Sunday, May 20, 2012

12 hours in the Wild West

Ginna's out of town this weekend--at a conference in Napa. She put in a request that I post some stuff from the bike race I did last weekend. It was called 12 hours in the wild west and took place in south-central New Mexico, just outside Ruidoso.
We told Max that if did a good job at school for the week his reward would be to come along for the trip. He worked really hard (relative to how hard he usually tries) and earned the trip.
We left Friday as soon as school and work ended and took the Airstream for the 3 hour drive.
Our camp
We set up camp during a torrential rain storm. The Airstream kept us pretty dry, but it would not keep us from getting very muddy the next day. I did this race as a relay, which meant that I had plenty of time to hang out between my laps with Max. 

Max, ready to start the day
The Kids' Race
Getting a badge for coloring
The organizers did a good job having activities for the kids. There was an activity tent and a kids' race. Max did all the above.
It got worse after I took this picture
Despite all the distractions, Max's main focus was on riding his bike through the mud. He found every mud puddle and absolutely soaked himself and his bike in sloppy mud. I asked him if he could stop ridding in the mud and he replied, "I just can't stop".
Riding in the mud is fun.
Max also got to pick names for the raffle; he picked himself and me. Thanks Max.
By the end of the day he was so tired he could barely move. He fell asleep before I could make us a frozen pizza in the airstream oven. Yum.
Good morning Max
The race went fine for me. I finished mid-pack, partly due to my rookie relay partner, but I wasn't all that fast myself. 
The next morning we got up early and drove back in time to change into our church clothes in the church parking lot. 

Sunrise, ready to leave

Thursday, May 17, 2012

::shoes boy::

Untitled Remember how in my last post I was telling you that Sandy loves shoes? Well, here's some proof from the other day. We got him some cute little sandals at REI after he grew out of the tiny Tevas I found that we're on sale. He loved those Tevas. Well these flip flops were tons cheaper than buying a new pair of Tevas, so I got them hoping they might actually stay on his feet. (They definitely don't stay on his feet!). Anyway, he was psyched about the new shoes. You can see it in his little face. 1 Then I said something about needing to put on my shoes. He disappeared around the corner and came back with one of my running shoes in his hands. He offered it to me and wasn't satisfied until I had actually put my foot in. Cutest shoe boy ever!! Untitled

Monday, May 14, 2012

::18 months::

IMG_5704 Yesterday--mother's day--was Sandy's 18 month anniversary! A whole year and a half old. Crazy. Remember the olden days? 20101201-IMG_2435 Awww. Anyway, a few things about Mr. the Sand for you. He's a guy that will only eat a banana will the peel on. If you cut it up and give it to him or peel it and give it to him, no dice. It must be in the peel. He's very serious about it. IMG_5702 He still only says a couple of things: Thank you, Uh oh, Out, Hi, Mom (sometimes) and DAD. DAD is said all the time and anytime. Usually first thing in the morning or if somebody reminds him that he has a dad or if he goes near anything that makes him think of dad. Dad is a superhero. He also started calling Max "Bap" last week, but hasn't really kept that up. He basically refuses to say anything else although I know he understands so so much of what we say to him. I figure he'll start saying more when he's ready. IMG_5701 For now I'm just having fun giving him little tasks to do and seeing if he can pull them off. I changed his diaper the other day and then asked him to take the old one to the trash. He went straight there--given he did try to put it in the recycling can first, but once I pointed out his mistake he remembered the right can the next time. I also spied him picking up a little crumb from the floor and taking it to the trash the other day, it cracked me up. IMG_5703 He's still a very neat eater too. He is almost never messy. He just doesn't really like it. I think maybe that's why he only wants to eat bananas in the peel--it's just too slimy otherwise. He's also driving me crazy with food. He'll LOVE something for a while, like grapes for example. He'll eat piles of them. Arbitrarily at some point later on he is very displeased when served that food and refuses to eat any of them. Like the earlier mentioned grapes. I can't even count how many grapes I've cut up, prepared and served only for them to be very vehemently rejected. IMG_5705 He's a very cheery baby and is always willing to be happy and have some fun. His giggle (just like most baby giggles) is totally irresistible. It just makes you want to tickle him and tickle him. He gets to spend lots and lots of time in the dental office. He thinks it's his other house, and I guess essentially it is. He loves all the employees there and he's the star of the show when he's there. He'll be sitting at his high chair having lunch with everybody and if he does something cute the whole table full of ladies will cheer or gasp or scream. It's too funny. I'm not sure it's healthy though, having that much attention. Oh well. He'll have good self esteem. IMG_5706 He loves shoes. He will bring me his shoes and ask to have them put on if he sees them. We bought him some little sandals at REI the other day (which he promptly grew out of) and he LOVED them. When I'd put them on him he'd look down at his feet every so often and smile. It's cute. IMG_5708 He's started to love bedtime stories--he's getting into our family classics, "a Boy and his Bunny" and "Caps for Sale" to start with. He begs Kris for books at bedtime and Kris always gives in. IMG_5709 He still adores his little swaddling blankets and if I'm doing the laundry and he finds them he'll laugh with glee and bury his head in them--with no regard to what is underneath, I always have to make sure he's not clocking his head on the brick floor. IMG_5711 He loves cars almost as much as Max does and can play with them for hours. He's pretty gentle with them too and drives them very well, often even making noises. He especially likes to drive the little cars on the windowsills. He mostly just wants to play with whatever Max is playing with--or whatever is under the sink in my bathroom. IMG_5713 I did find him with his hands in Max's toilet the other day--grossest possible toilet to stick your hands in of course--so he's not the perfect baby. He also likes to scream when he doesn't get his own way, is hungry, is annoyed or is tired. He's pretty good with being tired though. If he's not feeling unwell in some way he can totally skip a nap without any ill effects--it doesn't effect his nighttime sleeping badly either which to me is totally bizarre. IMG_5714 He just barely a month or so ago actually started consistently sleeping through the night. Huzzah! It was rather torturous for a while there, but I knew he'd figure it out at some point. There's so much more to say of course, but we'll have to save that for later posts. We love Sandy, could he only have been with us for eighteen months? Is that even possible? Life without him just wouldn't be right. We're so glad he's here.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

::a tribute appropriate to the day::

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This is just a quick post to tell the two best ladies in the whole world how much we love them.  Thanks for all you have done and do for us Kathy and Kristen.  Thanks for your love and support and for giving us such a great start in life.  Kris and I are both so lucky.
Happy Mother's day!!

And here's the card I got from my Max.  It's so cute.

photo It's Max on the bike with me behind him. And no, I'm not supposed to be pushing the bike, that just happened accidentally. I'm just running with him in my vibrams. I love my ponytail. Stuff like this makes it all worth it.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

::swings::

IMG_5503 One of our major projects for this year is improvement of our outdoor spaces.  We have very nice spaces, but they haven't been well maintained in the last two years.  It started before we got the house, and then we didn't know what was weeds or plants or how to keep them watered in the hot hot summer!

Anyway, we're working on this project a little at a time.  The ultimate goal is to have a fun outdoor space where both Sandy and Max can have a good time.

So in April we started by hanging a baby swing, and replacing the huge log tied up with climbing rope that used to be Max's swing with a plastic thing that might not brain a baby someday.
IMG_5504 (You can see the death log there on the floor, yikes! Sometimes Max would spin it up and then send it swinging. It was like one of those things they used to use to break down castle doors. It was time.) IMG_5505 IMG_5506 They were excited about the new set up. Everybody loves to swing, after all. Kris did a bunch of stuff with ladders and tools and anchors and finally the guys were in business. IMG_5510 Though you can't see the baby through his daddy's bum. And yes, Max is glued to Kris's old iphone. It's a losing battle against technology in our house, sigh.. And somehow I didn't ever get a picture of both of them actually swinging. I think it had to do with the extreme lights and shadows out there in the courtyard in the middle of the day. It's a tough place to get a decent photo. IMG_5598 But this is how it looked a few days later. It's fun that they can swing together, though I still don't trust Max to put Sandy in or take him out of the swing. And now that I mention it, I don't trust him to push either, since he likes to twist Sand up and let him unroll while swinging high. Sandy of course thinks it's hysterical. He's too young to know he shouldn't trust his life to his eight year old brother. But of course that's what moms are for, right? To spare our kids for another day. And look, while I was waxing philosphical about swinging I found us a little video complete with baby giggles. That's why I have no pictures, I was taking VIDEO! We'll keep you posted on the yard improvements as we go.

Friday, May 11, 2012

::easter part 3 and final::

Subtitle for this post is "outfits." Although now I can't think of what outfit I was wearing on Easter, I do know what my boys were wearing. This could have something to do with the 10,000 pictures I took of them. Or it could have something to do with the fact that I found matching outfits for a large and tall eight year old and a small yet stocky 1.4 year old. I'm impressed with myself, and you should be too. It's not easy to make those guys match. Honestly, I didn't go out with the intention of making them match, but it just worked out that way. It was very lucky. And without further ado, here's my cool oldest dude.
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IMG_5547
Like the church shorts? I usually outlaw those, but these were too cute to resist. And Max was told he had to behave as if he was wearing slacks, despite the sportiness of the shorts.
And suddenly here is the roving baby, come for a picture. I told him to stand by Max and he did. This was when I started to realize that he was actually following some of my directions. He's a smart one. He won't say much, but he understands lots and lots.

IMG_5549 IMG_5548
This one is so cute.
And off goes baby again. IMG_5550 IMG_5551 I love Max's little pigeon-toed feet.
 And back zooms baby. IMG_5552 Ready for some adorable brothers? IMG_5554   IMG_5555 IMG_5556
Yep, they're adorable and I love them. And I love that they like to match too. IMG_5559 The End.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

::easter part 2::

Easter part two! So once we had decorated the eggs, we needed an egg hunt. I love what my parents always did--the big friend easter egg hunt with piles of eggs and candy on saturday. I love it, and I've only pulled off doing it like once or twice since Max was tiny. Sadly, this was not one of those years where I made it happen. At church my presidency and I were in charge of the ward easter party which ended up being friday night and then saturday was crazy busy as usual. So we were left with sunday afternoon being the best and only time for any sort of egg hunting. And we did have to make it up to Max because at the church egg hunt he only got ONE EGG, although I know there were dozens more than that since I ran the whole thing. He's just not the running pushing kind of guy. Anyway, after church and a nap Kris and I hid some eggs for the boys. Easy eggs and hard eggs, plastic eggs and real eggs. IMG_5582 Everybody's excited and ready in this picture except for Kris. He's just embarrassed by all the cardboard boxes and stuff in the front hall. IMG_5583 Sandy was excited, but he didn't quite get what was going on, he kept dumping his basket and taking off in another direction. And off they went: IMG_5587 Sandy just ran around for a while. Kris tried to help him figure out what was going on, but it was pretty much a lost cause. Max however, was a man on a mission. He wanted an egg salad sandwich, and he was willing to work to make it happen. IMG_5586 I'm not sure why he's wearing a helmet--he must've been ready to take some serious risks for those eggs. IMG_5585 IMG_5591 This was pre yard clean up for us, now I look at these pictures and it all looks so junky! But everything does in the early spring I guess, except for those very motivated gardening people. IMG_5584 Sultan of course wanted to get in on the action too, but the plastic eggs don't taste so good. And then finally Sandy clued in and found a couple of eggs, though by then Max had gotten all the easy ones and Sand had to almost sacrifice his arms to retrieve some eggs. IMG_5588 IMG_5589 Easter eggs hunts are really the best, aren't they? Even when reported on a month late. One more easter post to come. Soon I hope.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

::::

I'm interrupting my slow Easter report to show something that's current and fun. Kris got out our work projector and took it out on the back deck and set us up a little movie theater! IMG_5634 We've been watching shows out there at night which is quite fun, and when Murphy was here we even had a fire in the firepit too. I'm really looking forward to watching movies out there in the summer when inside is a little too warm for comfort. There's lots of room out there, so come on over--bring your favorite movie!

Thursday, May 03, 2012

::easter part 1::

Here you go, a couple of my long overdue Easter posts. So late that they hardly even matter anymore! But I go on and do it anyway, like any good mom, chronicling along. As has been the norm lately we were super busy, including getting a family photo shoot redo on Easter saturday. We're lucky I had the foresight to buy extra eggs and a bundle of dye. We usually draw on our eggs with markers or paints--that's how I usually remember it growing up--but I thought it might be fun this year to go normal and dye the dang things. It was kind of fun actually, and not too hard, so that was nice. Max worked on it while everybody else did stuff around him. IMG_5542 IMG_5543 He worked hard and made sure they were all the exact right color before they were removed. IMG_5544 IMG_5545 And visions of egg salad sandwiches danced in his little head. The End of part 1. Goodnight.