these are a few of my Braden's favorite things . . .

If I thought November went by quickly, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that December (and all of the holiday events that accompany it) is flying by too!

The biggest news at the Hartsock house is that Billy is off weekends!!!! Yes, after a little more than a year of working weekends (yep, every weekend unless he used vacation time), he's off! It has almost felt like a vacation yesterday and today having him at home/being home at the same time during the day! We were very excited to be able to go to church as a family today for the first time in a long time . . . yay! Braden even went to the nursery and did great - he was happily playing on a rocking horse when we picked him up after the service.

Now - onto the good stuff - pictures (and a video)! I think I have mentioned that my blogging seems to correlate with my picture taking - and since I haven't taken many pics lately, I haven't blogged much lately. So tonight I dusted off the camera and snapped some photos of our little fella in action (which explains why he's wearing the same pj's in all of the pics)!

And now, at the age of 14 months, a few of

Braden's favorite things:

• running - he loves to run back and forth from our living room to the kitchen . . . and loves larger spaces to run in, like at grandparents' houses.

• books and baskets - B still loves his books, and also still loves to climb in his baskets of books/toys

(we're still working on not biting the books!)

had to throw this one in because you can see all B's teeth!

• toys - Braden is at the stage/age where he finally really "gets" how to play with his toys, and he really likes toys -- which is making Christmas shopping fun this year!

• kisses - Braden loves to give big, wet, open mouth, sloppy kisses to any willing recipient

• pointing/showing "1" - most of the time if asked how old he is/the number one is mentioned, B will hold up/point one finger. He has also recently started pointing at everything, then babbling some sort of nonsense word - it will be super fun when he starts using the correct words for things that he sees!

(here he's pointing at a Christmas tree - one of his favorite things to look at these days - but luckily he has stuck to just looking and hasn't touched/grabbed/pulled yet!)

• remotes (and cell phones) - loves 'em!


And finally - he has learned to make a basket! For the longest time he loved to bring the ball to us to shoot (and would do this repeatedly) . . . but now he doing it himself!