Ryan and Erika's blog: Catching Up!

Wow! How time does fly when you're having fun...and when you're not. It looks like we haven't updated this at all since February and much has happened and Ryan has charged me with this responsibility this time. I apologize it will be a long one. So, here goes....

Another Move
At the end of February we found out that the house we were renting sold, so we had to find a new place to live. Rentals are hard to find and outrageously priced. In the end it is cheaper to buy a house than to rent, so that's what we did. We are now the happy owners of two mortgages!! Anybody know someone that wants to move to the Idaho Falls area??? There's a great house for sale there! We moved from our rental on March 31st, but couldn't get into the new house until April 14th. So, we prepared for 2 weeks of homelessness. A family at church took pity on us and let us store much of our stuff in their garage and took us in. I didn't feel that I could impose the whole family on them, so the boys and I went to Utah and visited family for a while. During all of this we got some good news - we were able to move into the new house on April 8th, a week earlier than expected.

Fun Times
When we weren't looking at houses or packing we did find some time to do a few fun things. First, we have heard about some water falls that are close to here and a pretty easy hike in, so we took a Saturday to do that. We really did hike to the falls, but they were still ice, so we just got some pictures of the kids and me in that general area!

It was a fun little hike and we will have to do it again when there isn't snow on the ground. For some reason I really didn't expect that much snow there in March, but I forget how much we actually do climb in elevation getting there! Next time we might actually have pictures of water!

We had some nice warm days in March and we had some days with 16 inches of snow. On the nice days we got outside and played. Andrew loves to ride his motorcycle (a batman big wheels) and he is actually learning how to peddle. Maybe moving in Flinstone fashion is getting old!

Caleb doesn't have a ton of outside pictures only because the ground was still pretty wet and he's not walking yet. So, most of our outside time is while Caleb is taking his nap. I'm not really a mom choosing favorites in children here!

While the boys and I were in Utah, my sister and I decided to take them to Hill Airforce Museum. Andrew had a BLAST looking at the airplanes. He ran from plane to plane with shouts of "Yee Haw!" (I really have no clue where he got that one from!) and many many "Wow!" I think the little man was in heaven. Caleb was pretty content in the stroller viewing from that vantage point. Here are some pictures of that little adventure.

The boys sitting by a plane. It was impossible to get a picture of the plane in the picture with them.

Andrew is standing by the tire of one of the planes. Just to give you an idea of scale, Andrew is 35 inches tall and the tire is still a bit taller than him!

I had to get a picture of the Idaho Jet.

Easter
We were still unpacking and living out of boxes over Easter weekend, so we missed out on the fun of dying eggs. Instead, we filled plastic eggs with jellybeans for the little man to find. And after filling the eggs I had to ask myself, is it really worth dying the eggs when there is so much less mess with the plastic eggs??? I'm sure next year we will dive fully into the mess!

Andrew finding Easter eggs.

Andrew showing his find. For the next week he kept asking when the Easter Bunny was going to come hide eggs for him again. I kept throwing away plastic eggs as quietly as I could!

Birthday Time
Can you believe our baby is one year old now?! And Andrew is 3!! It is amazing how fast it all goes by. There are days I wish for Caleb and Andrew to be a little older so my life might be a little easier when going places. Then they have a birthday and I realize all over again how much they have changed over the last year and all that they are doing now and I'm not really ready for them to be any older than they are.

This is Caleb's first birthday cake. As a one-year-old, he is crawling every where, but more importantly he is walking around furniture and with the help of mom and dad. One day soon I'm sure I will be trying to keep up with him as a biped! He's got "mamama" down pretty good, especially when he is upset. I am trying to encourage his love for "dadada"! He weigh's in at 22 pounds and is 31 inches long - still a big boy, but starting to thin out. The doctor is impressed and says all is well with the boy!

Caleb enjoying his birthday cake

All done with the cake. Evidently, he had a piece with a red balloon.
His mother has a similar picture of a cupcake all over her face at about this age!

Here is Andrew's 3rd birthday cake. He loved his dinosaurs! He is just to funny to listen to now. We have a little parrot in our house that repeats everything we say if he is within earshot. Needless to say, we are beginning to be much more careful about what is said around him!! As a 3 year old he is potty trained, which really happened around Thanksgiving. Andrew is trying to use the peddles on his bike and climbing trees. I think he might have his dad's rock climbing genes in him! He now weighs 28 pounds and is 35 inches tall. The doctor says he's healthy, but should gain some weight, which is not at all new to us since he's always been on the smaller side. The poor kid is going to be passed up by his brother if he doesn't start doing some growing soon!