::the fourteenth week::

This poor little week fourteen post is long long overdue. Baby is already fifteen weeks and counting! But I'm not going to give up just because I'm slow. So here you go.

We're starting with Sand all ready for church. I love little sweater vests. I love this whole little outfit. He looks so adorable and church appropriate (like babies aren't always church appropriate!).
I like dressing babies up, especially boys because the girls are always dressed in little dresses, but baby boys don't usually get dressed up too much.
So here you go.



He's been great at church. It always starts about when he's supposed to nap, and since he's a light sleeper he can't just sleep in his carseat or being switched between people's arms. I've been putting him in my Moby wrap while I do the music in primary and he tends to sleep through the whole thing. By the time we get to sacrament meeting we're both super sweaty and uncomfortable, but at least I'm able to get done what I need to with a minimum of distraction. It also helped when we first brought him to church, because less people can touch him and cough on him while he's tied to me. Hah.

Next is Sandy with his katamari.

Now, you might be wondering what a katamari is exactly, and I wouldn't blame you. Katamari is a fabulous video game we've been playing in our family for years now. You're a little character pushing a big ball around trying to roll everything up. And the balls look just like this toy of Sandy's.
Max found it for him when we were out shopping one day and he loves it. Max loves it too and wishes he had one of his own.


And lastly, a couple of phone pictures from our Phoenix trip.
Sandy fell asleep in my arms on the bed, and that just doesn't happen that much. It was so sweet I had to take a picture even though it turned out pretty dark and terrible. He's so nice to snuggle.


And here we are eating at our favorite sandwich place in all the world, Planet Sub. Turned out they had just opened one in Phoenix--it was grand opening weekend. We drove about 40 minutes to get there and it was totally worth it. If only there was one here.

Then Sandy might be able to look forward to enjoying a delicious PB&J kid sandwich. As it is, at least we're closer now.

It was a good week.

Geocache #1

Ginna has been suggesting that we try Geocaching for a while now and today we finally did it. If you don't know about Geocaching, you can read up here.
We decided to start off with one near our house. Turns out, there are a whole bunch near us.
After we found a suitable geocache, we downloaded the location and mapped it out.

The wind was really strong and cold plus Ginna was pretty tired, so we decided that just Max, Dad and Sultan would go on this first adventure. We drove down to the Galisteo Basin and began hunting for the treasure.

Fortunately, my bike GPS is pretty sensitive and we got close to the cache in no time at all. Once we were sure we were really close, we got down on our knees and Max found it under some bushes.

He was pretty bummed that the cache wasn't actually treasure, but rather a little marker in a rusty can. Still he was excited to have found something. We celebrated as if it were treasure.


It was too cold to stay for long, so we ran back to the car. Even Sultan was excited to jump back in.

The quick drive home provided us with another typically beautiful New Mexican sky. In this picture, you can see our neighborhood on the left. Pretty scenic huh?

The boys had a good time riding in the back. Next time we'll make sure everyone gets to come treasure hunting.

::working::

I love this picture of the two guys working hard to learn.
Even though I do have to force both of them to do their learning at least 75% of the time and I definitely had to do some pushing (to put it lightly) to get this to happen.
It doesn't matter, as long as it gets done, and we hopefully have fun doing it.

It's fun to look at this picture and realize how we are all at such different levels in our learning and how playing can be learning and hard work all at the same time.

Cute cute boys.

::max is seven!!::

Our sweet big monstrous Max is now seven. It's such a crazy thing that I can't really wrap my mind around it.
He turned seven last week while on our trip to Phoenix.
Poor guy, we drove half the way the night before his birthday and drove the rest of the way on his birthday morn. Unfortunately for him, he came down with a cold just as we left town. So he slept awfully and he had stuffed up ears and a yucky cough. Driving down from the mountains into the Phoenix valley just about killed him. I think he felt like his ear was going to explode. At one point, about an hour outside of town we got stuck in construction. Max was bawling, Sandy was screaming and I thought I was going to die. If there had been a cliff handy I would've gone off it. Luckily everybody settled down and we made it to our hotel.

Oh, but it was before that the festivities started. Max had requested a couple of weeks ago if we could put a little present under his pillow and say to him "Good Morning Sunshine!" or something to that effect to wake him up. So we did it. But we forgot what we were supposed to say and so we said "Rise and shine Buckaroo!!" It worked just as well though and he was excited to wake up to a little gift. We got him a watch with Pluto on it. It reminded me of the Mickey Mouse watch my parents gave me when I was about his age.

Once we got to the hotel took the boys swimming right away because it looked like that day was going to be our only swim worthy weather. Sadly again for the Max, the little water slide at the hotel was closed. But he had fun anyway. Sandy did awesome swimming even though it wasn't really that nice out. It was kind of breezy and cool. But he was way into it. I can't wait until the next time was can take him swimming. Whenever that may be!

Then we went back and he opened his presents. He was psyched about them, thank goodness. Then we headed out and picked up some Jimmy John's sandwiches for dinner along with a yummy b-day cake from Trader Joe's. After that we put the poor boy to bed and it took him hours and hours to wind down enough to fall asleep.

I think all-in-all it turned out to be a pretty good day. I hope so anyway, we only turn seven once!

::get ready::

and the one from Max:

::week thirteen::

Week thirteen was busy busy--like they all are really with a 6 (almost 7!) year old, a business to run and a little guy.
Here's the best picture I took of Sandy the whole week:

Sandy is in his bouncer, concentrating fiercely on his toys.
When we first got the toys at Christmas, he thought they were relatively interesting. But not THAT great. However, this week he realized that they're really cool. And he's actually playing with them. He grabs them and whacks at them and spins them. It's really fun to watch and we're all so proud of him! It's so fun to see him realize that he's a real person that can do stuff.

And a couple of bonus phone pictures:
Kris was in UT over the first few days of week 13 to visit his parents, and I was alone with Thing 1 and Thing 2. I sent him this picture at about 6:30AM to show him what was going on here, while he was sawing logs in Highland.


And here's the boy in an impulse purchase from Target. Good old Carter's makes some pretty adorable baby boy stuff. I couldn't pass up the dino onesie with the coordinating jacket (not pictured, unfortunately).

But cuter than the clothes is the little one filling them out. He's adorable!

::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!

::freezing::

Luckily for us it's not freezing anymore right now--well, at least not the way it was.
The week of my birthday had some crazy weather. My birthday was nice and temperate, but the next day a storm blew in. My parents were flying out that afternoon, and it was truly questionable whether they were going to make it out or not. Lucky for me since Kris was flying out to see his parents that weekend they drove our car down there and parked it in long term parking. It was very nice that I didn't have to drive down and back with the boys, since it was terrible driving conditions and seemed very unsafe.
Max had a two hour delay for school and it was so darn cold I decided to just keep him home so I didn't have to take the baby out in the freezing.

Anyway, they made it luckily--though I think there was some white-knuckle driving in there.
That night it got freezing freezing cold, like well below zero, which is unusual for out here. School was cancelled the next day and we discovered that our pilot light had gone out. We have radiant floor heating and it takes a long time to cool down and a long time to warm up. By the time we realized the furnace wasn't running it was way cold in the house and it took forever and a day to warm up.
We spent a lot of time in the living room by the fire and we dressed Sand really warmly.


Max got out every toy he owned in an effort to entertain himself. He did well, but we were getting pretty tired of the still cold house by the end of the day. We braved the snow that night to go and grab a couple of burgers at a new place with FRY SAUCE!

The next day there was another two hour school delay. I ran into work after I dropped Max off and I got a automated phone call from the school district saying that all the students were warm and safe, but there was a statewide gas shortage and that they were going to close up school as soon as all classes were over. Turned out there was a true shortage and several cities in the state were completely without gas and some without power for days that week! Luckily we were fine. We did close the office friday though, in order to contribute to saving gas for cold homes. School was cancelled too.

It was just a crazy winter week. Kind of fun to have such crazy stuff going on, and lucky that we were warm, but I did feel bad for all the cold people without working heaters. Things like that make us grateful for what we have, and inspire us to make sure we have enough wood to stay warm if we happen to be left with only our fireplace for heat!

Can't wait for spring!

::12::

These first three are a cheat. They really belong to week 11. I'm not sure how they slipped past my radar. I'm going to blame it on fun visits from my parents--way too much fun to think straight.
But these photos are way too adorable to leave off the interweb!
Baby entertaining himself in his little bouncer while we did stuff in the kitchen.

Shades of cross-eyed-ness, but not truly cross eyed. It's amazing I caught him staring straight at the camera!

Here he is demonstrating his best skill. Bubbly bubbles. He's very excellent at it and does it ALL the time.

I LOVE this one. So cute.

Alright so here's official week 12. And how CRAZY is it that he's been here for 3 months already? I think I've said this 20 times already just on this blog, but time goes too darn fast. He's growing and changing too fast for me. I wish all his little stages would last twice as long.

We had lots of fun with my parents when they were here, and the baby especially enjoyed his one on one time and tons of attention and cuddling.

I love this action shot here, my mom is all blurry and actiony.

And that baby is loving it. And I'm loving the sideways smile with his little bow mouth.


Here he is enjoying one of his favorite pastimes--the gas massage. He's such a gassy baby sometimes, he just loves to be squished. It doesn't make much sense to me.

And lastly here he is again in his full body sweater sitting on the couch. I just can't resist a couched baby in a red sweater. How many different pictures do you think I have of him like this? A lot!

It's because he's adorable and he looks different every day and I just can't help it.

And there you go.
Slow these darn weeks down, dang it!