Happy Birthday to US!!!!

Sam and I just celebrated our 26th and 25th birthdays, respectively. I know, we're getting old! My sister Kaitlyn thought it was absolutely hilarious that I had turned 25 and couldn't stop laughing for five minutes when she realized how old I was (Thanks a lot, Kaitlyn! Way to make me depressed on my birthday :) )
Our birthdays our only three days apart, which is good for a couple of reasons 1. I don't think Sam will ever forget my birthday (and to be fair, vice versa) and 2. Between the two of us, we usually put in like a week of partying and birthday fun.
Sam's birthday was actually on Easter Sunday this year. So on Saturday night, Grandma was kind enough to babysit so Sam and I could go to a Texas Ranger's game with some friends. It was soooo-sooooo-soooo cold that night, and we were sitting at the very top of the stadium where we were very accessible to the cold , cold wind. We huddled there for about the first six innings which were a weird combination of fun and misery. Then we decided we were too cold to stick out the rest of the game and decided to go. But when we got to the bottom of the stadium we noticed there were some empty seats right behind home base....and who can pass up seats like that? So we nonchalantly walked past the usher (who was looking mighty suspicious but said nothing.) The last two innings were great fun, we got to listen in on some great verbal fights between drunk Ranger fans and drunk Red Sox fans, and the Rangers actually ended up winning the game.
Then on Sunday morning, we had cinnamon rolls and Lasagna for Sam's birthday dinner. We were able to celebrate with family, so that was fun. Instead of asking for a lucious, lucious cake of any flavor he chose, Sam asked for birthday oatmeal cookies. Go figure. Here's some pics




Then, for my birthday, Sam got up in the morning and made me breakfast. We had eggs, hashbrowns, biscuits, and sausage..yum, yum, and knowing how much Sam HATES to cook made the fact that he actually made breakfast very sweet. I too, decided to forgo the birthday cake and we had banana milkshakes instead. I got some cute new clothes and money. Can't go wrong there (Thanks everyone)
Later that night after Riley was asleep, Sam and I went and played mini golf and hit some balls at the batting cages. Great fun. All in all, a very wonderful birthday week.

Not the Nap!!!!!!!!

So about two months ago, Riley discovered that it was a piece of cake getting out of his playpen. I discovered this in the middle of the night when I woke up in a cold sweat and he was standing right by my bed with his face about two centimeters from mine. Since then...life has become much more complicated.
At first I figured, that'd he'd be too scared to jump out of his crib, so we started putting him in there instead of the playpen ("Why wasn't he in his crib in the first place?" you're probably wondering. Well that's way too long to go into so you may as well stop wondering.) Wrong. He hurdled the crib rail in like two seconds and didn't even seem to mind the fall to the floor.
As soon as we laid him in his play pen for naps or for the night, he'd jump right out and come outside. I had to completely retrain him by laying him right back down over and over again. One night, I seriously did it 35 times (i decided to keep track since I had nothing better to do.) It was the worst few weeks ever and i felt like a big fat meanie.
He's finally started doing better, at least for the most part, but some days he still regresses back into his old ways. And some days, he jumps out of his playpen, but because he knows he's not supposed to come outside he falls asleep on the floor of his room (hence the picture).
But now, the best news of all......are you ready for it? I think he's trying to give up his nap on me. It's like the end of the world as I know it. The last few days, he has absolutely refused to go down and hasn't acted all that sleepy during the day.
Blog readers (even if I have never met you) please help me out. Isn't 21 months way too early to quit taking naps? What should I do? Could this be just a phase?

Phone Booth...the sequel

My mom and dad have this antique phone booth that Riley just loves. The phone doesn't actually work, which is a plus because we don't have to worry about him accidentally calling China and wracking up a huge phone bill. Believe me, that is not out of the realm of possibility..I'm pretty sure it's already happened a time or two. Once I grabbed the phone from him after he had punched a bunch of numbers and heard someone on the other end speaking some foreign language or the other.
Riley loves to climb in and out of the booth and open and close the glass doors. And who can blame him? That thing is pretty darn cool.

"This phone is just a little too heavy for me to make it up all the way to my ear. I'll just hold it on my shoulder and pretend like I'm having an acutal conversation with someone."

"What are you looking at?"

"Let me out of here!!!"

Zoolander Jr.

I've been meaning to post this pic for awhile. While we were staying with my sister Audra in Utah a couple months ago, Riley kept crawling into this baby swing she had stored in one of the bedrooms. Once in, he was completely relaxed and practicing his male underwear (or diaper) model poses. It was pretty funny, and weird to see him holding still for longer than five second at a time. What do you think? Should I put this photo in a portfolio to send off to catalog companies?

When we're helping, we're happy

Riley loves to "help" his Grandma work on her computer and vacuum. And by helping, what I really mean is it takes about 30 minutes to vacuum one room because Riley insists on pushing the vacuum himself (either that or trying to ride on it). Still though, it's pretty cute, and very nice for Grandma to put up with a couple of extra "helping" hands.

Awesome Read

I just finished a great book, thanks to my friend Serena for suggesting it. It's called Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I'm not even going to go into detail about what it's about, other than to say it's a different twist of sorts on a love story. I warn you though, the book will suck you in. I started reading it at 8:30 p.m. one night after I put Riley to bed. Other than getting up to use the bathroom a couple of times, I didn't leave my spot on the couch until 2:30 a.m. when the book was finished. I had a killer headache, but I was like.....must......keep......reading.....must find out how it ends. And, the author is a BYU grad, so how can you go wrong there?
Oh, and P.S. If you do decide to read the book, take my advice (which is the same advice Serena gave me) Don't read the back cover of the book or the preface until you're done with it. It gives away way to much and will totally kill the suspense.

Grammy and Gpas "farm"

Here are a few pictures from our Utah trip. These are from my mom and dad's wannabe "farm" in Neola, Utah. Riley thought it was the greatest place in the world. There are cats to chase, horses to pet, and motorcycles and snowmobiles to ride.
The good news is that I dropped our camera in a giant snow drift and most likely ruined it. I'm sure what will happen is that i'll take it to a camera place, they'll look at it for a few seconds and say, "It will be cheaper to just buy a new one." How, you ask, do I know this? Well my camera kill count is up to three now. It's not a number I'm proud of. Somehow, I just have a knack for dropping those things in water puddles, out of moving vehicles, or off balcony's the very second before I'm about to snap a great picture. I'm actually pretty darn upset about it. Our camera wasn't top of the line, but it was nice, and we really don't want to buy a new one. Keep your fingers crossed (for our sake) that someone will be able to resurrect it.
Anyway, the point of telling what happened to our camera is to say it may be awhile before we get the rest of our pics posted. The memory card should still work, even though the camera doesn't, but we won't have a card reader handy for a few days.

So many pictures!

Hi Friends,
Sam, Riley, and I are all heading off to Utah tomorrow for a couple of weeks. We thought we'd go visit my family and do as much snowboarding as possible. Sam is also going to work a little bit while we're down there at a trade show in Salt Lake to help fund our vacation spree.
It may be awhile before I have a chance to post again, so I thought I'd share some misc. past photos that i've been meaning to load but haven't gotten around to actually loading.



Riley's usual preferred method of going down slides is head-first, so
the feet-first routine is a nice (and much safer) changeup.

So cute!!

I'm not sure how daddy feels about this picture.

Riley and daddy playing the piano

Mommy, look! I'm a duck!!!

Treadmill Bike

Maybe I'm lame, but I'm a sucker for mock infomercials and I thought this was hilarious.

Take your favourite gym workout outside with the amazing Treadmill Bicycle.

Merry Christmas

We hope all of you had a great Christmas! Ours was wonderful. I considered this year Riley's first "real" Christmas experience, since he was only six-months old last year and celebrated the day by keeping us up all night on Christmas Eve and then sleeping through the entire Christmas celebration.
This year, he was much more excited about the whole present thing. In fact, you'll notice that he couldn't even be bothered to look up at the camera in 99 percent of the pics I posted. He loved unwrapping the presents and spent a good five minutes after he tore the paper off trying to figure out how to "rearrange" it back on the box the way it was originally.
We spent Christmas this year in Oklahoma with my Grandma, Aunts and Uncles, and Cousins. My mom and dad and brother and sisters also drove down from Utah. It worked out great for us, since it's just a four hour drive to Grandma's from Dallas. Not that driving in a car for 18 hours with a screaming baby isn't a treat.

Riley driving his new dump truck under the stool. He also drove it (or tried to drive it) on the cat and dog's back, but unfortunately I was too slow to snap any pics of that.
My dad with his awesome bomber jacket that my mom bought for him.
Riley (he's the one refusing to look at the camera) with his Aunt Audra and Uncle Dustin)
My sister Kaitlyn and her cute little baby Graycie
Opening presents with Grammy




Sam thought it would be fun to celebrate Christmas by catching a nasty case of the flu. He spent the entire day in bed except for the ten minutes that he emerged to try and enjoy present-opening. The good news is that Riley and I also had really gross colds, and seeing as how Christmas is all aboug giving, we were kind enough to share our germs with everyone.

'Nothin But Blue Skies

I've got to admit that it didn't take me very long to fall in love with Texas weather. There are a few cloudy and cool days every now and again, but there are also so many warm days...even in the middle of winter! Unfortunately, being from Utah I wasn't expecting to need t-shirts and shorts occasionally so most of them are packed away in storage.
I'm so glad I'm not stuck in a small Utah apartment everyday because it's too cold to take Riley out to play. I think we'd drive each other crazy! Riley's favorite outdoor activity is playing in a small patch of dirt just outside the door at his Grandpa and Grandma's house. The dirt patch is directly below a gutter, so when it rains the whole thing becomes a nice, choclatey, gooey mess. It actually looks rather delicious, and Riley finds it irresistible. He sticks his fingers in the dirt and licks them. He looks so disappointed and disgusted that the dirt tastes like....well dirt....but yet five minutes later he's trying to eat the stuff all over again.It's really pretty darn funny.
Here are some pics we took on one of those days when the weather was so nice.

"Don't bother me mom, I have a very delicate operation to perform! I have to move these leaves from one side of this bench to the other."


"Success is mine!!!"


"Now I"m going to look at this stick for awhile."

Thanksgiving

Here are some random pics that we took at Thanksgiving--which was great by the way. Any holiday where you can eat everything you want is fine by me. We tried to get a really cute picture with all three babies and grandma and grandpa, but as you can imagine that's pretty much an impossible task. Of all the pictures, this one turned out the best.

Hooray for Sam!!!!

I'm going to take a minute to brag in Sam's behalf, since he's far too modest to do it himself. We found out last week he's been accepted into a few different medical schools, whose names I will omit for security purposes. One of the schools where he was admitted only accepts about 12 out-of-state applicants each year, so Sam must have really impressed the admissions committee. It'll be fun to see where we end up!

Ride 'Em Cowboy

I guess we know now why little boys shouldn't play with dollhouses. For some reason, while we were visiting Sarah and Shane a few weeks ago, Riley kept trying to sit on his cousin Kathryn's dollhouse and ride it. Poor Kathryn was a little confused as to what in the world he was doing, but she was sweet enough to share all the same.


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Birthdays = ICE CREAM!!!

Andrew had his 18th birthday last week, and Riley quickly learned that birthdays mean the once-in-a-rare while opportunity when we actually let him have some ice cream. He loved it. I think he enjoyed making a huge mess and finger-painting himself in chocolate almsot as much as actually eating the ice cream.