Little Grassclippings: James is 24 weeks old!

I missed James turning 23 weeks old because of Thanksgiving festivities, but this past Saturday James turned 24 weeks old and I thought I should play catch-up. I think I will discontinue the weeks when he turns 6 months on the 19th as it is getting hard for me to remember how many weeks old he is!

This past week has been busy busy. Eliot finished out his semester and his LAST class EVER of his college education (hooray!). I have been a busy beaver with Christmas shopping and running errands... I feel so far behind for the holidays this year! I think I will get everything done in time, but I was starting to realize that the things I order online are approaching the cut-off for cheaper shipping. I can't believe James's first Christmas is right around the corner!

This weekend we made a trip up to visit Grandma Jan and attend the Oregon Chorale Christmas concert (which was beautiful). We also said Hi to our old kitty, which was nice. Today Eliot and I took James to his first trip to a restaurant (Panera Bread, baby!) and went shopping in Powell's books. It was a pretty good trip... I wore James in the Ergo on my back like a backpack, and he actually fell asleep!!! This is monumental because he NEVER sleeps anywhere but his crib. Granted he only slept 10 minutes or so, but it was better than nothing!

We left with plenty of time to get home before James's bedtime... but, as we are driving our 9-year-old Kia with 120,000 miles on it, we inevitably had car trouble. Right around Salem we noticed a burning smell coming from the vents... no warning lights came on and the car wasn't overheating, but we've been stranded before on the freeway so we decided to pull off into a Costco and see if the smell was coming from our engine or perhaps a car we were following. After a few whiffs under the hood, it definitely was coming from our car. To make a long story short, an hour (and a feeding) later we come to discover that having the heat on in the car causes the smell (possibly a coolant leak in the heating core according to my father). So we kept the heat off all the way home to keep the coolant from leaking and the engine from overheating. Luckily I had bundled James up nice and warm and we had warm coats, so it wasn't too bad... except for the fogging-up windows and constant fear of the car leaving us on the side of the road.

Needless to say, we need a new car.

Anyway, we are home safe and sound now and won't be driving the Kia long distances till we figure this thing out.

Oh, and we also went to tree lighting this past week as well... it was fun, lots of kids and they said a prayer beforehand. They also had live reindeer! Good times.

And now... pictures and videos!
Putting up the tree