::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......

::blessing day::

So first thing, I had the toughest time ever picking which pictures to put up in this post. So I just picked a bunch.



A week ago today we were able to bless our sweet Sandy in church. If you'd like to know more about that please follow this link and read the section titled "naming and blessing children."
Kris gave Sandy the blessing and he did a beautiful job. He said so many sweet and precious things. I wish I had a recording of it so I could listen to it 100 times in a row and memorize it. We had lots of good friends from the ward standing in the circle, as well as my dad. I was so glad my dad could be there, and we missed the rest of our family, but we knew they were there in spirit. I'm glad that we have so much support from the ward though, since we can't live minutes away from the family. It's nice to know that a lot of the men standing in the blessing circle will be the same men supporting, helping and teaching Sandy (and Max) for a long time. That's special.


(I think this picture is so funny--just the angle of his head, his chubby mushy cheeks and the bubbles.)

Afterwards we gathered at our house with a few friends from the ward for snacks and chatting. Sand didn't even know the party was in his honor, but he had a good time.

(preparing for his party--he didn't even poop on his clothes!)


Speaking of Sandy, he was absolutely perfect at church, didn't make a squeak during the blessing. After his blessing he was held by Mrs. Evans, the wife of the dentist we bought the practice from (they came to the blessing, wasn't that nice?) and then he fell quietly and serenely asleep in her arms. That never happens these days!
What a great kid.

It was so nice to have my parents there. It was fun that they got to meet and chat with some of our friends and just be around for just general help and support. Kris and I are so blessed in the parent department. We have four of the best.
Anyway, my dad spent a lot of time with Sand, entertaining and snuggling him. Sandy loved it.


My dad also got a few giggles out of him during the visit. Some of his very first.

I just want to eat him up with that adorable little smile.


It was a wonderful day. I was probably too stressed out with making sure everything was ready and clean and all was going to run smooth, but I survived. Thanks to everybody for their help and love. We are so greatly blessed with friends and family (whether you were able to attend the blessing or not) I can hardly think about it without being overcome. We love you all. Thank you for loving us.


oh, and if you would like to see a few more pictures, including a couple of me, go here to my mom's blog.

::::

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.

::my office::

Ok, so this isn't always my office, but often. And don't I have the cutest little coworker?

::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.
\

::today::

Today we had Sandy's blessing at church. It was so nice and a really beautiful day. I'll post more about it later hopefully. I'm all worn out now.
Sand couldn't have behaved more perfectly today.

(thanks to Grandma Kathy & Lechelle for finding the adorable outfit, it fits perfectly!!)

::word::

So some people have been coming up with a word for the upcoming year. A word to define, or sometimes direct the year by. This is tough for me. I have a hard time distilling everything down to that one particular important word. But I try anyway, because it makes me think.

And the fact that it's taken me like four weeks to finally think this out and write it down is just evidence that I need this word to apply pretty terrible.

The word for me this year will be SIMPLE. Yes, as in like "keep it simple, stupid." Except for the stupid part since I really hate when people call themselves stupid.

The reason why? Well, I'm way in over my head right now. I have way way more to do than I can ever possibly get done to my satisfaction. And most if not 99% of what I'm doing is good and important and a large amount of it I enjoy. So where can I cut some of it out? I can't. So what I have to do is just keep everything as simple as I can, and not require too much of myself at any given time.
Like......making dinner. It's so hard for me. It's a tough time of day, I'm not a very good cook and I can never think of what to make that actually sounds good and is healthy. So I've got to keep it simple. I've got to find some easy things that sound decent and figure out how to do them well and quickly. OK, so that's not a simple task, but once I get it figured out it should simplify things.

Here's a good example of something I already did. I really wanted to make delicious sugar cookies at Christmastime. I usually do it and they're delicious and fun and so festive. I made the dough, twenty times in my mind. I never got it done. And instead of beating myself up because I didn't get something fun done I just decided I'd make "winter" cookies instead and put it off until after Christmas. And we did it. Later when the pressure wasn't quite as intense. They tasted just as good.

So it won't be particularly simple to simplify things, but after the initial work I think it will benefit us all. And then I can keep doing all the good stuff I'm doing. And hopefully I won't go crazy.

So there you go.

::the tenth week!!::

Week number ten was a little crazy. I felt like I was drowning in things to do. We got back from our Phoenix trip and of course there were mounds of dirty laundry to take care of and all sorts of other projects waiting for me.

We also had a little health scare. One of Sandy's newborn screening tests came back with a (slightly) elevated reading and I had to drive him down to UNM hospital (all by myself) to have another set of testing done. It was really unpleasant and made me really nervous and stressed of course. Everything turned out normal and ok so we were extremely relieved, but it did give me a good chance to think and realize that it didn't matter if our Sandy wasn't perfect, he's our darling boy and we'd just make sure everything was as good for him as it could be. But we're really grateful that he's ok.

So anyway, I spent a lot of time driving and a good amount of time trying to catch up on work. Poor Sand and Max spent more time than they wanted to in the car.

So turns out the only pictures I have of the baby from week 10 are car seat pictures. And they're sad pictures too.
I wanted to showcase some of his cute clothes, because I went to Carter's in Phoenix and got some adorable stuff and I got a few things on sale from the Gap too that are just to die for. But of course, car seat pictures don't do much for seeing baby clothes, and the baby always seems to soil the clothes that are the cutest, so oh well.

Oh, and another thing this week, Sandy got his first set of shots from the doctor, poor guy. See? I told you it was a crazy week. He didn't have a good time with it and he was sad all day after. So this picture is from shots day.
It was supposed to show you his adorable little jeans and flannel shirt, but oh well.

Ah, now that's a bit happier face--a bit.

He wasn't too happy for the next day or two either, and he didn't sleep well at night. I'm not used to that anymore, since he's been doing such a great job sleeping, so I was pretty worn out.

I think he might be wondering why I'm taking pictures of him instead of getting him out of the dreaded seat here.

But how cute is his little star jacket? I like my baby in a hood.

So we survived another week. And a tough one it was. I wasn't sad to see this one roll on by. This next week is already much better.

********I forgot I had this adorable photo on my phone.

I love these two boys so much. I'm so glad we had a happy picture for this week, even though it was hard to find!