Family Christmas

Well, our first Christmas with John was a success. We were able to attend all of our family parties, go to temple square, have a Christmas Eve dinner with yummy food and spend the holidays with our families. John was adorable as usual and seemed to really enjoy the christmas wrapping paper. (He thought that the presents were neat too) We couldn't have asked for anything better but being together.

Ben with his fake sad face. He got coal for being naughty. BUT, he musn't have been too bad because it was really filled with chocolate.

WOW Mommy and Daddy, Do I get the tree too?

John's christmas haul.

It came with packages, boxes, and bows. Yes sir, we were one of the lucky ones and no grinch stole our christmas. John did try to eat it though.

Christmas traditions

It's our second Christmas for Ben and I as a married couple and the first for our family of three which really got us thinking about which family traditions we wanted to bring from our own families and what we wanted to add that was new.

What's been nice is that our extended family seems to continue the traditions at the Roe and Gerstner family parties and so it's made it really easy for us to make our little family Christmas all our own. We did decide to make a Christmas book like the one that Ben grew up with and to do the family line-up like my family does and Ben is pretty adament about having steak. (men and their meat haha)
One thing is for sure, whatever we do, it will be a special christmas with John as it is his first ever since his existence on this earth. NEAT!

Shopaholic

Hello my name is Marie and it has been 3 hours since my last shop. I suppose what I really am is a look-a-holic. I love to go out and browse, window shop, and so on. And now that I've been blessed with cute John, I can't help but look at cute things for him. Perhaps I should join a group? You know what doesn't help? Commercialized holidays that create such cute things and a Joann Fabric and crafts within 5 minutes of my home.

Roly-Poly uh oh

John began rolling last week. He went from barely rolling to Mr. Roly-Poly overnight. We are officially in the "daredevil" stage of John's babyhood. He rolls everywhere! He rolls around on the ground, on the couch, on my lap, EVERYWHERE! So much so that yesterday I set him on my mom's couch, sitting up, all the way back and turned away for a minute to check on something. My brother Joseph comes in and I ask him to watch John. I then hear " hey, did you put him on the floor?" "No, is he on the floor?" "yep" JOHN!!!

...and the worst parent award goes to............(drumroll)..................Me!

Sadness, my baby fell off of the couch. Weird though, he didn't even cry, he just kept playing. I checked all over and no marks. Needless to say I have been closely monitoring him ever since.

mmm...the tastiness

On November 24th John got to have his first taste of rice cereal and he's loved it ever since! These pictures are of his first ever venture into the world of utensils an food. However, it's pretty much like this now, too. The first time he tried it he liked the food but wasn't too sure about how the spoon was going to help him get that yummy food into his mouth. This is definitely obvious when you see how much got near or in his mouth but no further. Now, while he's mastered the art of the spoon feed, he has decided that feeding himself is much more fun as he tries to take the spoon from mommy or daddy or better yet stick his hand in the cereal and then all over his face. However messy he gets, it sure is fun as we watch his face when he tastes all these new and different foods. So far John has tasted (notice I said tasted, not portionally eaten) pumpkin pie, beans, yams, icecream, rice cereal, carrots, potatoes, cheese, spaghetti sauce, lemon pie, and some other stuff. I suppose many of you are reading with your mouths agape at our 5 month old trying all this stuff. However, the Dr. said too, soooooooooooooooo we follow dr.'s orders. :)


John trying to grab the spoon from mom to feed himself


looking and waiting for that delicious cereal


"mmm mmm" clean so far!


The end result of little John John's feeding frenzy.
Thanks turtle bib!

Like father, like son

SO........This isn't the best picture of ben (mostly because the upper half of his head is cut off here) but this is a good time to point out the similarities between my two boys. It's a little hard to say for sure who John will end up looking the most like, but at this point let's point out a few with Daddy and baby. Notice the mouth, the nose, and the chin. Obviosly the hair color is from mom. The hairline is a mix between mom's pointy widow's peak and dad's hairline. The eyes and ears are also mom's. Anyway, this may sound boring to all of you, but I've had so many people ask and comment that I thought I would give you my view.
(PS. this pic is of John's first day eating rice cereal. see post entitled mmm...the tastiness)

"I love daddy" is ruined

This past week I pulled John's clothes out of the washer and somehow one of his pjs was stuck under the spinner. When I pulled it out the damage was already done and I found three small holes in it. This was especiall sad because Ben had just said that he was going to be sad when John grew out of this outfit because he loved seeing him in that "I love daddy". I hope that I can sew it up before he grows out of it. In the meantime here are som pics as a tribute to that beloved pajama.

Bouncing Baby

John is becoming more and more active every day. He now can mostly sit on his own, until he decides to lean back. But, even before that he's loved standing when we hold him. Now however, we've started putting him into his bouncy chair. Thus I present bouncing baby:)

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Last Friday we went to get our Christmas Tree. It was great! This is actually the earliest that I've ever gotten a tree so I was pretty excited to get that holiday spirit going. John of course was overjoyed, or he would have been had he not slept through the whole thing.

We picked it up at a tree lot about 3minutes from our house and were both impressed by how nice the "tree guy" (totally technical term) was. After packing the tree onto our subaru we got it back into our tree stand and started stringing the lights. By this time John had woken up, yet he still found his bouncy toy to be more interesting (go figure). Well, I'm sure by the time all the lights are on and ornaments put up and the shiny wrapped presents are underneath he will be more than happy to hang out over there. By this time however I'll be doing something along the lines of "no honey, don't touch" (oh we moms, what can you say).

So, here at the Roe home we have officially kicked off the holiday season. Ben and I have even started talking and planning the yearly traditions we would like to begin as a family which to me is the best part. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Today was Granddad Gerstner's birthday so John and I went to visit he and Grandmother in their home.

Here they are! John's middle name is Siosefa which in Tongan means Joseph. I chose that name in honor of this man Joseph Dean Gerstner. He said that John is pretty heavy and he's not kidding:)

Here's Granddad with his cool shades and John with that signature brow furrow of his. A couple of cool cats.

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...............Also, today my sister started her new job, which gave me the opportunity to watch her youngest child Kaylee. Kaylee is one week younger than John, but the difference in size is just craziness. Even so, the two together equals cuteness. Here are a few pics of them together. I tried to get them to smile at the same time, but working with two almost 4 mo. olds produces a cornacopia of photos where one smiles and the other doesn't. First John would smile but Kaylee wouldn't and vice-versa OR neither would smile and one would look away. Here are three of the best photos we took (BTW notice that Kaylee is in pink and John in blue. It was a funny coincidence.)

Chillin' on the couch together. They had fun playing together and talking to each other.



Check out John's chunky legs. REALLY they are only 1 week apart!

Hanging out on the bed, propped on the pillows. John had some obvious drool issues.

Overall it was a pretty great day, filled with family fun. At the end of the day when you can look back and say you spent it with family, it's always one of those good days.

"Little" John

On July 15, 2009 one of the best things in the world happened to us. John Siosefa Roe was born. At 10lbs 1 oz and 21 inches long, with an abundant amount of dark hair, our little boy almost skipped the little part.

I can't believe he was ever this little. It's almost sad to think that he'll never be this little again, it goes by so fast!

Here's our "bebe" minutes after he was born. He hasn't stopped sucking on that hand since, haha

The Family Blog

I guess we'll see how this goes. The family blog. I should've started this earlier because it would have made things to post SO much easier. But now, I want to post everything from back in the day up until the present. AYE!

I suppose I'll start with an intro to us. Some of you know both of us really well, some only me, some only Ben, and some may be lucky to even know John.

SO, here we go...