A week for the record books

Oliver has done two amazing things this week and seeing as I don't expect to see a repeat performance anytime soon I figured I would record them for posterity's sake. First, he sat through all of Sacrament meeting without a single trip to the foyer and then attended all of nursery. Second, he slept in until 11:30 this morning after going down at his usual 8:00 p.m.

I am shocked and amazed, still.

Stir Crazy

My parents have a mule that gets stir crazy being penned up in a small corral during the winter months. When she just can't take it anymore she stands by the fence and rolls her head around in circles. Oliver has recently adopted a similar outlet for his pent up energy. We have experienced some crazy weather lately, i.e. 80 degree temperatures followed by huge snow storms. On the days that Ollie finds himself stuck in our small apartment he takes to running circles around the living room. I attached a video of him running circles, but to get an idea of what it is really like you need to multiply it by at least 50. He just goes and goes and goes. Good thing we will have a backyard in only 11 more days!

Home Sweet Home.............almost

After five years of cramped, apartment-style living we have decided to rent a house. Our motivation really had nothing to do with getting more space inside (although that will be nice) we pretty much just wanted a backyard for Ollie to play in. Our little house is old but well maintained and full of character. The backyard is fully fenced and has plenty of grass to run around on. Lucky for us, the house also came mostly furnished (we don't own near enough furniture to fill it up). This also means that we have quite a few spare beds, so we are hoping that you will all come and pay us a visit. Our plan is to rent this place for the summer and then probably relocate to a cheaper apartment or townhouse for the winter whilst we shop around for a place to buy :)

Wet Shoe Chronicles

It all began innocently enough with a fast-melting snow storm a couple of weeks ago. Our friends came to do some sledding, but Oliver could not be coaxed away from the puddles. He had his big snow boots on so I didn't see a problem with allowing him to stomp and splash to his hearts content. Oh, how wrong I was. Since that day Oliver has had an absolute obsession with puddles. He makes a bee-line for every puddle and there is no holding him back. Case in point:

Incident 1: We decided to visit Sam at school, just for a minute. We took Ollie out of his car seat and before we knew it he was running to a mud puddle that neither of us had seen. He took two steps into the puddle, slipped, fell on his back and was covered with thick gooey mud. We had to strip him down and head back home.

Incident 2: Ollie and I go to Mother Goose time at the library each week. Afterward Oliver likes to go throw rocks into the river on the other side of the parking lot. We have found that the safest place to throw said rocks is from the bridge. We had already gathered and thrown several. I was waiting for Oliver at the bottom of the bridge while he searched out new rocks. I watched him walk to the other side of a little hill but didn't think much of it until I heard him calling my name. As I walked closer I could see that the city had piled a huge amount of snow there and that the run-off had created a big pond/puddle. I found Oliver standing chest deep in freezing cold water. Again, we stripped him down and headed home.

Incident 3: We went with some friends to Chattfield Botanical Gardens. They have a kids area with a big treehouse and a pond surrounded by rocks just for throwing in. Of course Oliver was in heaven. While he was busy throwing rocks I turned to talk to my friend for just a second, when I turned back I saw that Oliver had waded out to the middle of the pond. I guess he thought his chances of getting the rocks to land in the water would be increased if he were standing in it. It was a warm enough day that I just let him wander around wet and muddy.

Incident 4: The weather finally warmed up and Ollie and I headed to our favorite park. The park has a river running through it and Oliver insisted on climbing down to the bank to throw rocks. He was doing just fine until he stepped on a wobbly rock, slipped and fell onto his bum in the river. It wasn't deep, but he was wet enough to again warrant being stripped down and taken home.

I understand that with toddler boys such incidents are to be expected. Our trouble was that all of this happened over the course of about ten days, with plenty of other minor incidents sprinkled in. Now, I am all about letting kids be kids, our problem was that we were running out of shoes. (They take a couple of days to dry out you know). Even his church shoes were soaked. I am happy to report that after a trip to Target and several local consignment stores we now have a pair of shoes for every day of the week. I don't stress about puddles, I just take and extra pair of shoes. Now that the weather is warm enough I put him in shorts and can worry even less about him stomping in puddles. Of course, this does create other problems, such as the poison ivy he sat down in yesterday. Boys, hmmm.

Easter

We had a great Easter Weekend and learned one very important lesson: don't let your child stuff himself full of Easter candy Sunday morning and then expect a calm and peaceful experience at church. What can I say, live and learn.

Our weekend started out great with a visit from Sam's dad and step mom. They came to spend a few days with us an we were so happy to have them. We saw some sights, ate lots of food and just had a good time with them. They showed us the most incredible act of love kindness and patience when they volunteered to spend the majority of their vacation driving Oliver and I around Colorado Springs looking at rental properties. We were sure grateful to have them (and their GPS).

Aside from house hunting, Oliver also got his fill of Easter egg hunts. In the beginning, he would find one egg, open it, get the candy and be done. But, by the time we made it to the ward Easter egg hunt on Saturday he had fully mastered the concept and ran, yelling and jumping up and down between each egg. He was so good at finding them in fact that he kept interrupting the other activities (the egg toss and the egg obstacle course) by marching in and "finding" those eggs as well.


As you can see the Easter Bunny brought Oliver a rather large basket this year.
After a game of H-O-R-S-E with mom and dad Oliver was mostly interested in the Easter grass.
Oliver loves to play baa-gu-bo (basketball) and has taken it one step further by testing every other item in the house just to see what fits through the hoop.

Change of Plans

It's official. Today Sam accepted an internship offer with Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor with offices in Colorado Springs. We had originally planned to sweat our summer away in Houston where Sam was to work for a big oil company, but when I got pregnant we decided to look around a bit more. We feel so blessed to have received two great offers, especially with the economy the way it is right now. We feel like the opportunity to move to Colorado Springs is an answer to our prayers as we will have insurance and be closer to family. The company wants to hire Sam on permanently in December when he graduates so when we move down in a few weeks, we won't be coming back. Sam will just commute back for his last semester of school and we will get the opportunity to put down some roots and finally make a home for ourselves. The light at the end of the education tunnel is getting brighter and brighter. Yahoo!!

Faith & Fruit Loops

I remember General Conference weekend growing up my mom would always have tons of conference related activities to keep us in our seats and paying attention. The most popular of these was General Conference bingo, other activities included special journals and writing things we learned on pieces of construction paper, then stringing them onto fruit loop necklaces. No matter what, General Conference always included a big bag of fruit loops. Not only did the fruit loops make great necklaces and bingo markers, they were considered a special treat because it was the only time of year my mom ever bought cold cereal. We eventually outgrew mom's tactics and had to rely on our own devices to stay awake and listen. I am happy to report however, that while the bingo cards got tucked away into the dark recesses of one of mom's filing cabinets, the fruit loops remained a General Conference staple. And, for whatever reason, my mom continued to buy a huge bag of them every April and October. So it should come as no surprise that as Sam was leaving the house this morning to pick up some Ajax to srubb the shower, I also requested a big box of fruit loops. Conference just doesn't seem right to me now with out munching on a big bowl of sugary, artificially flavored, air-filled cereal.

Of course, Conference just had to begin with the talk that everyone loves to hate, the debt talk. I did my best to ignore Elder Hale, but he said too many true things. Sam and I are not big spenders (having no money really helps out with this). But he does have a good job this summer and in the back of my mind I have been dreaming about a new set of couches. The couches we presently sit on are ones I paid 35.00 for at a garage sale before we got married. They are pretty shabby and every couple of months I have to get out my scissors and cut of all of the new fraying strings. I have let them get really bad recently because in the back of my mind was the thought that they wouldn't be with us much longer. However, after Elder Hale's talk (and a few more bowls of fruit loops) I broke out my rag and needle and thread and did what I could to make the couches last a little while longer. Obviously it would be more prudent of us to work on our food storage and build our savings than to get new furniture. So, thanks Elder Hale for keeping us on track. And thanks to the fruit loops for making that pill a little sweeter to swallow.