A few photos from VA Beach and Williamsburg

Since I'm home sick today and loo hasn't uploaded any pictures recently, I've decided to take matters into my own hands...

Tom Sawyer, er, Jr2, took his first walk along the beach (at VA beach back in September). So yes you're right, Sr isn't very timely at uploading pictures either!

Jr2 says, "look dad, all the free sand we can eat!"

family at the beach

Jr2 asks, "did you know that the sand gets really, really wet and splashy here mommy?"

reflections

family at williamsburg, of course libby is being camera shy again!

No biting!

Traditions

I know you all want pictures of the kids. Too bad. Today is my anniversary and we celebrated with a new tradition or two.

My favorite is we pulled out the book of our wedding pictures and looked through them and remembered our wedding day together. Then we showed a few pictures to Jr2 who amazingly recognized Mommy and Daddy when they were skinnier and even hugged one of the pictures.

Then Sr bought me some flowers. But not just any flowers. Some flowers similar to what was in the wedding bouquet (but a smaller and cheaper arrangement due to budgetary concerns). So I cleaned off the table and put the beautiful arrangement in the middle for us to enjoy.

Jr2 also made it through the day without biting, so he got to vacuum and eat sherbet. Then he had a tantrum once he had to stop vacuuming. Jr3 enjoyed watching Jr2 vacuum and didn't mind the tantrum. She also enjoyed reading the halloween book Aunt Roo sent. She is quite fascinated by it.

Overall, though, I'd say we had a pretty good day.

Names

So, the name search for the baby continues. We have it narrowed down to four names. We have definitely decided on the last name. O.K. so that was never up for debate so it was easy. As for the other four names, don't be surprised if we can't decide and just end up using them all.

I feel cheated

So, when following everyone's blogs I look at the list at the side and see when they were last updated and their names. If it is one I haven't read yet I go read it. I already knew that just a thought's didn't always update correctly. Now it turns out that North of Nowhere is not updating properly either. I missed out on three posts. Well, o.k. I just read them later than I would have liked to, although I did know a lot of the information from phone calls. However, the phone calls did not contain the lovely photographs.

In other news, Jr1 is now with us for the next 3 weeks. Things are going fairly well other than the fact that he is having to sleep on the couch downstairs since the air conditioning upstairs does not seem to be working and so the upstairs is running around 91. We will need to look into that.

Jr2 still loves brooms. He thinks sweeping is lots of fun. He also thinks throwing things on the floor is lots of fun. Unfortunately he is not yet good enough at sweeping to sweep up the things he has thrown on the floor.

Sr is having fun learning all about his CPAP machine. It is helping him feel more rested, but it does annoy him.

I'm just mostly tired and can only handle Jr2 on my own for 1/2 to 1 hour increments. After that he has me worn out enough that I need help. Fortunately some ward members came over and helped me out this weekend while Sr was off getting Jr.

I think that is all the non-excitement going on. Hopefully things stay non-exciting.

Walking

Jr2 has started walking. It just took a little extra practice with a toy lawn mower to hold onto. He still isn't confident in walking by himself, without holding on to someone or something. However, he will walk with the toy lawn mower and basically be carrying the lawn mower as he walks. I guess it could be called the training wheels of walking.

As for talking, his latest word is "Elmo" as we watched the introduction to Sesame Street this morning. He has also said "Tuck" (truck) and "Nanana" (banana). It seems his favorite things seem to inspire the words more than things he doesn't like. His exciting (gross?) phrase of the week was "I go poop". And he had. Of course, that could have just been a proud parent translation of something else.

A few pictures

Over Christmas

Our overachiever back in December.

November

September.

Here are a few pictures from newest to oldest.

Concert in the Park

Friday we decided we needed a break. So we made last minute plans and off we went. (That's what you get for cleaning the house all Labor Day Weekend.) We took a look at the internet to see what we could find reasonably close, since we had Stake Conference starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Boy, did we luck out!

We found that a town in North Carolina named New Bern (after Bern, Switzerland) was celebrating its 300th anniversary. They were having a concert at Tryon Palace (the old state capital, I think) on the lawn. The North Carolina Symphony was playing and the concert was free! Even better, you could take children. For the hour and a half before was bring a picnic time. We tried to get the picnic, but we ended up totally missing the picnic and being 1/2 hour late for the concert. (Big surprise, huh?)

Anyway, we took our camp chairs. The lawn was full, so we had to sit in the shaded garden off to the side. It was even better than the lawn. Liam loves the outdoors and he loves music. So he had trees and flowers and birds to watch while listening to the symphony. Plus it was shaded! Then there were fireworks at the end that we got to see a bit of. We timed it about right. We got to hear most of the symphony, see some fireworks and then that was about the end of Liam's energy level. The bath after was pushing it a bit much, but much needed.

The other big excitement is Liam has his bottom two front teeth poking through now. Hopefully this means the teething won't be as painful until the next set decides to come.