::in celebration::

In celebration of starting to move stuff into our new house tomorrow, here are a few pictures. This isn't an exhaustive tour--more like some highlights. The first ones are from when I first saw the house in November (3 days before the baby was born.)
The front

I can't wait to see the front with leaves on the trees!
Kitchen/dining area


Bookshelves in the kitchen? Yes please!
The bathroom by the kid rooms

The master with it's built in cabinets

View of backyard from the big deck

Those of you that live in places that actually have grass may be unimpressed by this, but let me tell you, out here this is a GREAT yard. And it might just get astroturfed at some point. Just wait and see.
A view of the living room from one angle

Looking from the interior courtyard towards the kitchen/dining room windows


And now a few from the other day. The owner was sort of almost moved out. It was nice to see the place without all her furniture and stuff. We could see better how we'll be able to make it our own!
Living room again, but from a different angle and much less furniture.

Carpet!

Sandy rolled over when we put him down on the carpet. He really liked it. I think it's going to be a wonderful place for him to learn to crawl.
And finally (for now) the front little yard/courtyard/whatever on our way out.

We love the indoor/outdoor living this house is going to enable us to do.
Now who wants to come and visit????

::the funeral::

I'm back--I think at least.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the pictures my mom took at Ken's funeral.

Hopefully more posts coming later if I can catch up with everything and myself.











It was as lovely and spiritual a day as it possibly could've been. The program was great and the talks were absolutely amazing. It's always so nice to be able to be together with family and it takes the sting off of sad times.
Love to all the family and it was so nice to see you.

::brothers::

It's nice to have these two little guys around when things get sad. They're cheery and full of love.

(He's kicking Max in the above picture. It's one of his favorite past times and for some reason Max loves it too. He thinks it's hilarious.)




So sweet.

::::

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." --Timothy 4:7


Kris's dad Ken passed away this afternoon and boy are we going to miss him. But we are so grateful for the amazing life he led and the faithful example he was to all of us. He loved his family so much and would do anything for him. His sons turned out the same way and I'm so grateful for that. He's truly left a legacy and large shoes for us to fill.

"And may I say that this life never was intended to be easy. It is a probationary estate in which we are tested physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually. We are subject to disease and decay. We are attacked by cancer, leprosy, and contagious diseases. We suffer pain and sorrow and afflictions. Disasters strike; floods sweep away our homes; famines destroy our food; plagues and wars fill our graves with dead bodies and our broken homes with sorrow.

When the faithful saints depart from this life they “are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow” (Alma 40:12), and they remain in this state until the day of their resurrection.

If we have lived the gospel we shall come forth with celestial bodies which are prepared to stand the glory of a celestial kingdom. We shall continue to live in the family unit, and as Joseph Smith said, “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”
--Bruce R. McConkie, "The Dead Who Die in the Lord", Ensign, Nov. 1976, 106

And in honor of my dear Father in Law, I leave you with a bit of a song.

"I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go"
--Bob Dylan

Ken, we'll really miss you. Thanks for being you.

::i don't have a title::

Kris was off on an adventure this weekend. He was meeting my dad and brother and uncle in Moab, UT and was going to bike and hike and adventure around until monday night.


(His adventure car, parked in the school parking lot so he could drop off Max. Pretty awesome looking, right?)

He had to take a detour during his weekend though. I haven't said anything about this on my blog so far because it's just been to hard for me to talk about, and I guess it's my way of trying to assume that things will all be ok.

Kris's dad was diagnosed with cancer in October. Lots of cancer. Lung and bone and brain. We thought and hoped that with treatment he'd get some good years still, but the treatments didn't do much for him. He's struggled through the last six months with so many problems, and it's starting to look like the end is very very near.
We're about to lose him and it's hard for me to even think about. So Kris is there with his parents and brother and sister today being together. We don't know how much more time Ken has, but it won't be long. Then he's on to his next adventure.
Kris will get some more bike riding in this weekend before he makes it home, but the true blessing of the trip was that he was close enough to drive home when he needed to.

The rest of this post I guess is just acknowledgment of a sad and hard reality.
And a shout into the cosmos for and to Ken of our love.






Max asked me today, "What will we do without Grandpa?"
And honestly? I'm not quite sure. We'll miss him so much.

::week 17::

And week 17 just flew on by.

Here are Sandy and Kris on Sunday morning before church. We had lots of sleeping and napping problems this week. A couple of weeks ago the baby started waking up in the night for no good reason, a lot, and we haven't been able to sleep much. And he was struggling to sleep in the daytime at all. But some of it improved by the end of the week.
But Sunday he hardly slept the night before, then wouldn't nap in the morning but 5 mins in Kris's lap. Then he stayed up for all of church. Needless to say the afternoon was NOT good. But the snoozing boys do make for a cute picture.

In desperation I tried to figure out how to help Sand to take a decent nap in the daytime. I've been chewing over this problem for days and days, but I finally realized that our room is SO light. Even with all the blinds closed it's just bright as can be. And there are tons of windows. So I thought maybe that was making it hard for him to fall deep enough into sleep. (I don't think he'd slept more than an hour at a time during a nap until the end of this week.)
So I put him in the closet.

I turned on the air filter so he couldn't hear Max's crazyness and I put him in the closet where it was nice and dim.
And it worked. The first time I did it he actually slept past 45 mins and I was blown away. We've been doing it since and things are starting to improve. He's becoming a much happier baby during the day and that's pretty great since he was adorable and happy to begin with. I think he has a pretty big sleep deficit to make up, so we're working on that now.


His eyes appear to be turning a dark brown color like Max's. They're so sweet.

And to wrap up the weekly report, some brotherly interaction:



Such cute little piggy toes.
The end for now.

::chewing--sort of::

On Sunday our Sand got to eat his first bites of rice cereal.
Yuck, I'm so glad somebody doesn't force me to eat bland blah rice cereal!
Anyway, he was quite interested in why I was sticking a spoon in his mouth. He was willing to try it. Then once it all got in his mouth, I got this face:

But he kept on trying anyway.


He's getting the cereal a little earlier than Max did. Max was about a month older when I started him. But this guy seems to always be so hungry. Our doctor thought that trying the rice cereal might help with his sleep. It hasn't yet, but we'll see. It's not making things worse, so that's good!
He's just so adorable when he's eating and smushing all the cereal right back out onto his chin after I stick it in.
Today after I fed him I was eating my own dinner. He was looking at it with great interest--I don't think he'd ever really noticed us eating food before. I think pretty soon he's going to want what we're having!