). we'll have to get some more decorations but it's hard to decide what we want it to look like. we don't want it too themed - we like more rustic, old fashion trees.....we'll see what we come up with-if anything;D

for halloween we borrowed a costume for jorgen from a friend and jorgen was a little devil, i was an angel, and we were justin's bad and good conscience. it was a lot of fun.



jorgen LOVED looking at himself in the mirror.


jorgen LOVED getting candy. we went first to the law school because they had a mini trick or treating activity for kids. jorgen was the first kid to every door and knew exactly what to do - walk in, smile, point and ask for the colorful bag of candy, and reach in and grab a piece of candy, blow a kiss to say thank you. he can make anyone smile with those kisses!


"goodbye" hope you all had a great halloween! we sure did!

the look

funny picture, funny moment, funny look, and funny kid! not to mention funny mommy for letting him run wild in his diaper!