::brothers::

It's nice to have these two little guys around when things get sad. They're cheery and full of love.

(He's kicking Max in the above picture. It's one of his favorite past times and for some reason Max loves it too. He thinks it's hilarious.)




So sweet.

::::

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." --Timothy 4:7


Kris's dad Ken passed away this afternoon and boy are we going to miss him. But we are so grateful for the amazing life he led and the faithful example he was to all of us. He loved his family so much and would do anything for him. His sons turned out the same way and I'm so grateful for that. He's truly left a legacy and large shoes for us to fill.

"And may I say that this life never was intended to be easy. It is a probationary estate in which we are tested physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually. We are subject to disease and decay. We are attacked by cancer, leprosy, and contagious diseases. We suffer pain and sorrow and afflictions. Disasters strike; floods sweep away our homes; famines destroy our food; plagues and wars fill our graves with dead bodies and our broken homes with sorrow.

When the faithful saints depart from this life they “are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow” (Alma 40:12), and they remain in this state until the day of their resurrection.

If we have lived the gospel we shall come forth with celestial bodies which are prepared to stand the glory of a celestial kingdom. We shall continue to live in the family unit, and as Joseph Smith said, “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”
--Bruce R. McConkie, "The Dead Who Die in the Lord", Ensign, Nov. 1976, 106

And in honor of my dear Father in Law, I leave you with a bit of a song.

"I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go"
--Bob Dylan

Ken, we'll really miss you. Thanks for being you.

::i don't have a title::

Kris was off on an adventure this weekend. He was meeting my dad and brother and uncle in Moab, UT and was going to bike and hike and adventure around until monday night.


(His adventure car, parked in the school parking lot so he could drop off Max. Pretty awesome looking, right?)

He had to take a detour during his weekend though. I haven't said anything about this on my blog so far because it's just been to hard for me to talk about, and I guess it's my way of trying to assume that things will all be ok.

Kris's dad was diagnosed with cancer in October. Lots of cancer. Lung and bone and brain. We thought and hoped that with treatment he'd get some good years still, but the treatments didn't do much for him. He's struggled through the last six months with so many problems, and it's starting to look like the end is very very near.
We're about to lose him and it's hard for me to even think about. So Kris is there with his parents and brother and sister today being together. We don't know how much more time Ken has, but it won't be long. Then he's on to his next adventure.
Kris will get some more bike riding in this weekend before he makes it home, but the true blessing of the trip was that he was close enough to drive home when he needed to.

The rest of this post I guess is just acknowledgment of a sad and hard reality.
And a shout into the cosmos for and to Ken of our love.






Max asked me today, "What will we do without Grandpa?"
And honestly? I'm not quite sure. We'll miss him so much.

::week 17::

And week 17 just flew on by.

Here are Sandy and Kris on Sunday morning before church. We had lots of sleeping and napping problems this week. A couple of weeks ago the baby started waking up in the night for no good reason, a lot, and we haven't been able to sleep much. And he was struggling to sleep in the daytime at all. But some of it improved by the end of the week.
But Sunday he hardly slept the night before, then wouldn't nap in the morning but 5 mins in Kris's lap. Then he stayed up for all of church. Needless to say the afternoon was NOT good. But the snoozing boys do make for a cute picture.

In desperation I tried to figure out how to help Sand to take a decent nap in the daytime. I've been chewing over this problem for days and days, but I finally realized that our room is SO light. Even with all the blinds closed it's just bright as can be. And there are tons of windows. So I thought maybe that was making it hard for him to fall deep enough into sleep. (I don't think he'd slept more than an hour at a time during a nap until the end of this week.)
So I put him in the closet.

I turned on the air filter so he couldn't hear Max's crazyness and I put him in the closet where it was nice and dim.
And it worked. The first time I did it he actually slept past 45 mins and I was blown away. We've been doing it since and things are starting to improve. He's becoming a much happier baby during the day and that's pretty great since he was adorable and happy to begin with. I think he has a pretty big sleep deficit to make up, so we're working on that now.


His eyes appear to be turning a dark brown color like Max's. They're so sweet.

And to wrap up the weekly report, some brotherly interaction:



Such cute little piggy toes.
The end for now.

::chewing--sort of::

On Sunday our Sand got to eat his first bites of rice cereal.
Yuck, I'm so glad somebody doesn't force me to eat bland blah rice cereal!
Anyway, he was quite interested in why I was sticking a spoon in his mouth. He was willing to try it. Then once it all got in his mouth, I got this face:

But he kept on trying anyway.


He's getting the cereal a little earlier than Max did. Max was about a month older when I started him. But this guy seems to always be so hungry. Our doctor thought that trying the rice cereal might help with his sleep. It hasn't yet, but we'll see. It's not making things worse, so that's good!
He's just so adorable when he's eating and smushing all the cereal right back out onto his chin after I stick it in.
Today after I fed him I was eating my own dinner. He was looking at it with great interest--I don't think he'd ever really noticed us eating food before. I think pretty soon he's going to want what we're having!

::some smiles::

I've put these in the order that I want them. It's a bit of a cheat, since the process didn't really happen that way. But I like it.





I like having a little dark eyed elf living at my house. Even if he doesn't sleep.

::science pt 2::

Remember this post I put up forever ago?
Well this is part two to that part one.

Remember that awesome science kit that we got Max for Christmas? We did a few of the experiments but then I had no time to work with Max on it for several weeks. When he heard that my parents were coming to our house for Sandy's blessing he was SO excited. He decided my mom would be perfect to do the science with, since she likes to teach him stuff and he likes to learn her stuff.
He was planning the science projects for weeks.
So when they got here he got her right to work.

Here they both are, wearing shirts that would be ok to be all stained by red cabbage juice.

While they were working hard, Sandy was hanging out with Grandpa.
Who was, of course, tweaking my bread recipe to make sure it works out here at extremely high altitude!


They did several projects the first day, and I can't even remember what this one was, but it was cool looking. My mom was so patient and sweet and had Max read the instructions for all the projects. He was in heaven.



And they did more the next day.....to be continued.....
and the requisite baby picture--this was from the same day and I just COULDN'T leave it out.

::overhauls::

I bought these cute overalls when we were in Phoenix last time. When I picked them out I thought that there was no way they would fit. They looked so big! But after a week or so I pulled them out to try them on him. And of course they fit. Snugly. The boy is huge! I love babies in overalls.

::16::

Wowzers, 16 weeks. I keep saying it, but it does fly by doesn't it?
I'm a little confused about when the baby is technically four months old. Is it at 16 weeks, or is it actually his birth date four months later? Can somebody explain this to me? I need to know because I need to decide when to start feeding this porker some food. And I think that's going to have to happen sooner than later considering he went from sleeping all night to waking up all night in the last month.....

Anyway, the sixteenth week.

Here's our guy, hanging out and taking everything in. He loves to watch stuff go on. Not ofr hours or anything, I mean he's not extra patient or anything, but he does love to watch stuff. Including TV, much to my chagrin. But especially he loves to watch Max. When I took this picture he was watching Max play with his electronics set. I think he's going to have a serious case of hero worship and it's starting now.

And he's an expert smiler. His smiles are getting so amazing. He's got the full body smile thing going on a lot, and just generally the most adorable big grins. Max loves to try to make him smile and feels so triumphant when it happens.
My favorite smiles right now are the ones that I can tease out of him even when he's crying. Like he just can't help it, they just happen.



Sunday morning we were hanging out a little bit before church. Max was watching Fantasia and I was slathering lotion all over Sandy's poor tender skin before I got him dressed.
Well, Sand wanted to watch Fantasia, and he wanted Max to pay attention to him. He was reaching so hard for Max. He kept reaching and reaching and trying to roll that direction, but he just couldn't pull it off. I finally took pity on him and got Max's attention and also moved Sandy a little closer.

That was exACTly what he was going for.

He was quite content and probably didn't think it could get any better until I rolled him all the way over and suddenly he was on his belly watching TV with his brother. Just like a big boy.

He stayed there for as long as his neck would let him.
It was SO cute.
I love those two boys--have I said that before?

And some bonus photos that I didn't realize belonged to this week:




Keeping me company while I dry my hair:

And as always, keeping me company at work and not taking very good naps. But it's not every baby that can nap on mom's desk--even if it only is for 10 minutes at a time!