Birthday Boy!

We celebrated Myer's 1st birthday today. I really can't believe it has already been a year. We didn't do anything too exciting. He started his day getting woken up to all of us in his room shining a camera in his face. So nice! He handled it pretty well. We had to get ready for church and have time to eat some birthday waffles. He enjoyed those! He's been a pretty happy guy most of the day, very squeely, I guess he was excited!

This morning at breakfast

Hmmm tasty waffle

We gave him his new toy play table thing after church. He has had fun with it except when Kenner closed the laptop thing (I'm assuming that is what happened since I didn't see it) and pinched his finger. Boy Kenner is really benefiting from having a younger sibling! :) He loves all these new toys as well!

Checking things out, notice Kenner close at hand.

He was dancing to the music, it was cute!

And soon after dinner we had some cake and icecream. I thought he was totally going to love this part. He loves to eat, loves to feed himself finger food, so I thought he's just totally going to sink his hands in this cake and go to town. Well, I was sadly wrong. I put the whole cake in front of him with his little candle for some pics.


Well, he didn't waste anytime and started digging into the frosting.



He took a few good chunks out and seemed to be really enjoying himself. But then . . . . . .



. . . . . he just got mad. And no he was not crying because I took the whole big cake from him. I'm not sure if it was like frosting sugar overload or having it all over his hands but he was not happy. So, by the time I got him a slice of cake he wanted nothing to do with it. I was kinda sad. He wouldn't even touch the thing. Then dad brought over a taste of icecream and he was liking that. I let him play with the bowl for a bit and he enjoyed that but when he stuck his hand in to get some icecream he didn't like the cold. So, needless to say he was kinda ornery about eating his cake and mom was a bit disappointed. Here are a few pathetic pictures of how he was really feeling.

Finally one good pic. All the other pics like this he was so serious. I had to work for this smile!

Maybe I'll see if he's interested in some cake tomorrow. But he's had a pretty good day. Happy Birthday to my little boy! We sure do love him!!

It's about stinkin' time!

So we have been waiting and waiting and waiting for Myer to crawl. Yes, you heard me right crawl. The boy has been taking his sweet little time. I think when your child is taking awhile to develop these milestones that you see so many other kids already doing that are their age or younger it takes a hit on your "parent pride". That is the best why I can think to describe it. Maybe that is silly but maybe some of you know what I'm talking about.

Anyways, over Christmas break he made much improvement and was oh so close but not quite there. He'd move forward as far has his arms would go but once his bottom half caught up he would plop his bottom half down. He has somehow manged for the last bit to kinda get around by rolling. He finally started pushing himself up into a sitting position by himself over the Christmas break and that made him even more mobile in his own way of maneuvering around. The last few weeks he has seemed to get in places that I was surprised he had managed to get to. And he's now started pulling himself up to stuff and moving his feet a little while standing there. So, he is progressing slowly but surely.

I'm glad he has finally at least figured out this crawling before his first birthday rolls around, next week!

So, without further ado here is the boy in action. I mostly wanted his grandparents to see that he's finally done it! Oh, but one more thing! The other night he had started doing this funny scoot type army crawl. I wanted to get it on tape but couldn't find a blank spot of tape. So, I got more tapes for the camera yesterday and we started to record him today and he was crawling a perfect crawl. I was amazed. You'll see it here at the start. Then I was kinda sad that maybe I'd missed the chance to get the funny crawl he was doing the day before. Well, the 2nd half of the tape when I brought out the Wii remote for motivation it's like in his determination to get to it he forgot his real crawl and reverted to old habits. So, I was happy to catch the funny scoot crawl.





He is now causing his brother some grief because he's going after his stuff and pulling his race track down, etc. Kenner will whine to me, "Myer scoot back." It's kinda funny but I'm sure after a bit of hearing Kenner whine about Myer ruining his stuff it might get a bit old. Luckily he hasn't resorted to hurting him to get him out of the way . . . .yet.

Carseat Recommendations

I'm just looking for some recommendations on a good carseat from everyone! I need to get Myer into a new carseat. I think he's reached the weight limit on his infant car seat so I need to get him into something different. We got Kenner a new carseat in the summer and I'm not sure I want another like it. It can be a pain to put him in if you don't lift him in and make sure he gets up over the belt flap thing then it gets stuck under him and it's a pain to fish it out.

So, I'm just wondering what you all might suggest as a carseat you've really enjoyed or are enjoying for your kids? The one I have for Kenner goes up to 65 lbs so I kinda like the fact that it can convert through the different stages. So, if you have any ideas on a good one like that or whatever, I'd love to hear your opinions in helping me to shop for a new carseat.

And I guess while I'm at it, another totally random thing. What do you all like to use to mop your floors with, as far as cleaners go? Whenever I go the store I'm usually very overwhelmed by the different products they offer so it'd just be nice to hear what you use and enjoy. Maybe it'll reinspire me in my floor mopping. That is one job I really don't like to do.

Thanks for your help!

A New Year!

I seriously cannot believe that another year has come and gone. Time really seems to be going by faster and faster. It's crazy. Sometimes I hate for time to pass by so quick. I hate to think that my little baby is almost a year old already. It hardly seems possible that was a whole year ago that we welcomed him into our family. But what can you do? Time just keeps on going whether you like it or not.

This last year has been an eventful one for us. The two big events that occurred for us were as I already mentioned Myer being born. The other was getting into our first home. It's been a good year for us and we feel very blessed. It'll be fun to see what another year brings.

I of course need to back up a bit now and cover our Christmas vacation. Did you really think I wouldn't mention a single thing about that? :) This could get quite lengthy so maybe I'll make several posts below this one to cover everything. Happy New Year everyone!

Pre-Christmas in Texas!

We spent Christmas in Utah this year. It was fun to be with family for the holidays since last year we stayed here because it was getting a little too close to Myer being born. We left December 17th and thanks to a good deal that came up on Southwest we were able to fly to Utah without the worry of if we'd make it or not like we do when we go standby. We saved that worry for when it was time to come home!

Since we are away from home for Christmas most of the time we get the special treat of opening gifts early at home. We usually get too excited and can't wait any longer. So, it seems the day we've designated to have our early family Christmas gets bumped up a day or so from what we planned. That's the joy of being parents, we can make those decisions now!

So the Sunday before heading to Utah (we were going to do it on Monday) we had our family Christmas. This gave the kids two days to enjoy their gifts before leaving to Utah.

Kenner opening his new hot wheels race track

Testing out the new track

Waiting for his turn

Luckily Kenner was there to help out

New Hot Wheels cars for his racetrack. It was kinda funny because he opened the track before church and was playing with it using his old hot wheels cars. He kept looking at the box the track came in and it had all these cooler looking cars on it. He was admiring them I guess and wishing for something more fancy. So, these new cars were a bit cooler but he had to wait until after church to get them!

I thought Kenner had a funny look on his face in this one

Ahh, a Mac truck, with Lightening McQueen inside!

Get these away from me! He didn't care too much for opening the gifts or the crinkly noise of the paper.

He'd rather just eat the paper!

Posing while daddy got the camera set up for our family pic in front of the tree!

Christmas with the Lowder Family

We were able to spend a few days at my parents, then went back to Bountiful and spent some time, then back to Brigham, then back to Bountiful. Ya, we bounced around a bit but got to see everyone that way.

We even managed to get together with some of Wayne's old high school friends one night and some of mine one afternoon. It's always fun to get back together even if for a short visit. We enjoyed the fact that for these outings and a few trips out to finish our Christmas shopping we were able to just take off and leave the kids with our families. Ahhh, how nice that was!

So, here are some pics of our Christmas with my family. We didn't have a camera with us in Utah so I've been gathering pictures from everyone.

Kenner with his cousin Hailey. These two were being so funny. We'd go to get a picture and Kenner would go stand right in front of her. Then Hailey kept doing this funny cheeser face!

All the grandkids in their new Christmas Jammies! Myer was hidden behind Kenner :(

Our little family

All of my siblings. Lots of pictures were being taken so we were looking every which direction (or maybe just Natalie in this one)!

I think the first snow storm happened when we were at my parents. Wayne went out and shoveled their driveway while my dad was at work. Kenner ventured out when he was finishing up. Thanks to a neighbor I was able to borrow a coat for him so I didn't have to go buy one for him to use for just 2 weeks.

Christmas with the Hartman Family!

Kenner enjoyed playing with his aunts and uncles. They are pretty good entertainers. His poor aunt Rachel got dragged all around by Kenner. We enjoyed a few nights of playing Guitar Hero World Tour among other things. We got spoiled silly on Christmas!









And we couldn't leave Utah without playing a bit in the snow. We went out sledding one day. It was VERY cold that day.

Cute little snow bunny!

Kenner getting carried up the hill after a fun ride down!

Kenner and me coming down the hill

I was a bit nervous coming down so I had my feet out to protect me. Not a good idea, we got sprayed with snow real bad.

Kenner was not happy when we got down, his face was covered in snow. Oh, so cold. Trying to muster a smile on our oh so cold faces!

Wayne coming down!

This would be Wayne on the ground soon after he finished his fun ride down. He had just barely got back up on his feet and started to say how fun that was when BAM two kids came down the hill sooner then they should've and totally nailed him from behind. He didn't even see it coming and they knocked him right off his feet. Needless to say he was pretty sore for many days to follow.

Kenner and dad coming down the hill

I'd say we got our share of snow while there. Luckily most of our days of traveling were clear except for the one back to Bountiful after Christmas. My antsy husband decided he wanted to go back to Bountiful the night before we had planned. About the time we were ready to head out the snow really picked up and boy was it coming down. The roads weren't so great and we only made it a few miles before we exited off and headed back to my parents house. The roads were a mess and it reminded me why I am so happy we don't generally get snow where we live! We ended up going later the next day. The roads were still bad but at least we could see where we were going.

Anyways, we had a wonderful trip and enjoyed being with family!