Mr. Charles

I guess now that we live a bit far from family members it would be wise to do a Charlie update seeing how he is growing too fast. I love my baby boy more each day. He is 6.5 months old weighing somewhere between 18 and 20 pounds. His hair has be growing a lot recently 

Some milestones include:

Sitting up. He started this about a week before he turned six months and is stronger than ever now.

He can scoot in circles on his belly...as in his belly button stays in the same place and he can move 360 degrees.

HE started rolling over pretty early but now rarely rolls over. he never does it to get places. 

Charlie has been practicing a new cheesy smile accompanied by a wheezy laugh. It cracks us up which makes him do it more. 

He started solid food right a 6 months. He hasn't rejected any food yet and seems particularly fond of green beans, applesauce, and pears. 

He loves going for walks and runs in his stroller. 

 He is great at helping daddy do his work

Charlie and I like to play in front of the mirror. It makes us feel like we have the coolest friends around.

Some things that I absolutely love about my son include.

His Giggles. He gets in moods where everything is funny and if you just look at him he will crack up until he gets severe hiccups.

Whenever Max comes home, Charlie lights up, giggles, smiles, and flaps his arms in excitement.

Charlie will start biting his tongue when he is tired just like Max. This melts my heart!

Charlie will give me kisses occasionally.

Sometimes when he is sitting next to me on the couch he will pat my back or hug and suck on my arm. 

He loves being thrown around by his daddy. 

Anyway, I feel so blessed to have this wonderful son. I am so lucky that I get to stay home and care for him. He is a joy to have in our family and he definitely has parents who love him. 

Father's Day

Yup, we got a jump start on Father's day because, let's face it, My baby has a pretty fantastic father. It all started with a simple idea. Charlie got a new cute summer outfit that said "Daddy's little hero" with a fire fighter helmet on it. So I dressed Charlie up in it and got the great idea of taking him to a fire station to do a photo shoot on some fire engines and then give the pictures to Max as a Father's day gift. Great idea right...I was pretty proud of it. But I really wasn't sure how I was going to get access to a fire truck. I don't think I could be bold enough to walk into a fire station and ask if my son could sit on the truck while I take some pictures. So i did some research to find out if the fire department would be at any events in the near future. And LOW AND BEHOLD they had a huge city safety festival that very coming weekend. I planned on taking Charlie to the festival while Max was working. I kept this idea a secret from Max for about a whole twenty minutes. I realized it would be really hard to take pictures of Charlie by myself and it would more fun to go to the festival as a family anyway. Plus, I wouldn't have had a car that day. The point is, I'm really bad at secrets. So the moral of the story is this, Max knows these pictures exist so I can now share them on our blog. I plan to attempt some editing before I print and frame them. I guess that will be the surprise!  

I think it worked out best this way. Max was able to be in some pictures with our baby boy and we had a lot of fun at the festival.

3 years

Max and I got to celebrate our 3 years of marital bliss on May 2. We actually did more of the celebrating a couple days later because May 2nd was Max's second day of work and he had a whole lot of training stuff to do. We still were able to spend a nice lunch break and dinner together. For lunch we had Jamba Juice. We had  Jamba among the frantic events of our wedding day, running from our photo shoot to our reception. I needed food and I didn't want anything that could pose the risk of a mess. So on our actual wedding day we stopped by the mall in all our dressed up glory and got Jambas. This year I just picked them up and had them on the table when Max got home for lunch. Max got off work semi early that night (8:00pm ish) and we enjoyed a nice celebratory dinner and wonderful night at home.

Several days later we went out exploring. Off course we went as a family of three because we don't know anyone well enough here that we would trust to babysit. We went downtown to Old Sacramento to check out the museums and shops and get a little history lesson. So far, we have spent each anniversary and our wedding in a different city (Portland/Los angelas, San Francisco, Provo, and now Sacramento)  

We were able to pan for Gold. 

And sit in a big chair...actually I'm not sure if that is a chair.

And drive the caboose!

Of course we had to take bottle breaks but the view wasn't bad. 

Charlie entertained us with some table dancing after our fish and chips. 

We all got Sunglasses! A nice lady at the store got Charlie's for him because he was just "so darn cute" 

"Mom, you're in my picture"

We ended the date with ice cream cones!

Anyway, it was a fun family date. I am so in love with these boys.  I'm so grateful for my husband and the loving patient, and kind man that he is. He is constantly impressing me with how willing he is to serve others, something that I sometimes struggle with in my selfish ways. I love seeing what an amazing father he is to our son. Life is good. 3 years down, eternity to go! It's gonna be fun.

PS in the not so distant future Max and I will get to go out on some hot alone dates when the most excellent babysitter (Grandma) is more readily available! We can't wait. 

Sacramento

 The Car ride from Utah to Sacramento was still pleasant although near the end it got a little more challenging for Charlie. He had been a little sleep deprived in Utah and it was starting to catch up with him. Still we are really pleased at how well he did. Saturday night we pretty much did all the unpacking seeing as we really didn't have that much to do. There is a lot of space here and we didn't bring very much. The apartment is really nice and it is the first summer in California where we have a washer and dryer in the apartment. I was not looking forward to hauling a baby and dirty laundry to the laundromat. Our furniture is excellent and it was ll set up when we got here! We are really close to the pool, hot tub, sauna, and gym. And the city we live in is very clean and it has pretty much everything!

Sunday afternoon we decided to go to the pool for a little swim before Charlie's bedtime. He got to try out his new suit for the first time and if I do say so myself he's adorable.

All ready for his first trip to the cold pool.

I was kind of a wimp and didn't go in but my boys were sure brave. It was so cold and Charlie didn't even cry, I actually think he liked it. Maybe he'll be a swimmer like his daddy. 

Since then the pool has become a lot warmer and Charlie has enjoyed it even more. 

 Max started out right away, working hard and making money. He has already been very successful and so have his team members. This Sacramento branch is one of the biggest, best, and most organized in the company so they have been a pleasure to work for. We're really excited about the success so far because our goal is to have student loans completely paid off by the end of the summer, before they start accruing interest. Soon we can be 2 debt free college graduates. We've been making a strict budget to make this happen and we are really enjoying it!  

Charlie sure lights up when he gets to see his Daddy at lunch time. 

It has felt like somewhat of a vacation for me.I get to play with my baby all day. We've been going out to explore parks and trails and libraries and stores. On Saturdays Max gets the afternoons off so we are excited to have him come explore with us in just an hour or so.

In other news, Charlie is officially a sitter...pictures to come.

UVU Graduation

Surprise! I attempted to be a blogger again, even a "twice a month" blogger would be a major success on my part. Now that I am in California with the sole responsibilities of taking care of a precious mild mannered baby boy and a busy money making husband I may just have a little extra time to share our life events. 

So, at the end of April we packed up whatever could fit into our little Jetta and trekked on over to Provo Utah to celebrate Max's graduation. It was so exciting to meet up with so many of our good friends. We really missed so many people. All our Oregon friends somehow ended up in Utah too. Pretty Lame. 

So the car ride...I was absolutely dreading it. 12+ hours with a strapped down wiggly boy. But all I can say is WOW. My little Charlie was an angel. We packed the car so one of us could sit in the back with him at all times. and Charlie just smiled and giggles and sang and slept. Seriously! What an amazing baby. I could do more road trips in the future with this little one.

So while in Utah we were able to stay at our great friends' Joe and Lindsay Rosas' house, which happened to be our old house and we slept in our old bed. It was just like going home. It was fun spending time with them. We were able to visit Charlie's future wife, June, and her parents briefly before they jumped on a plane to Hawaii. I would have thought they would cancel their trip to spend more time with us but they didn't!

We were able to spend time with Richard and Marissa also friends from the childhood days and celebrate their soon-to be new addition. We spent time with the famous Leah "Peacock" Pettit and had dinner with Lee and Krystal and their 2 adorable children. 

We didn't realize how much we missed being surrounded by such wonderful friends. Being back in Provo was another story. It felt...weird. I don't know if I can describe it. It's almost as if I had bad feelings associated with the town which most likely stem from it being a college town and our last semester there was probably one of the busiest and most stressful times ever. I was very pregnant, very busy and never saw my husband. It just made me feel so grateful that I made it through college and now I don't have to live there any more.

Picture Break

We took a walk to a park from Joe and Lindsay's house. we had walked there a couple times before when I was pregnant and talked about how we would have fun bringing our children to the park. 

Charlie was really enjoying the swings. 

So the real reason we went to Utah was to celebrate the brilliance of my husband. This last year of school was pretty challenging from taking it online. He would often get distracted by the cuteness of his wife and child. And also wanted to get involved in many other house and work projects, but he survived. He received a bachelors in emergency services, 2 associate degrees a 1 year paramedic certificate and a firefighting certificate. And yes, the announcer did read all those certifications at the ceremony. It is Max's fault that those ceremonies are so incredibly long. hehe. 

Charlie was pretty proud of his Daddy, or maybe he really liked that bright orange tassel.

 I have some cute boys.

I absolutely love my family.

Charlie did some push ups with "Uncle Joe" it was pretty impressive, however, I have no idea how to put movies on this blog. and if I try, this post risks the fate of never being posted. 

A very happy family!

The funny part about this picture is that at my graduation in August, it felt like Charlie did this exact pose in my stomach when they announced my degree. 

Max's best friends Joe and Richard came. We love these guys, they both grew up, along with their wives, in the Tigard area so we are all one big happy family that grew up together. 

And this is our little future graduate. We really hope we can instill the importance of education in him. 

So there is a basic run-down of our trip. Of course there are many more details such as needing to go to Pantrucas, the amazing Chilean restaurant despite it making us late to graduation, the traffic on the way to graduation causing Max to jump out of the car and run to make it on time. Me arriving to the graduation late and finding my son asleep deciding to haul him in his hefty carseat a really long way. Upon arriving to his graduation, realizing I forgot my phone in the car and having no idea how I would get in contact with Max after the ceremony. Charlie being an amazing sleeper despite us constantly waking him up for random events. Oh yeah and the guest speaker for the ceremony was Erin Gruel. She was the teacher who inspired the movie Freedom Writers. If you haven't seen it, you must. It is amazing and moving and the best part is...it's true. Anyway, my point is, if I expound more I will never get this posted. I hope that I will make time for future posts to update the masses on our life in California and our 3-Year anniversary!   

Blog Tag?

I got tagged in a little blog game.

THE RULES:
1. Post these rules

2. Post 11 random things about yourself

3. Answer the questions provided by the one who tagged you
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag
5. Tag 11 people

11 Facts about me.

1. I've known my husband since I was about 10 years old

2. I drove school buses on and off for 4 years

3. I got glasses when I was 15 months old. I have some funny baby pictures with my lazy eye.

4. My husband and I were each other's first and only kiss!

5. I graduated college 7 years after I graduated high school.

6. I get a thrill from waxing cars.

7. I have never dyed my hair.

8. I had my wedding date picked out before I got home from my mission...luckily it worked out perfectly.

9. I wanted a boy for my first child but would not admit it until I knew he was a boy. (I would have been happy with a girl too)

10. I enjoy reading juvenile literature more than "grown up" books (hence the Elementary Ed. Major)

11. When graduating college I didn't really see myself being a full time teacher. Now I realize I miss the teaching and am more likely to pursue a teaching career. (If jobs are available) (I planned on being a sub or in-home tutor)

11 questions I'm asking:

1) What's the most difficult conversation you've ever had to have?

Probably the time when Max and I had to "break up" before his mission. we both knew it had to happen but neither of us were happy about it.
2) What do you think about most these days?

Whether it is time to feed, change or put my son down for a nap.
3) What is something you wish people knew about you, but they never seem to get?

I'm not as shy as I seem when in groups. I just really like to listen.
4) If you could have any animal for a pet, what would it be and why?

A fish because it seems like the least work.
5) If you could change your name, what would it be?

I have always loved my name it's not common enough to have duplicates in my class but common enough for it to be a "normal" name. I've never wanted to be called something else.
6) Have you ever felt like you belonged in some other country or state more than your own? Where?

Maybe I just haven't explored enough because out of the places I've lived (Oregon, California, Idaho, Utah, and Armenia) I would choose Oregon. It is my home sweet home!
7) If you could only see the world in one color for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Green! Hence the reason I love Oregon.
8) If you could take one object to heaven with you, what would it be? (besides photos)

Probably a family journal or some sort of document that tells stories about our family members.
9) How would you spend your day if you had no T.V., computer, phone, or whatever electronic device you normally log your time away on?

Making a fool out of myself just to see my baby boy laughing. Goofy noises, jumping around, dancing...

10) If you could travel back in time to any day, what would it be?

If this means a time in my life that's hard because in so many ways I just feel like my life gets better and better and somehow I get happier and happier. I would love to relive our honeymoon.

11) If you could have any talent, what would it be?

I think it would be fun to write, sing, and play my original music. I guess that's 3 talents but the piano part I'm already pretty sufficient at.

And just because I was tagged twice, here is another set of 11 questions. If you don't like it, stop reading MY blog!

Questions I'm asking!

1) Why do you blog?

I guess I don't so much anymore, it started to let my family know what we were up to so I didn't have to call them all individually to inform them.

2) What is one thing that comes easy to you, that doesn't come easy to others?

I would say being positive. Of course I have my weak moments but i try to look at the bright side of situations.

3) What is your biggest regret?

I probably shouldn't have eaten so much ice cream while pregnant.

4) What is your one guilty purchase? Something you splurge on and justify splurging on?

As of late I love to go to children's consignment stores and find cute clothes for my baby! Totally justified even though he has plenty of clothes.

5) Where would you live, if you could live anywhere?

Right here in the Northwest. I guess this could change once I explore the world a little more.

6) How do you feel about cats?

I strongly dislike them. I think I've just been around some where they weren't properly taken care of and they stink and are hairy.

7) What is your favorite place in the whole world? Post pictures.

Anywhere with my family! The beach and the temple are great places to be with them.

8) What, in your opinion, is the biggest problem our society faces?

I don't know if it's the biggest problem but I worry about the world my children grow up in and how technology can be used for many negative purposes while being so accessible.

9) What is one of your pet peeves?

People that are constantly criticizing themselves

10) What is one demographic that makes you mad?

Can't think of anything right now.

11) What's the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning?

My baby wants food.

My questions to YOU!!

1. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

2. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life what would you choose?

3 What is something that you want your grandchildren and great grandchildren to know about you?

4. Describe a time when you felt happiest.

5. What is your favorite article of clothing and why?

6. Describe 3 aspects of your dream home.

7. What was your favorite way to spend the summer as a child?

8. What is the last book you read?

9. What's a unique habit you have?

10. What is one of you life goals?

11. What would you be doing if you weren't filling out this survey right now?

And there you have it, a whole lot about me, If you made it to the end of this blog post you are tagged. I'd love to know more about you. (I 'm pretty sure less than 11 people even look at my blog)

My growing boy!

I have been a little absent for awhile, caught up in the joys of being a new mom! And boy do I love it! My baby boy is a little angel! Anyway, I have no idea where to start and I don't feel like playing catch up so here are some pictures of my growing boy.

NEWBORN

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

Charlie is a joy to have in our family he has been smiling and laughing tons. His best sleep stretch was 11.5 hours. (Which was after a lot of screaming) One month ago he weighed 12 lbs 10 oz which is in the 50th percentile for weight and 75 percentile for height (apparently he is tall and skinny for his age) We get to go to the doctors again in 3 weeks. He has brown eyes and a dark brown mullet. He will never stop eating until we force him to. He laughs really hard when Max attempts to beat box. ( I don't know if he likes the sounds or the spit in his face) He likes to go on walks and read picture books. Charlie now has his own room and has been sleeping great! (With the exception of last night)

And that's all I can think of now.