::smiles::

::week 5 highlights::

Here's a little of Sandy's week five for you.
It was a busy one, what with the snowstorm and the football game and getting ready for Christmas. We still got some fun pictures though of course!
This week Sandy got to take his first "real" bath. He loved it. He would've stayed in there all afternoon if he could've.

You've seen a couple other of these carseat ones, but I thought this one was just so cute. I love the stripey suit and his silly face.


Ok, here's the funniest thing I have for the week. Kris wanted a picture of Sandy with his dental books for something, so we did a couple of little photo shoots. Since I don't have lights, it's complicate to get things looking right, and they're still not where I wanted, but they did turn out pretty cute. Sandy was patient for about 3 minutes and then he wanted off the shelf, dang it!!


So we got him off before he got too mad.

And last but not least, Sandy sitting in the rocking chair that is currently in our room, waiting for me to do something like dry my hair or brush my teeth. Little guys sure have to wait around a lot.

5 weeks already? Yikes, time flies.

::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!

::advent::

I wanted to do something fun for Max this year for an advent calendar type thing since we have all the Sandy hype going on right now.
And speaking of Sandy, he really didn't want me to get this done. I had to do it all with him in my lap or arms, depending on his mood. I got really good at wrapping presents while holding a rather large sleeping baby.

Anyway, I did this same thing a few years ago. We had a playmobil nativity, and I wrapped up each piece of it, along with some treats and movies and different stuff like that. So he gets to open a little gift every night, and generally it's the nativity pieces. He remembered doing it before and was excited to do it again. And it's been encouraging him to play with each nativity character as they come out, which is fun.

So my favorite part of it is the little wrapped packages, they just look so festive.
Here's how it looked a couple of weeks ago, before he had opened a bunch of them:



Give me bowls full of little presents and pinecones and sparkly ornaments any day. They're just so fun looking.

And the master of the feast:

Just wait until Sandy gets old enough to want to open presents too--we'll see how it goes then.
I think that advent calendars are a really fun way to build up to Christmas, and they help little ones understand how long they have to wait until the big day too. Fun stuff.

::speaking of::

Speaking of cozy fires, (we were speaking of those at some point, right?) weren't you wondering where we got all that wood to burn??

Well, I hope you were wondering, because I'm going to tell you.
Early this week Kris bet up with a friend from the ward who works for the Forest Service. He's like a genuine mountain man (well, sort of), and he's awesome. He had a permit to cute firewood--which are evidently very affordable--and he took Kris out into the middle of nowhere to find a great big deadwood fallen tree that he had run across at some point. I guess it was crazy getting there--no roads or anything of course.
They chopped it up with Gilbert's chainsaw and axe and then filled the back of the Land Rover with chunks of (extremely aromatic) wood.


No--that chainsaw doesn't look very safe or secure--we'll assume they moved that after the picture and before driving home, right? They both made it home with heads intact anyway, that's the important part.

Kris was pretty proud of his load of wood.
And rightly so, it's quite impressive.

Sultan was less impressed and more distressed--the wood was in his spot. What's a dog to do?

The wood smells amazing and it's been really fun to have cozy fires on cold days. And I think the cutting of the wood satisfied a need for adventure in my husband--well a bit of that need anyway. Feeling like a real mountain man is pretty awesome.

::are you ready for this?::

Check it out.
So there was yesterday morning:

And yesterday afternoon:


And do you want to see how it looked first thing this morning? Here you go:

WOW!
It snowed all night and now the snow is so deep here. It's amazing. And it's funny because this one of the biggest snows we've experienced, even after living out east and in the midwest. And it was the least hyped by the media! If this snow had been heading towards anywhere else we lived people would be mobbing the grocery store to get supplies and getting ready to hole up for weeks. Funny stuff.

Kris left this morning in the Land Rover because he had a dental surgery scheduled at the hospital at 7AM. He barely made it out of the driveway. The patient didn't make it to the hospital of course. By the time he got done calling all of our patients for the day and rescheduling them, he came home and all the freeways and highways were being closed.
We'll see if we make it out of here this afternoon--we're supposed to be going to Albuquerque for the NM Bowl. We were going to stay the night and go to the game tomorrow. We'll see!

Here are some more snowy scenes for you.
The french doors in the dining room. Poor Sultan can't make it out to use the facilites:

Our high windows in the living room, all plastered:

Max, enjoying his snow day home from school:

Sultan, bummed because Kris left in the Land Rover without him:

The view from the front door:



And the view out the back door onto our weird patio:

I think these little snow dunes are my favorite.

A fun view from Max's bathroom window:


Days like this make me truly appreciate a warm cozy house and other temporal blessings. It's also nice to be the bosses instead of being bossed around--making the call on whether this should be a snow day or not was nice instead of just being forced to go in whether we wanted to or not!
Happy snow day. Looks like it may still be white by Christmas!

::today::

Today was our first big snow storm of the year. It started early in the morning and just kept on, light and steady.
This is how it looked this morning at around nineish.

This is how something else looked around nineish.

I think he wanted me to be doing something besides taking pcitures.

Kris left us with a roaring fire and a big pile of wood. What a sweet husband. The fire makes it really cozy.

I used up all the wood.

And here's how it looked at about four after we picked up Max from school.

Brrrrrrrrr.

::look alikes::

Here are my two boys. Can you tell which is which? Max couldn't even tell. These were the most similar pictures and poses that I could find. These are two cute little boys that look so similar.


They have the same little bow lips and the same little pokey out chin and double chins for that matter. They have noses that are very very similar. They both have/had those little bruised looking eyelids. Those come from Kris.

I think though they look a lot alike now that is going to change. I think Sandy's going to end up with his own look.

Here are a couple more poses that I tried to use for comparison--not as good as the top ones, but still so cute I couldn't help but posting!!
Max at about two months old:

Sandy last week:


Max at about two and a half months:

Sandy last week again:

There are some similarities there, right?

And last but not least, here they are in the same outfit--Aunt Leslie gave me this one when Max was born. A little boy always looks adorable wearing the Hungry Caterpillar.
Max probably around a month old:

Sweet Sandy just yesterday:


Love it!