I miss my old calling

I am a visiting teaching coordinator in my new ward. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve. I saw this video from one of the boys who was in my Sunday School class that I taught in our old ward. I miss that.  It was a lot of fun. Oh well, enjoy!

Scottie versus Seminary

My dad has a healthy view on misfortune, if you take a picture of it, it doesn't seem so bad and you eventually can look back at it and laugh.  My most memorable picture of misfortune was when Shannon and I got the worst sunburns on our faces EVER while snow skiing.  Literally, we both could end up with skin cancer from that one burn.  I wish I had the picture handy so I could show you our misery with both our little faces puffed out to about twice their normal size.  I think we were old enough that we should have put on sunblock ourselves, but young enough to forget and not do it.  Youch!  

Well, in the spirit of my dad, I will post this:

Scottie had his own little misfortune on Sunday.  After church Hyrum had a little meeting in the seminary room.  Scottie having fun, pulled down one of the extra thin and not-so-sturdy seminary tables on his head.  This is how it was it was described.  Scottie falls bonk on his head and then bonk went the table on top of his poor little head.  Luckily the man Hyrum was meeting with had sense or luck enough to get his toe in there, thus decreasing the brunt of the fall.  He figures that is what saved Scottie from stitches and a concussion.  

These pictures taken after a couple of hours and after the bleeding had stopped and been cleaned up definitely don't do it justice.

Notice the goose egg starting to form on his forhead.

This morning while he was sleeping you can get a good view of the cute little gash coming out of the corner of his eye but the goose egg is sort-of hidden beneath his hair.

We are glad you are feeling better little buddy.

Bed Head

The car obsession lives on!  Scottie has taken to sleeping with his cars.  His stuffed monkey is a lot nicer and softer to sleep with, but he needs both.  So when getting him ready for church on Sunday after a nap, this is what we found.

I'm tired Dad, did you have to wake me up?  YAWN!

 Look closely friends, yes that is a nice car-print on the side of his cheek, see the sweet set of wheels on that baby?  It was a RACE car!

 

Whatever makes my boy happy.  He wasn't complaining.

Scottie the Scientist

For Valentine's Day, Hyrum gave me the best present ever, he finished his paper two days early and spent the WHOLE day on Saturday with me and Scottie.  Talk about a fun gift.  He also gave me those pearls he bought in China that I knew he had and that he had been hiding since July. Now that is patience on my part.  :)  So to take advantage of his day with us, we went to the Pacific Science Center.  That place is so fun.  

Highlights of the trip:

• Naked Mole Rats-Scottie loved watching them climb around their tunnels.  They mostly were eating and sleeping but there were a few of them that were entertaining us with their wrestling and tunneling.
• IMAX-we decided that one 3-D movie on fish (non-fiction and everything) was okay for our media fast since we haven't watched any real movies or shows and will hold off on anymore for the rest of the month.  Plus these tickets need to be used before the end of March and who knows when this baby will come.  Scottie actually kept his 3-D glasses on the whole time and only got scared when the fish were hunting.  He really loved the bubbles that floated out into the crowd at the end and tried to catch the images.  
• There was a bubble man that demonstrated cool bubble-blowing techniques including blowing bubbles out of helium that floated away, and bubbles out of liquid nitrogen that dropped down to the floor.  Fascinating.
• Water area.  Playing in water is always fun, especially when there are boats to experiment with.  

Here are some pictures of the adventure:

This giant chair and table shows Hyrum how Scottie feels when we put him in normal chairs and scoot him up to the table to eat.  

We tried to get Scottie to look at the camera but playing in the water takes a lot of concentration.

The butterfly house!  It was really cool.

3-D IMAX goggles.  Hyrum helped Scottie get them right for the show so that he could participate in the fun.

What a great day!  Thanks Daddy!

The Count Down...

So I am officially 16 days off of my due date.  Let the waiting begin.  At the beginning of this pregnancy I told myself that I would try and think of my due date as the 15th instead of the 9th of March so that I wouldn't get too excited or annoyed about my progress... well somewhere in the last few weeks that notion has gone out of the window and I am eagerly anticipating the return of my waist.  

My childhood buddy, who also grew up in Monroe and basically slept over every single Friday night for several years, came over on Monday and Friday this week.  Her kids were on mid-winter break from school so we took advantage.  She is due mid-Aprilish...

Here we are in all of our pregnant glory

Woah baby!

Keeping Busy

We have had the nicest February weather that I can remember for Washington.  Hallelujah.  The Lord must know that we are sacrificing this month and so is giving us some tender mercies.  It actually hasn't been a big deal to not watch TV or movies.  Scottie has only thrown 2 tantrums due to desires to watch Lightning McQueen and friends.  Besides that it has been really nice.  We have kept very busy enjoying the February weather.  

I have read a million books this month, but that is not new really, he has always been a bit of a book worm.  His new favorite is:

He will always go and find it and say "This is a good one."  I like it better than the Cat in the Hat which we also have read a billion times.  I do not like that Sam I am.

We spent a fun filled morning throwing rocks in the river down at Buck Island in Monroe.  Scottie had so much fun that we went back the next day with cousins Cade and Eli. 

I can't remember if this was from January or early February but we have had a little snow a few days and here is our masterpiece.  Scottie and I made this before church one morning.  Now that church starts at 1pm, we have some time for family play before church.  

We went out to Start-up (how many Washington residents know where that is?) to my parents' piece of riverside property.  We wanted to see how much of it we lost this year.  We are missing a big portion of the rocky beach but maybe we will regain some when it is summer.  It is always an adventure to go out and see what has changed each winter.

Probably the coolest fruit of the media fast for Hyrum and I is we have been getting into family history.  Hyrum got us set up on Ancestry.com with our own family tree and now we are merging with his sister to make a mondo family tree.  Hyrum has gotten really into it and even stayed up past his bedtime last night searching out records and obituaries on my family line.  Way to go Hyrum!

Tools that work

"Daddy, breakfast?" "Daddy, jam?" "Daddy, toast?" Being the caring father that I am, I naturally fixed Scottie some healthy whole-wheat toast, lightly buttered, with a spoonfool of jam, cut it in half, then went back to my pressing email needs.

Apparently, Scottie is used to having Mommie serve his toast with a napkin to keep his hands clean....because I looked up a few moments later, I caught him doing this.

Evidentally, Scottie had seen that Daddie was too busy, or too foolish, to get him a napkin. No bother, he thinks, I'll just reach up into the drawer and get myself a spoon.

What's left when breakfast is over? Everything but the jam.

Media Fast

Our bishop has challenged our congregation to have a media fast for the month of February.  So, no movies, tv, nothing.  Does blogging count as entertainment media or journeling?  Hmmm...  I don't mind doing the media fast but am not looking forward to enforcing it at all times with my 2 year old.  Scottie hardly ever watches tv or movies, but occasionally he really really really wants to watch the movie Cars to get his Lightning McQueen fix.  Is that so bad?  :)  

I left my heart in San Jose.

This past week we went to San Jose, California for one of Hyrum's conference. He presented a paper that he and his professor had worked on. At the last minute we bought a ticket for me and I got to go too. Thanks to my sister Shannon, it was just the two of us. Scottie had an awesome time playing with his cousins Eli and Cade, and we had a relaxing little vacation. Here we are at the Japanese friendship garden.

One of the coolest things we did was go to the Tech museum.
Here I am walking the line with drunk goggles. These are supposed to estimate what it feels like when you have a blood alcohol level of like 1.1 or something.
I would be a terrible drunk. I could not walk straight to save my life.

They had the coolest robots and computers. We programmed our own Mr. Potato Head, had a computer take a picture of us then draw the outline with a robot, and this cool robot would spell out anything you asked it to in blocks.

The tech museum also had a special exhibit spotlighting Leonardo DaVinci and all of his invention/engineering projects. They had tons of models showing his inventions. This one was a spring that basically told time. Springs were basically the only storage form of kinetic energy back then, they were like today's batteries.

His flying machine. The wings were supposed to flap. I doubt this one ever really worked but cool idea Leonardo.

We went to the Winchester Mystery House. This was a crazy house built by the widow of the man who made Winchester guns. She was haunted by the fact that they killed so many people and felt that she could only appease the spirits by constantly building. So this house has all sorts of odd architectural things inside. Legend has it she used to hold seances and sleep in a different bedroom everynight to avoid the ghosts.

Ooh, the Winchester Mystery house all in gingerbread.

Overall we had a great time. I loved getting some sunshine, I don't get enough vitamin D in Washington in the winter. I even went swimming in the hotel's outdoor pool though it was only maybe 70 degrees. It felt great to me.

Seattle Winter, some fun to be had.

Sometimes I feel like Seattle winters are the worst. You don't get much sun, and this year it has been extra cold and had lots o' snow. Lots of snow for us is 2 weeks straight (that never happens) over Christmas and some random snow days where we get snow for 2 days and then in another couple of days it melts. But still. Anyway, we have actually had a lot of fun this winter. Here are some of the things we have been doing.

The day after Christmas we braved the snow and went to the zoo with the Farmers!
It was a lot of fun and we never checked out the inside exhibits so well.

Scottie and Hyrum feeding the birds.

Jimmy and Eli feeding the birds.

Cade hatching out of a dinosaur egg.

Scottie and Cade enjoying the zoomasium.
Notice how wet Scottie's pants are. He didn't care that it was snowing out, he still wanted to splash in any puddles and to fall down in snowdrifts. He had a blast.

New Years eve with the Travis Magelsen family and some ward friends.
We had some live accordion entertainment from Hyrum.

Scottie enjoying the sparkling cider. We rang in the New Year with the kids at 9:30pm.
They even set the clocks forward...devious Melissa.

Karissa gave Hyrum and I a day of babysitting for Christmas.
We decided to use it with a day of snow-shoeing. We had a blast!

My sister Shannon and I took our kids to the Children's Museum.
Here is Scottie and Cade being firemen.

Scottie driving the tractor.


Downstairs in the museum they had a "workshop" where you could build stuff.
We had a blast building towers and here is our igloo that we built around the kids.
Their favorite part was busting out of it when we would build it around them.

Anyway, we have had a pretty decent winter so far. 2 more months to go.