December

We tried to start December off right by taking Lincoln to go see Santa Claus.  Here's the best picture we got:

Not unlike many children, Lincoln wasn't too keen on the idea of going to see a large unfamiliar man with a beard all dressed in red.  Well, see for yourself:

If you noticed, Lincoln had no problem taking candy from the stranger though (we may have failed as parents on that front but, the relatively recent Halloween experiences didn't help us much).

Christmas was lots of fun.  We stayed home and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and took almost no pictures.  Here's the only good one:

Frog hat from Grandpa, trains from Grandma, riding on Mom's lap on my way to Wendy's house on Christmas morning.  It doesn't get better (Wendy lives less than a mile away, don't turn us into social services please).
We did take a video of Christmas morning though when Lincoln came out to see what Santa brought him (it's kind of long, we won't feel bad if you don't watch the whole thing).

For New Years we took a trip up to Idaho to visit Grandma and Grandpa and play with long lost cousins.  Hopefully, someone else got some pictures of the cousins together because apparently we didn't...  Here's what we got:

 Sledding

 Cold

 Still cold

 If you're thinking to yourself, that looks cold, you've got a pretty good grasp of the situation.

 You know Dad, someday in the not too distant future I'll probably fall into that creek around this time of year and make you jump in after to save me.  Won't that be fun?

It wasn't actually all that cold, relative to say, liquid nitrogen but we really didn't stay out there too long.  We did have a wonderful time playing with Chloe and Leyla, meeting Shane, talking with him and Kelsey (congratulations to them!) and just spending time with family.  A good time was had by all.

November (Gingerbread houses)

So, it turns out, the only thing in November I found interesting enough to take pictures of were gingerbread houses.  So, that's all you get.  Here are the two annual gingerbread houses we made this year.  The first one is the one we made to give to Grandma Whittier.

 Such a festive scene.

Why does the man behind the door have a grenade!

 What a beautiful design Tyson made (my main contribution).
Oh no! They're coming though the windows!

Sniper on the roof!  

Thanks to all of our armed forces (especially Chuck).

And here's the gingerbread house we made to live at our house:

 If you try really hard, you may be able to find one or two references to Disney and Mickey Mouse.

 These are the Mickey hands I made to come out of the chimney (my only contribution to this one).

The Mickeys became a bit of a game of oneupmanship between Angel and her sister Wendy.  I think Angel won.

They made it through the holidays mostly intact although Lincoln did manage to sneak a few Dots... from both of them.

Everything I learned at Disneyland (from Lincoln's perspective)...

Always invite Goofy to breakfast because he's good at keeping secrets.

Daisy is a clean freak!!  She wiped off my syrupy hands faster than I could say, "Quack, quack."

Statue Goofy is not as cool as Real Goofy.

While wearing a Nemo costume, you must run around in circles, and make mom chase you.  Not only does is make you a star on complete strangers facebook page, but it makes everyone stop and yell, "I found Nemo."

When you get tired of your hat, dad is always a good backup plan.

Even though you're tall enough to ride the Matterhorn, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

There are only three guys at Disneyland...Mickey, Nemo, and Buzz.  This guy must be Buzz.

They do make seatbelts large enough for fish.

Mr. Toad's is a hot spot to pick up on princesses.

This tree is hilarious...and I know funny, I'm a clown fish.

I forgot these ones

These are a couple of pictures I meant to include with the section about Bear Lake but they got skipped over.

1. These are awesome.

2. They remind me of pictures of me when I was little

Lincoln's Summer Update (August)

In case you haven't noticed from other pictures of him, Lincoln has a very expressive face.

As a small example, here's a series of pictures taken in the span of about a minute, presented in the order they were taken:

^This one is my personal favorite.

I would caption those but I think they speak for themselves.

On her way down to visit her Granddaughters Grandma visited Lincoln too and we went to the dinosaur museum.

I know there are no dinosaurs in this picture.  Lincoln's favorite part was actually this little ramp with balls to throw down it (something about light waves?).  Lincoln enjoyed playing with the balls and we all enjoyed having Grandma around.  She's so upbeat all the time that even when we made her go be in the cave by herself (Lincoln had no interest in following) she was still smiling.

Sometime after Grandma's visit we had a little family reunion with Angel's family.

There was a parachute to play with.

And Lincoln got to play some kick ball.

There was some confusion about the kicking thing...

And which way to run...

Grandpa got him straightened out though.

They weren't really keeping score but...

With a strut into the sunset like that, I'm pretty sure Lincoln won.

Because he's nice and apparently didn't have anything better to do, Lee came over and took some family photos for us.  Here's some of them:

You can see a few more here.