::last year::

In honor of Sandy's 16 mo birthday today here are some photos from last year's today.

Lots of things can change in a year and lots of things stay the same.

It was sunday and Sandy was trying on a really weird hat that I made one of the two or three times I actually sewed something. He looks very gnomish to me.

And really he looks unsuspecting of the hat.
We were still in our rental house.
Last year at this time we still had Kris's dad with us, though he was so sick. It really is crazy how much can change in a year.

After church last year Max went adventuring. Kris hid a geocache out in the yard and sent Max a-geocaching. Something that hasn't changed is the fact that Max loves adventures.


We haven't geocached much in the last year, but we've definitely talked about it a lot. Max loves the memory of it, so I'm sure we'll do more.


To end the day last year, Sandy got his first taste of (real) food. It was pretty early on in his life but we were trying to figure out some way to help him to sleep through the night.
Little did we know that even still today sleeping thourgh the night would only be a once in a while thing. Little stinker. He usually sleeps pretty well, but wakes up at least once--he sleeps the whole night maybe once a week, ok maybe twice if we're lucky!


Aw, he's so little and cute! His eyes look so huge.

Happy month bday little Sandy. We sure do love you. It's been a good year.

::max is a yellow belt::

Max has been going to his karate school since the summer we moved to Santa Fe. At first when he started he was just silly and crazy. He was enjoying himself and was excited to be doing karate, but really not that serious. He even got into trouble a few times for giggling too much.
But after he took a test and passed up into the next belt he suddenly became serious.
He was so excited and serious about karate that he could've gone every day.
Over the summer the sensai offered week long "summer camps" where groups of the kids would practice karate, play games and hang out. Max did a couple of these and loved them.

He was karate man all summer, and would try to wear his belts out of the house over his normal clothes.


But, the frustrating thing was that when it came time to take the next test--in October, finally! He didn't remember the stuff he needed for the test. So we had to do a private lesson or two and go to every class offered (which is like four per week) for a couple of weeks.
It was a huge pain.
But it paid off. He passed his test and is SO SO proud of himself.

It's exciting to see him so excited and involved in something.

Luckily (for him) he's proved to us that he's serious about it. Because the dojo just barely moved from right by our house to twenty minutes across town. If he wasn't so excited about it we'd be OUT. But as it is I can't take this away from him, so he gets to keep ninjafying himself.
We'll keep you posted on his progress. For now he's a big yellow belt and he couldn't be prouder.

::youch & cinnamon rolls::

Yesterday when Max was out adventuring he had an unfortunate incident. He had a brush with death (i.e. a bumblebee). The bumblebee was flying at him as he was riding his bike on the trail behind our house. This bumblebee may or may not have existed, and it may or may not have stung him on the cheek (it didn't.) But this supposed bumblebee startled him enough that he ran into a cactus. YOUCH.
This really isn't surprising because the man NEVER watches where he's going while riding his bike. It drives me crazy. He's talking and swerving and having close calls all the time he's riding.

So anyway, he was out for just a few minutes riding by himself when the horrific event happened. I heard him come in and I said, "How was your ride, Max?" He said, "BAD!" But since he's the little stoic, he couldn't just tell us what had happened. Instead he lay down on the floor and pulled his pants down and there were the spikes.

(Post spike removal.)
He really didn't get spiked too bad--not as many spikes as he could've ended up with. But the big one in the middle must've really hurt. It left a big purple bruise.
Kris got his loupes and tweezers and a headlamp, and I held his head while we pulled them out.
Once they were out he was pretty cool about it. He got a long warm bath and then all was ok.
Would you like to run into one of these?

I don't want to, but I'm sure I'll have my turn at some point. These spikey things are everywhere!! There's even a story involving the Land Rover and cactuses that I'll save for Kris to tell another day. It's just too good to waste.

(Dramatic re-inactment. This one is right on our driveway!)

And the next item here in today's post is cinnamon rolls.
I figure it's always fun to have something yummy to eat during conference, and on conference sunday sometimes I actually have time to do something like make food, which doesn't happen a lot.
So anyway, I decided to make real cinnamon rolls from scratch for the first time in my life. They turned out really good!

I was pretty worried the dough wouldn't rise at first, but after I waited a bit (left the room, took a shower, stopped checking on it) it did fine.

Cute little rolls.


Done!
It took forever, that was the only problem. I started on them at probably about 8AM and they were finally ready to eat at about 11:30. Max almost didn't have enough patience to survive. He was asking me if he could "have one" before I had even finished mixing the yeast into the dough!

And he was very happy when he finally got to eat one. Picture him whispering reverently "From scratch..." as he munched.

And Sandy insisted on heating most of mine, though I tried hard to convinve him that cheerios were a better idea.

And that's all for now. Happy conference sunday. Wish it would come more often that twice a year. How about once a month?

::adventures::

My Max likes adventures.

For the first week of school his new teacher sent home a brown paper lunch sack and asked the kids to bring it back the next day containing five things that they felt defined them as people. They were supposed to share and explain these things to the class.
When I saw this assignment I started to brainstorm of course, so I could give Max some good ideas. I started to talk about it and he told me he already knew what he was going to put in there.
"I love adventures," he said "so I'm going to put my geodes in there and a Matchbox Land Rover. I'm also going to put a little yellow bike that looks like my Scott Bike and my stick that I found in the desert that looks like a gun."

I thought it was very very interesting that he defined himself that way. I hadn't realized that about him up to that point--in fact I don't think it was true up to very recently.

I'm happy to have a boy that defines himself as an adventurous outdoors guy. There are so much worse and more boring things to want to be at this age.

And what it really comes down to is that I thought it was awfully cute.
I suggested he include a family picture in his bag and off he went to school. I think it went well for him.

(No, I don't know why Max is wearing a bike jersey backwards.)
When my parents were here last week Max invited my dad into his special club--the club I didn't know existed. It's called the "Explorers Bike Club" they had a secret handshake, a secret meeting location and they went on all sorts of cool bike rides. Adventurous and fun. And active.
Pretty cool, right?