The last 8 months through my iphone

I know this is ridiculous, but I just figured out how to upload the pictures Angela messages me to my computer. It's really quite simple, but I've never taken the time to do it.  Angela's Grandpa Clarke just passed away and her and the kids went to Utah for the funeral. So I have a little kid free time to post. Angela's Grandpa was an inspiring man, a Patriarch in all the senses of the word. Though I only knew him for a little while, his influence I have felt through my wife's testimony and example. He left a legacy that will be honored for eternity. We will certainly miss him.

On that note, here are some fun memories I found on my phone.

Christine giving me a sweet smile. This was a phase that she was obsessed with playing cards. The phase ended when Jacob started eating the cards. Soggy cards aren't very fun to play with.

Christine playing with Jacob, before he learned how to crawl and get into everything. Oh those were the days.

This picture helped relieve some of my home sickness at work. I started thinking, "hmm, maybe work isn't that bad."

 Gigi-the great crawling motivator.  Or maybe Jacobs looking at Christine's big thing of balloons, thinking, "Now, I can't remember if I've ever tasted a Hello Kitty wrapped in ribbon. I think I definitely want to taste it."

For a very short time, Jacob would play nicely on the bed, while Angela took a rest and watched Project Runway. I think this only happened twice, before he realized he could jump off the bed and get Mommy to take him back out to the living room.

Christine enjoying her balloons. I had to surreptitiously pock holes in all the balloons, so that we could throw them away.

Christine: "Do you know who this is Mommy?"
 Angela: "Is it Tangie Bear?"
Christine: "No, this guy has a HUGE head!.... It's Daddy!"

Jacob learned to crawl and then to stand very quickly. He is the most active kid I have ever seen.

Jacob taking a Selfie

We got this toy at Christmas at "Other Mother" for only $20. I couldn't believe how good of shape it was in. Jacob quickly mastered it.

This is right after Frozen came out. I love this song!

                                    

Things that keep Angela happy when I have worked 26 days straight.

 Oh and Christine happy. That is powdered doughnut on her face.

Christine made her Crayon's into a house all by herself. She is so independent and creative. She also decided to cut out this piece of fabric all by herself for Tangie Bear's new dress... Angela was not very pleased. On the positive my daughter can cut a straighter line than I can.

Angela's sister, Jessica, came to visit with her kids. It was so much fun! The kids loved their cousins and were very sad to leave. Unfortunately I was not home for very long while they were here, so I didn't get to join in on much of the fun.  While they were here Bill, Jessica's husband, found out that our kitchen sink had been installed poorly and was on the brink of breaking a pipe.  Thankfully he was able to install a new one, which I think is a whole lot nicer.

Jacob has quickly learned to climb.  Here he has climbed up into the sandbox. His upper body strength is incredible. He is not much taller than the sandbox. Angela said she pulled him out and set him on the ground. When she turned back around he had climbed right back in!

Here Jacob is learning to eat solid foods. He loves his Cherrios. He only gets about 1/3 in his mouth, the other 2/3 I get stuck to my foot walking around the house.  He also has mastered his first sign. I mean he has been doing the sign for "more" and "all done" intermittently, but this sign he is adamant about.  He will clearly indicate when he would like more "Cheetos". Big surprise, since it was one of his sister's first words too.  I can't blame them, those baby Cheetos are pretty dang good, especially compared to bland rice cereal.

Thanks for all the great messages love!

Our Gardening Adventures

Angela and I have always wanted a garden and fruit trees. We have had many misadventures on our way.  

First in our apartment in Provo we decided we would grow our own tomatoes. We got some tomato starters and planted them in some pots outside of our apartment in Provo. They grew really well, but then they developed a fungus. They also got too heavy for the pots and kept falling over. So in the end we got no edible tomatoes.

We tried several experiments in our Houston apartment, including planting a peach pit and a pineapple top. Both failed!
We then tried to grow some onions.  We babied these onions for a whole year. We moved them from Houston to Temple and finally harvested them last summer.

I know, pretty pathetic, but they were sweet and tasty.  Our first, and pretty much only gardening success.

Last summer, you may recall, my father-in-law and I built a raised garden.  We composted a bunch of our fruit and randomly the cantaloupe stated growing. They grew like weeds, unfortunately they never fruited.  So unless pretty green vines count, the cantaloupe was another gardening failure.

Last summer we also planted a Zuccini starter. It grow really well, until a rabbit ate it! (little flopsy)

This year we were determined to get our farmer on, and grow something eatable. We were really excited to find a nursery near our house.  There is actually only one that we can find in the Temple/Belton area.  It's right off of Main street by HEB.  They had peach trees, which we were very excited to try.

Digging the whole proved to be way more work than expected.  It seems that when a new house is sodded they do not bother moving any rocks from the yard.  They just plant right on top of them.  So, in the end, there were so many rocks in this hole that I had to abandon my shovel and had to use a garden fork.  At the bottom of the hole I met my greatest challenge. A 50 pound behemoth. It took me over an hour just to pry it out.  The silver lining is that I had another nice huge rock for the flower bed.

Christine had a blast collecting "Macaroni rocks" from the hole to feed them to turtle. (We have no idea why she calls small rocks macaroni rocks, but she does, and she loves collecting them.) Jacob wanted to participate a little more in the fun, but was restricted to his car seat.

Thus far the peach tree has been doing well.  It had beautiful pink blossoms on it.  We attempted to protect it from the late frosts this year, wrapping it in plastic tarps and surgical gowns.  It seems to have survived and has at least 3 good sized peaches growing on it!

When we went to the Nursery to buy our peach tree we saw they had beautiful strawberry plants for sale. We bought 5 or 6 of them. We planted them, naively dreaming of a huge strawberry patch taking off in our back yard.  We ate one strawberry they had already produced. That night it was going to be cold, so I covered them up and tucked them in.  No sooner had the sun come up then the flies started attacking the plants.  The plants were too young to have insecticide sprayed on them, so I sprayed the plants around them and hung some fly paper up.  That night another frost hit, and when we went to check on our fly eaten, baby strawberry plants, the rabbits had eaten them down to the ground!!  So much for our strawberry patch! Our starters barely lasted a day!  This story might have been our worst gardening failure, had it not been for a nice nursery who gave us two more strawberry plants to plant in pots and protect.  These strawberry plants had a little frost damage, but are now doing well.

These last few months we have tried planting seeds in the garden directly, and then tried growing the seeds inside when our first planting was unsuccessful.  After trying to transplant our small seedlings to the garden and having them die. We tried again. We also planted some more seeds. We planted some starters, and we planted some vegetable left-overs.  So far the vegetable leftovers have done the best. Half of an onion is growing quite well. The bottom of a celery stalk has shot up some leaves, and left over garlic cloves are doing amazing! Last night there were two baby rabbits in the garden, so we'll see how long this vegetable garden lasts.

Spring Break

Jeff and I are updating the blog, and found a bunch of draft posts we found that we had started but never finished. Here is our Spring Break 2014. The Deleeuws drove all the way from Missouri to hang out with us.

We went to the park.

Corndog picnic

Our sink broke and luckily Bill is quite the handy man and installed a new sink for us.

We had a HUGE hail storm during their visit.

We all (well everyone except Jeff, he had to work) went to Backyard BBQ and had some delicious Texas BBQ.

Trip to Utah

I went to write a blog post today and realized I had several drafts I had started. So these posts are a little out of order.

In December I flew to Utah with Christine and Jacob by myself. I remember flying with Christine as a baby and being so scared. hahaha how little I knew! Traveling with one baby and two adults is so easy compared to traveling with two kids and only one adult. The flight there was pretty easy, Jacob slept for most of the time, but the ride back was difficult. Christine fell asleep, laying on her seat and my lap, leaving only half of my lap for Jacob to bounce on. I fed him baby puffs, and tried to keep him from grabbing the hair of the lady sitting next to us, who was not happy being stuck by us. I think it took about 5 years off my life.

Though the traveling was miserable, the trip itself was wonderful! One of the highlights of our trip was getting to see our very dear friends Sarah, Annalia, and new baby Ryan. They moved to Houston around the time we did, and had babies at the same time, and then moved away at the same time. We miss them soooooooo much!

Sarah is a super mom and an Occupational Therapist on top of that, so she is always coming up with fabulous kid activities. She brought over some cookies for the girls to decorate.

Sarah was a lifesaver during my pregnancy, helping watch Christine, letting me lie on her couch while Christine played with Annalia's fabulous play house. I wish so much that we still lived nearby each other.

During our trip, we played in the snow, met my parents' chickens, and ate delicious food. Christine's favorite part was playing outside with Papa every day. Mommy stayed inside where it was warm.

Last year Uncle Keith gave Christine a rubber ducky for Christmas, so this year she told me "Uncle Keith is going to give Jacob a rubber ducky" because that's what Uncle Keith's role is right? Luckily Uncle Keith is the best, and after hearing this got a rubber ducky for Jacob. Christine was ecstatic, jumping up and down after opening Jacob's present.

It was fun to see my family again. We definitely don't get to see them enough. (Jacob was already asleep when we took this picture, if you were wondering where he was)

Climbing

These were taken the beginning of January. Jacob at 8 months.

Jacob is such an active, strong baby. He is so determined, when he sets his sight to something, there is no stopping him. Trying to make him hold still enough to put on a diaper is quite the challenge. He doesn't like to cuddle at all, and if I try to snuggle with him he tries to climb up me (like put his foot on my shoulder and try to launch himself above my head).

He loves his sister. Each morning Jacob wakes up about an hour before Christine. Jacob and I play in his room until Christine wakes up. If I open the door of his room to go throw away a diaper or something, Jacob will bolt out of his room and go straight to Christine's door and start banging on the door. "Get up sister! get up!"