My Little Golfer

A few weeks ago we bought Jack his own little set of golf clubs. He has 2 woods, and iron, and a putter and this kid LOVES to golf! Rob has taken him to the golf course a couple of times to practice on the putting green and Jack just eats that up. He is getting a lot better and he is good at putting his clubs away and putting his golf balls in his bag. He told me yesterday that he loves our back yard because we have so much grass to play golf on. I am anticipating a broken window or two someday. All for the love of the game. He loves Tiger Woods and loves to even watch him play on TV. He told Rob when they were swimming in the pool that he was the Tiger Woods of swimming!:) You gotta love that.

Isn't the argyle sweater vest fitting!:) This was just after church, he doesn't have to wear this to play.

Playing the trumpet

Introducing....

the newest member of the Christiansen family a baby boy that will be joining us around the end of December. Can you see his face above?

This is him with his hands in front of his face lying on his side.

Here are his cute little feet!
We are all so excited to welcome him and excited that everything seems to be healthy and developing properly. Now how do I make sure he just doesn't decide to arrive on Christmas Day?? His actual due date is December 31, and I am sure it will creep up on us sooner than we think. We are all so excited and couldn't be happier to add this guy to our bunch.

San Diego

We took a family trip to San Diego this past week and we had a great time! I have one warning there are a lot of animal pictures as we spent quite a bit of our time looking at animals. You will also notice that it was hard for Jack to take his eyes off the animals and look at the camera, even the statues like we are in front of above.

The first thing that we had to do at SeaWorld, is ride the Flying Elmo. Rides Mommy, I want to go on a ride. Once we were done riding Elmo we went to see some of the great shows at Sea World.

Shamu is amazing and Jack didn't quite know what to think of it all. He was pretty quite throughout the show, but has been very excited to talk about it since.

This is Shamu's belly behind us. Of course it is not the original Shamu and we called all of them Shamu.

We spent some time in Balboa Park going through some of the great museums they have there. We went to the science museum and saw a great IMAX show. We went to the Natural History Museum, the Air and Space, the Model Railroad, and the Automotive Museum. I know you are thinking how does an almost 3 year old deal with all of that museum time, well they actually have a lot of fun things for kids to do and see. Jack and I are standing in front of a mega diagrama in the Railroad Museum. They were so cool and so detailed, it really was fun.

Jack riding on a motorcycle at the Automotive Museum.

This is an old sign from an original Jack and the Box. We just thought it was a cute sign.

We met up with Rob's sister Emily and her husband Ryan on Friday afternoon at the Del Mar horseracing track. It was a first for us and it was fun to watch a few races. The horses were beautiful and Jack was able to pet even one of them.

We made it to the San Diego Zoo and here are some of the highlights. The panda's above were very cute. There were two of them out and one of them was very playful.

Here is a lion that was sleeping in its cage. Jack was a little hesitant with this one but he did get close to the glass for a picture.

One of the best things we saw were the polar bears. When we saw them they were playing in the water and then they would swim right up to the glass right at us. It was fun, and very cool.

Rob and jack on the Sky Safari ride accross the zoo. From above we were really able to see how big and expansive the zoo is. It was a great place and we had a fabulous time there.

The last thing we did was go to the children's zoo area and there was a climbing wall and Jack couldn't get enough. In fact when he was climbing he told Rob and I that he didn't want to see any more animals. We had a great time and I don't have a picture but we were also able to attend a baseball game which was a lot of fun. It was a great vacation for all 3 of us.

Ogden Valley Balloon Festival

We spent the weekend in Eden relaxing and attempting to watch the hot air balloons fly in the crazy cold weather we had. The picture above is a view of part of the Ogden Valley. It is so beautiful up there with all the farms, the mountains, and Pineview Reservoir. (You can see a little bit of Pineview in the right side of this picture). On Saturday the storm rolled in and it was cool! As part of the festival they have booths and activities over at the ski resort Wolf Mountain so we headed over there once the rain stopped. We actually decided to take the ski lift up, which I was a little nervous to take Jack on, but we did it and he was a very good boy and held very still.

Here we are on the lift and below getting on the lift to go down. Facing forward and riding down a ski lift is not something I have done much of but it is a little scary.

Here we are on top of the mountain and you can see a lot of Pineview in the background.

One of the balloons at the festival was the Energizer Bunny Balloon and it is actually the tallest hot air balloon in exsistence. They passed out all of these bunny ears and here is Jack jumping around.

Jack in the basket of a hot air balloon.

We have discovered that our little Jack Jack is quite the fish. He is swimming all by himself, with a life jacket of course, but he kicks his legs and moves his arms and he is doing just great! I think he drinks half the pool each time, but oh well, he LOVES it!

Here is a picture of the propane, being shot up into the balloon. It was cool, very loud, and very warm on a cool night!

Finally on Sunday morning we were able to see the balloons come up on Sunday morning. It wsa beautiful even the big ol Energizer Bunny!:)

And Then There Was One

This is silly but I just had to post this story. About 10 years ago I went to England with my Mom and one of our stops was a town called Stoke-on-Trent. This is where a lot of china that comes from England is made. Wedgewood, Spode, Port Merion, and I bought a few dishes there, not a tone, but a few. Since that time they have pretty much all been packed away. I just didn't have the space to bring them out and so I have just left them in the boxes. I thought that since I have moved into my new house and I have more space I could finally bring some of this stuff out and use it. I have a few Spode Christmas dishes and so I have put them in my cupboards. Well literally not 1 hour after they have been unpacked, after being wrapped up tightly for 10+ years my son found and broke my Christmas Spode salt shaker. Seriously not even 1 hour did it last. It really is not the end of the world and I am sure that I can find another one, but I just couldn't believe it!

My New Masseuse

It was not the best foot massage that I have had, but it was the cheapest, and he was definitely the cutest!:)

Look he even is smiling while he is rubbing lotion on my feet. He loves it!

Camp Out

After the family reunion we headed up to the camp out with our ward church group. It was about 1 1/2 from our house in Liberty, Utah. It is beautiful up there and we enjoyed taking the Ogden Divide road up which we have never done. This was also Jack's first camping trip and he did great! Granted we were only there for a little over 12 hours, but he still was a good boy and slept the entire night. I on the other hand didn't fair so well, but that is ok, I survived. I tell you though this is the way to go camping because all we had to do was show up and have a tent. All of the food was taken care of and that is the hardest part of camping. Thanks to all of those who made it happen! Here is Jack outside of our tent.

Oreo's on the eyes, that is a new one.

Jack's latest passion is fighting dragons, and here he was fighting with one of our neighbors maybe he confused him with the dragons!:) Either way no dragons made it into our camp ground.

ALFFA Reunion

This past weekend was one of those weekends where we had too many fun things going on and we wanted to fit all of them in. We really are not that exciting of people and most weekends we just sit around and look at each other so I hate it when everything happens at once. Oh well, even though we were rushing some we still had a lot of fun.
ALFFA stands for Arthur L. Flandro Family Association and it is Rob's maternal grandfathers family. His Aunt Paulette has spent I think more than 2 years planning and arranging this big event and she did a great job. We weren't able to attend everything but we did have a nice lunch at Sunnyside Park and spent a great afternoon at This Is The Place Heritage Park. We have never been and it was a lot of fun, we had a great time. In the picture above I am standing, pointing to my own name which is on the family tree that Paulette made up for the event. They had everyone on there, even Jack made it!;) Next to Jack is Grandma Flandro, and I am not sure who is next to her.

Here is Jack with a baby goat who escaped from his pen. We learned his name is Oreo and he does that a lot.

My pioneer era cowboy!

Enjoying some lemonade with Nanna.

Taking a little train ride with Daddy. We had a great day and really enjoyed our time at the Park and with the family.