Nate's Nine Month Pictures

Nate is 10 months old today (can you believe it?), but I had pictures taken of him at 9 months. This past month, he has fully learned to crawl...he mostly army crawls but if he is in no hurry he will crawl the right way on his hands and knees. He has three teeth on top and two on the bottom, but the 4th on the top is just about to poke through. He has learned to pull up on things- instead of seeing one eye poking over his bumper in the morning, I will see him standing in his crib smiling at me. He is into EVERYTHING! I have a little table in my hall that had a lamp and a vase of fake flowers on it. His favorite thing to do is to grab the bottom of the table and scoot it back and forth on the floor. The lamp has already fallen, so for now the table is empty.
At the beginning of this month, he got some kind of stomach virus, probably rota, so he was pretty sick for a while. Since then, he has been very picky about eating. He will cry when I try to feed him something and shake his head back and forth saying "no," but then if he is really hungry he will stop at the last minute and open his mouth so I can put the food in. But he really only likes squash and applesauce. He does, however, like any real food he can get his fingers on.

He continues to charm us with his big smile, and loves to engage others with his charm. This next picture is really how he mostly looks.He got his first haircut this past month (about a week after these pictures were taken) and he looks so handsome--and big!

At the doctors last week, he weighed in at 22 pounds 12 oz and 30 inches long. That is 90% for height and 75% for weight.

He is happiest when he is around his brothers. Ellie will do in a pinch, but he prefers Michael or Adam! We sure are lucky to have such a wonderful baby!

Bluebonnets

The Texas state flower is the Bluebonnet. It is this beautiful blue/purple flower that is a lot like lupin. In the spring, they stop mowing the medians and shoulders of the roads so that the bluebonnets and other wildflowers can grow. As you drive, especially toward hill country, there are large areas of these flowers. It is a big deal for Texans to go get their kids pictures taken in a field of bluebonnets, and why not..they are very pretty flowers. I have noticed a couple of pretty patches of flowers along the road to our property. Yesterday, I stopped and we took some pictures of the kids in the the flowers.

Unfortunately, at this point, the batteries in my camera died, and I had only had 2 minutes notice. Oh well, I'm sure there is always next week, we'll be going to the same spot.

2:00 Church

This year we have the 2:00 time block for church. 2:00 is not a nice time for church, especially since it takes close to 1/2 hour to get there. We leave at 1:30 and arrive home at 5:30. 1:30 is too early for kids to get a good (or any really) nap in. When this year started I was not at all excited about the time, I figured it would be like all the other years and we would putter around the house, go to church, come home, eat, go to bed. After this year started, however, I have found that I really enjoy church at this time. It allows for our family to have an actual day of rest. We can sleep in, and then spend the morning being laid back and relaxing. I know this doesn't sound like anything special, but we have been so busy the past year with our houses, moving, new baby and trying to work on our property. Sunday comes around and I am just exhausted. We can use the day to regroup and not "have" to do anything. In past years Sunday has not been any more restful than other days, but we have not been so busy doing physical labor (or projects as Joe likes to call them) as we have this year. So for this year, I can honestly say that 2:00 church has been a blessing.
Here are some pictures of my cute kids ready to go to church:

Projects

Since we moved into our new house, last August, I have had the chance to do several projects around the house. This house has been fun because we had it built so I had 8 months to think of what I wanted to do where in the house. (It only took them 6 months to build the house, but it was two more months for us to sell our old house so we could buy this one). Of course, it has taken me quite a while to get the projects done that I had been planning for this house, but it is fun to do.

This first one is in our gameroom. I have never before decorated our gameroom, but there is a large area above the couch, so I thought it would be fun to put these pictures up (recognize them, they are the same as on the side of my blog!)
Here are the fun curtains I made for the gameroom. I don't have blinds in there because we have this cute bay window and I didn't want to block out all of the light with blinds that I would never use. Nobody lives behind us (there is an elementary school there) so I don't need the privacy. I made curtains that could be put down to block the light if we want to watch a movie, but otherwise are up.
These cute curtains are in Ellie's room. She has two little square windows in one wall and I wanted to do something cute and girly with them...this is what we ended up with:

This last one is in the area where we put our shoes. We had to have a big shoe area because we have a lot of shoes and they take over if there is not a nice place to put them. I thought a wall quote would be a cute use of the space. We (Joe and I) settled on this one because we thought it is a good statement that the kids could think about daily as they got ready to go out of the house!

I have about 500 more projects that I want to do, and hopefully, one of these days I will get around to actually doing them!

Trench

At some point last week Joe and I had this conversation:

Joe, "Do we have any plans this weekend?"

Me, "Hmmmm, no, I can't think of anything, but it is supposed to rain, maybe we could stay home for once and get some things done around the house."

Joe, "I really want to run some water lines at our property, if its not going to rain I think I will do that."

Translation: I am going to rent a trencher and trencher about 800 feet of trenches so we can have water and electricity pipes running anywhere we might want them in the future.



Thursday rolls around and it is projected to only have a 10% chance of rain on Saturday so Joe sets up to trench, much to my disappointment.



Saturday dawns and it is not raining, but it is very foggy and it had been raining for the three days previously, nevertheless, Joe was feeling the need to trench and so he did it.

I (for once) got a babysitter to stay with the kids and I went up to help him for a few hours.

He did very well, but the trencher would slow down anytime it was near a tree (note that in the first picture he is trenching through a forest) because the trencher would have to cut all the roots underground as it dug. Some spots were quick, but many were slow. At about 2 it started raining and didn't really stop until early Sunday morning.

So these are a couple of pictures of the trenches, I have about 5 more pictures of different trenches that are just as long, but you get the idea...it was a massive project. As we were doing it, I thought about how nice it will be to have water where we want it, and eventually to have power available wherever we want it, that will be so convenient. It just seemed like an overwhelming task and I did not think it could get done in one weekend...but it did... Joe got all the trenches dug and we got the pipes put in and connected in all of them. (I guess I really am married to superman!)

(On a side note...look at that beautiful piece of property, and to think we actually own that...I can't believe that...I feel I am too young to own anything of value or beauty).

Joe even let me glue some of the pipes. After growing up and watching my father install a sprinkler system and then Joe installing a sprinkler system in our previous house, I have seen pvc pipes glued together a million times. I have never been trusted enough to actually be the one doing the glueing, but for some reason that changed this weekend..and I have proof!

In retrospect, I am really glad that Joe was so ambitious to do this, I am very glad that we will be able to have water where we want it...but mostly I am glad that it is done.

Hmmm, another weekend is coming up, what seemingly impossible project will we tackle next? When did my husband become the Energizer bunny?

Spring

Since it is terribly cold and dreary today, I thought I would post about the spring and our garden. It has been so beautiful here for several weeks that everything has started to turn green and to blossom. We even got our garden in. Here are some apple blossoms on our trees on our property:
This is a peach:

Around Thanksgiving time, Joe decided it was time to build a raised bed garden. We have had great gardens in our last two houses, thanks to his dirt work and so he wanted to improve on it in this house. He spent some time thinking about the size and the type of enclosure that he wanted and the location. He decided to put it against the fence on the west side of our house. He built a raised bed with pressure treated pine and filled it with a combination of dirt and mushroom compost. Then he rototilled it and left it. A couple of weeks ago he was busy installing an irrigation system into it (very necessary in our house because I am horrid at daily watering). We have planted beans, carrots, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, lettuce, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and a few herbs. Everything has started to grow:

I love the beginning of a garden when all the rows are neat and there are no weeds and all the seedlings are just beginning to sprout.

Even our orange trees have started to blossom, and they smell so nice.

I'm so glad that spring is here. I'm also glad that we don't have much of a winter (I don't deal well with the cold).

He won, he won, Adam really really won!

Adam's school had a rodeo/ carnival last Friday night. We all went (we walked...it took 4 minutes...I LOVE living so close to the school). The kids had a blast... there was carnival food- hot dogs, burgers, soda, popcorn, cotton candy and snow cones. There were also a lot of games. The kids could play in bouncy houses, get their faces (and hair) painted, bowl, play tug of war, go fishing...just tons of fun for the kids. They had a blast. When we were getting ready to go, we had one ticket left so while I stood in line for snow cones, Joe walked over with Adam and let him pick a basket from the basket raffle for him to put his ticket in. The whole way home, Adam talked about how he couldn't wait until the morning when they would call him to tell him he won. We explained that that could happen, but probably wouldn't.
Fast forward to Monday. Saturday and Sunday Ellie and Nate were super sick, but Adam and Michael were fine. I get a call in the morning, someone from Broadway Elementary asking if Adam is my son (shooot, I'm going to have another sick kid). No, they wanted to let me know that Adam's name was drawn for the boy toy basket! We rushed over and picked it up and then waited for him to get home so he could open it up!
He was so excited! There were so many neat things in it: Bakugan and Pokemon cards, football cards, two nerf footballs, a nice whiffle ball set, connect 4 game, Shrek 2 video, a set of noisy cars, a kite.... and many more things.

The boys spent all afternoon looking at the toys and playing with them. This is Adam with his loot.

Sorry the picture is so bad, I had to try and play bouncer to 4 kids (we were watching another one) while I took a picture. Anyway, its the first time Adam's ever won anything...way to go Adam!

Las Vegas

As I mentioned earlier, I got to go last weekend and spend 4 days with my family in Vegas. It was a nice break to only have the two little kids with me...I felt like I could actually enjoy visiting with my family and not spend every second playing mom.
While we were there, we just relaxed. We went to a place called "Springs Preserve" a couple of times and ate lunch and enjoyed the perfect weather.
The kids really enjoyed seeing their grandparents. Nate warmed right up to Grandpa and Grammie.

Ellie enjoyed being there without Adam and Michael, she even got to go on a special date with Grandpa just the two of them to get ice cream. When I got home from my outing, she was curled up on the couch with Grandpa!

When we were getting ready to leave, Ellie was so excited to get back on the plane to take a ride that she told Grammie, "I'm tired of this place so I am going to go on a plane!" My mom thought that was pretty funny.

We thought the babies would interact more, they mostly just did their own thing. Here Clell is trying to see which baby would get the phone first. It was usually Juliana.

Obviously, Nate warmed up to Uncle Clell too.

Ellie climbing at the Springs Preserve....they had a nice playground.

My New Quilts

My Mom is a quilter. She is a fabulous quilter, and if she loves you enough she will make whatever you request in whatever size you want. I always want something that has small pieces, uniform colors, and is quite large, so after the first few blocks, she often is bored with my quilts. She just finished the most wonderful quilt for me:
She even has a long arm quilting machine, so she and my dad even machine quilt it themselves. While I was in Vegas, they finished this for me. Isn't it great? We put the quilt on our bed and turned the lights out for the night and I looked over and saw something strange on the quilt. I turned the lights on and off again, and sure enough, my mom had quilted in a glow in the dark piece. It is black with white glow in the dark eyes, and it is right in the middle of the quilt Great quilt, huh? (On a side note, Joe made the beautiful bed for me).

Ellie just got into her big girl bed when we moved into this house last August. Grammie made a special quilt for her bed that is very pink:

Like I said, there are a lot of small pieces on it. What's fun about this quilt is that there are so many different pieces in it that you can look at and play I spy with.

Ellie loves her new quilt and she made sure and showed everyone that came upstairs her new bed. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you Mom!

Rodeo Day at Spring Baptist Church

Thursday was Rodeo Day at Spring Baptist. The kids got to dress up in their favorite rodeo clothes (Michael even consented to wearing a button up plaid shirt even though otherwise he would not). The kids got to decorate a stick horse and "ride" it in a parade. They also got to do a petting zoo, see a horse and play games. It was lots of fun!
That day, Michael was so well behaved that he was chosen to take home the class bear. His class has a bear and you get to take it home for the weekend. It comes with a journal in which you get to write about what you did.

Joe did a great job taking pictures of Michael so that they could put pictures into the journal. The bear got to see our land, and watch Michael and Adam play in the dirt.

He also got to ride on the swings and the seesaw with Michael.He also spent quite a bit of time riding in the truck with Michael.

The captive

When I go into Nate's room after a nap (or when he's refusing to take a nap) this is what I see. He knows how to sit up by himself, but he instead concentrates on pulling the bumper down and peering out over it. Then I am rewarded with a big grin. He sleeps in a room with french doors, and I recently had to put curtains on the doors because I would look in and see this one blue eye peering over the bumper at me, trying to make me come get him... even when it wasn't time. This kid is just so darn cute!

Juliana and Nate

I went to Vegas for a few days with just Nate and Ellie. I was very excited, to be able to go with just two kids was quite a vacation for me. While we were there, Nate got to see his cousin Juliana. She is exactly one month older than him.
Nate, however, weighs about 4 pounds more. He is about the same height, give or take 1/2".

We thought that they might interact, but they mostly kept to themselves, sometimes looking at each other, or stealing a toy, but that is it. Juliana was far more mobile than Nate...he can crawl forward a few feet, then he gives up, but she can get wherever she wants.

Nate ate a lot better than her (that can account for the extra pounds!)

The plane rides were okay, on the way out, the kids were really tired and the plane was not full so I got my own row. We all caught a nap. On the way back it was a little more eventful: The highlights were: 1- Nate sticking half of a nutrigrain bar into his mouth and then gagging and choking because it was too big to chew and it was stuck to the roof of his mouth so he couldn't spit it out.... and 2- Ellie refusing to pee on the potty while all three of us were crammed into the airplane bathroom because she was afraid there were barking dogs in it (it made a noise I think...?), and me trying patiently to explain to her that there was no other option. We survived and as we were leaving, the guy next to me said he thought the kids were overall good, considering their age. (He also said I got the short end of the stick having to fly alone with them...but that was shortly after the choking incident). Oh well, it was well worth it to get to see my family and relax a little without all of the crazies to keep me busy.