Friday, June 14, 2013

Fun in the Sun

Time is running away with me! It seems like Memorial Day took forever to get here and now I can't believe it's already a few weeks gone. We had a good time at the annual Rees Family Reunion at the Ranch. The highlight of this year was the swimming pool.  Both boys loved it, but our Andy sure is a daredevil. It didn't take him long before he was going down the slide by himself and jumping off the diving board- with Daddy there to catch him, of course. You need your eyes on that boy every minute, because he decided to get one more jump in after he was all dry, towel and all, with no Daddy and no floaty (is that a word?). It's a good thing we were all close by! We had a wonderful time and the three-day weekend was definitely over too soon.
(For the life of me I cannot figure out how to turn this picture. Sorry.)


Andy's making a funny face, but Lance looks good :)



This week we decided to get a little pool of our own to splash in. Of course, since it's filled with hose water it was absolutely frigid. I put my swimsuit on, too, but there is no way you could talk me into sitting in it. Andy probably wouldn't care if it had ice chunks in it- he loves water! Jonathan enjoyed it, too, but I'm pretty sure his favorite part was eating the grass clippings off the lawn. 
Don't you love Jonathan's hair sticking out the top of his helmet? So cute!
Trying to share a popsicle.


Andy getting ready to plop in belly first. Brr!

Getting a break from the helmet and eating grass!




Here's to lots more fun in the sun as summer heats up!

Friday, May 10, 2013

Our Little Stunt Man

Jonathan has a new accessory.


And isn't he adorable??

I was afraid when I saw the sample helmets, because they sure looked ugly.  But now that he has it, he sure makes it look good. It makes his sweet little face look even chubbier!  He of course gets very hot and sweaty with his new gear on, so I bought him some cooler outfits for sleeping, such as the one in the picture. It makes him look like a human cannonball. A very cute human cannonball, that is. This helmet should help to correct his plagiocephaly (flat head) over the next few months. He wears it 23 hours a day, and it gets adjusted as he grows. Meanwhile, we are still doing physical therapy exercises to help resolve his torticollis- the tightening in his neck which caused him to spend so much time on his right, leading to the misshapen head. He's doing pretty well with it, and although we are sad and a little frustrated that it came to this, we are certainly glad that such things exist. We just have a very stubborn little boy! Hopefully we can channel that determination in the right direction as he gets older!
 
 Six months old and such a cutie! 


 Sitting up!

We also had the opportunity to be on the morning news. Good Things Utah did a segment on helmet therapy and we were asked if we wouldn't mind having Jonathan's head scan filmed. So we got our 15 seconds of fame! We show up about half-way through the clip:


All in all, we're grateful that we can get Jonathan's little beanie fixed in a relatively easy way, and glad to know he can still look good while doing it! I mean, how can you go wrong with a face like this, anyway?

It's RUFF being this cute!


Monday, April 1, 2013

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter this year! The weather was perfect- and it's a good thing Easter was this weekend instead of last weekend, because this is what we did the Saturday before:

Andy loved to watch the Daddy snowman and the Andy snowman get smaller everyday. It did not take long until they were gone!

Easter weekend we had a fun ward party with an Easter egg hunt, then Andy and Lance spent most of the day playing in the sunshine so I could work on these for the family dinner:
They were a lot of work, but I think they turned out well!
 It is so satisfying to see a project actually turn out right.

Sunday morning Andy had a little Easter egg hunt and then we discussed the Easter story with pictures from the Ensign. We had so much fun with food, family, candy, and sunshine, but we hope that amidst that all, Andy gleaned some of what we tried to teach over the weekend- that Easter is really about the resurrection of our Savior, and how grateful we are for his sacrifice so that we can be an eternal family and live with Him again someday.

 (Please ignore my two-tone hair and concentrate on those adorable boys.)



 Love those blue eyes!

 Happy Easter!


Monday, March 4, 2013

Staying In and Going Out

It's a lot harder to get out these days. That combined with the fact that we are trying to save our pennies meant we opted for a very simple Valentine's Day. I still wanted to make it special, and I wanted an excuse to try to make Schwartzwaelderkirschtorte all by myself. With the help of several emergency phone calls to Mom, my four-layer chocolate-cherry-marzipan masterpiece came out, well, a masterpiece! And although Andy "helped" me make it, I just realized that he didn't actually get to eat any. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?



 As an outing, last weekend we decided to head down toward our old stomping grounds. Lance has been very interested to see the progress on the burned-down Provo Tabernacle-turned-Provo-City-Center-Temple. They have excavated beneath the building and are supporting it with stilts as they begin expanding and developing the basement floors. It is going to be pretty awesome when it is done in a few years.





 As you can see, they have removed the conical roofs that top the corners. They are actually sitting just a short distance away, wrapped up to protect them from the elements. I mentioned that they looked like ice cream cones, and then the whole way home Andy talked about putting ice cream on the temple. You can tell what impressed him the most!

(Notice how Jonathan is looking tilted to the right? Apparently the muscles on the left side of his neck are very weak and the ones on the right are very tight, which leads him to prefer his right side and has resulted in a lopsided head.  We have been in physical therapy with him to strengthen his neck but he is quite stubborn. There is a chance he will end up with a helmet to help re-shape his head. We hope it doesn't come to that, but we'll see.  He's still the cutest baby ever.)
With two kiddos in tow, everything gets a little harder. But we manage to have our own fun amid the madness. We can't imagine life without our sweet boys!

Monday, February 11, 2013

Jonathan's Blessing

Our little Jonathan is already three months old! We had him blessed this Sunday. Good thing, too, because he barely fit in his outfit- we couldn't have waited another week! It was wonderful. Lance gave a beautiful blessing for our sweet boy. We had almost all of Lance's family there along with some of our friends. We just wish Grandma and Grampa Fife could have made it!


 Our little family!

I had to include this one- I am making the funny pose because I am keeping Andy from picking his nose.



 The star of the show!





We love our little J-bug!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Please Pass the &@%!

At breakfast, sometimes Andy likes a piece of toast with homemade raspberry jam.  I cut it up into pieces so he can eat it with a fork, because that's how he likes it. The other morning he was having a rather difficult time and dropped a piece. He started whining and getting frustrated when he couldn't pick up the piece that fell in his lap. Finally he stabbed it with his fork and as he lifted up the smeared piece, he looked at it with consternation and said,

"Oh, dam!"


Who knew such cute face could have such a potty mouth?

My mind started racing. Where on earth could he have picked that up? As I tried to decide how to respond, he then cried,  "I need more dam on my toast!"
 
It was pretty hilarious.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. It was fun to see Andy really start to understand things this time around and to get excited. Some of the fun things we did included going to the Zoolights at Hogle Zoo (Andy liked the sea lion and the black-footed cat best; that's about all we could see in the dark), taking the whole family to the movies (I love hearing Andy remember it: "We see Check-it Ralph and eat popcorn and drink barkly!", Jonathan slept through it), doing a nativity scene with cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Rees' house, the traditional Christmas morning, of course, and then playing in the snow. It's a good thing we all got some snow things under the tree, because it has snowed more in the past few days than I think it did all last season. All in all we had a great time. It's always over too fast!

Hogle Zoo. It was packed, but we still had a good time looking for the animals and enjoying the light displays.
Jonathan got to be the Baby Jesus in the family nativity.
Andy took his time unloading his stocking goodies.
Jonathan checking out his new ornament.
This is his smile. He really is happy.

Andy insisted on wearing his new helmet half the time. And those jelly beans he's dumping out? Yeah. Those were his breakfast.
Showing off his new shovel and snow duds!


Helping Daddy shovel the walk.

Smile, Andy!

This is just under the eave of our front porch. Once he walked out a little ways, the snow was up to Andy's thighs. It was cute to watch him tromp through it!

Tasting the snow. Maybe we should bring out the sno-cone syrup Uncle Tim and Aunt Cami got us...

Jonathan stayed toasty warm by staying inside. Isn't he getting so big?!
 Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, too!