::grandpa's guitars::

At least a few of them.

When we were in UT in Sept for Murphy's wedding Max had a fun sunday afternoon playing some of Grandpa Ken's guitars.
The Gibson Explorer:

This one was relatively new to the collection. We hadn't ever seen it much. It's pretty cool though.

The Fender Telocaster. Kathy got this one for Ken for his birthday one year. It was one of the first nice guitars he had and he loved it. It's one I remember him playing the most. I love Max's pose here.

This next one is an interesting one. It was commissioned from a polygamist guy that builds guitars. Ken picked out the design and it took the guy about nine months to make it. There's even a blog post about it. Max loves the american flag theme too.

The last one I have a picture of right now is a cool Gretsch. Kris and I picked it out for him when we lived in Kansas City. I think it's a very cool looking guitar.

This is only a fraction of the guitar collection that Ken had. It's a fun one. Next time we're there we'll take a few more photos and share.
(and he did make a book--here's a link to see some of it as pdf if you want to!)

::eggs::

The second to the last of the easter posts...

We decorated some eggs saturday afternoon. I'm pretty impressed with myself that we even did it considering all that was going on. But since Kathy was here and she helped me get all packed, moved and unpacked in a really short period of time, we were able to pull off some egg boiling and decorating.
Max made some of the coolest eggs ever.

He got out his Atlas of the Universe that he earned by reading books at school and made some moons.

Titan, Saturn's biggest moon. And maybe the biggest moon of all, we're just not sure.

Pluto. Not a planet anymore, but instead an awesome easter egg.

I love them!

Hunting for them was fun, but I just enjoyed the moment and took no photos. I'm allowed to do that once in a while, right?

::basket::

Max came out of school today with a treasure--a basket full of grass.
You just don't see lush green grass around here much. I think the kids planted the seeds about two weeks ago.
His sweet teacher is a pastor's wife. She was pretty excited to sneak some easter basketing in at school under the guise of "spring baskets."

Yay for spring (and Easter) and baskets and treats and eggs.

Now if only that patch of grass was big enough I could squish my feet around in it.....

::the electrician::

My dad found this awesome "snap-together" electronics kit and gave it to Max for his birthday.
Max adores it. He's been playing with it every day. Before school he gets it out and works on it and then when he goes home he goes straight to it and continues his work.


This kit is really nice because after I helped him the first few projects he got the hang of it and could do them on his own. They're not messy or dangerous, and there are 300 different projects in this kit.

Awesome, right?

The other day he made a radio. And he found a box for it. Then he pretended to be a stranger that I'd never met, here to show me his awesome electronics. He was an electrician.


A very serious electrician.


We talked about what he was doing and how it worked. It was pretty fun. Until we had to start all over and pretend the same thing again. That wears me out. But anyway I'm glad he's been having fun with the kit.

Sandy likes to watch him. Sandy likes to watch him do anything and everything.

It's no wonder. He's a pretty interesting guy, this electrician.

Thanks for such a great present Dad & Mom!!

::before & after::

It's the shortest I think we've ever had his hair cut. It matches Dad. This is a fresh "do" all ready for school.
We love him with the floppy hair and with the spiky hair. He's just cute. And goofy.
He wanted his hair cut like Sandy's, but we told him that was just slightly too short.

::happy::

Happy Valentine's day to all those we love. Just a few fun photos from the day to celebrate.





(He's happier than he looks--a LOT happier)
Here's hoping everybody had as generous of a day as our Max enjoyed. Goodnight!

::science part 1::

We got Max a cool science kit for Christmas. I thought he would really like it and I was right. In fact, he wanted to start working on it the second it was unwrapped and he tormented me every single day until I had a chance to work on it with him.
Finally one day things settled down a bit and we got to do a couple of experiments.

The first one we did was definitely the coolest. It was a color changing volcano that involved baking soda and citric acid and some other crazy stuff.

He felt so cool with this "pipette" and his little scoops and his chemicals. A cool and awesome scientist making things change colors. It was very cute.

Keeping him and the house clean though was a big task, and obviously a kit like this cannot be worked with alone by a six year old. So it required heavy parental involvement, which is good and bad, bad when little brothers need lots of attention too.
Anyway we had fun working on it together. After the little bubbly volcano we made large jiggly crystals.

That was all the science energy I had in me and so we packed up the kit and put it away, much to Max's chagrin.
He's asked me to work on it with him almost every day since........
Part two to follow......

::::

As the manager of the dental office, one of my official duties is picking out and ordering the little toy favors that kids get after their appointments. I really enjoy this. It's just a fun thing to do. And it reminds me of how I used to love going to the dentist because of the fun little toys they would give us. And that's really funny too because I had a darn lot of work done over the years. You'd think I would be traumatized. But no, the toys saved me. I think the only thing that was traumatized was my parents' pocketbook, unfortunately.

Anyway, picking the toys is fun. Sometimes I have Max help me go through the catalogues and tell me what he thinks other kids will like. Of course it usually ends up with him circling what HE would like, then us having a big long discussion about why I can't just GIVE him one of each toy we order, and how much he'll have to pay me for the ones he wants.

Anyway again, the other day I had him go through one of the catalogues at home. He stuck to the dask with diligence and dedication. When I went back through it to make my orders I was highly amused. I asked him to circle the toys that he thought would be good for us to get.

Sometimes he did just that, and nicely.


Sometimes there was just too much awesomeness on one page, and he ended up circling essentially everything.


It gets even better from here.
Sometimes the awesomeness of the page was just overwhelming and he had to use special means to express how cool it all was.

I mean, who wouldn't bust out with an "OH YA" when they see those sweet Sponge Bob tatoos?

And my ultimate favorite, the "silly band" page.

I laughed so hard when I found this: "Ah ya, OH ya, YES YES!!"

I hope you appreciate all that as much as I do, because it still cracks me up while I'm writing about it. Funny funny kids. They're worth all the hard work. Especially when they're in bed.

::week eleven::

Ah, so for week eleven. And again I say, already? Seriously? I can't believe time flies by so darn fast.

Here are Sandy and I, working hard on saturday morning. I finally decided to put the darn Christmas decorations away, once and for all, and of course the baby wouldn't sleep while I did it. So he got to be wrapped up and carted around.

This Moby wrap has been so useful. I use it all the time and Sandy seems to be really comfortable in it. He's even slept through two hours of primary while I did singing time in it, for four weeks. It's amazing. I'm really glad I bought it. It's nice to have him all snuggled up close and still be able to do some things with my hands.

Here's the Sand in an outfit Dixie sent him. He looks so cute! He proceeded to poop on it, but at least I got some pictures. Good thing Dixie's not letting Kris forget his Denver roots!

Yes, his double chin is hilarious!


And here's Sunday. The boys are wearing their matching ties that Lechelle made and gave them for Christmas. I just love them! I got Sandy his little white shirt onesie when we were in Phoenix. He just looks like a little man in it, doesn't he? All the old ladies at church were freaking out over his shirt and tie. They loved it. I can't blame them.
And I love that he and Max match. Thanks Lechelle, because as we discussed, finding things that match that can fit a nearly 7 year old and a tiny little guy is so darn hard! We also love the dino shoes that came from Lechelle.



Will Max ever get those front teeth back? I miss them so much.
Week eleven. A good week.

::31 on the 31st::

(My birthday presents--my new computer for work and some fun stuff my mom brought for me!)

Today is my birthday! It's been a great day, besides the 20-30 minutes I spent on the phone with the bank, since they pulled our rent out of our account twice for Feb. Ouch.
But enough about that. The fun part of today is that my parents are here visiting. This is the first time I've been able to be with my parents for my birthday in years. Probably since we moved away from UT which was close to seven years ago! So how fun that they got to come out for the baby blessing and stay for my birthday.

I got to go shopping with my mom and sandy this morning while the boys went on a Land Rover adventure in the mountains (Max had the day off school for some teacher training or something.) We had a good time. Then we all met up at Harry's Roadhouse for lunch, which was delicious. Then we went home and relaxed for a while and then at the end of the day enjoyed pie and some sweet gifts.

Max served me a fancy breakfast this morning and it was delicious. He was very very serious about it too. Or at least he tried to be.

I couldn't be luckier.
\

::new mexico bowl::

Saturday was the New Mexico bowl--BYU vs. UTEP. We really wanted to go, I mean a BYU football game an hour away from our house?!!
Luckily, the big snow storm didn't keep us down and we made it to Albuquerque right on time. In fact, the snow probably helped because we had to cancel work on friday, so we were able to leave even earlier than planned.

We started our outing by going to the football team's fireside at a stake center in ABQ. It was really fun to see the team up close and to hear a few of them speak and sing. The coach spoke last and he gave a great talk. He's such a good guy. He talked about how after the team struggled so much at the beginning of the year people were starting to doubt that the team could be run the way he runs it--with emphasis on the honor code and being a good person--and succeed. And then he talked about successes and where they come from, and the right reasons to do the things we do. It was quite inspiring really.
The boys behaved really well too, which made things even better.

Then we stayed the night in a hotel not far from the stadium. In the morning we got up and headed over to the stadium for the alumni tailgate party. The moment we got to the stadium I realized we'd left the tickets to the game at home. I was just sick! So as soon as we parked at the stadium, we hurried over to the will call and begged them for some help--inadvertently cutting in line on the way and getting yelled at by an angry BYU fan texan. He was mad.
Anyway, they gave us three more tickets, thank goodness, and then my weekend wasn't ruined anymore!
We went over and Max got to spend a little time in the bouncy houses, which is the stuff of dreams to him.

We ate a big southwestern breakfast complete with BYU catering's mint brownies and hot chocolate. We listened to the band for a bit.
Then we headed over and took our seats in the stadium. Max got some awesome stickers for under his eyes so he looked really intense.


Sand spent the whole time sleeping on my chest in his carrier. He was warm (super duper warm) and snuggly and seemed pretty happy. And the awesome baby carrier that I have is pretty easy on the back, so I survived the experience.



He was a trooper. Actually both boys did great and instead of ruining our fun, helped it along for once!
We stayed until half time and then left. It was good timing really and considering the game was a blow out we didn't miss much.
But we did stay long enough to see Santa, who apparently is a UTEP fan. Who knew?!


It was really fun and we'll do it again. Too bad BYU won't be coming to NM regularly anymore for football, but that's just how it goes. All this did was just strengthen our desires to come out to UT for a BYU game sometime in the fall!