::::

This is how Lucy feels about Max:



She thinks he's hilarious.  (He took these first two pictures.)







Lucky Lucy girl.

::some cute::

"Take a picture of us!!!!" Sandy insists after requesting Lucy in his lap during sacrament meeting.  Not only was I bad a took this photo in the chapel, but I'm also posting it because it's just too cute not to.



I'm not a big fan of naked baby bottoms on the internet, so you get some stars instead.

While Kris and Max were gone getting the new car I was trying to entertain the littles.  A dual bath seemed like just the thing.  And it was.  They had a BLAST.  Lucy wasn't too sure about having Sandy in there with her at first, but she warmed up fast.  It was a great morning activity.



The beauty of our big bathtub is that Sandy could hang out in there for hours and be happy, and I really mean hours.  He loves it.  This day I bathed both of them, got Lucy out, dried her, lotioned her, fed her, put her to bed, took a shower myself and got most of the way ready before Sandy was done.  It's like magical kryptonite.



And for the last cute thing.  The lady that does housekeeping for us showed me this note she had saved . She left him a note saying sorry that he broked his collarbone and asking if it hurt.  This was his response.  I thought the whole thing was adorable, from top to bottom.  I love his little cartoon guys.

And all of the crazy punctuation.

::new car::

So we finally decided that my car (that I love, by the way) is just too small for the whole family to ride in comfortably, although techinically it does have enough seats.  Kris and I decided that it would benefit us to have an optional 3rd row, and so Kris did a bunch of research and found the bigger version of my car that was a deisel for sale in Phoenix.

These cars aren't that easy to find used, it seems like people like them and hang on to them, so when we decided that car was the right one for us, with the right amount of miles at a good price we had to jump on it.

So we got my car all cleaned up and Kris and Max drove it out to Phoenix over the weekend and traded it in for the new one.

Max was pretty excited to be in on the new car buying trip.  He's a car lover, that's for sure.  He claims that if he hadn't been there Kris wouldn't have been able to figure out all of the different features.



Here he is taking full advantage of the hotel breakfast buffet, as usual.





Seeing Max's sling reminds me of what finally motivated us to get the bigger car--when he broke his collarbone and we were driving to the Urgent Care I had to sit in the back between the two car seats because he was too broken to crawl in there.  I can't remember what was wrong with Kris's car, but we couldn't take it for some reason.  Anyway, sitting back there squished between the seats was uncool, loud and uncomfortable.  I decided at that point we had probably grown out of the 5 seater.

Kelly was coming to help us out at the office for a few days, and instead of flying into NM he flew into Phoenix and drove back with the boys.  They had a good time.

I love the new car.  It's been great so far!

::smoldering sandy::

If he was just about 20 years older and a few feet taller....AND if that chocolate around his mouth was a scruffy five o clock shadow....he could be a movie star.  Funny little guy.

::lighting them up::

Lighting the big tree was super tricky.  It was so big that we had to cut a few feet off of it when we got home, and once it was in the stand it still basically brushed the ceiling.

Anyway, there was no way I could really light it from a ladder without being really scared.  Kris suggested lighting the top while it was lying down and then standing it up in the corner where it was going to live and finishing there.  I was skeptical, but it sounded better than the ladder option!





It was hard but it worked! Lucy was fascinated with the lights though and kept trying to crawl under the propped up tree. She made me nervous.









I was pleased with how it turned out. It think it was a lot quicker to do it this way. I just love
Christmas lights. If I could I'd wrap everything with them and keep them on all year.

::laundry helper::

Honestly I wish she could really help me!  But being cute is the next best thing.  She loves to follow me around, so when I'm in working on the laundry she'll scoot after me and show up at the door.



When I first put her in the laundry basket she was so confused--do kids really belong in here??



I'm trying to train Max to actually help me with the laundry--the neverending task--but some days go better than others.  He'd much rather just come and sit in a basket like Lucy.
Oh well, at least they're both cute.

::sleeps::

Our little Lucy has been a pretty delicate and difficult sleeper, as I've mentioned before.  Just before Thanksgiving she was still sleeping in the Moses basket by our bed, still getting up many times at night, thinking she needed to eat a lot and just never sleeping terribly solidly.  And she was in our bed a lot of the night, thrashing and twisting and complaining and kicking.

After another terrible night Kris and I decided to try some good old fashioned sleep training--it was just too much and nobody was getting the sleep they needed.  I was getting so desperate.  Anyway, we thought we'd take advantage of the work break over Thanksgiving and get her sleeping.

As usual it was pretty unpleasant, lots of sad crying and pitiful whining whimpers.  Lots of little silences where we would be hopeful and then loud howls.  But eventually she did go to sleep, and after a few days of effort and follow through she was sleeping a little better.



We got her in her own crib in her own room so that was the first big triumph.  And then one night during the holiday weekend she actually slept through the night.  It was incredible.

It's nice to have Kris's help.  He always brings a more hard-nosed approach to the sleep training which at some point can really help.

Little darling thing.  She's so happy after she actually sleeps.

::art lessons::

Shakti taught art lessons at Max's school for the last couple of years, but things have changed and she's not there much anymore.  At some point I was talking to Shakti and she told me she'd be willing to come and teach art at our house.  At our house!? Super!!!  So now Sandy gets to sit in on the lessons.  Shakti's son Malachi has been coming along and joining in too.

A weirder goofier group of kids you're not going to find.  They've been having a lot of fun and it's nice to see Sandy enjoying doing some drawing/coloring/writing because I can never get him to do it.

Look at the way they're all sitting.  So goofy.

::poor baby::

Lucy is in that mode where she just scoots backwards and gets so frustrated.  She's been getting stuck under stuff and behind stuff.  Under Sandy's bed.  Under the couch at work.



She doesn't think it's particularly funny.