Monday, October 10, 2011

More Utah

More photos from our trip.


Carli getting asked to Homecoming with Army men.

Another normal picture of Jamie and Sara.  

Checking out an airplane

Jumping with Grandma

Tractors

James asking Grandma about the dump truck

James watching the dump track

He kept making this face to my mom.  It was hilarious.

Bowl hats are all the new rage.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

BYU VS UTAH


James questioning why we are wearing BYU stuff.


Pre game excitement.


Which was shattered in the first 30 seconds....and then about every 30 seconds after that.  


Cousins (caution ... baby bum nudity)

So now that I have gone through a lot of photos from Utah I'm realizing that I am the bad one about taking photos.  There are so many people I missed.  Next time I'll attach the camera to my hip.

So when we got to Utah James 3 cousins on the Sorenson side of the family were visiting at my parents house for the week.  It was so fun and SOOO crazy.  And I only got a few photos of the back of heads....and running blurry heads.  Oh well.




A week later James got together with his cousin on the Wright side of the family.  They are one month apart and it was so fun to see them together.

They splashed in the tub together.



They took on the jungle gym.
 
 




They explored trees


These old guys watched.  They just can't keep up.





Tractors!

We were so lucky to get to go to Utah for a month...but a month wasn't long enough I still had lots of family to spend MORE time with and lots of friends that I didn't get to see.  I apologize if you are reading this and you are one of them.  Never never enough time.

Anyway so Rocky had a rotation at the University of Utah for a month and he let James and I drive him there. We were happy to do it.  It's not often that we get extended time with Rocky.

One weekend we went up to Logan for a quick visit with James Great Grandparents....who are pretty much the coolest.  James is really into Tractors these days and well what do you know??? Both sets of great grandparents had a tractor for him to ride.  He was in tractor heaven and pretty serious about it too.  Driving a tractor isn't all fun and games you know.

 Well driving a tractor is funner for Grandpa but he has a few more years of experience so he can smile.
James showing dad how to put his hands on the wheel.

Grandma made a friend for life when she gave James he very own ice cream cone.  Grandma also managed to avoid the camera most of the time.  Don't worry Grandma...I'll get you my pretty.  

James and Grandpa S became two peas in a pod.  Here is Grandpa explaining the in's and out's (who's in and out ... haha) of his Will.  

The tractor across the street.  Pretty cool and HUGE for a little guy.

Buddies!

James running to Grandpa.

Probably talking about Tractors...

Riding the Tractor that keeps the green stuff down.

James was thrilled (and so were the chickens) when Grandpa C gave him a cup of candy (wheat) to feed the chickens.  

James was even more thrilled when he saw the HUGE patch of tomatoes in the garden...just his size.

Here he is trying to keep up with Grandma...she is a quick one.

James checking Grandpa's work.  

Floating boats with grandma.

We had such a good time with all the family in Logan.....Aunt Sue and Joann's family also evaded the camera.  We wished we could have spent more time.  Thanks for the wonderful memories!

Saturday, October 8, 2011

RED ROCK RELAY

A SPECIAL MOMENT FOR ME
When my sisters asked to me to run a relay with them I thought it would be way fun and so of course I said yes.  Then as it got closer and my training wasn't going well I starting thinking that it wasn't going to be fun - it would be hard.  Then it got really hot here in Ohio - and we didn't even have to drink water anymore because we just got it when we breathed the humid air.  And well, I didn't have any plans to drown (you know from breathing too hard in such humid weather) so of course I couldn't train in those conditions.....so the race REALLY didn't seem like it would be worth it.  And then I was going to have to leave James overnight without me.  How would he ever survive with his loving grandparents and aunties that would probably spoil him to death......ok ok, I wondered how I would ever survive.

Jamie charging up her MAJOR hill
Yes, I'm pathetic.  (Please see the last post when I cried because I was told that I could leave nursery).

So anyway there were way tooooooo many hard things going on here.

Most of my training consisted of thinking about how I should be training and then thinking of excuses as to why I couldn't.
Sara after finishing her 8 miles run (it was 8 right?)

I was pretty sure that the elevation difference was going to kill me.  Ohio and Utah - they really different.

I could barely stand the thought of leaving James.

Janice's unfortunate injuring run ( she became our driver after this run)
When I did actually train I would get to about 2.9 miles and then need to use the bathroom would hit me so hard that I'm still embarrassed thinking about how I'm sure I looked as I walked/danced/pranced/ran/walked/pinched/ran/danced/pranced/pinched home.   And it happened multiple times.  So when I saw that all of my legs of the race were over 3 miles I figured there was no way I would be helping out my team at all.
Alice

Overall I was scared - scared of the unknown.  scared of what my body might or might not do.

Alice and Juicy
My van consisted of all girls, all related, except for when Neil (a cousin) couldn't stand how much fun were having and begged to join us for a little while.  Then he couldn't handle the pure awesomeness of us girls and so his head exploded and we gave him back to the other van.
Me yelling as I got toward the end of my long run.  I was loving it.


But then it came time to race and so race is what I did.
Neil before his head exploded from girl awesomeness


Cute Shaunee who would rarely look at the camera

Janice intoxicated by the smell of my shoes.  Whoooweee

A normal picture of Juicy and Sara

Our Light Saber - feel the power

Group shot

The girls!
The Sisters
 I'm happy to say that I finished.  I ran most of all three of my legs.  I had the best time with my van mates and our team 2 van.  I loved the experience but would probably think twice about doing it again.





18 MONTHS

Seriously time is going by way too fast and in just a week James will be a month older so I better get the 18 month report in here.


One thing is that he is very much on the move and discovering.  He is much harder to photograph.







James seemed to make some major changes from 17 to 18 months.
He weighs 22 lbs and is ?? inches.  I'm so bad - don't remember.  I hope hope hope that I can find my printout with numbers.

So he lost weigh but grew in height.

He doesn't like to eat much, it just gets in the way of play.  The Dr. told me to not worry too much - he won't let himself starve.  Sounds encouraging right?

When we can get him to eat something he usually prefers tomatos, grapes, any fruit really, or anything that dad is eating.

He loves to play with trains - he calls them Tractors.  In fact if it has wheels it falls into the tractor category.

He has named his binky.  He call's it "bunny."

He loves grandpas and great grandpas and uncles and almost uncles.  Girls are ok....but boys are awesome.  I think I'm (mom) still tops though and I am all right with that.

He is saying more words then we can count and is getting pretty good at copying us.

You know that your prayer is too long if James says "amen" before you do.  He likes them short and to the point.

He loves watching shows.


He loves to play outside and loves Rocks and throwing rocks and eating rocks.

He sleeps really well but wakes up crying.

He has a super funny fake laugh....which may be a real laugh but sounds fake.

He is super good at spotting planes in the sky and finding animals.

He LOVES animals, especially Shasta, my parents cat.  And especially small animals that he can hold.

He is very sweet and gives lots of hugs and kisses....and he is totally a toddler and hits when he doesn't get what he wants.

He has started to go to nursery, I cried when he was doing well and they told me I could leave.  Wasn't I just counting down the days at the 17 month mark????