Hansenisms

Thanksgiving!

2011-11-30T20:48:00.009-06:00

We had a nice and relaxing Thanksgiving. Earlier in the month, Josh's preschool had a Thanksgiving feast that Lucy and I got to attend. It was fun to eat our little feast with Josh and his class.

We had lots of different ideas of what we wanted to do for Thanksgiving, but ended up finding ourselves on our own for the holiday. Adam and I enjoy cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner, but we didn't want to do it just for ourselves (because let's face it, the kids weren't going to eat much), so we decided to just make a few pies and go out for dinner. We went to Rudy's and it was EXCELLENT! Their smoked turkey was amazing, and they have the BEST creamed corn I have ever tasted. It was even nice enough that we could eat outside.

It was great to have yummy food that we didn't have to cook or clean up after. After dinner, we went home and had mini pumpkin pies and lime meringue pie that Adam made. So yummy!! Later, we were able to Skype with our families and share a bit of the holiday with them. All in all, it was a very nice, relaxing day and I'm so glad we were able to spend it together. I am so grateful for my little family and all the blessings we enjoy!

Bowling!

2011-11-29T13:51:00.009-06:00

We took the kids bowling the day before Thanksgiving. I think it was the first time we've gone as a family, and the kids were really excited when we got there. Lucy lasted for about 4 or 5 frames before losing interest, but Josh had a blast the whole time. I'm glad we were able to go and have fun. It is definitely something we should do more of in the future.

Grandma's Visit

2011-11-16T13:21:00.017-06:00

My mom came to visit us last week and she brought along my nephew, Ryan. Josh and Ryan are very close in age, and I'm so glad they were able to spend some time together and have a fun week of playing. That's one thing I miss most about being away from our family. I wish my kids were able to play with their cousins more. And now for the pictures!

We had a great week. Grandma had so much fun playing with the grandkids, and they loved all the attention. I'm so glad they were able to come and visit us!

Sometimes...

2011-11-16T13:18:00.002-06:00

...it's so hard to wait to get in the tub.

Halloween

2011-11-15T10:58:00.005-06:00

Halloween is always a struggle because Josh never likes to wear costumes. He even picked out his Thomas costume this year, and when we got home and went to try it on, he didn't want anything to do with it. We wrestled it on him, and it took a little while for him to get used to it before he would stop messing with it. Even after he was used to it, he didn't want to put it back on for Trunk or Treat or to go to school on Halloween day. The boy was just not made for Halloween, I guess. We did have fun at the ward Trunk or Treat. Adam had to work, so I left our candy bowl in the back of our Jeep and took the kids around the parking lot.

Josh actually had a lot of fun. In years past he hasn't really gotten the whole concept of trick or treating, but this year, everything clicked and he loved going from car to car, holding out his pumpkin and saying "Trick or treat!" Lucy had fun walking around, too. I don't think she knew what was going on, but she got to wear a pretty dress that she loved and everyone we passed kept commenting on what a cute little witch she was.

Josh had school on Halloween day. Lucy and I stayed for the Halloween parade the school did. It was cute to see all the kids in their costumes. Unfortunately, the video I took was lost when I was having issues updating my phone later. Boo. But I did get some pictures of his class and teacher.

We didn't go trick or treating that night because Adam had to work and I didn't want to take the kids out by myself. I wish I had, though. I think Josh would have really enjoyed it (finally). Definitely next year!

Pumpkin Patch

2011-11-15T10:38:00.007-06:00

In October we went to the pumpkin patch a couple times. There is a pumpkin patch down the road from Josh's preschool, and one day after school we went there to eat our lunch and look at the pumpkins.

Later that week, Josh and I went back to the pumpkin patch for his school field trip.

There were lots of fun things they had organized for the kids and we rotated between stations. One of the stations included riding the train around the pumpkin patch. That was Josh's favorite thing!

Hats!

2011-11-05T20:42:00.004-05:00

My parents took a month-long road trip in September to practice being retired, which was a lot of fun for them and they had a great vacation. When they got home, we got a care package in the mail of things they got for us from their trip. These hats for the kids were included. They have been lots of fun to play with! Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa Pratt!

First Day of Preschool!

2011-11-05T20:31:00.002-05:00

Josh started preschool in September, and he LOVES it. He goes to Triumphant Lutheran Preschool, which is at the church where we took our Financial Peace University (Dave Ramsey) classes last year. Some friends of ours have sent there kids to this preschool, and they loved it, so we decided to have Josh go there, too. It's a little bit of a drive, about 20 minutes away, but it is awesome. His teacher is Ms. Jalene, and there are 5 kids in his class. They have lots of fun together. It has been fun to hang up his art projects on the fridge! It's great having a preschooler!

Reading Stories

2011-11-05T20:16:00.003-05:00

Sometimes on Sunday mornings after the kids have had their bath and they are waiting for Mama and Daddy to finish getting ready, they grab some books and sit on the bean bag chair and read to each other. It's very cute. I love that my kids are interested in books!

First Day of Nursery

2011-11-03T13:43:00.004-05:00

Lucy turned 18 months old in July, which means she started going to nursery! YAY! The first day was rough for her with lots of crying. She has an awesome nursery leader, though, and after a couple weeks, Lucy was having a blast in her class. I'm so glad she loves her class now and enjoys going every Sunday.

Chillin' out on the way to church.

Ready to go to class!

Swimming Lessons

2011-11-03T13:11:00.009-05:00

Josh took swimming lessons for the very first time this summer. I heard from some friends about a lady who teaches in her backyard pool, and I signed up Josh to be in the same class as his little friend Annabelle. Josh LOVES the water, and he did OK with the lessons. He would either get his legs kicking, or his arms moving, but never both at the same time. Maybe next year :)

I LOVE her pool. It is both a fun play pool and a lap pool all in one. I want one just like it when I grow up.

Arizona Trip

2011-11-01T21:22:00.005-05:00

OK, it's time to try and update the blog. Again. These catch-up posts probably won't be as detailed as I would like, but at least there will be pictures of what we've been up to this past summer and fall.The last week of June and into the Fourth of July weekend, we took at trip to Arizona for a family reunion for my mom's side of the family. We left after Adam got home from work and drove through the night, hoping the kids would sleep most of the way there. Remind me to never to that again. The kids did OK, but it's hard on the parents, too. The reunion was at a small horse ranch just outside of Flagstaff. It was great to see my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other extended family.

Adam and I left the kids with grandma and grandpa one afternoon and headed up to the Grand Canyon. It was pretty amazing!

After the reunion, we drove down to Chandler to visit my dad's brother and family. I love visiting with family! Josh and Lucy had fun playing with cousins and electronics.

We stayed the night there, then headed home the next day, which happened to be the Fourth of July. We stopped in El Paso for the night, then drove the rest of the way home the next day. That stretch of I-10 between El Paso and San Antonio is a long, lonely stretch of road. Sometimes you just really have to go to the bathroom.

I'm so glad we were able to go on vacation and spend time with family!

4 Years Old!

2011-06-21T14:48:00.023-05:00

Josh turned 4 years old in May. It's crazy to think he's already 4. My little boy is growing up.

That afternoon we went to Pump It Up with some friends to play.

The next night, Adam didn't have to work, so we had our little family celebration after dinner. I made Josh a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake, which he loved.

Josh got a new bike for his birthday. He's not so sure about it yet. He still prefers to ride his tricycle, but hopefully by the time the weather cools down in a couple months, he'll be ready to try out his new bike again.

Josh has been in speech therapy for a year now, and Adam and I can see lots of improvement. He still has issues with beginning and ending consonant sounds, but he'll continue working on it as he does speech therapy again for another year. We're also excited for him to start preschool in the fall. Josh loves to play with his trains and his cars. He can play for hours running his trains and cars back and forth along his tracks, reciting the stories and phrases from the various Thomas the Tank Engine episodes he likes to watch. He likes to wrestle with Lucy, which sometimes she enjoys and sometimes she doesn't. He is very concerned when she cries and tries his best to take care of her and get her bottle for her when she is upset. He likes to build block towers and do puzzles and he loves playing with Mama and Daddy.

Here are some of his 4-year-old pictures.

We love Josh and are so glad we have him in our family!

Catching Up

2011-06-21T13:53:00.031-05:00

I had wanted to do individual posts for each of the things I will mention in this post, but that's just not going to happen right now. We did lots of fun things in April and May. My mom cam to visit for a week during the first part of April. While she was here, we went to Pump It Up, a place where kids can bounce and climb around on huge inflatables.

Josh just LOVES climbing all over everything and going down the slide. It's a great way for him to use all of his abundant energy.

While my mom was here, we also went to Corpus Christi and spent some time at the beach.

Lucy didn't like the water very much.

Josh LOVED everything about being at the beach. He had a blast playing in the waves and digging in the sand.

Up next is Easter. We had an Easter Egg Hunt with our playgroup friends. Josh and Lucy really liked looking for eggs.

Oooo, there's candy in here! Bonus!

The day before Easter, Adam and Josh colored some eggs.

That week we also got to play with a present from Grandma Pratt.

Josh doesn't quite have the whole "sliding" part down yet, but he still has lots of fun playing in the water.

Fun Stuff

2011-05-05T15:02:00.006-05:00

These are some pictures from a couple months ago.

Lucy has discovered that the best toys are not in the toy box, but in the cupboards. She LOVES to take out the plastic containers and spread them throughout the house.

And Josh still LOVES to blow bubbles. In fact, he's watching me do this blog post right now, and saw these pictures of himself blowing bubbles. Now his shoes are on and he's pulling on my arm to go outside with him and blow bubbles. He got a Thomas the Tank Engine bubble blower in his Easter Basket, so which he loves. So, I guess I need to wrap this up and head outside to blow some bubbles!

Potty Training

2011-05-05T11:32:00.005-05:00

In my continued efforts to update our blog, I'm hoping to get a few posts done today. First up is Josh's potty training. We started at the end of January, and to be honest, it has been MUCH easier than I was expecting. We came home from church one Sunday and got out Josh's Thomas the Tank Engine underwear that he got for Christmas and got out the little potty seat and sat it in front of the TV. Josh LOVED to look at his new underwear in the package, but he didn't want to actually WEAR it. We set the timer and had him sit on his potty every so often. There were a couple frustrating times that afternoon when the timer would go off and we would discover he has just wet himself. But eventually he did go on the potty and we celebrated and gave him mini M&Ms for rewards. After a day or so he recognized when he needed to go and would run to his potty. After a few days we moved the potty into the bathroom so he would learn to run to the bathroom when he needed to go. After a few more days, we put the little potty away and he started using the regular toilet. He was so proud of himself, and I think it has given him confidence to try new things. I was so glad it was finally working. This was our third attempt at potty training, and I'm just happy he was finally ready. Over the next few weeks, he knew when he had to go and he would just go to the bathroom and do his business. Sometimes he would tell me he had to go, but mostly he would just go on his own. He's had a couple accidents here and there these past few months, but thankfully it hasn't been the constant mess of accidents that I was so afraid of when we started.

Of course we have to include some embarrassing
pictures :)

The past few weeks have been a little difficult for some reason. Usually, he would just go when he needed to go, or if we noticed he had to go we would encourage him to go potty and he would happily go to the bathroom. But these past few weeks have been different. We would notice that he had to go, he would be holding himself and dancing around, and when we tell him to go potty, he breaks down into a screaming and crying fit and almost has to be dragged to the bathroom. I don't know if he's trying to hold it as long as he can, or if he wants complete control over this area of his life and doesn't like us telling him to go potty anymore, or what is going on, but it's been frustrating. I'm open to any advice or suggestions. I'm sure we'll get through it, eventually. I am so proud of Josh for accomplishing this major milestone in his life! My little boy is growing up.

1-Year Pictures

2011-04-13T13:51:00.016-05:00

Well, it's been a while since I've done some blogging. I have a lot I want to post, I just need to make some time to do it.

First up is Lucy's 1-Year pictures. She wasn't very happy to be having her picture taken, so she didn't last very long at the shoot before she completely broke down crying. I think we got a few good pics before that, though.

Aw, she's such a cutie! We love watching her learn and grow everyday.

Let's Go Spurs!

2011-02-25T20:27:00.009-06:00

Adam's company has box-seat tickets to the San Antonio Spurs games. Each department rotates when they get to use them. This past Wednesday was Adam's department's turn. Usually the higher-ups in the department get dibs on the tickets before Adam gets a chance at them, but due to a bunch of the higher-ups being out of town, Adam and some of the other peons got a chance to go to the game. It was so much fun!

Our seats were AMAZING! They played the Oklahoma City Thunder, and it was a pretty close game the whole time. The last five minutes were especially exciting, seeing if the Spurs could pull out the win, and the did! I love the energy at live sporting events.

We had a great night. It was fun to hang out with Adam's co-workers and be part of the crowd at a winning game. We might have to become Spurs fans now :)

Seven Years!

2011-02-21T15:27:00.006-06:00

Happy Anniversary to us! I can't believe it has already been 7 years. It has been a great adventure so far, and I can't wait to see what the next 7 years will bring. I love you!

So hard to be patient...

2011-02-12T20:20:00.003-06:00

...when you're waiting for cookies to bake.

1 year old!

2011-02-08T13:00:00.009-06:00

I know it was almost 4 weeks ago, but I'm happy to finally be posting about Lucy's First Birthday! (I've been waiting until I could get the video uploaded, and I finally got around to it today. Yay!) I wanted to make a cake, but we didn't need to eat a whole cake ourselves, so we invited some friends to come over and have cake and ice cream with us while we sang Happy Birthday to the birthday girl.

Lucy picked at the frosting and cake a little bit, but she didn't really eat any of it. I can't believe she's already a year old! Crazy! She was taking a few steps while we were in Washington for Christmas, and when we came home, she continued to take more and more steps, until a few days before her birthday when she was toddling about like a pro. At her 12-month check-up, the doctor found some more teeth that were coming in. She loves to play with her toys, putting them in buckets and dumping them out again. She especially loves to play with whatever Josh is playing with, much to his great dismay. Heaven forbid she touch any of his trains! We switched her to whole milk, and she LOVES it! So do we. NO MORE BUYING FORMULA!! She also loves to eat (when she's not sick like she has been the past few weeks) and will usually eat anything that we are eating.

Here's a video of our Baby Girl on her birthday for the grandparents, and anyone else who wants to sit through it.

We love her so much and are so glad that she is a part of our family! Happy Birthday to our little Lucy!

Sunbeams

2011-01-12T16:20:00.005-06:00

We were still on vacation on the first Sunday of the year, so Josh missed the first day of being a Sunbeam in our ward. But this past Sunday, we were home and I got a couple pictures of our little guy looking so grown up.

He didn't have any freak-outs going to a new class or anything. There are about 9 or 10 new Sunbeams in his class, so Josh has lots of friends from Nursery in class with him. We just have to work on sitting in his chair for more than 5 minutes at at time... I can't believe how big he's getting, and we are so proud of him!

Sledding!

2011-01-12T15:01:00.025-06:00

We went sledding with my family the Monday after Christmas. We went to a place called Happy Trails in Easton, a little ways past Snoqualmie Pass. They have warming tents at the top of the hill where you can go to get warm (duh) and they have a stove in the tent where you can keep a pot of chili warm for lunch and a fire pit outside the tent for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. We had tons of fun. I wasn't sure how Josh was going to like it, but he LOVED it. At first he would wait at the top of the hill for someone he knew to be ready to go down and hop on with them. Eventually he was brave enough to go down by himself. He didn't even complain about having to climb back up the hill. I took Lucy down a few times. She didn't cry, but I don't know if she really liked it, either. I think she just didn't like being cold. (Warning: lots of pictures below.)

It was a fun day, and I'm glad we were able to go and spend time with my family.

Visiting

2011-01-12T13:54:00.011-06:00

While we were home for Christmas vacation we were able to see some old friends and visit with extended family. One night we went to Dean and Michelle's house. Sean and Anika came, too. We met little Leah for the first time, and found out that Anika is pregnant again. Soon we will all have two kids. It has been fun to watch each of our little families grow. I forgot to bring my camera that night, so I copied these pictures from Anika's blog. (I hope you don't mind, Anika!)

Terryn giving Lucy loves.

Terryn and Kara had fun playing together. As you can see in the background, Josh only had eyes for the train set. I believe I have already mentioned that he is a little obsessed...

The whole gang together. We all knew each other in the Singles Branch, but since we've all been married, I don't think we've lived near each other for more than 6 months at a time. Dean and Michelle were off at school in Iowa for a few years, and now that they are back in Washington, we are in Texas, and Sean and Anika are in Vietnam. I'm so glad we are still able to get together when we're all home for holidays and things like that.

I was also able to spend an afternoon with my mom's sisters and my girl cousins on my mom's side. They always crack my up when we hang out. I love being able to spend time with them playing games, eating good food and talking and laughing. Alas, no pictures :(

I got to go do a puzzle with my good friend Megan from our old ward in Spanaway. I was great to just sit and talk while we did the puzzle and catch up on each other's lives. I miss being able to talk to her all the time.

I also go to spend an afternoon with some old friends that I grew up with. Alycia, Katherine, Beverli and I were in the same ward growing up, and I was roommates with Alicia and Katherine for a few years at college. When I got back from college, I taught seminary with Bev for the last few months of the school year. Alycia and Bev were bridesmaids at my wedding. We haven't all been in the same room together for many years now, and since Bev and I were in town for Christmas, we decided to have a little get together. It was so much fun!! We made pizzas for lunch, and just talked and talked and talked. And played a little Nertz, too.

I love catching up with old friends!

Christmas Day

2011-01-10T21:47:00.008-06:00

We spent Christmas Day at my parents' house. My brother and his family came over in the morning to open presents and have breakfast. Christmas breakfast has become one of my favorite traditions over the years. When we were kids, we rarely had sugar cereal, so for Christmas morning, we could have whatever cereal we wanted. (My favorite has long been Lucky Charms.) My mom would also make cinnamon rolls and we would have hot chocolate and sometimes warm Christmas punch. Mmmmm...I love Christmas breakfast!

In the early afternoon, my Aunt Catherine came over, and Adam's parents also came over. We had a late afternoon Christmas dinner, followed by games and chatting. It was a fun, relaxing day. We got Josh a Thomas the Tank Engine track set. He LOVES it and played with it the rest of our vacation. He is pretty much obsessed with trains.

Christmas Eve

2011-01-10T21:01:00.008-06:00

We were able to go home to Washington for two weeks for Christmas vacation. We stayed with my parents and had so much fun visiting with family and friends. We spent Christmas Eve with Adam's family at his brother and sister-in-law's house in Edgewood. They have a dog and three cats that Josh just went NUTS over. He LOVED to chase them around the house and love on them. Lucy also liked to watch them and laugh at them. We had brunch, opened presents, and had a yummy Christmas dinner. After dinner we played games and chatted. It was great to see Adam's parents and brothers and sis-in-laws and their families. The hardest thing about being in Texas is being so far from our families.

11 Months Old!

2011-01-07T14:14:00.004-06:00

I realize I'm very late with this post (her birthday is next week!) but I wanted to get a couple pictures up and do a small update on our Baby Girl before I do all the Christmas vacation blog posts.

That month between 10 and 11 months old, Lucy seemed to grow up so much. She became more interested in lots of different kinds of foods and really started to enjoy feeding herself. She became very disinterested in anything we tried to give her with a spoon. It was finger foods all the way! She continued to become stronger and more confident in her moving around, creeping along the furniture. Occasionally, she would also stand all by herself for a few seconds. She had a couple more teeth come in, and is now flashing toothy grins with 8 whole teeth.

She continues to be the happiest baby ever and we just love her!

Riding Bikes

2010-12-05T11:13:00.010-06:00

Last weekend, Adam had Friday off of work for the Thanksgiving holiday, so we did all our usual Saturday grocery shopping and errands on Friday, and had the whole day on Saturday to play. We went to a park that had some space for Josh to practice riding his tricycle. He likes to ride on the sidewalk in front of our house, but he doesn't really have much room on the sidewalk to figure out how to steer and other things like that. He really enjoyed riding around, although he still doesn't quite understand the concept of turning yet.

When Josh got tired of riding his bike, we played at the park for awhile. It was a fun family day.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T11:15:00.016-06:00

On Wednesday, Adam got off of work early and we spent the rest of the day making pies. We made an apple pie, a lemon meringue pie, and a chocolate pie. Josh had fun helping me peel and cut the apples for the apple pie.

He also had fun eating the strings of apple peels.

Here are our beautiful pies.
This year we spent Thanksgiving Day with our friends Leslie and Dave and their family and extended family. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them and eating yummy food. It was about 80 degrees outside and Josh had fun playing out in the dirt in their back yard. After stuffing ourselves with pie and cheesecake, some of us watched football with others planned their attack for Black Friday shopping. A cold front blew in that afternoon/evening, and by the time we left, it was a chilling 48 degrees. When we got home, we were able to chat on Skype with Adam's family who were all at his Aunt Adria's house, and later we called my parents and were able to talk to them and my aunt and my brother and his family.

This morning we passed along to the next generation the great tradition of eating pie for breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving.

They thought it was great!

We have so many blessing that we are thankful for. Mostly, I am grateful for my Savior and His gospel, for my wonderful family, and for our great friends. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Family Pictures

2010-11-18T15:35:00.014-06:00

We had some family pictures taken last week. It turned out to be more stressful than it should have been, but it all worked out in the end. The first place we went to turned out to not be a good fit for our family. Josh doesn't like to sit still for pictures, and we need some flexibility and creativity from the photographer, which wasn't happening at the first place. So we went somewhere else a few days later and had a much better experience. I think we got some good pictures. The lady had fun putting some effects on some of the poses. We ended up getting a small package with the first pose below.

10 months old!

2010-11-18T14:42:00.023-06:00

Lucy turned 10 months old last week. She continues to be the best Baby Girl ever. She is always quick to laugh and smile. She is getting quicker at walking herself around the coffee table and along the couch. Sometimes I'll take her hands and try to have her take a few steps, but she's still much more interested in crawling than trying to walk. She loves to explore any space she can get herself to and chew on anything and everything that she finds in her explorations. There is one thing that she has discovered that is not so fun or cute. She LOVES to screech as loud as she can. Just for fun. Oh joy.

I love me a baby in overalls.

Lucy loved sharing Daddy's ice cream cone.

Yup, I think she thoroughly enjoyed that.

Look at all these fun toys. I could chew on these all day long!

So cute! We love her.

Trunk or Treat

2010-10-31T18:35:00.018-05:00

We had Stake Conference this weekend, so our ward had Trunk or Treat on Friday instead of Saturday. The three wards in our building all participated, and there was a chili and cornbread cook-off, as well. They also had a popcorn machine and a small bouncy house for the little kids to jump in. Everything was outside in the parking lot. Adam took the kids around and I stayed at the car to pass out candy.

Lucy was a ladybug, and she was just the cutest little ladybug you ever did see.

Josh was a baseball player. Last year, he didn't like wearing his costume, so this year I tried to think of something he wouldn't mind wearing. I knew he liked to wear his baseball hat, so I thought he would be fine with a baseball uniform. He was lukewarm about the whole outfit at best. And he didn't want to wear the hat, which is why I picked the costume in the first place! Oh well. I think he still had fun.

And here is Josh in the bouncy house:

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-26T11:09:00.016-05:00

We went to a pumpkin patch yesterday for our playgroup activity. When we first got there , we were able to take a short hay ride, and then the rest of the time was spent eating lunch and wandering around the pumpkin patch. Josh had fun dragging the little wagon around and running around with his little friends. (When we got there I realized my camera was dead, so a big thank you to my friend Melanie for letting me borrow her camera!)

Josh liked playing with the hay.

This is some pretty fun stuff!

Here, Baby Sister, have some hay.

Lucy decides hay is pretty tasty.

How about a flower in your face?

Alright, time to go find a pumpkin.

Oh, here's a good one!

OK, off to find more.

Hmmmm, which one should I get next?

Ooooo, here's one for Baby Lucy.

OK, these look good.

Baby Girl thinks the pumpkins are pretty cool, too.

It turned out to be a beautiful day to run around the pumpkin patch. I'm so glad we got to go!

I think...

2010-10-22T16:01:00.004-05:00

...they might be related.

Josh and Lucy, both at 9 months old.

Yep, definitely related :)

9 months old!

2010-10-22T14:12:00.016-05:00

Lucy Mae turned 9 months old last week. At her 9-month check-up she weighed 19 lbs 7 oz, and was 26.75 inches tall. This past month's progress has included lots of crawling, shortly followed by pulling up on things and even some cruising. WHAT?! My baby girl is much too little to be pulling up and cruising! You know what comes after that? WALKING! Nooooooo! I'm not ready, I'm not ready!!

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah, crawling and cruising. Lucy has become a pretty speedy crawler, and she LOVES to pull up on things and walk along a couple steps. She is so proud of herself and gets the biggest smile on her face when she pulls up on the table or the couch.

She loves to help me load the dish washer...

...and play on the stairs. She has managed to climb up a couple of stairs now, so the baby gate is usually up when I'm not around to watch her.

She loves to play with this interactive table top, and we've since put the legs back on it so she can stand up and play with it.

Baby Girl also has a couple more teeth. Along with the ones pictured so nicely here, the fourth top tooth is also coming in. Lucy loves to use her teeth to chew on EVERYTHING, including her brother.

She is just so cute, though, it's hard to get mad at her. She is always quick to smile and she loves to laugh.

She always brightens my day, and we love having her in our family!

Playgroup Petting Zoo

2010-10-07T13:50:00.023-05:00

Our ward has a playgroup that we have attended since we moved here over a year ago. Josh has lots of fun playing with the kids, and I have really enjoyed being able to get to know the other moms. One of the ladies that comes to playgroup with her granddaughter lives out in the country. Years ago, she started a pony ride and petting zoo business to pay for her sons' missions. She has since stopped the business, but still has some animals on their property. So for playgroup this past Monday, we all went out to her house to ride the pony and feed and pet the animals.

Waiting for their turn to ride the pony.

One of Josh's favorite things to do is dig in the dirt, and there was plenty of dirt around for him to dig in.
Josh liked watching the other kids ride around on the pony, but when it came time for his turn to get on, he decided he didn't like ponies after all. Instead, we took the lead rope and Josh lead the pony around the ring for about half a loop, then we tried to put him in the saddle again, but Josh was having none of that. He did reach out and pet the pony, though.

Even Lucy got to ride the pony. She was fine when it was moving, but as soon as the pony would stop, she started to cry.

Next was petting the bunny. This was probably Josh's favorite. He was sad when it was time to put the bunny back in the hutch.

Then we fed the goats and sheep.

And finally, we fed the chickens and ducks.

Josh really liked the duck, too.

It was a beautiful day to be out in the country, and Josh had a great time with all the animals. I'm so glad we were able to go!

Fun with Grandma Pratt

2010-10-05T14:51:00.009-05:00

My mom was able to come for a visit, and we had so much fun while she was here. The weather was just perfect, with lots of sunshine, hardly any humidity, highs in the 80's and lows in the 60's.

Her plane arrived in Austin Wednesday evening, and on the way home from the airport, we drove through the little town of Lockhart for some yummy BBQ dinner. This little town is able to support 4 very popular BBQ restaurants. Dinner was so good, and for dessert we had warm peach cobbler with ice cream. Yummmm!

Here are some of the other things we did with Grandma:

Ride tricycles

Read books

Build block towers and knock them down.

We also went to the park, went to book club, went shopping, played together lots and lots, watched General Conference, and went to play group. My mom also watched the kids on Saturday morning while Adam and I had a date going out to breakfast.

We took my mom back to the airport yesterday afternoon. We already miss her. Josh woke up this morning and asked, "Where's Gwamma?" I told him Grandma had to go home. Then he wandered around the house for awhile asking, "Gwamma, where are you?" We are so grateful for our families and all they do to help us and support us. Being in Texas, we miss seeing our families as much as we used to, and it's so nice when they are able to come out and visit. We can't wait until Christmas when we get to go home and see everyone again!

8 months old!

2010-09-18T11:11:00.021-05:00

Well, it's happened again. Another month has gone by, and Baby Girl continues to grow and get cuter and cuter. She seems to have grown up a lot this past month, and she is at such a fun age.

Lucy started clapping on her own this month. I remember trying to teach Josh how to clap when he was a baby. For some reason, I thought he should be clapping (I probably read it in a book somewhere) and for a month, I would clap his hands together before he would do it himself. So I was a bit surprised when Lucy started clapping all by herself. She loves clapping. She'll be sitting in her high chair while I get her food ready and start clapping, and we all cheer along with her. She thinks she's pretty hot stuff.

The army crawl is now her preferred method of travel. She's getting pretty quick, too. Sometimes she'll get up on her hands and knees and move her hands and knees forward a couple times, but then she falls back down to her stomach and goes back to the army crawl. She'll be crawling up on her hands and knees soon enough, I think.

Lucy is perfectly content to crawl and roll around the house, playing with whatever she happens to come across in her travels. Sometimes while she's crawling about, she'll roll over onto her side and slap her leg like she just heard a funny joke. It's very cute.

She also like to follow Josh around and try to play with him and his toys.

And sometimes she plays so hard she tuckers herself right out.

Lucy loves her Daddy. She gets so excited when he gets home from work, and if it's a night he has to go to his second job delivery pizzas, she cries when he has to leave again. She's getting to the age where she understands when Mommy and Daddy aren't around, and that is not OK with her. I left Josh and Lucy with a friend the other night so I could go to a church meeting, and Lucy was not happy that I was leaving. She did not approve of that course of action. It's nice to be missed, but it's not fun leaving behind a crying baby.

Baby Girl is getting her two front top teeth in. I think Josh had twice as many teeth at this age, so it's been different having to wait for Lucy's teeth to come in.

We are very blessed to have such a good Baby Girl. She eats well, entertains herself well, likes to play with her brother, sleeps well, hardly ever cries, laughs and smiles often, and is just so much fun to have in our family! How did we get so lucky?

I Have No Idea What Happened

2010-09-07T23:11:00.009-05:00

Really.

I was blending up some baby food, everything was blended up nicely, I was moving to put the spatula down and get some containers, and out of the blue, food was being thrown everywhere.

I just stood there for a full minute, staring, dumbfounded, at the scene now before me. My thoughts started racing, including but not limited to: are you serious?...all that food wasted...what the aitch just happened?...are you kidding me??...how am I going to clean all this up?...argh...blergh...but...but...WHAT???

It was on the ceiling.

It was on the floor. Note the spatula that flew across the room and landed on the floor.

It was on the counters and cupboards.

It was on me.

I managed to pull myself out of my disbelief and get to work cleaning it up. Well, most of it. There's still some food stuck on the ceiling. I'll tackle that tomorrow. There was also some food left in the blender, so I was able to salvage a little bit of the baby food. Peas, carrots and spinach. Mmmmm. Lucy had it tonight for dinner and she loved it. So all in all, a successful afternoon :)

At least that's what I keep telling myself. Maybe I'll believe it tomorrow.

Baby Girl on the Move

2010-08-31T10:27:00.004-05:00

Here is a video I took yesterday of Lucy using her new army crawl talents. I am just starting to fully understand just how much havoc is about to be wreaked. She loves to crawl over to where ever Josh is and try to play with whatever he is playing with, which is annoying to Josh sometimes. Such a good little sister :) I see lessons about sharing in our near future...

Bother!

2010-08-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

Adam here. For quite a while now, Josh has been completely enamored with Thomas the Tank Engine. Thanks to Netflix Watch Instantly, he can see dozens of different Thomas and Friends DVDs whenever he wants. Which is pretty much all the time. Often, he will grab the remote, place it in Lisa's or my hand, and whisper "choo, choo."

For anyone who has not watched an unhealthy amount of Thomas, the show itself is pretty boring. I can't really figure out why little kids love it so much. Maybe it is just the fact that they are all model trains and just about every little boy in the world loves model trains and cars and such.

Anyway, Thomas gets annoyed and frustrated very easily on the show, at which point he makes a face and then says, "Bother!"

Josh recently started repeating the "Bother!" whenever it happens on screen, so I hit upon an idea. Whenever Josh starts to get mad about something or if he bonks his head on the table or whatever, I just say to him, "Bother!" and he repeats it. This often heads off his complaints or crying at the pass, and then he goes on with whatever he was doing.

I think it is cute and useful, but I wonder just how long it will work. Hopefully until he is 13 or 14.

7 months old!

2010-08-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

I'm a little late in getting this post out, but Lucy turned 7 months old about a week and a half ago. Her little personality continues to grow and develop and she is so much fun to have in our family. She is pretty adept at getting anywhere she wants to go. Her new trick now is to push herself onto her hands and knees and rock back and forth. If she tries to move one of her legs forward, she throws herself off balance and collapses to the ground, and then she goes for the army crawl, pushing with her feet and dragging herself forward a little bit. She doesn't army crawl very far, though. If she really wants to travel some distance, she resorts to the tried and true method of rolling there.

Another one of her new favorite things is shaking her head. I don't know where she picked that up from, but she decided it's a pretty fun thing to do. Sometimes I'll nod my head at her, and she'll stare and me for a second and then shake her head back at me. This could go on for minutes at a time, and it's hilarious to Adam and myself. She is just so darn cute when she's being contrary.

This past month we've started her on some fruits and veggies. This time around I'm making the baby food by steaming and pureeing the veggies in the food processor and pureeing canned fruits in the blender. So far we've tried green beans, pears, carrots, applesauce, peas and peaches. And we've ventured into oatmeal, too, to complement the rice cereal she's been eating for a few months now. She seems to like everything she's tried so far, so that's a plus. She can also hold her bottle all by herself, which is really cool.

Little Lucy still babbles up a storm and loves to say, "dadadadadadadada." She also must have aspirations to be the Olympic champion of chewing on things because she practices ALL THE TIME. She LOVES to use her two little chompers. We keep waiting for more to show up, but nothing yet. She is the master of finding shoes to chew on.

We love her!

Big Shoes to Fill

2010-08-05T16:01:00.009-05:00

Josh was playing around with Adam's shoes the other day. He likes to put them on his feet and try to walk around in them. Well, it's more like clunking around in them, but Josh thinks it's highly entertaining. Josh is physically more like his dad than he is like me, and I know one day (sooner than I will be ready for, I'm sure) he will grow up and his feet will actually be able to fit into those shoes.

But more than just filling out his daddy's shoes, I hope Josh grows up to be like his dad in other ways, too. To really walk in his daddy's shoes, Josh will need to love his family and be willing to work hard to support them. He will need to have a hunger for knowledge and be willing to study things out that he wants to learn about. He will need to have a testimony of Jesus Christ and His gospel. He will need to have a great sense of humor and a sense of adventure to try new things. It's seems like a lot that Josh needs to learn if he want to fill his daddy's shoes, but he also has a great example to follow. I love Josh, and I hope he grows up to be just like his daddy.

Swimming!

2010-07-21T11:26:00.013-05:00

We went swimming with some friends yesterday and had a great time. There's nothing quite like swimming to beat the heat. Josh just LOVES being in the water, and we recently got him some floaties to help him be more independent in the pool.

His favorite thing to do at the pool is to jump in!

Jump. Swim. Climb out. Repeat.

Our friend Melanie with Bryson, Annabelle, and Josh. Thanks for a fun afternoon!

6 months old!

2010-07-20T22:04:00.001-05:00

Our Baby Girl turned 6 months old last week. That is crazy talk! I can't believe how quickly this past 6 months have flown by. This past month Lucy's bottom front teeth came in, and she just loves to use them as she pursues her new favorite hobby: chewing on anything she can get her little hands on. Her other big accomplishment of the month is sitting up on her own. When we were in Utah, she would sit up for a couple seconds and she got stronger and stronger until she can now sit up on her own for quite a while. She has such a cute, easy-going personality. When she's not eating or sleeping, she loves to sit on the floor and play with her toys, or watch Josh play around her. She is getting better at rolling, too, and has her own way of getting across a room to reach what ever catches her attention.

It's official, she's the cutest Baby Girl in the world!

I think Josh is her favorite person right now. She loves to watch him, and he can still make her laugh harder than anyone else can. He loves her, too, and is very concerned whenever she cries. I'm excited to see how they play together when she gets a little older.

We love having her in our family!

The Great Road Trip of '10

2010-07-15T14:37:00.036-05:00

We took a family vacation to attend a family reunion in Utah for my dad's side of the family. We looked at many different options of how to get there and back, and with the generous help of my parents, decided to rent a car and drive. (Our car needs new brakes and tires before embarking on a trip like this. Thus, the rental car.) Our adventures started before the trip even began. We had made reservations at National for a rental car because my dad could get a discount through his work. Their website also said we would be able to use a debit card instead of the usual credit card for the whole transaction. When we got there Friday afternoon to pick up the car, we found out that, no, in fact they don't accept debit cards after all. We panicked for a second, wondering what to do. We did the only thing we could do and went to a different car rental place that DID accept debit cards. We ended up at Hertz (luckily we were near the airport and all the car rental places were within a couple blocks of each other) which turned out to be cheaper than we thought, and also we were able to get the car we wanted, a Mazda 5.

I don't think we would have been able to get a car we liked as much as the Mazda 5 back at National, so in the end, everything worked out perfectly! Yay!

We packed up the car Friday night and left early, early Saturday morning. Most of that day consisted of driving through the flat, flat expanses of Texas, on our way to Denver, CO.

There were also lots of wind farms.

Josh and Lucy did remarkably well in the car. I was anticipating Lucy getting very tired of being in her car seat, but she only cried when she was hungry and had to wait for me to climb in the back seat. Josh was good about getting toys out of his backpack to entertain himself with. We also had a laptop with Curious George and Blues Clues on it for Josh when he got particularly restless. After 15.5 hours of driving, we made it to Highlands Ranch, CO, just outside of Denver.

This was taken about 10 minutes before we got to our friends' house. We stayed with our friends, Christina and Ben, both Saturday and Sunday nights. They have two girls, Audra and Claire. Audra is a week younger than Josh, and Claire just turned 1 years old. Josh and Audra were a bit shy at first, but they soon warmed up to each other and were chasing each other around the house before we knew it. It was great to visit with them and catch up on life and old friends. Christina grew up in the same stake Adam and I grew up in, and Adam and she were good friends in high school. The weather on Sunday was a bit stormy (it hailed three different times!), so our Fourth of July picnic plans were nixed, but we still had a great time. Josh and Audra probably don't remember the first time they met, two years ago, when Christina was in Washington visiting family and trekked down to Spanaway for a visit.
Josh was barely able to work up the courage to hold Audra's hand. Us parents knew long distance relationships rarely last, but I guess we forgot to tell Josh.

Just call him Rico Suave.

Monday morning we headed out for the 8+ hour drive to Park City, UT. The drive across Wyoming was very windy and very boring. At least the kids were having fun.

We got to Park City around 6:30pm or so, and thus started a fun week of hanging out with family. My dad is the oldest of 7 kids, and we all stayed in 3 condos that we rented. On Tuesday, Adam and I and the kids went down to Orem by way of Heber and through Provo Canyon (such a pretty drive!) to see one of our Imaginary Internet Friends, Susannah, and get my hair cut. When we got there, Susannah was just finishing up with another one of our Imaginary Internet Friends, Momma Snider. It was great to meet both of them, and after my hair cut, Adam and I played pool while Susannah played with Lucy. Josh helped us play pool by randomly rolling balls into pockets. On our way back to Park City, we stopped at 7-11 in Heber for Slurpees.

This was the first time Josh got his very own Slurpee. He did all right with it until we were almost home and dumped half of it on his lap. **face palm**

Most of the aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived Tuesday afternoon. We had a fun week of visiting with family, riding the Alpine Slide, going to the park with Grandma and Grandpa, walking down Main Street, and playing games. Of course, everyone loved meeting Lucy and she just ate up all the attention.

On Friday we all headed down to the big Pratt Family Reunion, which started at a church in Highland, and then continued at Heber Vally Camp, a Girls Camp up in the hills of Heber Valley. This reunion was for my Grandpa Pratt and his nine sisters and all their kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc.

Waiting for lunch to start.

There were tons of people there, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. There are a few of my dad's cousins that I enjoy seeing, though, and it was fun to talk to them for a bit before we had to leave. The big reunion had reserved places for people to camp at the girls camp Friday night, but we went back to Park City for the night. We loaded up the car and left for the long trek back home on Saturday morning. We made it to Albuquerque, NM, that night, and then on Sunday we made it all the way back to San Antonio. It was a lot of driving, but we survived with audio books to listen to. The kids were pretty good in the car again, and we are all glad to be home.

Road trips are fun every once in a while, and driving that long with the kids wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be. It's not something I want to do often, but now I know we can do it, and have fun, too! I'm so glad we were able to go to the reunion and see family we haven't seen in a while, especially my parents and brother and his family. We had tons of fun with aunts, uncles and cousins and I'm so glad we were able to make the trip.

5 months old!

2010-06-21T19:18:00.015-05:00

Little Lucy turned 5 months old about a weeks ago. I know I sound like a broken record, but she is just the best baby ever! This past month she has gotten stronger and has figured out how to roll back over from her front to her back. As I'm sure you recall from my last post about Lucy, she was just barely rolling over from her back to her front. Now, if she's in the mood, she can roll back to front, front to back, and so forth and get to where she wants to go. Sometimes, though, she rolls into the entertainment center and bonks her head, so we gotta be careful. When she's on her tummy, she also likes to bend her knees and then push with her feet on the carpet and try to propel herself forward a bit.

She also tried some rice cereal for the first time this past month.

She likes it! I give it to her once a day, when I remember. I'm sure she would love to eat it more, but it's not part of my routine yet, and I sometimes forget that it's an option.

She loves to play, and this past month we got out the Jumperoo to see if she was big enough for it yet. She likes to sit in it and play with the toys around the edge, but she doesn't really bounce in it very much. Her feet DO touch the floor, though. Just barely. Sometimes, she just wears herself out when she plays and can't keep her eyes open any longer.

She is just so darn cute. It is a joy to have her in our family!

Two-Face

2010-06-16T09:07:00.003-05:00

Adam here. I was reminded today of one of the funniest things I ever did, and I was inspired to make a blog post out of it. Back in my Singles Branch days, my best friend Michelle and I were sitting in Sunday School, kind of paying attention to the lesson. Michelle suggested that we play a game that she had played with her sisters in church when she was younger. She folded a paper in half and explained that the would draw half of a face, mark where the eyes, nose, and mouth were, and then the other person would draw the other half of the face without seeing what the first half looked like because it was hidden by the fold. Then they would unfold the paper and see what the face looked like.

So Michelle folded a paper in half, drew half of a face on the left side of the paper, and marked where the eyes, nose, and mouth were. She handed it to me, blank side up, and I drew half of a face, too. Struggling to keep a straight face, I handed the paper back to her. I wish I had kept the actual paper to scan and show you, but here is a close approximation of what she saw when she unfolded the paper:

We were both red-faced and straining with the effort of not laughing out loud in the back of the Sunday School class. Clearly, the hours I spend in 6th grade practicing how to sketch a Ninja Turtle paid off after all.

2010-06-09T07:51:00.002-05:00

It's been quite a while since I posted anything on our blog. Lisa does most of the posting on here because she remembers to do it and she has access to the computer with all the pictures on it every day. So this post won't have any cute baby pictures or anything, but it will have some thoughts on what has been most interesting to me lately.

Firstly, we are right smack in the middle of thunderstorm season here in San Antonio. Last Wednesday, there was a pretty severe thunderstorm that had a lot of wind to go with it. It knocked out power for a bunch of people and blew down some trees. Luckily, nothing was damaged near our house (and our power only flickered; it never actually went out). We had another huge storm last night. It didn't have the really high winds of last week's storm, but it had a lot more thunder. From about 9:00 last night to some time past 3:00 this morning, there was constant rolling thunder and flashing lightning. It reminds me of my mission in Milwaukee when there were severe thunderstorms in late May and early June that would shake the apartment all night long.

I really enjoy listening to the storms, as long as I don't have to be out in them. If I can lay in bed in our dark bedroom and just hear and feel the thunder and watch the flashes of lightning, then it's really relaxing and fun. I'm not sure if Josh or Lucy feel similarly, though. Lucy was woken up last night by the thunder around 12:45 or so, and she was not happy. She decided that since she was up anyway, she should probably also be a little hungry. So Lisa gave her a little bottle and she settled down. Josh doesn't seem to get too startled by thunder, but then, I think he could sleep through just about anything.

Secondly, we have been attending classes for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. I have known about Dave Ramsey for a few years, but never really bought into the whole "no credit cards, no debt, cash only" thing. Until now. It turns out that his whole system is based on painfully simple common sense. Sure, the General Authorities have been teaching these same principles for years, but I was never really ready to do anything about it until now.

We have finally hit the point where we want do escape the evil credit card and consumer debt game. We're tired of paying huge amounts of money just on interest because we bought something with a credit card rather than saving up actual money for it. We're tired of living paycheck to paycheck and never really having a reserve in the bank for emergencies. We're tired of trading our financial security and future to credit card companies so that we don't have to delay our gratification a little and save up for stuff that we want.

So we have called up our credit card companies and canceled our accounts. We have finally started making a monthly budget and sticking to it. We are on our way to becoming debt free. It's going to take a long time to dig ourselves out of the hole we created with our instant gratification habits, but it will be worth it. And some day we will be able to go wherever we want and buy a house where we really want to live and enjoy the fruits of our labor, rather than giving all of those fruits to a bunch of creditors.

Lastly, we are really excited to go to a family reunion in a few weeks. We're going to be driving from San Antonio to Park City, UT. We're making a stop in Denver for a couple of nights on the way to Park City to visit my friend Christina and her family. Then we will see the Pratt relatives over the ensuing days. We're really excited for everyone to get to meet Lucy and see how cute and sweet she really is. We're not necessarily excited for the approximately 48 hours of driving that will be involved in the round trip, but that's what podcasts and audiobooks are for.

More pictures!

2010-06-02T23:14:00.004-05:00

Last week I took Josh to get his 3-year-old pictures taken. He was, of course, uncooperative, and didn't want to hold still for the camera lady. I was scared there wouldn't be any good pictures, but it turned out there were a few that I liked. This first one is the pose we chose for the pics going out to family.

4 months old!

2010-05-16T14:17:00.014-05:00

Little Lucy turned 4 months old this past week. At her check-up on Friday she weighed 14 lbs and was 24.25 inches long. She continues to be just the best, happiest, and cutest baby girl ever. She is quick to smile, especially when she sees Mama, Daddy, or Josh. She is very vocal and loves to jibber-jabber after she's been fed and she's playing before it's nap time again. She is getting stronger and stronger and is very good at holding her head steady. She has discovered her toes and is seriously thinking about rolling over one of these days. In fact, she has done it once or twice, but none of us have seen her do it. When I was taking a shower one day, she was on her play mat, on her back, on the floor outside the bathroom door. When I was done, her head was pointing in the opposite direction, and she was on her stomach. Tricksie little girl. She can reach out and grasp her toys and tries to eat everything she gets her hands on. She also loves to pull on Daddy's goatee when he's feeding her. I think Josh got his first tooth around 4 months, so she might be teething soon. She certainly has gotten more drooly lately. Josh just loves his baby sister now and likes to try and hold her and help me with her. He likes to try and copy her when she's jabbering, and Lucy loves the attention. She is so much fun to have in our little family, and we love her so much!

Three years old!

2010-05-12T15:53:00.009-05:00

Josh turned 3 years old on Monday. In the past, we have celebrated birthdays with family parties, but since we aren't near any family now, we had a pretty low-key day. We went to the park with our ward play group and I made cupcakes for everyone. Josh had fun playing with his little friends.

It's hard to believe he is 3 years old already. His speech has been improving a little these past few months. We knew he would have a speech delay because of his cleft palate. He has been more and more willing to say new words and copy words he hears us say, or hears on Blues Clues or Curious George. His pronunciation is still not very good, he usually leaves off the starting or ending consonants of words, and he is starting speech therapy through the school district at the elementary school down the street from our house. I can usually understand him because I'm around him all day long, but I doubt strangers would be able to understand more than a few words and phrases that he says. We are excited that he has qualified for this speech therapy and look forward to being able to understand everything Josh is trying to communicate to us.

We tried potty training about a month ago, and Josh is NOT interested in any of that stuff yet. I wish he was ready because I am tired of buying diapers for two kids at a time.

It is fun to watch Joshua grow up and learn new things. He loves to play outside, either at a park or in our back yard blowing bubbles or drawing in the drive way with chalk. He is constantly making us laugh with his little sense of humor and the way he tries to say new things. We are grateful he is a part of our family and we love him!

A Beautiful Saturday Afternoon

2010-04-25T23:35:00.009-05:00

We bought this sprinkler when we first moved here last summer, not realizing it was the middle of Phase 2 water restrictions and we couldn't use it. This past week we have had some really nice weather, so we broke out the sprinkler yesterday and Josh had fun running through it.

And here's a video for the grandparents of Josh running through the sprinkler.

My Grandpa

2010-04-15T09:54:00.010-05:00

My Grandpa Pratt passed away a year ago today. I'm glad we were still living in Washington and were able to be there with all our family that came into town. Even though it was a somber occasion, I love getting together with family and hearing all the stories from my dad and uncles and aunt about their childhood and the lessons they learned from their parents. My grandpa was a great example to me of love, kindness, church service, and missionary service. I had no doubt of his love for his wife, his family, his Savior, and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Me and my grandpa.

And this is me and my grandma. I liked this one because I think Lucy looks like me in this picture.

3 months old!

2010-04-14T22:06:00.001-05:00

Our little Lucy Mae turned 3 months old yesterday (!) and I can't believe how fast she is growing up. She has really discovered her voice this past month and loves to coo and make as many different noises as she can. It's cute to listen to her talk and tell stories. She is getting stronger and stronger and cuter and cuter and just continues to be the best little girl ever!

I love this picture of Lucy with her big brother.

She is so much fun and we love her!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T23:44:00.019-05:00

We have had a fun-filled weekend. Adam had the day off on Friday (his work gets Good Friday off instead of President's Day), so he got to come with us to our playgroup's Easter Egg Hunt.

This was Josh's first Easter Egg Hunt, and he loved it. He had a good time carrying his basket around with Daddy and then he would get excited whenever he found an egg. And then afterwards he discovered there was candy in the eggs! BONUS!!

That night we had a game night with a bunch of our friends, which was tons of fun and lots of laughs.

Saturday was my birthday! Yippee!!

We have enjoyed watching General Conference this weekend, too. This morning before conference started, Adam wanted to color some Easter Eggs.

Josh also had fun putting together his new Curious George puzzle he got in his Easter Basket from Grandma.

All the loot from the Easter Bunny!

And all the pretty eggs all colored.

It has been a great weekend, but I am most grateful for my Savior and his Atonement and Resurrection that allows us the chance to overcome death and sin and be able to return to Him and my Heavenly Father again. Happy Easter everyone!

Because she is just so dang cute!

2010-04-03T23:26:00.011-05:00

When we were visiting in Washington a couple weeks ago, we spent the day with some of our good friends. A bunch of us got together at Michelle and Dean's house, and it was lots of fun. Anika has a nice new camera, and I wanted her to take a few shots of our family. She took the photo currently in our blog header, and these pictures below of Lucy.

Thank you so much, Anika! The pictures are great, and just what I wanted.

My favorite kind of day

2010-03-24T01:25:00.010-05:00

One of the things I miss the most since we moved to Texas last year is being able to go to my parents' house and hang out with them and my brother and his family. I love relaxing and watching the kids play with each other and with Grandma and Grandpa. It just makes me happy. This past Sunday, we all went to church with my parents, then headed back to their house to take a family picture and spend the rest of the day together. It may not seem like such a big deal, but I really miss it.

Our Family

My brother Kevin and Lucy

Taylor and Lucy

Ryan and Josh

Everyone loves to help Grandma in the kitchen.

Brandie, Taylor and Brooklynn with Lucy.

The boys playing with toys.

My dad with his oldest and youngest grandchild.

The Wedding

2010-03-22T01:26:00.018-05:00

Adam's brother Kacy married his lovely bride Krissy yesterday afternoon. We are so glad we were able to come up to Washington for the wedding. I loved the cherry blossom theme, it was beautiful!

Krissy walking down the aisle with her dad.

Presenting Mr. and Mrs. Hansen!

Adam and his mom.

Josh with his cousin Garrett. They had lots of fun together that day.

The beautiful wedding cake that my mom made.

Adam and Kacy.

Congratulations to Kacy and Krissy! You have both come a long way in the years you have known each other and we are so proud of both of you. We are so glad we could be part of this special day!

2 months old!

2010-03-17T23:56:00.010-05:00

Lucy turned 2 months old last weekend. Her two-month check up was today, and she passed with flying colors. She
weighs 11lbs, 11oz now and is 22.5 inches long. She also had to get her first round of shots today, and she was NOT a fan. (But really, who is?) She had some sore legs this afternoon, but after a dose of infant Tylenol, she calmed down. She is generally such a happy, smiley baby. She is starting to make cooing sounds and talk to us, which is adorable. She is getting stronger and stronger everyday and is getting much better at holding her head steady. She eats great and sleeps for 6-8 hours at night, which is WONDERFUL! Josh has really started to warm up to her and calls her Baby. Never Lucy, just Baby. He looks for her when we get up in the morning, and if she is crying, he has a concerned sound to his voice as he says, "Ba-by." We love her so much and are so glad she can be part of our family.

(BTW, there are a ton more pictures in our Picasa web album. Clicky here to see all the cuteness.)

Looking for a laugh?

2010-03-06T11:42:00.004-06:00

Then you need to play this game. We played it at a game night last night with some friends in our ward, and it is hilarious! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I had tears in my eyes at one point. Hoo-boy, it was good times. Here's a link to how you play and you can read some reviews. It's a great game to play with a group, big or small. Anyway, check it out if you have the chance. You'll be rolling on the floor in no time!

Anniversary

2010-02-24T10:18:00.003-06:00

Adam and I celebrated 6 years of marriage on Sunday. It was pretty low-key this year. Josh was sick all weekend, and I had New Beginnings on Sunday evening. When I got back, Adam had a fabulous dinner prepared that we enjoyed after Josh went to bed. Juicy steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and roasted veggies. SO. GOOD! We also got a new printer, which we have needed for awhile now. I am so grateful for Adam and all he does for our family. I love the way we work together and that we still enjoy hanging out together. I truly lucked out to have such a great husband! I love you!

One month

2010-02-15T23:19:00.004-06:00

Our Baby Girl turned one month old last Saturday. She continues to be such a good baby, very good natured and only crying when I'm a little late in getting her bottle ready. Like most newborns, her first few weeks were filled with mostly eating and sleeping, but just this past week, she has spent more time awake and looking around at everything. At night, she sleeps about 6 hours at a time now, which her momma greatly appreciates!

A few pics from this weekend:

She's a cutie and a sweetie! I think we'll keep her :)

Lucy's Blessing Day

2010-02-08T15:31:00.011-06:00

Yesterday was Lucy's blessing day. It was very different from Joshua's blessing day in that we didn't have any extended family with us, but it was still a great day for our little family. Adam's mom made Lucy's blessing dress, and it is beautiful! The blessing itself was very special. I am so grateful for Adam and that he is a worthy priesthood holder and is able to bless our children and family. I have to admit, in trying to keep Josh still and quiet during the blessing, it was hard to pay attention to everything that was said. A friend of mine came up to me before Sunday School started and gave me an outline of the blessing that she had written down for me, for which I am very grateful! She knew it is hard to listen and keep kids quiet at the same time.

Being a parent is not always easy, but it's days like this that help me remember just how special our children are and what great responsibility we have as parents to teach these little ones that our Heavenly Father has entrusted us with. I am constantly making mistakes, but everyday is a new start and I hope I can improve each day and be able to effectively teach my children the things they need to know.

The past three weeks

2010-02-06T22:57:00.000-06:00

Little Lucy turned 3 weeks old on Wednesday. In some ways it seems like a short time, but when I think about everything that has happened in the past three weeks, it seems like it should have taken longer. And sorry if nothing I say makes sense for a while. I am functioning on very little sleep :) Adam was able to take a week off of work after Lucy was born. We have had lots of fun with Adam's parents visiting the day after Lucy was born. They stayed a week and then the day they flew home, my mom flew out here for another week. Well, she was supposed to stay a week, but I wasn't ready for her to go, so she stayed three more days longer. It was great having family members around to help for a couple weeks. I definitely needed it. One of my worries before Lucy was born was how I was going to be able to handle the needs of a newborn and a two-and-a-half-year-old at the same time. It was great to have grandparents around for a couple weeks to keep Josh entertained while I got used to having a newborn again. This past week was my first week with the kids by myself. Some days were harder than others, but we all survived. I know we'll all get better at this as we take the time to adjust to all the changes. Josh is warming up more and more to his little sister and now likes to touch her hair and give her kisses on her head.

Here are some pictures from the past three weeks.

Four days old.

One week old.

Three weeks old.

I LOVE these socks that look like shoes!

We love our little Lucy!

Little Miss Lucy

2010-01-18T18:00:00.003-06:00

Our little Lucy Mae Hansen made her appearance into this world on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, at 12:31pm. I was scheduled to be induced that day and we had to be at the hospital at 5:30am. When I got up that morning, I noticed my water had broke sometime during the night and was slowly leaking. We got ready quickly and headed off to the hospital. For the past three weeks at my OB appointments, I had been dilated to 3cm. When we got to the hospital, I was at 5cm. The nurses got me all settled and after hooking up the monitors and getting a bunch of information, the nurse said I was ready to start on pitocin. I told her I would need an epidural as soon as possible. The contractions were manageable at that point, but I knew when the pitocin kicked in, they would get unbearable. (NOTE: I am a wimp, and I am OK with this fact. As long as there are drugs to reduce pain, I will take them.) The anesthesiologist came a little bit later and gave me the epidural around 7:45am. The nurse checked me before starting the pitocin and I was at 6.5cm. From that point, I continued to dilate about 1cm an hour.

The epidural was working well, but most of it seemed to go into my left leg. My right leg was only slightly numb. I could feel lots of pressure with the growing intensity of the contractions, but luckily, no sharp pains. The, uh, delivery area was also numb enough that I could feel pressure, but no pain. Hallelujah! It just became a waiting game while we waited for the cervix to do its thing and dilate fully and get out of the way. I took the opportunity to take a nap. I didn't get much sleep the night before, and I knew I wasn't going to be getting much sleep in the future, either.

Around noon, the nurse came to check on things and determined it was time to start pushing! I pushed for about 25 minutes, and then we had to stop actively pushing and wait for the doctor to get there. The next push or two would deliver the baby, and the nurse was concerned about some scar tissue from Joshua's delivery. The doctor came, the nurse described her concerns and they were both very good at doing everything they could to try and minimize the tearing this time. After the doctor came, I pushed about two more times, and at 12:31pm, Lucy was born.

Lucy weighed in at 9lb 4oz, and was 20.5 inches long.

Lucy and I stayed in the hospital Wednesday night and we were able to be discharged Thursday afternoon. Adam and Josh came to get us and our family of four (!) headed home.

We love our little Lucy and are so grateful she can be part of our family.

BBQ and Elvis

2009-12-15T12:46:00.006-06:00

That's what first comes to mind when I think of my uncle Gaylen. He is my mom's older brother, and he passed away last week after a brief battle with cancer in his kidneys and lungs. His funeral is today, and I'm sad we can't be there with the rest of my mom's family. He is the first of any of my parents' siblings to pass away, which is a little difficult to think about.
When I was little, I remember him managing BBQ restaurants and at family reunions, he was always the resident BBQ expert. He also loved all things Elvis. From my perspective as a kid, he seemed kind of gruff at times, but he was also a jokster, too. Now, as an adult, I remember him as a fun-loving, faithful and loving person, and a very hard worker. We will greatly miss him!

Thanksgiving Weekend Adventures

2009-12-04T23:07:00.008-06:00

We had a fun and full Thanksgiving weekend with my parents coming for a visit. Our fun times started Wednesday evening when Adam and I started making rolls and pies.

We made five pies (Pratt family tradition to have one for each person): lemon meringue, pumpkin, apple, cherry and chocolate orange mousse (not pictured).

The cooking continued Thursday morning and went on all day long. It was fun to be with Adam in the kitchen all day, making the various Thanksgiving dishes that we love so much. The aches and pains that go along with being 8 months pregnant slowed down my cooking mojo a bit, but we still had a good time and got everything ready.

The brined turkey, ready for baking.

The turkey after baking, perfectly browned on the outside and nice and juicy on the inside. YUM!

My parents arrived at about 5:30 that night and helped us get the final details ready for dinner. First, though, was the doting on the grandchild, of course.

Josh looks at a puzzle and book that Grandma brought.

And finally it was time to eat! Everything was delicious, especially the garlic mashed potatoes, which made me happy just eating them.

The rest of my parents' visit was filled with shopping, putting up a wallpaper border in Josh's room, putting together the baby's crib set, going for walks to the park with Grandma and Grandpa, going to the Riverwalk to see the Christmas lights, playing games, putting up our Christmas decorations, building block towers with Daddy and Grandpa, finding the house that served as the mission home when my Grandpa was the mission president of the Texas San Antonio Mission about 30 years ago, making Christmas candy, and making a blanket for the baby.

My parents had to leave Tuesday afternoon. We are so glad they were able to come visit for Thanksgiving. We had lots of fun times and enjoyed every minute of it.

30 weeks down...

2009-11-01T21:55:00.002-06:00

...10 to go!

Besides having a hard time getting over this cold this past week, this pregnancy has been going great. I'm getting into the "big and uncomfortable" stage, and I definitely feel it. That and being tired all the time, but that is normal at this stage, too. We are getting more and more excited to have a little baby girl soon, even though sometimes it doesn't seem real to me yet that we're going to have another baby in a few months. I'm sure the reality check will hit me soon enough!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T22:14:00.000-05:00

We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat activity tonight, and Josh got to show off his mad ninja skills. Adam took him around and I manned the candy giveaway at our car. Josh did well for 7 or 8 cars, holding his candy bucket and saying "thank you" (he hasn't quite conquered "trick-or-treat" just yet), but then he lost interest pretty quickly. He sure was cute, though, even if he wasn't a fan of his headband.

Let's go get some candy, Daddy!

The ninja thrives in his natural habitat.

Somber ninja is in a reflective mood.

Happy Halloween everyone!

MMMM...mmmm...

2009-10-22T12:35:00.000-05:00

That must have been one good cookie!

Are you ready for some football?

2009-10-04T14:30:00.001-05:00

Why yes, I think we are. Especially now that Joshua has his new sweatshirt.

The crappy thing about watching the NFL in Texas is that they mostly show the Texan and Cowboys games. Boo! The only merchandise available in the stores is for the Cowboys. Boo! I miss being able to watch the Seahawks every week, even if they aren't doing very well this year. Just because I live in Texas now, I'm not about to become a Cowboys fan. I asked my brother if they were still selling Seahawks sweatshirts at Walmart, and he was nice enough to send one to Joshua. (Thanks again!)

Now, if only the weather would cool down some more, it might actually get to be sweatshirt weather :)

He says it better than I could

2009-09-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine posted a link to this article on Facebook yesterday, and I wish I had read it before I did my post yesterday. I love it. It seems like everyone in this area was against letting their children listen to President Obama's speech yesterday, and that just boggles my mind. I really like the points this guy makes in his article about how not every president was perfect, but there are things about each of them that make them a good role model. President Obama is a great role model for the power of education and working hard, and I think we can appreciate that aspect of his life, even if we don't agree with all of his policies.

A few thoughts...

2009-09-08T13:12:00.000-05:00

Note: I rarely wax political. OK, I never wax political, but lately I have felt a need to find my own opinions in certain matters, and I'm slowly starting to find them. I believe everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe. I don't mean to attack anyone or their beliefs. I'm just trying to figure out what my beliefs are.

This has been a very politically charged year or so, and I usually try to stay out of politics. It doesn't really interest me, and the people that do talk about politics are the ones who are passionate about it, and I don't share that passion, so I feel unqualified to contribute to the conversation. When people around me are talking about politics, they ask me if I'm interested in politics, and I usually say no, not really. I think the problem is that I don't know where I fit in. The political conversation is usually dominated by politically polarized people, and I am somewhere in the middle. I am definitely conservative in my views, but I hesitate to use the word "Republican" because lately that word seems to have the connotation that you worship Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, and frankly whenever I hear one of their rabid followers talking about the government conspiracies and whatnot, I look at them incredulously and shout in my head, "Do you know how crazy you sound???" I am not a Democrat, either, and I think the people on the far left sound just as crazy as the people on the far right.

So I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't like confrontation. I don't like to be part of debates, either, because I don't have the facts to back up my thoughts and ideas, so I feel like I have nothing to argue with. That's OK, though, because I don't want to argue. I haven't really studied President Obama's policies, so I don't know if I would fully agree with them or not, but I don't think he is evil, either.

A word I've been hearing a lot lately is "socialism." Republicans seem to be afraid of President Obama's socialistic tendencies. Again, I haven't studied his policies, so I have no opinion of whether he has socialistic tendencies or not. This is just what I have noticed from the news and from hearing people around me talk about it. As I've thought about it, I don't think socialism itself works as a economic system, and I think history has shown that socialist and communist systems ultimately fail. But I can't disagree with the underlying basic principles of a socialistic system. From my brief study of socialism this morning (I looked it up on Wikipedia), I can generalize the basic principles to be individuals working together for the betterment of the whole society. This sounds like a good idea to me. Again, I don't think it works as a government-run economic system, but I believe when Christ comes again and rules on the Earth, the Law of Consecration will basically be individuals sacrificing what they have for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the Earth. In essence, individuals working together for the betterment of the whole society. I believe these ideas can and will work with Christ at the head.

Specifically today, those afraid of socialism are very worried that President Obama's speech to the kids in school today will be oozing with socialism. I've read the speech, and I just don't see it. I see a president who is worried about the future of this nation, as well he should be, and I see him encouraging students to stay in school, don't make excuses, and work hard to be successful. The future of our nation depends on the kids who are in school now. That's a scary thought.

So, there's some of my infantile thoughts on politics. (I mean infantile in that I feel like an infant in the world of politics, and my opinions are in their beginning stages.) For some reason, I feel the need to express them and get them on (virtual) paper. If I don't, I think they will rattle around in my brain forever until they get an outlet.

Ahhh, parenting...

2009-09-01T12:27:00.000-05:00

Being the parent of a 2-year-old, I've had many opportunities to try and teach Josh what behaviors are correct and which ones are not so appropriate. Whichever discipline methods you choose, you hope you are successful in teaching correct behaviors and not just scarring your kids emotionally for life.

Recently I've had occasion to reflect on this part of being a parent, and I was overcome with awe and responsibility as I thought about the trust Heavenly Father puts in us when He sends His spirit children to us. It is amazing to me that He trusts His children with people (us) who have so little knowledge and experience compared to Him. He knows full well that we are just learning, too, and will make mistakes with His children, but still He created His plan so that we all learn together, parents and children.

I hope this makes sense. Sometimes it's hard for me to put feelings into words. I just know that I want to be a better parent, especially with another child coming soon, and I pray for guidance from my Father in Heaven that I can correctly teach His children that He has entrusted to me so that they can grow up to be responsible and well-balanced people.

Josh!

2009-08-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

I thought I would post some pictures of Josh since I just got his 2-year-old pictures done.

Josh has been doing well with the move to Texas. Before we left, Adam found a toddler bed on craigslist for a good deal and when we moved in to our new house, we set up the toddler bed in Josh's room. He's been doing pretty well with it. For the first few nights, he would get out of bed and play with the closet doors, the door stop, and anything else he could find in the room. Eventually he would fall asleep. After a couple nights, though, the curiosity wore off and he was able to stay in bed and fall asleep pretty quickly.

Josh has been growing and growing. He loves to run around like a monkey and play with his toys, especially his cars. His speech is improving and he is able to repeat more words lately. His doctors have told us that he will probably need speech therapy to overcome the delay in making certain sounds due to his cleft palate. He is learning his colors and is really good at blue and orange. He can recite his numbers from 1 - 10, but for some reason he always skips 7. He still LOVES Blues Clues ("Bah Poo") and has started shouting out when he sees a clue ("a poo, a poo").

He eats the crusts of his sandwiches first, and sometimes won't eat the rest of the sandwich. He won't eat ice cream. He used to not like cookies, either, but recently he's changed his mind on that. Sometimes I don't know where he came from (who ever heard of not liking ice cream!), but he's a cutie and we love him. I especially love his giggles. It makes up for the frustrating times that come with being the parent of a 2-year-old.

Surprise!

2009-08-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

One of the worries I had in moving to San Antonio this summer was finding a new OB and making sure I had the continued prenatal care I needed. I was able to find a new doctor (that was accepting new patients and had appointments available within the next week) relatively easily, and I went for my first appointment this past Tuesday. When the doctor said it was time to listen to the baby's heartbeat, he said, "Oh wait, you're almost 20 weeks. Let's do an ultrasound." YAY! I love being able to see pictures of our baby, especially since we would be able to find out the gender of the baby, too. I was hoping to be able to at least schedule an ultrasound at this appointment, but instead, we got to do it that day. We had to wait a little bit longer than they originally thought for the sonogram room to be available, but it all worked out because it gave Adam time to get there on his way home from work. It was also Adam's birthday, so seeing pictures of our little baby was a nice little birthday present.

The doctor was very informative in telling us what we were looking at and what he was measuring. All measurements looked good for the gestational age, so that was good to know, especially since I haven't really been gaining any weight yet during this pregnancy. It's good to know the baby is still growing as it should. The doctor asked if we wanted to know the gender, and we said YES! He said it was a girl! We are very excited to welcome a baby girl into our family.

This is a very close up profile of our baby girl's face with her hand below it.

This is looking right at the face and head (on the left) and the body. I guess. This one is a little harder for me to make out, but that's what the doctor said, and I trust him.

Like I said, we are VERY EXCITED to know we are having a girl!

The Riverwalk

2009-08-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

Last Monday while my mom was here we all went downtown to the famed Riverwalk. We were in the mood for BBQ, so we found a place called The County Line that looked good and found a parking place nearby. The entrance was down on the Riverwalk level, and the food was pretty good. After dinner we walked down a few blocks to one of the Riverwalk tour boat stations and bought tickets for a tour. The tour was very pretty and informative about San Antonio history. Joshua even sat still for most of it. His favorite part was the ducks on the river and he quacked at them every time we saw them. The Riverwalk winds through lots of restaurants, a mall, the convention center, and other historic buildings.

Josh and Mom

The tour boat

Josh and Grandma

"Quack
quack
quack
quack
quack!"

Mural on the con-
vention center made up of 1" tiles. It was a gift to the city from Mexico.

We were worried about the weather, particularly that it was approaching the 100s, but the evening was pleasantly shaded with a slight breeze, so we had a very nice evening on the river. I think I'm starting to like this town!

Update

2009-08-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to blog about our move and everything, but I've either been busy or too tired. I was going to detail all our stuff being packed up and everything, but suffice it to say it was very nice to have movers pack all our stuff and truck it on down here. They packed it up on Thursday the 30th, and loaded it up on Friday and headed on down the road. The next three days were filled with cleaning, touch-up painting and minor repairs, and we are indebted to our family and friends for all their help with everything. Especially since it was in the high 90s and into the 100s that week.

On Tuesday we flew to Austin and rented a car to drive to San Antonio and pick up our cars at our friends' house. They had been shipped there a few weeks before. We went to our new house and turned on the AC (it was 93 degrees inside), then went back to our friends' house for dinner and a dip in their pool. When we got back to our house it was getting down into the 80s inside. We set up our air mattress and set up Joshua's pack 'n play and camped out in our house until the moving truck arrived on Thursday. My mom also flew down Thursday afternoon to stay with us for a week and help with the unpacking. The next week was filled with a flurry of boxes, packing paper, and sorting out where everything should go. We're still not done yet, but it shouldn't take very much longer to get it all unpacked. Then there's the matter of putting up the curtains and the pictures on the walls and everything. It's starting to look more like home.

We've done some fun things, too. Last Monday we went with my mom downtown to the Riverwalk (pictures to follow in another post), I went to the temple for a RS enrichment activity, and my mom watched Joshua for us one night while we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. We've gone to our new ward a couple times now, and even though it seems small, we're meeting new people and getting callings soon. Josh and I went to a play group yesterday made up of moms and kids from the ward, and I got to know a lot of the moms and Josh had fun playing with the kids. Hopefully we'll all be able to make some good friends.

The weather had been hot, hot, hot. Thank goodness for air conditioning everywhere. Adam's commute is 20 minutes from leaving the front door to sitting down at his desk, which is very nice. We've been here for a little over two weeks now and we are enjoying all the space in our new house and are settling into our new life here in San Antonio!

One Week

2009-07-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

Adam here. Today marks exactly one week left until we move to San Antonio. The past few days has been a whirlwind of activity. With the assistance of my brothers and our friend Dean, we tore up the old vinyl flooring in the kitchen and dining room, and then put down tile. It is now all nice and grouted, thanks to Brek (who is installing new baseboard molding today) and then all I have to do today is seal the grout and it is ready to have appliances moved back into the kitchen. With the assistance of Lisa's family, we painted the bathrooms and the office. They both look great now. It's the rest of the house that is a mess.

We moved a bunch of stuff out of the office in order to paint it, and that stuff is sitting in the garage, along side a bunch of the stuff that had to come out of the kitchen and dining room in order to do the tile. Good thing our cars are already on their way to San Antonio, eh? Also, our stove and fridge are currently in the living room until the tile is ready for them to be moved back in there. So the extreme disarray of the place is almost over.

And then it will all be thrown back into disarray on Thursday of this week. That's when the packers from the moving company will be arriving to pack everything up that we are allowed to ship down with us. I have no idea how long it will take, but I am really hoping it will go quickly. We need all the time we can get in order to finish a thorough cleaning and to do the yard work that needs to be done to pretty up the outside of the house. So that will be a bunch of weeding and laying down beauty bark.

It's crazy, though. Sometimes it still doesn't seem completely real that we are moving in a week. All of the stuff around the house that needs to be done has successfully distracted me from really taking in the enormity of what we are doing. We're moving halfway across the country, trying to rent out our house up here in Washington, and hoping for the best. We'll be separated from our families by quite a bit of distance, and on our own for the most part.

The strange part is that I am not scared about this huge change. I'm definitely nervous, of course, but not scared. I guess it's a side effect of my general "go with the flow" attitude toward life. That attitude has served me well in the past, and hopefully it will continue to do so going forward.

So, onward, I guess. We'll be doing a ridiculous amount of cleaning in the next few days.... You never realize just how much gunk can accumulate around and behind things that you really don't move very often. After the cleaning and the yard work comes the new carpet installation on the day before we fly out for good. I hope the renters appreciate and enjoy all the work that we have done to make the house nice for them.

Camping

2009-07-23T12:43:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we went camping with the Pratt side of the family. We went to Keller Ferry campground right on Lake Roosevelt, which is the lake behind Grand Coulee Dam in Eastern Washington. The campsite was right on the lake, which was pretty, but there was no separation between us and the other campsites, so that was kind of weird. The weather was very hot, but we had fun cooling off in the lake. The afternoons got windy, too, and one evening the wind was relentless until well into the middle of the night. But like I said, we had fun in the lake and the kids had fun riding bikes and playing with bubbles and various other things.

The campground.

Our campsites were on the end, so we had some nice views of the water all around us.

Joshua playing in the lake with Ryan.
(I copied that picture from Brandie's blog. I hope she doesn't mind.)

Bubbles!

Grand Coulee Dam.

We had fun being with family. I'm glad we had time to spend with them before we move in a couple weeks!

Travelogue

2009-07-10T16:51:00.000-05:00

Adam here again. Since we are just sitting in the San Antonio (SAT) airport until the flight home boards in an hour and a half, I figured I would put together a most likely sizable blog post that will serve as a travelogue for our trip. Here goes:

Sunday, July 5th: We kind of packed our stuff, but had to wait for the dryer to finish before we could get it all done, and of course began running out of time as the clock approached 10:00 and beyond. We didn't actually get everything packed and ready to go until midnight or so. Which meant the time we set the alarm for (4:30 AM) was horribly close.

Monday, July 6th: We got up, got everything ready to go, and got a very sleepy Joshua up and out to the car to leave at about 6:15. We stopped at Kevin (Lisa's brother) and Brandie's house at about 6:35 and then knocked on the door for a while to wake up the sleeping occupants. They watched Joshua on Monday until Lisa's parents could pick him up that evening for his stay with them for the week while we were to be in SAT.

We rushed up to Lisa's parents' house where we parked the car at just after 7:00 and climbed into Dean and Michelle's van, as they graciously offered to drop us off at the airport. We arrived at the airport in pretty good time and got through security pretty quickly. Maybe too quickly, since our plane wasn't supposed to board until 9:10. So this left us with an hour and a half to sit and do nothing in SeaTac. Oh, well.

The flight to Dallas was long and uneventful, other than Lisa's very painful sinus pressure upon descent. The layover in Dallas was long and uneventful, too. And then we boarded the plane for the one hour hop to SAT. We essentially took off, climbed up to 30,000 feet or so, and then began our descent ten minutes later, which was again very painful for Lisa. Usually she doesn't get that sort of pain when flying, but it was pretty bad this time.

There were a bunch of thunderclouds in the SAT area, and we saw some lightning strikes in the storm bank as it headed westward away from SAT. When we got on the ground and went outside the terminal, we found that the storm had dumped tremendous amounts of rain just a little bit before our flight arrived. So not only was it nearly 100 degrees, it was also 100% humidity. I felt like I was walking into a steam bath when I walked out of the airport doors. Ugh.

We picked up our rental car, which turned out to be a Mazda5. Very nice. I have liked the look of that model for a while, and now we got to test drive one for a week. Excellent. Once in the car, we headed up to the hotel, the Hilton Homewood Suites. It was very nice. Nearly brand new, and just plain nice. I'm really glad my company had us stay there. We got our stuff settled, took a trip to see the new office building, ate dinner at Sonic, and then hit up Wal-Mart for a couple of essentials that we didn't want to try to carry onto the plane. And then it was off to bed, since we were both dead tired from the day.

Tuesday, July 7th: A very early alarm went off, and we got ready for the day. I had to get into work clothes, since I was scheduled to be at the new office building for orientation at 8:30 that morning. Lisa dropped me off and then headed over to our friend Leslie's house to check out some additional rental house listings. My orientation went well, and I am definitely amazed by the size of the new building. Fourteen stories may not sound like a whole lot, but since the biggest building I have ever worked in before was only ten stories with a much smaller footprint, it makes the new Tesoro San Antonio Headquarters feel ginormous. We were taken around the building lobby, our floor, and the conference center where our orientation meeting was to take place.

There was a mix-up with our stuff from my old office, and our boxes had not yet arrived. Also, we didn't have any chairs at our new cubicles. Apparently they thought that we were shipping our old chairs down from Seattle, but we were explicitly instructed to not ship our chairs down. Whatever. They eventually got it straightened out.

After the orientation, Lisa and Leslie picked me up so that we could go and drive around to check out the outside of the rental houses we had been looking at on the Internet. A couple of them looked promising right off the bat, and a couple were immediately dismissed. We drove around a bunch and discovered that the radio station selection in SAT is horrendous. There were at least three stations airing sermons, about 10 Spanish-language stations, three or four Country stations, one oldies/classic rock/disco station, and one modern rock station. ONE. And it played all sorts of different rock ranging from Alternative to Heavy Metal. So no dice. I will obviously be using my iPod a lot. And when I get an iPhone in August, I will be using the Pandora App a whole lot in order to get decent music to listen to.

Anyway, we found a couple of houses that we liked pretty well from the outside, and one in particular that would have been an excellent fit. We headed over to Leslie's house to swim in her pool, have dinner, and hang out with her family, and I called our Realtor to make sure he had scheduled showings of the houses we wanted to see. He hadn't. But he got in gear and scheduled them after I called. And then, around 9:45 PM, I got a call from him saying that the house we liked the best from the outside was just rented that very day, so we were just barely too late for it. Oh, well. We still had another one that we really liked.

Wednesday, July 8th: We were scheduled to meet the Realtor at our new favorite house at 9:00, and we were only a couple of minutes late. There were two houses in the same gated community, and we started at the one that we liked better after walking around the outside and peering into the windows the day before. We walked through and really liked what we saw. A little over 2100 square feet, nice appliances, big bedrooms, and a nice big game room upstairs over the garage. Ding ding. We could have just ended right there and decided on that one, but we wanted to see a couple of other places to make sure that this was the best. We looked at the other house in the gated community, which turned out to have the same floor plan, with a couple of different options. And shiny reddish brown tile all over the bottom floor. No schpanks. We headed to the next place on the list, which was a few minutes closer to my new office, but slightly smaller in size. It turned out to be occupied by a bunch of slacker, loser roommates and reeked of cigarette (and other) smoke, plus the various reptile cages and empty keg of beer. Icky. We were out of there pretty quickly. And then we hit one last other house that seemed pretty nice. It turned out to be occupied by someone very elderly and it smelled like it, too. The floor plan was kind of small compared to our favorite place, and the layout was odd. We crossed that one off, too.

So we ended up choosing the first place after all, and headed over to the rental management office to put in an application. After obtaining a money order with the application fee, we filled out the application and went back to the hotel to hang out and see what they said. They called back a few hours later and let us know that our application had been approved and that we needed to come by the next day to sign lease papers and turn in our security deposit.

Then we drove the rest of the way into downtown SAT to look at the buildings, the Alamo, and the Riverwalk. We didn't stop, since we didn't want to pay for parking or walk around in the 104 degree heat. It was nice to get a feel for the downtown area, but it was also nice to get back on the freeway and head back to the outskirts where we will be spending almost all of our time. At this point, there was nothing else left to do but head up to Leslie's house to hang out again.

But we did more than hang out. Leslie and her husband Dave took us up to this AWESOME hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant called Pappa Gallo's in Bulverde, just north of San Antonio. Oh, my goodness. It was stupendous. We will be taking anyone who comes to visit us up there to that place. Their entrees were excellent, and we had a dessert called "Sizzling Apple Pie" that is to die for. They take a cast iron plate (like they use for sizzling fajitas) and put a slice of delicious apple pie on it. Then they put a big old scoop of ice cream on top of that. Sounds good so far, right? Well, then they pour this amazing caramel syrup on the cast iron plate around the pie, and it immediately starts to bubble and boil and get even more caramelized. It is inadvisable to try to eat any of it at that point, unless you want to sear your taste buds off. So we instead busied ourselves with scooping the syrup up and pouring it over the ice cream, causing it to melt and run down the pie and into the pool of bubbling caramel syrup. Once it cooled a bit, we dug right in. It is the best dessert I have ever eaten, period.

After we were so full that it hurt, we went up the road a bit to check out where Leslie and Dave are building their dream house. It sounds like it will be amazing when it is completed. And we saw roughly 1 billion deer wandering around the property, so they will be able to have fun watching them eat all of their plants, too, when the house is done.

Thursday, July 9th: This was a slightly more lazy morning, since we didn't have to be anywhere first thing in the morning. We went to a credit union branch that would let us access our account at the credit union in Washington to get a cashier's check for the security deposit. Then we went back to the rental management agency's office to sign the lease and give them the deposit. After a bunch of signing and arrangements, we were headed out the door to get everything scheduled for the new house. A call to the power company, then lunch, and then a visit to the Universal City Municipal building later, and everything was scheduled to be hooked up and ready to go for later this month. So it will all be good and ready for us when we get there on August 4th.

At this point, we were all set. Nothing left to do but look around SAT some more and hang out until it was time to head home. So we went back over to Leslie's house, swam in the pool, took naps, and watched some TV. It was very relaxing to be done with the arrangements on the SAT end of the move. We bid them farewell for about a month until we would see them again.

Friday, July 10th: We didn't want to get up early at all today, so we slept in, hit the hotel breakfast just before it closed, and then hung around the hotel room until checkout time at noon. We drove downtown again and parked at Market Square to look for a couple of souvenirs. There are a bunch of little shops, mostly Mexican imports, and we walked around them. It seemed like there was little to no difference between the shops, and we found what we wanted pretty quickly. We looked around for a place to eat, but at this point we were kind of tired of Mexican food, so there weren't a whole lot of options at Market Square or El Mercado. We hopped back into the car and headed up to one of my favorite restaurants in the Midwest, Culver's Custard. They have frozen custard as well as "Butterburgers" and other fast food fare. It was very good, even though it was quite a way out and away from the airport--our final destination.

We finished up at Culver's, and headed in to the Hertz lot to return our trusty Mazda5. I very much like that car. If we are in a position to buy a new car any time soon, I want to get a Mazda5. Anyway, we returned the car, boarded the shuttle bus back to the airport, and then we got to sit around in the terminal enjoying the free WiFi, and trying to block out the painfully bad smooth jazz elevator music that is playing on the PA system.

We will board the plane for our first leg (to Phoenix) on the way home to Seattle in about 10 minutes, so I need to button this post up and publish it. Hope you all enjoyed this novel. We will be home in Seattle soon, but only for a little less than a month before San Antonio becomes home.

There will be plenty of room in our house in SAT for visitors, so we would love for anyone who wants to visit to come on down, y'all. The Fall and Winter here are especially perfect for visitors from colder climates.

Way Down In San Antonio

2009-07-10T10:34:00.000-05:00

Adam here. Lisa and I spent this week in San Antonio dying of heat stroke. Oh, wait, I mean we spent this week looking for a house to rent for our upcoming relocation. We'll be moving down on August 4th, and we now have a place to live. Here is a picture of the front of the house:

And here is a picture of the back of the house:

Here's some more of the back yard, from an angle:

And from the opposite angle:

This is from the French Doors in the back toward the front door:

And this is the family room off of the kitchen and dining room:

And finally, the awesome, curvy tree in the back yard that they built the fence around:

It's a pretty nice place. As long as the scorpions, roaches, and fire ants are kept at bay and not allowed to take the place over. We'll do our best to fight them back.

There are a couple more pictures of the place on my Facebook profile. Feel free to check them out there.

Fourth of July

2009-07-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

This is kind of late, but I wanted to get it done before we start posts about our new house in San Antonio. We had a fun Fourth of July weekend. Adam's family came over and we had a fun day playing games and hanging out. Our friends Anika and Sean and their little boy Terryn also came over for dinner. Adam smoked a pork shoulder roast all day, and we had pulled pork sandwiches for dinner, along with homemade coleslaw and potato salad. YUM YUM! After dinner we passed the time before dark by lighting some fireworks and hanging out outside. Then it started getting dark and the real show started. We sat in our driveway for two hours and watched a steady stream of huge fireworks from all around the neighborhood. We had a few of our own fireworks we saved for dark, too. It was very pretty, but I'm glad it only happens once a year. It was a fun day and I'm glad we could spend a little more time with family before we leave next month.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Probably The Last Lawn Update

2009-06-28T00:06:00.000-05:00

Adam here to settle people's minds about how the new lawn ultimately turned out. You know, for all of you who are lying awake at night wondering about the state of my house's surrounding vegetation.

Anyway, here are three pictures showing the front, corner, and side yards. A lot of the patches that were not growing well are catching up to the really thick parts. It looks great overall, especially compared to the other yards in my neighborhood. On to the pictures:

It's a shame that we waited this long to do this. The yard finally looks great, just in time for us to leave it behind. :-(

BUBBLES!!!

2009-06-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, Adam is in the kitchen, by the table, opening a new package of bubble wands.

Joshua is eating popcorn at the coffee table in the living room. Like a gopher, his head pops up when he hears what Daddy is doing.

"Hey! What's that?"

"Bubblebubblebubblebubblebubblebubblebubbles!!!"

Ever since he played with bubbles at his little friend Mya's birthday party last month, he has been in love with them. Mya happened to be playing at our house yesterday, too, so we all had fun with bubbles.

And then, the bubbles ran out. Oh the sadness! There is a classic 2-year-old melt down whenever the bubbles run out and it's time to go in. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

Lawn Update

2009-06-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

Adam here with another progress report on the new lawn. After being dismayed at seeing that weeds have already infiltrated several parts of the new lawn, I put down some fertilizer with weed control in it. This should help to control and/or eliminate the weeds that took root while my grass was trying to grow.

Anyway, things are looking pretty good. Large portions of the lawn are lush and beautiful, while there are still some patches where the seed hasn't really grown all that well yet. From what I have read and heard, this is fairly common. Hopefully the seed in those patches will catch up with all of its friends. Here are some pictures taken after the second time that I had to mow the new lawn:

Camping

2009-06-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

We went camping this past weekend with Adam's family, and it was Joshua's first camping trip. We went to Indian Creek campground, which is about 8 miles east of White Pass. We all had a great time with good food and only minimal rain.

Relaxing with a juice box.

Grandpa, Grandma, Brek and Julia

The master chef.

Our tent.

Joshua and Kacy.

Joshua liked to go exploring around the campsite.

He found pine cones.

And sometimes got stuck.

He loves his doodle pad...

...and Uncle Kacy's longboard.

We all had a fun time and I'm glad we got to spend some time with Adam's family before we move to Texas.

It's Alive!

2009-06-01T23:42:00.000-05:00

Adam here with another lawn update. Here are some pictures of what the new lawn looks like today:

This is a close-up from the same angle as in the last post. You can see the clear difference.

From the street, you can see lots of little green blades of tender new grass coming up.

Same with the front/side yard. This is where the new grass is growing best so far. I am excited to see just how much more it will grow within the next couple of days. I hope it stays this green and healthy as it matures.