May

Almost caught up.  During the month of May we mostly just spent time playing and, thankfully, getting more sleep.

We spent lots of time at the park.

And learning to play together.

For the last 6 years Rose Park has had a little community festival.  The last couple of years they have held a 5k the morning of the festival.  Sam ran in the race this year and took 3rd place!  He was awesome.  That morning his calf was hurting pretty bad but he still ran and ran fast, the guys who took 1st and 2nd ran in college.


Here he is running past our house, overtaking our home teacher.  Ethan was very excited to cheer for Daddy, but when Sam ran by, Ethan thought he was chasing him so Ethan took of running towards the back yard.

At the festival they had a fire truck, slides and bounce houses, and yummy treats.  Ethan loved it, every time we walk by the elementary school he asks if we can go to the festival.

One evening we stopped at Chick-fil-A and they had their cow out.  Ethan thought it was great and kept calling it a moose.  We thought it was great because we could get him to eat by telling him the cow wanted him to finish his chicken nuggets.

I've been making photobooks from our pictures each year and I've realized that we hardly have any pictures of me (I'm usually taking the pictures), so here you go.

April

Lots of pictures for April:

We spent lots of time at the park.

Ethan has so much energy that we have to go to a park or go on a walk every day.

 This is a park near our house.  Ethan loves the giant cats, he gives them hugs when it is time to go.

Easter weekend we went to the Gleasons' and had an Easter-egg hunt.

While we were there, we dyed eggs.  Ethan found a blue one and was sucking on it.  His mouth and hands were blue for a while.  Thank you non-toxic dyes.



Ethan got a new bike!  He loves to ride it, but he doesn't quite have the pedaling down.  One of us has to push his feet, but he's getting better.

Ethan also got a sandbox.  We didn't want anything big and this is perfect, it has dump trucks and a lid.

He loves to go outside and play with his dump trucks.

Ethan loves it when Sam does pushups.  He either does pushups next to him or helps like this:

Elizabeth is getting bigger!

She loves bathtime.  We broke down this time and bought a baby tub.  I love it, it makes things so much easier.  Ethan likes it too, he likes to help give Elizabeth a bath by using a measuring cup and dumping water on her.

Ethan has his own set of "spatulas" (wooden spoons, ladles, actual spatulas) that he plays with.  He loves to use them to make pancakes and pizza or play baseball.  One day I walked by the hall and noticed this:





March

During March we mostly just spent the month getting used to being a family of 4.  We also celebrated our 7th anniversary, Sam's 29th birthday, and my 28th birthday.

On St. Patrick's Day, Burger King was giving away free french fries and green ketsup, so we jumped all over that.

Notice the green dye in the ketsup stained Ethan's face and fingers.  They were a light green for a couple of days.

Ethan has been watching me take care of Elizabeth.  Here he is changing his Blue Fish's diaper and carrying his puppy around in the sling.  Silly boy!

Ethan is very attached to Sam, so Sam has had to learn how to play with everybody at the same time.

The poop face.  For the first couple of months Elizabeth would make this face right before she pooped.  It was cute and scary all at the same time.

Since the weather was so warm we spent lots of time at the park.

February

Be prepared for a lot of pictures to update you on what we've been up to.

In February we became a family of 4!  Elizabeth was born February 22nd.

Getting ready to go to the hospital. Wow, I look huge!

Waiting for the pit to get things going.  We were at the hospital for a couple of hours when I needed to go to the bathroom.  While Sam was helping me with the cords he noticed a puddle on the floor.  The pitocin hadn't been hooked up to my IV!  Finally, after it was connected things got going, in the meantime we were grateful the hospital had satellite.

She's here!  Born around 7:40 pm, Elizabeth weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and was 19 inches long with lots of dark hair.

A very proud Daddy!

A very proud, but tired Mommy.  If you look closely you can see red sploches all over my face, a bunch of the blood vessels in my face broke from pushing so hard.  It looked like I had red freckles for several days.

My mom stayed with Ethan and spoiled him while I was in the hospital.  It was hard to be away from him but I was glad he was with someone I trusted.  Ethan wasn't quite sure how he felt about Elizabeth at first until Sam got him to help check her for toe-jam.



Work Party

Earlier in the month we attended a Christmas party for Sam's work. The theme was 70's. I've never been to a themed Christmas party before; Halloween yes, Christmas no. Thanks to Ellie, Alma, and Jake, Sam was able to put together a killer outfit, albeit a bit tight. I dressed up as well, but no one really noticed. I have some clothes my mother wore in the 70's, but they aren't eccentric, in fact I wear them all the time.

When we first arrived, no one recognized Sam. A couple of people figured it out because they recognized me. We didn't take any pictures of me, so you will just have to look closely at Sam's glasses to see my outfit.

Raking Leaves

I have never raked leaves in December before, but this year (thanks to some big wind storms) we did in hopes that we would soon be making a snowman. No snowman yet, but we sure had a lot of fun with the leaves.

You may be wondering why Sam and Ethan are in the garbage can. Sam was jumping on the leaves to squish them down and Ethan thought it looked liked lots of fun so he asked to join in.

October

I can't believe October is already over! It was a pretty eventful month for us, we found out we are having a girl, Ethan turned 2, and we celebrated Halloween.

Birthday:
Unfortunately we forgot to take our camera when we celebrated Ethan's birthday. We had pizza and cupcakes at my parents' house in Preston. Ethan loves pizza and for several weeks leading up to his birthday whenever someone would say "birthday" Ethan would say "cupcake." But he got scared by the crazy birthday song so he wouldn't blow out his candles, so the next morning we put candles in his pancakes and he blew those out instead. He was spoiled with lots of new clothes, toys, and books.

Halloween:

These are some festive pajamas Grandma and Grandpa gave Ethan which he's been wearing since September, the bones glow in the dark. When we would put Ethan to bed he would lift up his arms and legs to inspect the glowing bones.


Our little Police Officer. Ethan would throw a fit everytime we tried to put his costume on, so finally Sam had to put on his "work" shirt so Ethan could also wear his "work" shirt.

For the past month we have been teaching Ethan to say "Trick or Treat" so of course we had to take him. We only planned on going to 3 or 5 houses because we didn't think he would really like it, but once he realized we got to go on a walk and people gave him candy, he was totally into it. We walked around the neighborhood for almost an hour.

We hope everyone had a fun filled October. So far we are enjoying our sugar-filled November.