Meow!

I know it has been forever since I have posted anything and I keep telling myself I need to, so here we go.  There has been so much that has happened since the last post that I am not even going to try and catch up right now on all of the stuff that we have been doing.  However, I just have a few pictures to post. 

Back in July we had our basement torn apart because the foundation was leaking, again.  We had a company come in and put in a sump pum system so that we wouldn’t have to keep fighting the losing battle of patching holes, replacing drywall, and doing it again the next year.  After they finished the demolition and foundation repair we had someone come in and replace the drywall, then it was up to us to paint and put down the carpet.  This started a number of trips to Lowes because of the inevitable “I forgot this”, “I got the wrong one of that”, and the “Why on earth doesn’t that work like it is supposed to.”  So, Ron and I would trade off with who would run to Lowes and which boy would go.  I took Luke with me on many of these trips.  The first time we went in, Luke noticed this giant inflatable cat Halloween decoration.  He started saying “meow” and would say it the whole time we were in the store.  By about the third trip he would say “meow, kitty” as soon as we pulled into the parking lot.  It finally got to the point where we would walk in, he would point to the cat and start meowing and as soon as we went up the aisle and he couldn’t see it, he would get upset.  So, the ever spoiling mother that I am, would tell him that we would see the kitty again when we went to the front of the store.  On one of my final trips to Lowes, I had gone alone and almost missed the meowing when I pulled in.  So, I decided that I would consider buying the cat for Luke.  We don’t have many Halloween decorations and I thought this could be a good addition.  So I went to get it and sure enough, they were sold out.  However, they were nice enough to sell me the display model.  So I took home the box and set it in the kitchen.  As soon as Luke saw the box, he sat down on the floor and started in on his “meow, kitty” routine.  It was really cute, but I had to try and explain that the kitty had to stay in his box until October.  Unfortunately, this was the beginning of September and he had awhile to wait.  So finally, October arrived and we went out yesterday afternoon and set up the kitty.  At first Luke was a little scared of the cat and wouldn’t get very close.  But, with a little coaxing from Ron, he was able to conquer his fear and pat the cat on the head. 

 

After we got it setup and let him play for a little while, I figured we were good to go inside.  Boy was I wrong, I had to drag Luke in kicking and screaming.  We did finally get him to look at the window at the cat which would keep him busy for awhile.  I told him that I would take him outside again when it was dark so that he could see it when it was lit up.  However, when it got dark I was trying to feed Jack dinner and Luke kept trying to pull me out the door.  So, he ended up giving up on me and getting Ron.  It was really cute.  After looking at it in the dark he did fine with saying good night to the cat and going to bed.  However, the first thing he did this morning was run to the window, pull the blinds aside and start saying kitty.  I think it is going to be a long month.

I just wanted to add another picture to show how big the boys are getting.  My sister gave the boys these cute Spider-man outfits, and the only way that I could get them to sit still long enough to get a picture of them was to put their dancing Spider-man between them and turn him on.  It worked and we were able to get at least a couple of pictures of them.

Guess What? Another post!

I attended the FJH band concert tonight.  It was delightful – there was plenty of John Williams music (Star Wars, Jurrasic Park, E.T., the Cowboys) and I took some nice pictures for the end of year slide show.  But one of the best parts was actually after the concert.

Blog this is Ron. Ron, blog.

Hi all!  I know haven’t posted any of zany comments of late.  I’ve tried to start blogging again 3 times, but I just don’t seem to find the time.  And now there’s Facebook . . . anyway, I’ve returned for a quick post.  Enjoy this YouTube video – filmed and made fun of by yours truly in the annotations.  Anyone who still reads this rocks!

Easter

I finally took the pictures of Easter off the camera so that I can put them up. I was really excited for Luke to do easter egg hunts this year because he is big enough, or so I thought, to actually hunt for the eggs.  Our first hunt was with my family.  My sister Lisa  brought her two boys and my sister-in-law Amy brought their son and daughter.  All four of these kids are between three and six and I thought it would be great.  Of course the eggs were pretty easy to find and the kids really had fun.

 

 However, Luke lost complete interest in looking for anything as soon as he had the chocolate bunny that we gave to each of the kids.  I had to basically pick up an egg with his hand to get him to do it.  He did finally decide that he could pick up one more on his own, but he just didn’t really understand why I was trying to make him pick up plastic eggs.

 

As we took all of the kids back to open their eggs and Luke realized that there was candy in them.  He started trying to take the eggs out of the other kids baskets.  It’s a good thing they all like him.

On Easter Sunday we met up with Ron’s family and our friends the Axelrods for our annual egg hunt.  The great thing about this hunt is that it is not just for the kids.  It is always great to watch the adults wrestling over eggs.  Ron’s sister Brittany and Lisa Axelrod got into quite a wrestling match when I gave a hint as to where one of the eggs was hidden. 

Luke did slightly better with looking for eggs this time as he knew that there was candy inside, but as soon one of them broke open he was done.  

He found one egg that had broken open on the lawn and instantly started eating the candy off the ground. 

Luke was really cute with his cousin, Sydney.  He loved to just chase her around the yard playing.  Sydney wasn’t always quite as sure about him, but he thought it was great.  We all had a really fun time.

As a side note, our young women had an Easter egg hunt this week for their activity.  I took Luke with me to the park to hide the eggs and he finally figured out how to hunt the eggs.  He followed along behind me, picking up the eggs, breaking them open by himself, and eating the candy.  Unfortunately, one of the girls kept finding the empty eggs that Luke had left.

Birthday

Hooray for being another year older.  Ron and I have just had our birthdays which means now that I am 30 and Ron is only 29 I am pretty much ancient.  We had a birthday party with my family this last Friday and I had this great idea for a cake.  I decided to combine my love of Disney with Ron’s love of Star Wars and made a Jedi Mickey Mouse cake.  I was really happy with how it turned out and wanted to share. 

Hello again!

Hello again everyone.  We just wanted to let you know that we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.   We have just been having so much fun with the boys that we haven’t had any time to update our blog.  So, we’re sorry that we are such slackers, but here is an update on what has been going on. 

 

Of course the boys are growing like weeds.  I took Jack in for his two month check up the first week of February and he weighed in at a whopping 14 lbs. 6 oz. and was 24.5 Inches long.  The height was the same as Luke at two months, but Jack weighed almost 2 ½ lbs. more.  I think he has been bulking up to give him an advantage in his wrestling matches with Luke. 

 

Luke is such a good big brother.  He is finally starting to understand being soft with Jack and can often be found patting his head, giving him kisses, or hugs.  Unfortunately his hugs involve him laying on top of Jack, but Jack doesn’t seem to mind too much.  One of Luke’s favorite games to play , much like pin the tail on the donkey, is stick the binki in Jack’s mouth.  Although he is not blindfolded, his aim is about as good.  He usually hits him in the eye, the nose, and occasionally the ear before he hits his mouth.  If he does manage to actually get it in, he immediately pulls it back out and tries again.  They are really cute together.

 

Luke got his first hair cut this morning.  His hair is still fairly thin, but it had gotten really long behind his ears and it was starting to tickle him.  He has been scratching at his ears for the last little while, which at first I thought was because he has dry skin.  However, yesterday my friend Melanie realized that it was because his hair was tickling him and he was trying to get it out of the way.  So, this morning I gave him a haircut.  He kept trying to turn his head to see what I was doing, but he did really well actually.  I just hope it looks ok. 

 

Ron has been super busy at school.  He has student body elections to deal with this week, the school’s talent show next week, and it is the end of the term and his grades are due.  Hopefully, after next week things will slow down a little for him since his big projects will be done.  If nothing else, he gets Spring Break in a couple of weeks. 

 

We have been enjoying the warmer weather and try to get outside as much as we can.  Luke and Ron had a lot of fun playing with Luke’s soccer ball and glider last weekend.  Since then, Luke will grab his shoes and run to the back door just to let me know that he wants to go out and play.  He also really enjoys laughing at the dogs as Taffy and the neighbors dogs bark at each other. 

 

For now, there is a bit of an update.  I’m sorry again that we have slacked off for so long.  Hopefully we will get better about staying up to date.  If only the boys would learn to post for us…

Pictures

Life, as always, is crazy as can be.  Jack has started sleeping between five and six hours at a time at night which has been great.  Unfortunately, Luke has been teething and not feeling very well and has woken up in the middle of the night for about an hour or two each night this week.  Hopefully as soon as his tooth cuts through, he will go back to sleeping all night and Ron and I can finally get some sleep too.  Maybe then we can start to really get back into the swing of things.  I know that Ron has a couple of posts that he has started at various times of the night that he is planning on getting done and hopefully he will have the time to.  Until then, it might just be a couple of short posts for now. 

Ron and I have a great friend who has did some pictures of us in November and I never got around to actually posting them.  She did some pictures of Jack a couple of weeks ago too so I thought it would be a good time to put up some pictures.  More of the pictures of the family (before Jack was born) and the pictures of Jack are on her webpage too.  She did such a good job and I thought I would show off the cute pictures. 
 

 

Catching Up

I’ve noticed in the last few days (or possibly nights) that we have not had any blog posts in a while and that we should try to catch up a little on what has been happening in our lives. Obviously, the adjustment from one kid to two is taking a good amount of time. It is amazing that even though Luke is only a year old, I have forgotten so much about taking care of newborn. I had forgotten how many times you get up in the middle of the night to feed the baby. How many diapers you change, not to mention how often the baby will try to soak you while changing those diapers. I had even forgotten how much of the time the baby sleeps. Unfortunately that gets spread throughout the day and not just at night. (I know that will come eventually). However, even with the lack of sleep (like the fact that I am starting to write this post at 1:40 am) I am truly enjoying every minute of it.

I think the best way that I can catch up on what is happening, is to go through some of our recent pictures and show off our wonderful boys.

This is a great picture of my “boys”. I love to see Ron and Luke admiring baby Jack so much.

This is a great example of one way that we have been so busy. Luke has really taken to pulling books off of his shelves and pulling diapers out of the garbage can to replace them. It is amazing how much he can get in to when he is left to his own devices for a few minutes.

As you can see, we are anxiously preparing for Christmas. This is actually Luke’s second Christmas, but the first that he can actually do anything. (However, if his birthday was any sign, getting him to open the presents when we want him to might be a bit of a challenge.)

This will be Jack’s first Christmas, but I’m sure the only thing he really wants for Christmas is to not have Luke climb on him for one whole day. Luke loves his little brother, but hasn’t quite figured out that he can’t climb on him, poke his eyes, grab his nose, or dive on the bouncer while Jack is sitting in it. However, he does do a great job of bringing Jack’s pacifier when he is crying and watching as if to say, Mom can’t you make him stop. Fortunately for all of us, Jack doesn’t cry much.

As you might have guessed, Luke has finally figured out that he is supposed to smile at the camera when we take his picture. I love the cheesy little smile he puts on for us.

Here, Ron can be seen holding both boys as we often do. Luke does seem to get a little jealous at times and wants to be held while we are feeding Jack. As a result, we sit at the computer while we feed him so that Luke can sit on our lap and watch some of his favorite YouTube videos: “C is for Cookie”, “Rubber Duckie”, “and “White & Nerdy”. As you might imagine, his father is so proud of him.

Of course I had to add a picture of Jack in all of his cuteness. Then to show off how much his brother loves him, is the picture of what Luke is doing while I’m trying to take the picture.

This last weekend was Luke’s first birthday and we had a great time celebrating. Luke discovered early last week that if he chewed on the corner of the Christmas presents they would start to open and then he could easily pull of some of the paper to eat. After chasing him away from the tree all week I figured that he would be thrilled to open his birthday presents. However, for the most part he just looked at them and waited for someone else to open it for him. We tried desperately to tear a little part and get him to open the rest, but he just wasn’t that interested. Despite the lack of interest in the presents, he was very excited about the cake. When he first stuck his hands into the bright blue frosting of his batman cake, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He looked like he was playing with play dough for a while because he just kept smashing the frosting in his fingers. He did eventually taste a little of it and decided it was a great thing and proceeded to smash cake and frosting all over his face. On Saturday we had cake with Ron’s family for Luke’s birthday too and by then he knew exactly what to do. He quickly dug his hands in and went at it. Or, maybe it was just because it was a Spiderman cake and Spiderman is his favorite of the super heroes. (As a side note, Luke has started making the web slinging noise that Ron always makes as he is swinging him down the hallway. In the last couple of days he has even started sticking his hands out when he does it, but he can’t quite get his hands into the right formation so he just sticks out one finger and makes the noise. It is really cute.) I think for his first birthday, Luke had a great time and we had a great time watching him make such a mess. Surprising how cute a mess can be.

So now you can see what we have been up to lately. However, amidst all of the chaos that is life, we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tag – Your One True Love

1. Where did you meet?
We actually met on a blind date (amazing that those actually work sometimes.) My sister and brother-in-law set us up about a week and a half after Ron got home from his mission.
2. What was the first thought that went through your head when you met?
This poor guy is going to be so traumatized by being forced on a date so soon after coming home that he is never going to want to date again. The second thought was that he was very handsome.
3. Do you remember what he was wearing?
I’m pretty sure it was his blue and yellow soccer jersey he brought home from Brazil. (A trend I am noticing from Amber and Cassie’s posts.)
4. Where was the first time you kissed this person?
In my brother-in-laws driveway. My sister and my brother-in-law were still dating at that time too and Ron was dropping me off there to meet my sister and he kissed me before we went in.
5. Where did you go on your first date?
I made dinner and we ate at my house (chicken alfredo) then we went bowling and to Baskin Robins for ice cream.
6. How long did you know this person before you became a couple?
It was about three months from the blind date. Although, I didn’t even try to talk to him again for a month because I was a little worried about him adjusting to “normal life” after his mission.
7. How did he ask you out?
Ron had been driving me to and from school every day because I had a seizure and was restricted from driving for a while. We were pretty much together all of the time anyway, but on the way home from college one day, he asked if it was alright if he told his friends that I was his girlfriend.  It was really cute.
8. Has this person ever proposed to you?
Yes. See the post about Parowan, it’s a great story.
9. Do you and this person have kids together?
Yes, two beautiful little boys.
10. Have you ever broken the law with this person?
Nope. (Ron’s note: I may have pirated some music in her presence, but I take full credit for that.)
11. When was the first time you realized that you liked this person?
It was the first time we went on a “date” that wasn’t my sister’s doing. I asked Ron to go to the temple with me and when he walked me out to my car after the session he gave me a big hug and I knew that I really liked him (I would almost say I loved him at that point.)
12. Do you trust this person?
More than anyone else I know.
13. Do you see him as your partner in your future?
Yes, we plan on being together forever!
14. What is the best gift he gave you?
I would say it is a toss-up between his unending love and our two wonderful boys.
15. What is one thing he does that gets on your nerves?
The only thing I can think of, and it doesn’t even always bug me, is when he chews on ice. I think it only bothers me when I am cold and he is chewing on a huge piece of ice.
16. Where do you see each other 15 years from now?
Happy as can be and absolutely loving each other and our family. (I imagine we will have some more kids by then.)
17. What causes the most arguments? I actually can’t think of a time when we have fought or really argued about anything. There are times we don’t agree on things, but we just talk about it.
18. How long have you been together?
A little over seven years.
19. Are you married?
Yes, the best six and a half years of my life.
Who do you tag? Anyone that hasn’t been tagged and wants to tell about their sweetheart.

2008 Christmas Ornaments Premiere!

LAME!

I’d guess that buying a new Christmas ornament every year is a fairly common thing. Brenda and I cemented it as a family tradition early on. Each year, every member of the family (Brenda and I are combined) gets a brand-spanking new ornament for the tree. I’m not talking about a new shiny glass ornament shaped like a ball, I’m talking, a cool (normally licensed ornament) that costs approximately its weight in aluminum.  (Does anyone know how much aluminum is by the bulk these days?  I’m not sure, but worth their weight in gold sounded a little excessive.)  The plan is that someday, when we send our children off into the world, they’ll have some darn cool ornaments to start off their first tree.

Over the years Brenda and I have found a few good ornaments at “normal” stores (I’ve gotten some cool ones from Toys R Us) but usually, we’ve discovered that it’s faster and easier just to go to Hallmark, choke down paying too much for an ornament, and moving on with life.  There is a metric buttload (that’s slightly smaller than the Imperial buttload) of ornaments on eBay (like this high quality gator in a sweater and these so-called Rompin’ Stompin’ Cowboy boot ones) , but browsing through them isn’t the easiest if you don’t have something in particular in mind.

So off we went to Hallmarks in the mall and buy ornaments we did.  I now proudly present to you, the Bailey Family Ornaments of 2008!

This is the one Brenda and I chose. It lights up and makes bips and boops from the early 80's. I know, you're jealous. It's ok.

Luke got a Spider-Man. This ornament is a really nifty piece of work showing off the power of perspective. He may or may not have had help selecting it.

This is Jack's ornament for 2008. For his first ornament, we selected a classic Pooh. You can never go wrong with Pooh, right? Technically, we purchased this before we knew he is a "he," but another benefit of Pooh is that he's pretty gender neutral.

And, for the record, the lights ARE blinking on the bottom half of the tree tonight. I have no idea why.