Catching up again

It's been a while. Since last post, we've had a bunch of snow days. Snow days are torture for parents with newborns. I couldn't really go outside because I had to watch Eli, so I get snow blind staring out the window at the big kids while they play. They play outside for about an hour, and then dump all of their dripping wet clothes in a pile by the door. Then they play inside and argue and watch too much TV and make a mess. But I love them still. My kids, not snow days.

Eli went through the baby acne stage and came out unscathed. He's rolled over a few times. But that's because he hates tummy time and he did it on accident.

On another snow day, I tried to get Afton to pose for me, but she wouldn't. This is the best I could get.

Last Thursday, Dan's parents came to town. Friday they played in the snow with Dan and the kids and built a snow family.

We went to Buzz and Ned's for BBQ lunch. I took Eli home while the rest of them went to the Fine Arts Museum.

Saturday we had donuts and then went to Jamestown.

 These pics are all with my phone. I got to sit in the back sandwiched between these two the whole way.

I don't remember ever going to Jamestown before. The visitors center was really nice.

 Lots of exhibits and a cheesy video. Then you go outside and they've got a fort area with lots of different buildings.

 It was there that Sam got attacked by a rooster. He likes to pester animals so he charged the rooster and the rooster flew up and pecked him. Sam learned his lesson.

 It was a really cold day and the snow had turned to a muddy slush, so there weren't many other people there.

Next we went to look at ship replicas.

Did you know that the steering wheels on ships weren't invented until after they came here? I think the lady on the tour said they weren't invented until the 1700s. Next we visited the Indian village. There was only one man brave enough to wear a loincloth in the freezing temperatures. I wanted to take his picture, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

Sunday was the reason the Dursts came. Eli was blessed during church. In the prayer circle were Dan, Dan's dad, my dad, our bishop, Tyson Anderson, and our stake president, Brooks Baltich. Dan said it was hard for him to concentrate on the blessing because Eli was smiling these huge smiles at him the whole time (and had only smiled a few times up to that point). It was really special for Dan and a beautiful blessing.

Love that little chubs!

We had a nice dinner with both sets of parents and then M&D Cheney headed home. Monday morning after Sam went to school, we took Dan's parents to St. John's Church and then to the airport to head home.

On Sunday, Eli marked his two-month birth. I took more pictures a few days earlier. He smiled his very first time for his Grandma Cheney on Feb. 11 (a little over four weeks). Now he smiles a lot more readily and has started to coo, too.

 But usually he looks like this:

This past Saturday we went up to the temple and on the way saw a semi that had spilled grape tomatoes all over the place.

 Sam looks so comfortable, doesn't he?

Afton likes to help me in the kitchen a lot lately.

And here's a funny conversation I had with Sam the other day.

Me: Sam, will you change Eli's diaper?
Sam: No way!
Me: Please? You'd do a great job!
Sam: No. How about if you change Eli's diaper now, I'll change your diapers when you're older.
Me: Deal.
Sam turns to Afton and whispers: Silly Mom, she doesn't even know that grown ups don't wear diapers!
Little does he know. In fifty years I'm going to hold him to it. Just kidding. That would be gross.

Our New Normal

We're getting back in the swing of things around here. Slowly.

We went to the temple last weekend. Per tradition, we took a picture of Eli there for his first time.

 And for comparison purposes, here's Afton 2010.

For some reason, she doesn't look like how I remember her looking in this picture... And here's Sam.

Eli had his four-week check-up last week. he was 10 pounds, 15 ounces. He was 22 inches. That puts him at 75% for weight, 75% for height, and 75% for head circumference. He's very well proportioned and he has the smallest head of all our kids. 

He's a great sleeper at night. He goes to bed between 10 and 11, wakes up to eat around 2 or 3, then goes right back to sleep, waking up again between 5 and 7 to eat. Then he goes back to sleep for another hour or two. The trouble is that he grunts like CRAZY when he's falling asleep and it makes it hard for us to sleep. (He's in our room and I am hoping to keep him there until after Dan's parents visit so we can wait to set up the real crib in the guest room. Once we set up the crib, that room will be kind of cramped.) Dan has gone out to sleep on the couch a few times because it's too noisy. Eli's getting used to being lugged around wherever we go. I feel bad that he takes so many cat naps in his car seat instead of his crib. I guess that's what happens with the third.

The other night Sam thought it would be fun to play a new game called "dark football." He handed Dan a nerf football, then turned off all the lights in the bedroom and made it super dark. He told Dan to throw him the ball. Dan did and it hit Sam in the face. Sam started to cry and ask, "Why did you DO that??" That was the end of dark football.

Afton wants to be a detective when she grows up. The other day there was a crazy white plume of smoke in the middle of the road making my visibility just a few feet. I have no idea what caused it, but it was clearly something car related. Afton deduced that it was caused by a restaurant cooking their food too long and burning it. She's well on her way to solving problems.

We took Eli to church for the first time last week and it worked out really well. I teach singing time in the primary, so I was worried that he would need to eat while I was teaching, but I fed him between the junior primary and senior and it worked out great. Here's hoping that happens today, too! Everyone at church (and everywhere we go) comments on his hair.

We can never remember what we do for Valentine's Day (we usually don't go out or anything, so I wanted to write it down this year, even though we didn't really do anything out of the ordinary).Yesterday for Valentine's, Dan worked from home and went to an eye appointment. The kids and I cleaned the downstairs. Sam went to a birthday party. I took a nap. We got pizza for dinner. Dan got the kids those giant Hershey's kisses. His parents used to get him one every year, so he's carrying on the tradition. And we watched Dateline. The husband did it, of course. 

 My cute valentine.

More Pictures of Eli

This picture is of his second bath. I took pictures during his first bath, but he was peeing, so I didn't think those would be appropriate.

The Bathrooms: before's and after's

The powder room was finished a while ago. Just to jog your memory, here are the only two pictures I could find from before:

 Nice, right? This was when we moved in and discovered that the toilet had been leaking for who knows how long. The pedestal sink had shell imprints on it, tarnished fixtures, and yellowed stickers from its purchase 20 years prior.

Here's an after. New paint, new toilet, changed the toilet paper holder and where it's located (it was in a weird spot before), added artwork.

 New light fixture, towel holder, mirror, pedestal sink, and fixtures. SO much better than it was before!

The master bath, as I've complained, took a long and dusty time. But we're glad it's done, too. Here are some before's.

 (We were trying to decide on flooring.) Brass everything, low vanities, a huge jetted tub that took up tons of space and we never used.

 Off to the right in this picture is a "water closet" but it didn't have a door so it wasn't private anyway.

 The toilet was bad and ran a lot.

The pic below is taken from inside the water closet. The shower door and the bathroom door would whack each other if they were open at the same time. The tile going around the top of the shower had leaves on it.

 And it's hard to tell what this is, but it's a half planter shelf that went on one side of the bathroom. In the bottom left corner of the picture is the ceiling of the water closet. The right side of the picture is where the shelf went over the shower. We ripped all that out.

Here are some after's.

This first picture is a view from the doorway. We replaced everything.

 We still need to get a linen cabinet and some artwork for over the tub area. As you can see, we ripped out the water closet and tore down the planter shelf. It's much more open in there now and feels a lot less cramped. Surprisingly, I've already used that tub about 10 times.

That's it! We plan on keeping all other house projects much less expensive this year!

2014 Resolution Recap

Here's what I wrote for my 2014 resolutions:

Read at least 30 books. (I would like 10 of these books to be biographies on the next 10 presidents - starting with Mr. Jefferson.)
Take a trip with Dan for our 10-year anniversary.
Run a half marathon.
Continue practicing the piano for 20 minutes, five times a week.
Complete AND PRINT blurb books for 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Teach Afton the alphabet and the first 20 numbers. That girl has no interest at all in it.
Participate in some kind of service project.

Well, I did read 30 books, but only FIVE were about presidents. I got stuck on Andrew Jackson and I just can't get through it. I've renewed it like 6 times...

Dan and I took a trip for our anniversary and it was awesome. I also ran a half marathon and completed and printed a blurb book for 2010, but not 2011 or 2012. Afton knows her letters, but she's still working on those numbers. And I did participate in a service project.

The piano, I'll admit, has fallen to the wayside. Especially now that there's a baby in the house...

So, that's like 50%. For some reason, though, I continue to enjoy setting goals, despite my ability to keep them. So, without further adieu, here are my goals for 2015:

Read at least 30 books. (And finish that dang Andrew Jackson!)
Run another half marathon. (Probably the Richmond Half in November.)
Complete and print blog books for 2011 and 2012.
Use the fabric that I have before buying any more (unless it's for a very specific project like curtains).
Write in my journal at least once a month.
Read the Book of Mormon cover to cover during the month of March. (I'll continue to read it all year, but I've never done the "March Madness" challenge and I think it would be good for me to do.

So there you have it. My personal goals for 2015.

And here's my book list from 2014 in case anyone is interested.

1. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel Brown.
2. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
3. The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler
4. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
5. Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
6. Thomas Jefferson by R.B. Berstein
7. James Madison by Ralph Ketcham
8. The Honest Life by Jessica Alba
9. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
10. Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
11. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
12. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
13. The Last Founding Father: James Monroe by Harlow Unger
14. About Alice by Calvin Trillin
15. Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Kinsley
16. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
17. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
18. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
19. Escape from the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew by Alex Kershaw
20. Open Road Summer by Emery Lord
21. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
22. Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloane
23. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
24. John Quincy Adams by Harlow Unger
25. Paper Towns by John Green
26. Dodger by Terry Pratchett
27. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
28. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King
29. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
30. The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
31. Night by Elie Wiesel

That's 16 nonfiction and 15 fiction. My favorites were The Boys in the Boat (which follows a crew team from the University of Washington during the 30's), and Wonder (about a middle school boy who has a physical deformity). Both really good reads and highly recommended.