::july the fourth mezzanine::

Not quite part two, but like an interlude. This photo deserves a post all it's own.

It just illustrates the Max/Lucy relationship perfectly. They really love each other. He coos and goes goo-goo over her. If she's crying and he comes over she stops. If she's unhappy in the car and he sits next to her she's quite the whole way home just staring at his face. If she's crying in the house he comes running over to see if he can help.

Yes, it's adorable.

::july the fourth part 1::

First, Lucy in stars & stripes:

In a moment of weakness Kris and I took the family shopping on fourth of July morning. Well, the weakness wasn't in the shopping, it was in what we bought WHILE we were shopping.
WE went looking for BBQ supplies and some sort of polish water toy sort of thing that we could put in the courtyard next to the kitchen so that the kids could have a fun weekend.
We didn't have a ton of places to look, and it kind of turned out it was either a smallish thing or a largeish thing. So after much deliberation and checking amazon reviews we decided to go with the largish thing. And by largish I mean QUITE LARGE.
When we got home the boys were immediately in their swimming suits and waiting extremely impatiently for Kris to set it all up.
It was torture just to make them eat lunch. You can imagine how hard it was to make them stand still for sunscreen!


Lucy looked on of course. She thinks everything is either super interesting or super boring these days.

The set up really wasn't too bad--a lot quicker than I was afraid of. But not quick enough for the boys of course.



And up it went! It's like a bouncy house waterslide castle thing. A blower has to blow the whole time it's on, and little sprinklers run pouring water down the slide all the time. That water fills up the little pool area.


The boys were SO happy. Check out Sandy jumping.

Sooooo happy. Sandy kept running up to us at the edge of the pool and saying, "I love this new thing!!"


Kris and I pulled up a couple of chairs in the shade and enjoyed the show.

The boys spent all afternoon out in the freezing cold water and had a blast. It may be the best remembered Independence day ever for the kiddos. I guess we'll find out.

::in which sandy truly enjoys some chocolate ice cream::

It was wednesday night. I was feeding Lucy and getting her ready for bed back in the bedroom and Kris had to quickly run out to mutual. (of course as soon as I got released from Young Women Kris got called right into Young Men--we'll have busy Wednesday nights for the rest of forever). Anyway, I heard some commotion outside and so I stepped out of my bedroom door--I was intending upon taking a Lucy & Mom selfie. I only got this far:

Because then I looked and saw Sandy.

He said to me, "It's a pewfect night for ice cwream!" And obviously, it was.

Evidently Max had helped him get his shirt off after it became covered in ice cream.
Sandy's face was so out of control that I didn't even get a picture of poor Max. He's gotten to the point where he can keep his face clean, which is a good thing in a 10 yr old.


Happy eyes.

We love our goofy little Sandy.
And Lucy looked on, anticipating the day when she could be covered with ice cream as well. In the meantime she thought maybe she'd make some bubbles. It kept her busy.

::max makes lucy laugh::

Max is the expert at making Lucy laugh. I can do it once in a while, but he's consistent. She thinks he's hilarious. And since he also thinks he's hilarious they're a matched pair. But seriously, when he's holding her she's just completely transfixed by him. It's very cute.
For some reason Max loves the face that Lucy makes when she's lying on her back and somebody picks her up--she makes this frowny concentrating face and it really cracks him up.
I think this night he was watching Lucy for me so that I could get Sandy into bed.  He's a real help sometimes.  It's hard some nights when I'm the only parent and now I'm so outnumbered.  It's great to have a big kid around that understands I need help.  I love him.

::sandy candy::

When I was going through my photos I realized I just have so many goofy pictures of our Sandy. Sweet ones too actually. He's just such a funny character. So here are a few of the fun ones for you.

Goggles--they're pretty much like sunglasses according to Sandy.  He used to call them "goo-goo goggles" because of the Dr. Suess alphabet book (he called all glasses that for a while too).  So we still call them goo-goo goggles quite often.



More goggles and some mommy too.

Maybe he's pretending to be a dog here? I can't remember why he wanted this picture taken specifically, but I know it was requested.

Yes, he's super adorable.

Our cute little babysitter took this one. She loves the boys. That's all it takes to make me love her.

Back seat pirate.
A few weeks ago we were on a Sunday afternoon hike as a family. Some folks came along going the opposite direction. They had a little yappy dog with them. Little dogs make Sandy really nervous, which is pretty funny considering how big HIS dog is, but anyway. As they came along the lady called out, "Felix! Come!" Sandy says to me, "That's funny, Felix the DOG."
I was really impressed (and amused) that he got the joke--that it really should've been Felix the cat. He's smart and pretty funny too--when he's not making poop jokes.
There's your taste of Sandy Candy for the day.

::found::

I was scanning really boring work stuff in my home office when I turned over a seemingly blank piece of paper and found this: I was pretty delighted to run across this intriguing piece of work, and just disappointed that there was no more to it. I'm going to have to sit down with Max and force him to finish the story.

::sandy is a new mexican::

Turns out Sandy is a true New Mexican. He really appreciates the rain and doesn't take it for granted.
Besides, as all those close to us know, he's kind of obsessed with water. His favorite thing in the world is playing in it and with it, though he didn't like falling into the deep part of the hot tub too much today. Good thing I was there to fish him out.
Anyway, these photos are from Easter sunday. We had a gentle little rainstorm blow by after our egg hunt and Sandy was in heaven. He couldn't have been happier.



We've actually had a ton of rain in the last week or two, almost every day we had a great rainstorm. One of the storms in the middle of the night had huge thunderclaps and it made the aspens outside Kris's and my bedroom window sound like waves hitting the shore.
It's been great for us. Hopefully it keeps up and we get more moisture than usual so we don't all burn up out here.
Max and I were so sick of the rain after we lived in Rhode Island, the spring before we moved was so wet that parts of the city were completely flooded. It didn't warm up and quit raining until it was time for us to leave. We were done with the rain by then. But good old Sandy hasn't ever experienced too much rain.
Funny how things can be such a blessing in one situation and really not in others. Ah, life.

::in which sandy finishes school and lucy helps with the laundry::

Sandy had a good 6 months of school. He loved it at first, then hated it for a while, then regained a grudging enthusiasm for the whole thing.
But he was super psyched about the pizza party on the last day. I went over to the school at lunchtime and we got to sit out on the grassy lawn (a treat in Santa Fe of course) and eat pizza in the sun while all the kids ran around. It was a pretty nice time. It's been a good little school and I think Sandy will be happy to go back in the fall.

When a baby girl won't let you put her down or else insists that your face is always inches away from hers you have to get creative with the household tasks.

She put up with this for a while--not enough time for me to actually get it all done, but she tried.
She's good company if a little demanding.

::lucy blessing part 2::

Lucy is blessed in so many ways, but maybe one of the greatest of these blessings is the sweet older brother who loves her so much. This scene in sacrament meeting after Lucy got blessed was too sweet for me not to capture. They're both so adorable.