Camping at Lake Tahoe

Auntie Krista shared her tent with Naomi quite a bit. It was nice for Naomi to have a clean place to play.

Pinecones make the best natural toys.

So proud of herself!

We hiked up to the Lily Pond for a picnic lunch.

Matthew got to carry Naomi for our hike. She enjoyed shaking the canopy to add a little more challenge to his walking.
The last night we went out for dinner and stopped by this park/public beach in Tahoe City afterwards.


Naomi really liked grabbing handfuls of dirt and letting them flow down her arms and shirt.
A first S'mores experience - the sticky marshmallow didn't go over very well, though she mentioned the crackers and chocolate as yummy.
I promise we didn't do this to her hair! After getting her head sprayed with mosquito repellent three days in a row and sleeping with a beanie on, this is the result.

After a picnic at D.L. Bliss on our way out of town, we went down to the beach to say hi to the local geese.
During the last days of our vacation we stayed in Roseville. Naomi got this Dora helmet at a garage sale some friends of ours were having. She was excited to have both her new hat and her forggie pajamas on at the same time.

Boggle

Naomi did this for 45 minutes this morning. I got it out because she loves letters and puzzles more than anything right now. And it let me get some work done. She is my mechanically-minded little girl! Where could she possibly have gotten that from??? (Me and Grandpa Keith is the answer.)

Father Abraham

Here's a little video of Naomi doing the motions to "Father Abraham" with her daddy.

Testing the Sprinklers

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas with our families in Roseville. We are truly blessed to have both sides of the family in one place so that we can celebrate with everyone every year.

It was Naomi's second Christmas but this time she was actually able to really enjoy some of the Christmas activities. She had lots of fun going Christmas Caroling with our Faith Bible Church family and looking at Christmas lights with the Hallsten's in Roseville. On Christmas morning she opened presents and had fun playing with her new toys. Here is a small sampling from Christmas.

Here's Naomi all bundled up for Christmas Caroling.

Here are a few videos from Christmas morning at the Hallsten home.

Later on Christmas day we went to Matthew's brothers house for food and gift opening for his side of the family. We hope all of you had a blessed time this year celebrating the birth of Jesus with your loved ones.

Go! Go! Go!

Naomi's official first word is Go. She started saying it in late December. At about that same time she also started understanding and responding to much more of what we were saying. Here are a couple of videos that Emily took of Naomi saying her first phrase (go, go, go!).

Since these videos were taken Naomi's communication has continued to explode. She has a number of words now (although her use of them is still somewhat inconsistent). She says "ball", "girl", "daddy", "go get it" and (joy of joys) "T.V.". She also imitates many other words and sounds that we make. She can clearly understand much of what we say and will sometimes respond to simple requests like "let's go upstairs" and "shut the door". Her signing has also improved significantly and she babbles almost constantly. We're going to have real chatterbox on our hands soon.