Sunday Drive

Before we moved, our church was from 9-12 and Nate was usually in meetings from 6am-3 or 4pm. We now have church from 1-4 and don’t yet have any responsibilities, so it’s a long morning. I’m usually happy to hang around the house and get ready for church, read, etc. but Nate gets a little antsy, so we decided to go for a Sunday drive yesterday. We drove up Provo canyon and the colorful fall leaves were much more prevalent than I expected – I feel like fall is sneaking up on us. It was beautiful! We drove up to a park Nate had been to before and went for a short walk. I’m always disappointed when the pictures don’t quite capture the fall beauty, but I guess you just have to experience it in person. Bennett liked pointing out the orange trees (still his favorite color) and had fun finding rocks and throwing them in the creek.

 

(one with me in focus, one with Bennett in focus…unfortunately we didn’t get one with both)

5 Months & Solid Food

Ryan’s 5 months now, and I honestly can’t think of much that has changed since I did his 4-month post. He is getting more mobile and can pivot pretty well when he’s laying on his tummy. He’s really interested in the things around him and will grab for whatever is close enough (or nearly close enough) to reach – toys, my hair, my food if he’s on my lap, etc.). He loves his jumperoo – both playing with the toys and just jumping up and down. He also loves his big brother and gets excited when Bennett plays with him. Unfortunately, he’s not sleeping through the night, but hopefully that will come soon. Although maybe I don’t want it to…I would lose my excuse for taking an afternoon nap :) We’ve learned that he doesn’t like it when I’m gone and is a little too attached to me, which I didn’t think would happen this young. Hopefully he’ll grow out of it – I don’t feel like I can leave him with anybody except Nate for very long or he’ll just cry the whole time. Anyway – other than that he’s still a fairly easy-going baby (although he has his moments). He smiles and laughs a lot, and we love having him around!
We decided to start him on solid food a little earlier than we did Bennett, partly because Bennett took a really long time to start eating much and his weight gain slowed a ton, so we wanted to avoid that with Ryan. We started him on cereal shortly after he turned 5 months old and he’s doing great with it and seems to really like it. Bennett always wants to feed him, which is cute – but messy. And I have to make sure he doesn’t stick the spoon in too far. Here are a couple pictures of his first feeding and a little video for the grandparents.

Labor Day

To celebrate Labor Day, we met up with Dave & Liz and Camille for tin foil dinners up in Provo Canyon. We seem to be unlucky with tin foil dinners lately – we tried to do some last year and ended up eating them by the light of our cell phones because they took forever, it got dark, and our flashlight batteries died. We were slightly more successful this year, they just seemed to take a really long time. It was a fun way to celebrate the end of summer though, and to spend some time with Dave & Liz before they move to California at the end of this month (so sad!!). And the tin foil dinners were delicious when they did finish!  We missed Bryce, who was dutifully finishing his accounting project.

Bennett’s was one of the first ones done – probably because it was pretty small. I’m pretty sure this is the only time he’s eaten cooked carrots :)

and…proof that I was there – I realized that I’m always behind the camera instead of showing my lovely face :)

Thanks for a fun night!

end of summer

A few pictures of what we’ve been up to lately…

* playing at the park while we were evacuated.  Long story, but about a week after we moved, Nate came home and smelled gas. We called the gas company and they brought their sensors out to test the levels. The guy said that about 1/2 the time when people call, it’s nothing, but after testing around our house he said “this is a real one”. Great. He dug around the meter right by our house and Nate could hear the gas hissing as it came out of the pipe. Apparently a tree root had grown down and broken the pipe. There were “explosive levels” of gas near our house, so the guy told us “I don’t think it’s going to blow, but we’d better evacuate you and your neighbors while we fix it”. He then nonchalantly made his way over to our neighbors’ house as we frantically tried to gather our dinner, change of clothes, diapers, and a couple most valuable items (i.e. computers with all our pictures on them) in case we couldn’t come back that night (or ever). We went to the park and ate and played soccer, then hung out at my sister’s house until about 10:30, when they let us back in. It was a great way to make our grand entrance into the neighborhood (oh, you’re the ones who had the gas leak and forced half the street to evacuate).

* exploring the park by our new house. Bennett actually went down the really big slide without any coaxing from me…usually I can’t even entice him to go down much smaller slides with me.

* hanging out at home – here’s Bennett holding Ryan, Ryan playing in his favorite new (to him) toy – the jumper. He loves to jump and will play with the toys for a long time. And Bennett enjoying the swingset in our backyard

 

* handsome boys wearing their matching church clothes

* meeting Nate for a picnic on campus. Bennett loved chasing around the family of teenage ducks

* watching the BYU-Ole Miss game. We had to put on our “rally caps” when things weren’t going so well…and fortunately they seemed to work – the game turned around right about when we put them on.

* Sunday dinner at Nate’s parents’ house. We fed corn cobs to the chickens, Bennett loved looking at the bunny they found in their front yard, and Ryan played with his grandma.

   

Hopefully the warm weather will continue a little longer!