Photo dump time

I've been so scattered that Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating are all becoming part of this photo dump post but it is what it is. 

When Miles naps, this is what Charlie and I do....there are so many leaves and this is before even half of them had fallen. 

Then there are the times when Miles is awake.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, we pulled out the Christmas decorations and trimmed the tree.  The boys were the most excited about the box

I know a lot of these photos have ended up blurry recently but I really have been trying harder to capture memories and not take perfect photos...(assuming I have ever taken a perfect photo...haha)

Then there was a day when I loaded up the boys to go do piano lessons at my student's house. It was 5pm and Charlie fell asleep on the way, I carried him in and laid him on a chair. He slept during the whole lesson. When we were done I carried him back to the car and he slept the whole way home. I thought it might be my chance to get a photo of him sleeping under the tree just like HERE. He woke up right after I set him down but this is what I got.

I took ZERO photos during our Thanksgiving festivities. SO I will briefly summarize what we did. Max got a 4-day weekend which was pretty wonderful! Thanksgiving day, he left in the morning to go play football with the men from church. When he got back we went out as a family to rake and blow leaves and fill the yard debris. We then came in, Miles had a nap and I got in a great pre-dinner workout. After getting ready, we went to my Red Grandma's house shortly before 4pm and feasted. We decided to simpify our lives and not try to visit everyone and eat everywhere. So we only went to my Red Grandma's on Thanksgiving day and to Max's family get together the next day. In the past, we've had up to 4 Thanksgiving dinners. Yikes. We enjoyed spending a long morning and afternoon at home together on Thanksgiving day. We had fun at Red Grandmas house and watched some football and Charlie ran around playing shoot 'em up games with my cousins.

The next morning the boys slept in a bit which was great and refreshing. Max worked on the property for awhile and Charlie and I made rolls. We then got ready to go to Max's Unlce Jays house. We got there right in time for dinner. We had fun eating then the tables were cleared and all the boys just went at it in a massive wrestling match. It got intense but it was fun for Charlie to be involved in the tradition for the first time. It is one of Max's favorite memories.

On Saturday, Max and I had a lot of projects we wanted to get done around the house. So we invited his parents over to play with the boys while we cleaned the gutters and I put Christmas lights up on our house. Max wouldn't let me put lights up last years because he didn't want me on the roof being all pregnant. Haha, Now I wish people will actually see our house, but you wil never see it unless you come over...or if I take a picture.

Then there was the day that a huge snowstorm was expected, school was canceled, roads were closed and we barely got a mist of snow and ice. Haha. 

And I decided to take Charlie to go get his first real haircut. I'm still deciding if it was worth it. I think Max can cut his hair just as well. But Charlie had a good time. 

Yes these photos are out of order but we were testing which lights would work for the house.

Another attempt at making potty training fun. He is getting so close. He didn't really get the idea of the sticker chart though, he kept taking the stickers off. I'm hoping by the end of the year he will be mostly trained minus bedtime. It is one of our 2014 goals

Then we had a family outing to the pool since Max didn't get to go with us on Charlie's birthday. This is the only photo we took. Miles was so calm and content the whole outing and these chairs are so funny.

For one of our Thanksgiving dinners I decided to curl my hair and Charlie wanted to try out the curlers.

Miles starts "under the tree" photos.

Then this happened to my hair.

We've been practicing a lot of things on our white board. Here Charlie was working on the letter B. He's been doing really well with A so we decided to move on. 

Charlie talks about the Elders and Missionaries a lot so we decided to pull out a bunch of our mission stuff for family night and talk to him about our missions.

And then there are the everyday things like playing under a blanket with your brother and a flashlight. 

The long cold Hunt!

I'm really behind on my blog posts, part of that is probably because I've been awful at taking pictures. I think that may be because I'm trying more to live in the moment but it is even more likely that it is a result of having a baby that likes to crawl and climb everywhere. So, this post is to briefly describe Max's hunting trip that I wasn't even present for. 

It turned out that Max and Brent got permits to hunt Elk on their Uncle Jay's property. Elk season is only 8 days long and right in the middle of those eight days was Charlie's birthday. Max planned on being gone for about 5 days then come back with Brent hopefully with an Elk in tow. After those 5 days they hadn't seen an Elk but heard that they should be migrating towards Jay's property in the next couple of days. 

Oh yeah...and it was below freezing and Max slept in a tent cot in the barn and woke up to ice crystals surrounding him. CRAZY!

The freezing tent cot!

One of the perks about hunting is the amazing Sunrises!

At some point they were able to go to a neighboring property to help some hunters with their catch.

So what was planned to be 5 days turned into 9. And still no sighting of an Elk on Jay's property. Max was cold and ready to be home but he also has that amazing determined quality to finish what he starts so he held out until the end of the season. He learned a lot about hunting which I think is a valuable skill Also, next year Jay should have his house mostly built on his property so we will be able to go out there as a family and the boys and I can stay in the warm house. We are excited for that!  But boy oh boy, I love it when Max gets home!

Charlie the great!

This week our sweet little Charles Gorden turned three. Here's a quick look at his three years of life:

Day 1

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Charlie makes us smile every day. He is thoughtful and eager to help (on his terms of course). He finds joy in anything he is doing (a quality I admire in Max as well) .  He is still learning obedience but is making progress. He likes to run and jump and play. Poty training is what it is. I'm not super strict or forceful with it so he is doing ok with pee and not so great with poop. :) He has enjoyed doing more crafty things recently. I'm not sure if this is because of our new whiteboard, his age, or the fact that he can see better but it's neat that he can focus on a craft for a little while longer now. 

I Love listening to him speak and hearing the logic that he comes up with. 

Here are a couple funny things that I wanted to document for us.

He likes to mix up compound words such as Rubber bands are sometimes called rubber band aids and Construction cones are called pine cones.

When we are drawing pictures of people he says they are "sleeping" until you put dots in their eyes, then he says "they woke up!"

He's really into opposites, when he is talking about food he says it's not yucky, it's yummy." or "it makes you happy, not sad"
He recently started praying by himself and has been praying for daddy to come home (he's been gone hunting)

One of my favorite and unexpected quotes was when Miles was getting his 6 month shots and was crying. Charlie proclaimed that "he needs chocolate so he feels better."

There are probably more that I want to remember but that's what I can think of now.

Charlie's Birthday

The plans for Charlie's birthday kept changing. Max was out of town so I planned on having my mom watch Miles while I took Charlie out on a date for dinner and swimming. It wont be long before Charlie doesn't want to spend his birthday with his mom so I wanted to take advantage of that, plus I wanted a little one on one time. It turned out that my mom had to work later than expected and we wouldn't have time for dinner and swimming. Also, Elizabeth called me the morning of Charlie's birthday and said she could come down with the kids to celebrate if we were up for it. I was so excited because it has been a tough week with Max gone and I knew Charlie would love some cousin time.  So we got to celebrate Charlie's third birthday with an unplanned party with his cousins. Charlie lit up when his cousins came over. He was ecstatic and it made me happy that he was able to spend his special day with them. We started the cousin play time by getting out a whole bunch of toys!

The strong girls pushing the boys!

It makes me happy that my kids have cousins so close in age. These boys were able to interact a little more. 

These are Charlie's birthday brownies that we made together. He decorated them

We made homemade mac and cheese for dinner, somehow Charlie got Aunt Elizabeth to feed him.

My baby is 3!

Our baby boys playing together more.

After dinner and some birthday brownies we went swimming!!

Miles loved the warm water, Charlie loved going down the slide. I was mad that I forgot his arm floaties. so it was a little more stressful. I will not be forgetting them next time. 

Everett slept for most of it then woke up and was super content watching.

Charlie was super exhausted by the end. It was nearly 9pm and he hadn't napped. We decided to get out of the pool and get dressed all the cousins came soon after.

Miles is wearing Everett's old pajamas and Everett is wearing Charlie's old pajamas. It's great having cousins!

Charlie had quite the meltdown as we were going to the car but once we got home, he fell asleep quickly. Our cousins stayed at our house. It was pretty great birthday, especially considering that Max wasn't here.  Charlie is easy to please and I was so excited that we were able to spend time with Elizabeth and cousins. 

7 Months

Oh man, Miles wants to grow so fast. I'm just not ready for it. These posts may only be interesting to me but I'm glad that I have kept up with them so I can see his growth and development and I will be able to go back and see when his milestones were. 

 His biggest developments this last month include crawling and  a top tooth cutting through.

He seems to consistently wake up at least once in the night. This could be from tooth pain or from trying to crawl. Charlie woke up a lot more in the night when he started crawling.  

He's loving baby food more and more and will eat pretty much anything until he is full.
Most toys and anything he puts in his hand goes in his mouth, another reason I'm nervous about this crawling thing...big brother is always leaving things around. When Charlie started crawling we were living in California and had very little so there wasn't much for him to get into. Also, Charlie didn't have an older brother to leave things out for him. Oh well, I guess I can't stop him from growing so we will do our best to embrace it. 

We love Miles' beautiful smile and his infectious giggles. He is extremely ticklish and it is so easy to make him laugh. 

Both Charlie and Miles at 7 months. I was bummed that I couldn't find the sunglasses anywhere! I saw Charlie with them a couple days ago.

Playing in our mushroom and leaf filled yard 

And he's off!

 

So we got this awesome whiteboard from Max's work which may earn its own amazing blog post...yeah it's that amazing...so then I got kind of pinteresty...kind of! Maybe I should add stats and milestones and fancy fonts and other frilly things....(not really my thing) 

And here are some crawling videos from just before he turned 7 months, this is when he really started taking off on his knees and he's become much faster and more efficient in the days following. 

Something else that I've been enjoying is that Charlie is able to interact with Miles a lot more. Miles is less fragile and more responsive to his big brother so that is fun to see. 

That's all for now!

Halloween

I was the worst this Halloween when it came to taking pictures but we still had a fun time and we were able to live more in the moment I guess. I've had a hard time with Halloweens of late...maybe I just don't understand the point of dressing up. I like to dress up if the perfectly creative costume falls in front of me but I have a hard time spending money or valuable time on one-time use costumes. So this year, we just checked out Goodwill to see what costumes they had in our boys' sizes.

At first we saw this one and Charlie has been watching Monster's University pretty regularly so we thought this might be fun then see if we could dress up Miles as Mike Wazowski.

But then I saw this Elmo one and when Charlie saw it he got really Excited. It also fit him better. 

So we decided on Elmo! We then saw a giraffe costume that was in good condition and would fit Miles...it just had an awkwardly placed head but we were fine with that. 

A week before Halloween we were able to attend our Ward Trunk or Treat. They went all out this year and we had an amazing dinner, caramel apples, and fun games and of course the Trunk or Treat. 

Last year Charlie got so excited with one piece of candy that  he stopped asking for more and just started eating it. This year we went to a couple more cars but soon declared that his bucket was "too full" (not even halfway full and it was a little bucket) and that he needed to go sit down and eat his candy. We were fine with that. We knew he would quickly forget his candy and I would end up eating it so the less candy the better!

They took our picture at the party. I'm already brainstorming ideas for Max and me for next Halloween so we aren't as lame. 

But really though, Why is there a giraffe head on Miles stomach it prevented effective carseat and Moby wrap use? Miles thought it was fun to play with though.

On Halloween we kept with our tradition of only visiting the grandparents and great grandparents instead of trick or treating door to door. 

We decided to start a little early and visit Max's Grandma on his lunch break because she lives farther than the rest. We had a nice visit with Mum-z and Jordan. Miles sat perfectly still on her lap, we were shocked and she was happy. 

We then ate lunch at the food carts down by Wilson High school. We'd been wanting to check them out for awhile. Charlie got some macaroni and I  tasted it and deemed it the most delicious Mac and cheese to ever enter my mouth. 

Max then went back to work, after the boys napped we went to meet Max at the bank where they were all dressed up like contesants on the Price is Right and let us play Plinko for prizes. We also had some banking to do but we had fun while doing it. We then went to Max's parents house and visited a bit. We then realized we needed dinner and My mom had made Chili and brought it over to my Red Grandma's house. We headed over there and enjoyed some dinner, Charlie ate only Corn bread and Miles ate his Rice cereal and pears. We made sure our bellies were full of good food. We visited with Red Grandma, and my mom and Austin and Michelle and Stephanie and Val, then went to our last stop at My Green Grandmas house. Charlie had fun playing with Uncle Gary's amazing marble contraption and Grandma enjoyed holding Miles. 

We had a good chat with her and it got late so we put the boys in their pajamas brushed their teeth and called it a night. Usually my dad is at one of my grandma's houses but he wasn't this year so we didn't see him but we were able to see all of Charlie and Miles' other grandparents and great grandparents in one night. It was fun and luckily, we didn't come home with much candy because we never really put candy in Charlie's bucket, he just ate some while we were on our various visits.