Blake's First Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas Pictures

It's that time of the year...time for Christmas pictures. We went to a studio in Louisville and got a bunch taken. It was pretty cool...we did the photo shoot for about 30 minutes, reviewed the pictures and they printed all of them for us right then and sent them home with us along with a CD of them...nice! Gotta love digital photography...maybe all the studios do it this way, but we haven't been in to have pictures taken for us in a long time...it was pretty sweet.

Here are a couple teaser photos to check out. The rest with be 'released' after Christmas...we won't say why, but you might expect to see a few around then :-)

More Christmas pics, but not all of them :-)...we'll just say Blake takes pretty good pictures...wait until you see the rest..
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/ChristmasPictures

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well, we made it home from our trip and are enjoying being back at home for a while. We have had a few small snow storms and some REALLY cold weather in the last week or so. We had an 'arctic blast' which is exactly what it sounds like...freezing. It was about 5 degrees for the high for a couple days. Brrrr. At night it was -34 with wind chill. Fortunately this is really unusual weather for here and we're mostly back to the more normal 40 degree December weather.

We went out and got our Christmas tree and Blake had a nice time helping us pick it out. It was funny because we went through the normal 'get really picky about finding the perfect tree' routine at the nursery and looked at probably 100 different ones trying to find the one we wanted. We finally 'settled' on one that we thought was acceptable and would do the job and brought it home. Ironically I think it may be the best Christmas tree we have had...that worked out nice. Blake did a good job choosing. What do you think? Kona really likes it too :-)

We put the Christmas lights up and are ready for Christmas...with it not being too far off now we are excited.

CA Trip - Salt Lake City, UT

After all the traveling we did for the 3 weeks on the road we pulled into Salt Lake City, UT to finish up our trip with Abby's extended family and to enjoy Thanksgiving with everyone. It was a good way to finish the trip off with the weather feeling much more like the fall/winter weather that we are used to in Colorado. The food on Thanksgiving was great and we had a full house of people. It was a relaxing and full time.


Friday the girls went and did some shopping while the boys went and hiked some in the canyon. This was the first snow that we had seen this season. There had been a storm a few days earlier and there was still some snow on the ground while we went hiking. Kind of a good way to ease back into the snowy season as we headed home.

Thus ended our trip around the western half of the country over the past few weeks. It was time to head home...

Pics from our trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/CATrip

CA Trip - Santa Rosa, CA

Off we went from there to Santa Rosa to visit Abby's family. We had a really nice time visiting with all of them and had our third and final open house of the trip. A bunch of Abby's high school friends were able to make it and it was fun to catch up with them. A lot of them had kids too...


We had a nice time celebrating Sean's birthday with the family at Checkers and Jasen and Sean went and did some float tube fishing at the lake....didn't catch much that day, but that's why it's called fishing and not...well you know...



It was good to spend time with all of them and Brandi was a proud aunt for Blake.

We enjoyed getting see Abby grandparents, uncles and great grandma while we were there. We also made it by the Banksons in Santa Rosa to say hi. It sure was nice to see everyone...it had been a while.

Off to Thanksgiving in Salt Lake...

CA Trip - SLO, CA

San Luis Obispo, CA...what a great place. This was the vacation part of the trip and also the work part of the trip. We stayed at the Spyglass Inn on the cliffs of Shell Beach where we could take in the ocean a little each day. We could see a couple of the old surf spots we used to go to when we were in school at Cal Poly. No swell the days we were there though...it was pretty flat. But, the view was beautiful nontheless.

While in town we went to lunch with some clients and got to see several friends that we hadn't seen for a while. Had a tri-tip sandwich at Firestones (i highly recommend you have one sometime if you never have) and enjoyed an evening at Farmer's Market. We made it over to Cal Poly and got to tour the campus some and see everything that has changed since we graduated. And the weather was beautiful. Sure was nice to visit.

More pics from our CA trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/CATrip

CA Trip - L.A. & Ventura

We headed down to L.A. to visit some more family down there and have another open house where we got to catch up with some family there that we hadn't seen in quite a while. It was great to see everyone and we really enjoyed seeing and catching up with everybody. Aunt Mollie (in the picture above) is Blake's Great Aunt. Doesn't she look great for being 92? Wow, hope we got some of those genes :-)

After the couple days we were in L.A. we headed up the coast to Ventura. On the way there we stopped in Santa Monica and a couple beaches up the coast to visit the ocean. That's one thing that we don't see much of in CO. We had a nice time walking around, feeling the sea breeze and smelling the salty air. The weather was good (no marine layer) and it was warm. It was great. We had lunch at our old workplace (while we were living in Kona, HI), Bubba Gumps. It was good...reminiscent...

In Ventura we caught up to some friends from college and got to meet their little girl. We hadn't seen them in quite a while...it was fun to hear how things are going and what they are up to these days.

On to SLO, CA...tri-tip sandwich here we come...

For more pictures from the trip go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/CATrip

CA Trip - Hesperia, CA

Next we made a stop to see the Bankson family in the desert and Blake had a chance to see grammy and grampy, Auntie M and Auntie Rae, Uncle Kasey and his great grandparents. It was great. Sure was nice to see everybody and we had a great time visiting.

We had an open house and had a bunch of friends over, some that we hadn't seen for quite a while, and it was great to catch up with everyone. Thanks to everyone that came we really enjoyed seeing and hearing how all of you are doing.

Kona (Rhodesian Ridgeback) and Pearl (Puggle) had a great time playing together. Check out this great pictures we got of them playing :-) This really was friendly. They had a great time playing together and it was funny to watch since Pearl could run under Kona. It made it really hard for Kona to catch Pearl.

CA Trip Pics...
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/CATrip

CA Trip - St. George, Utah

Well, the trip started with our first stop in St. George, UT visiting Abby's grandparents. We had a nice time visiting with them and Abby's aunt, cousin and their new baby boy. The two babies seemed to like each other a lot and would look at each other and smile. I think they liked seeing another baby that was the same size :-)

While in Utah we had a chance to make a trip up to Zion National Park for a day and do a little exploring and hiking. What a beautiful place. Sure was fun to get to see that.

We had a really nice time visiting them and look forward to seeing them again soon, later in the trip.



CA trip pictures...
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/CATrip

More Smiles

Blake is slowly starting to perfect the art of smiling and continues to get cuter every day as he learns. He seems to be the most smiley when we change his diaper (not sure why that is, but he sure is happy). Just this last week he started trying to copy us too...so if we make a noise at him then he tries to copy it sometimes and then will giggle and smile when he can do it. Pretty funny to watch.

We also discovered that if we hold him up to a mirror that he'll look at himself and if he starts smiling he can entertain himself by smiling and seeing it in the mirror. It was hilarious.

Check out some new pics...

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/11012008

Smiles for Mom & Dad

We've crossed a new bridge...this week Blake started to smile at us. It's pretty fun...the first couple times we didn't think he knew what he was doing, but it has been getting more and more consistent now where he seems to realize that he can smile. We've been trying to get pictures of him smiling and it has been a challenge, but we're starting to get a few. See if he isn't one of the cutest kids around :-)

We spent the weekend up in Vail with a client at the Lodge at Vail. It's not snow season there yet (in fact they don't have hardly any), but it was beautiful nonetheless. The Lodge was AWESOME! Our stay was paid for and we got a sweet suite :-) It had a nice view of the slopes and was huge...It was great.



Check out these pics of the lodge...
http://lodgeatvail.rockresorts.com/gallery.asp

We are getting ready for Halloween this week and had a few friends over to carve some pumpkins with us while we watched some football and ate some Little Caesers (it's been years since we had crazy bread and decided it was time...it was just as good as i remember it). The pumpkins turned out great. Some of us are more artistically inclined than others, as you can see from the picture, but we had a great time.



Happy Halloween!

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/Blake8Weeks

Fall Arrives

The last couple weeks we've been getting things ready for the cooler weather. It's actually been really beautiful (70s and 80s) and we've been enjoying the fall weather. I raked leaves in the backyard the other day for the first time i think since i was like 6 years old :-) In the desert we never had to rake leaves and i don't know why, but we haven't raked them here for the last 4 years. I think we just let them fall and desingrate :-) Well, this year i felt inspired to rake some leaves. It was alright...i decided i like the smell of fall...not sure exactly what it is...maybe just reminds me of fall as a kid.

We got the boat shut down and put away for the season. it was a great season this year. We had a lot of fun (well Abby doesn't feel quite the same b/c she didn't do any of the sports this year...but really enjoyed the sun). We sure had a fun with everyone that made it out with us this year. It's nice to be able to hang out with friends and enjoy time out on the lake. Here's a nice shot that some friends got of me taking a jump...sweet!



Blake is doing good and went on another hike with us yesterday. This was our first attempt at a longer hike with him and together in a while. It went really good. Everybody though Blake was really cute and Kona was jealous...well, not really, but if she could speak she would have been complaining about the lack of attention :-) We tried turning him around so that he was facing out for a change and he really liked it. He looked around a lot and really checked things out.


New pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/Blake7Weeks

Bankson Clan visits

Well, we had the whole crew out this time. We have really been looking forward to having everyone out to visit. We haven't had everyone out all together for quite a while and were excited to see and spend time with everybody. It was a really great time. We spent some time relaxing, watching football and playing with Kona. We spent some time out hiking, enjoying nice fall weather, and went walking around downtown Denver for a little while.

Grammy and Grampy were pretty excited to get to see Blake again and kept saying how he had grown and already was getting bigger. Crazy. Blake got to meet his auntie M, auntie Ray and uncle kasey for the first time. Everyone got a chance to hang out with Blake and he misses everyone already and it's only been a day :-) Guess they'll just have to come back again soon.

Blake got his halloween suit this weekend (thanks auntie M!)...look at this cute little monster. I think he is going to get a lot of candy...at least i hope he does ;-)

All-in-all it was a really great time and we enjoyed the time spent with family and relaxing. We're looking forward to the next visit.

New Pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BanksonsVisit

Boating Season is ending...

Well, it has been a great season at the lake and Blake has been able to make it out with us for 3 or 4 times this month. Pretty good for less than a month old ;-) Got to make sure he is comfortable on a boat at a young age. During the last week of the lake season we were able to make it out 3 late afternoon trips and enjoy some beautiful late summer weather and outstanding sunsets. Blake seemed to enjoy it...by sleeping.

So far things have been going good with us and Blake and adjusting to life with a little less sleep. He has been sleeping pretty well, but still gets up about every 4 hours to feed. He is putting on some weight and getting bigger fast. Friends who hadn't seen him in about 2 weeks said they could see the difference as he is growing. We don't really notice too much being around him all the time.

We had a two week break between family being here where we were on our own for the first time. It really went pretty good. With Abby being off work for a while and able to sleep in some, after some sleepless nights, and to be able to take care of Blake and some things around the house. It's been going really good.

The rest of the Bankson family is coming to town the first weekend in Oct. Should be fun, we're really looking forward to them being in town.

More pictures coming next post...

First trip to the lake

Well, Blake isn't quite ready to wakeboard just yet, but the life jacket fits pretty well. We made our first trip to the lake with him the other day and he did quite well. The weather was good and it wasn't too hot, so it was a good time for him to make his first trip. We did a little wakeboarding (probably the last of the season) and then just enjoyed being on the water for the last couple times this year.

Blake: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael

While we were hanging out i decided to break out the fishing pole and just throw it in the water some to see if anything was hungry. Seems like when you go out to fish you don't catch much or anything and when you throw it out there to see if there are any fish at all you hook up the big one...well, this was the time i didn't expect to catch anything and hooked up a monster....well for me it was a monster...not bad...probably the biggest fish i've caught since fishing in Alaska 5 years ago. We couldn't weigh it but i bet it weighed about 10 lbs. Pretty fun fish. It was a Wiper (http://www.kdwp.state.ks.us/news/Fishing/Fish-ID-Gallery/WIPER) and put up a good fight...under the boat a couple times before it finally tired out and I was able to pull it in. Supposedly they are pretty common in the lake and we should catch them reasonably often. Gonna have to try to do that. (Time to get a net :-) )

Grammy and Grampy visit

We had our first couple nights completely on our own in between visitors this last week and got to experience life with Blake on our own. It was fun and really went just fine. He's a pretty good kid. He sleeps about 5 hours at a time at night, so really we've been doing pretty well rest-wise.

On Friday Blake had his 2 week check up and everything went great. He weighed in at 6lb 14oz, so he gained back all the weight he lost right after he was born (5oz) and then put on another 8oz. So, all is well and he is good and healthy. The doc had nothing but good things to say about him. We feel blessed to have such a good kid and that is so healthy thus far.

Also on Friday, mom and dad Bankson came to town VERY excited to meet their new grandson (and first grandchild). We've been doing video conference and trying to take as many pictures as we can to hold them over until they got here and they are very excited and proud. We've had a nice time with them so far and ventured out a little on a walk today to enjoy the nice weather and we saw a few trees changing colors. We're glad to be able to spend some time with them and they are enjoying the time with their new grandson.

Next time you see my dad (Mike) ask him how the Utah Utes are doing :-) You can ask him to explain after you ask him.

We enjoy having visitors and everyone seems to enjoy meeting Blake. The only thing that we're finding is, meeting a newborn is dangerous...almost in every case people that have kids can't remember them ever being that small and then start wanting another one.

Here's a picture of the nursery. It was a bit of work, but thanks to the help of a couple friends we were able to take down the old wallpaper, paint and put up some chair rail and it came together pretty nicely (if i do say so myself)...


In the pictures below there are a couple other pictures of the nursery. Grammy B made a beautiful turtle blanket that is hanging on the other wall alongside the crib. It turned out great and goes really nicely with the colors and decor of the room.



Pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael