New posts on our new blog

I've put a couple new posts up on our new blog at thelustyfamily.blogspot.com. Let me know if you still need an invitation! krernrer@gmail.com

Going Private

Well it's been a long time since I've posted because I've been working on transitioning us to a privage blog, which meant re-learning how to design a blog AND writing about what we've been up to.

I think I set it up right. You can find a new post here: www.thelustyfamily.blogspot.com. If you'll send me your email address to krernrer@gmail.com, I'll send you an invite. At least I think that's how it will work. Guess we'll find out!

I WUV BUNNY!

This week we went to Colorado. It was really boring.
The highlight of the trip was a couple of cotton tail bunnies that E chased around forever. He LOVED it. Ever since that trip, he's been chanting "bunny, bunny, bunny."

On the way home, we visited some friends who moved out to Vernal. We crashed their house and ahad a great time. It was fun to see them again.

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Evan is 2!

He loved the presents again. Thanks to the grandparents and aunts who celebrated with us and showered him with gifts.

Though his favorite presents may have been the balloons which provided days of entertainment.

 We made some pretty awesome cupcakes. Evan was pretty excited about kiester and elmo.

He wouldn’t eat it though. Turns out Evan hates cake. I coaxed one bite into his mouth which he promptly spat out. Here’s him scraping the last few crumbs off his tongue so he can hand them back to me. I tried it again the next day to see if maybe he was just tired, but nope. He actually screamed at me when I put that bite in his mouth. If he doesn’t like cake by next year I might have to put a candle on top of a stack of Pringles.

Stuff about Evan at 2:

He loves the Christmas tree.  He wants to kiss it every night before bed and I randomly find small toys, spools of thread and balls of paper balanced on the branches.

He’s still a stubborn eater. I usually have to force the first bite of anything new into his mouth. Then, if he likes it, he’ll eat, but if he hates it, he’ll spit it out into his hand and offer it back to me.

Whenever we give him a snack, he’ll always ask for more so we taught him “last one” to stop the fits he had when we wouldn’t give him more. Now, when we tell him last one, he carries the cracker, M&M, cookie or whatever, around with him and it takes him forever to eat it.

E vanhas a preposterous number of toys , but his favorite is still a strand of Marde Gras beads. I don’t understand the fascination.

His favorite meal is a toss-up between spaghetti and black beans, by which I mean a big pile of black beans and nothing else.

He still points with his middle finger

Evan gets on kicks where he wants a song over and over again, but his most consistent favorite is Happy Family. We have to sing through every member of the family (grandparents, great grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and dogs) before he allows us to stop.

He gets a huge grin on his face and shakes in excitement whenever Ryan kisses me. He runs over for a kiss of his own… but just from Dad.

When he gets something stuck to the bottom of his foot, he shrieks and he won’t move from the spot until we come and rescue him.

Evan knows all his letters by sight, name and sound. He knows his numbers up to 20, though about half the time eleven is oneteen and twelve is twoteen, etc.  We’re working on the twenties but so far the best we can get from him is 21=one one, 22=two two, 23= three three, etc. He also knows most of the basic shapes and colors.

Evan is obsessed with numbers. Ob. Sessed. He finds them everywhere and gets really excited when he spots one. When we read books, he ignores the pictures and reads the page numbers. When he’s falling asleep, we can often hear him counting to himself. And, when he’s showing off, he counts (according to Ryan) “as if he’s trying to convince the president to go to war.”

He’s still super clumsy. He doesn’t know how to catch himself in a fall and so usually ends up on his head. He really scares us on the stairs.

One day he discovered that all the doors in our house have a small piece of masking tape with a number (1-9) on the hinge. Ryan and I lived here 4 years without ever noticing this. 20 times a day he begs us to walk him through the house opening and closing doors so he can see his numbers. He thinks all doors should have numbers on them and tries the same game at every house he visits, but since there are no numbers on their hinges, he just points to them and chants “all gone.” He gets nearly excited about this version of the game as the one with numbers. Sylvia put numbers on the hinges of her doors so whenever we go over there the game continues. Grrrrrr Silly Baba....

He loves looking at the moon and asks to see it every night before bed.

He loves water and even loves it dripping down his face. When we pour water over his head to rinse the shampoo off, he requests “again” again and again. He also bends clear over to dunk his head in the water and then sits up to let it run down his face.

Here are some of my favorite mispronunciations:

Soup = poop

Applesauce = peepeesauce

Cookie Monster = kiester

Big Bird = Big Turd

Yee Haw = Hoo Haw

Beckie Grandma = Bwekybweckybwecky Baba

We sure love our baby boy and feel blessed to be his parents.

Happy Christmas! Merry Birthday!

All three of our birthdays fall within a few weeks of Christmas, so our celebration/present fun for the entire year is all condensed into those weeks. It makes the rest of the year a bit of a bummer but we sure enjoy our Christmas season. A LOT.

K’s Birthday

Every year, my birthday falls on whatever day in December is most convenient for us to celebrate. This year it happened to fall on Dec. 22. Ryan took me to see the movie “In Time” (entertaining except for the overt socialist metaphor) and to dinner at the Macaroni Grill (Yum!).

Yay for presents. R got me some (desperately needed) new clothes in the form of a gift card and the three wise men for my nativity. I love my beautiful nativity. 

And 29 is starting out pretty fine. Here are my favorite things about turning 29:

1.       I’m not 30 yet!

2.       I only aged one year, unlike last birthday where I spent the entire previous year thinking I was 26 and therefore aged 2.

Christmas

In all, we got 3 Christmas mornings this year.  We started out at my parents’ having fun with them and my bro and his wif.

E entertained grandma with his enthusiasm over numbers.

Christmas eve, we went to visit my Grandma. E LOVES GG. He plops himself in her lap every chance he gets.

L2 met us there and showed off her new gryphon (sp?) suit. She designed, built and sewed this all by herself.  It’s pretty amazing.

Though E didn’t quite know what to think about the giant bird-lion.

Then, finally came Christmas morning.

E really got into opening presents this year. When we told him there were no more presents, he actually screamed in frustration :)

He loved his toys and his books, especially this tractor.

But, his favorite was probably this can of pringles. Guess we don’t have to overdo it so much next year.

Everyone was right who said Christmas is so much more fun when you have kids!

We also got to talk to my missionary brother which was a lot of fun. L1 & L2 came over for the call and K conference called in so it almost felt like we were all together again.

Then, we came home that night and had Christmas #2. R & I opened our own gifts to each other. Ryan wrapped about a dozen books individually so there was lots of wrapping paper around. :)

Christmas #3 came the next day with R’s family.

And scored lots of great gifts like this USEFUL gift. Boards!

Evan loved it, of course. I hope he doesn’t think this will happen every day :)

The J2 and N surprised us with some hilarious games, one of which resulted in the most flattering collage I’ve ever created.

It was a lot of fun to spend time with our families

R’s birthday

R’s birthday was kind of a mirror of my birthday, hence the cheesy-pointing-at-presents picture of each of us.

Not because we’re boring (which we kind of are) but because we like movies and food, I took Ryan to see Sherlock Holmes (good except for the over-the-top ending) and to dinner at Texas Roadhouse (Yum!)

E’s birthday

And, of course, E turned two! Stay tuned for more on that coming soon to a blog near you.

And then the season of gifts gifts and more gifts was over. I can hardly wait for next year.

Unwanted Milestones

I'll admit that I was pretty impatient for E to learn to crawl (he didn't until 13 months) and then to walk (he didn't until 17 months) but with that has come some milestones that I hoped he'd never reach.

Enter the first black eye:

We were helping E play on a step stool but he pitched forward face first onto a sharp corner. It hit just above right between the eyes and immediately swelled up into a hard knot. An inch lower probably would have broken his nose. We felt so so so bad. Luckily, he only got this (relatively mild) black eye and a few days looking like a caveman because of a swollen eyebrow ridge.

Other milestones I'm not so thilled about E reaching (first tumble down the stairs, first goose egg, etc) all seem to be because he falls down. A. Lot. Maybe it's because I hate seeing my baby cry, but it seems to me like E is clumsier than most toddlers. He doesn't know how to catch himself in a fall. If he trips a little, he goes down all the way. Instead of landing on his knees or even on his hands and knees, he tips forward over his hands to land on his head. Instead of reaching out for something to steady himself against, he stiffens up and goes straight down. Instead of holding on when we push him around on a toy or give piggy back rides, he flails around and tips backwards. Is there any way to teach a kid how to fall correctly?

Christmas Par-tays

This year our family (as in my parents and us) were in charge of both Christmas parties (as in my mom’s side and my dad’s side). So, we put together Christmas Minute to Win It and made my relative take turns doing silly things while the rest laughed. They ended up being a lot of fun.

On the A side, we always have the great grandkids enact a nativity. For the second time, E was the youngest boy and therefore got to be baby Jesus. A very squirmy, tennis-shoed baby Jesus. J

If you ask R, my family has a get-together every weekend. We do have quite a few, but I think they’re fun and I enjoy getting to see my cousins at least once a year. The parties were really fun! Thanks Mom for all the work you put into them!

Thanksgiving with the Lustys

Nummy Nummy Nummy!

The food was so good we almost couldn’t wait to eat it.

E enjoy the “gobblegobblegobblegobble” (turkey) and LOVED the ham.

And because he’s growing up so fast, he kept climbing into this chair with his little Leapfrog cell phone. After all, everyone else was just sitting around playing on their cell phones, so why not?

It was a fun weekend with good food and great company. 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Twas’ the freaking month before Christmas

And all through the Lusty house,

Only one creature was stirring…

It was Evan! Who wore his parents OUT!!

From drawing on the walls

To screaming down the halls

From falling down the stairs

To his parents pulling out their hairs!

Now don’t get me wrong this kid is no Jack*

But when he does a somersault down the stairs
He’ll give you a heart attack!

Kendra’s the lucky one she hangs with Ev all day

She only gets things done
When Evan is at rest from all that play

Kendra still enjoys her job it is true,

But why does Access have to give
SO MANY DIRECTORIES TO DO!!!!!

Ryan is still a killer for hire

Skeeters can run but
They can’t hide from his ire!!!

Evan is growing at a very rapid rate

He’s learned his colors, some words
And he already knows his alphabAte.

So as the New Year comes

And you enjoy this Christmas time
Remember the Lusty’s
Or just send us a dime! **

Merry Christmas to all

As it is the season
To remember the Savior
His love is our reason.

*Jack is Kendra’s sister Kathryn’s son.  Dude is a terror.

** Feel free to send more than a dime.  Cash, check, money order, Pay Pal, American Express…  we aren’t picky. 

Bye Bye Beardie

Ryan grew himself a pretty impressive beard. At first, it was because he didn’t want to shave as long as his St. Louis Cardinals remained in the baseball playoffs. Then after they won the World Series (yay, Cardinals!) he kept it because my mom hates beards. Beckie: “What is that thing on your face?!” and “Wash your face before you come over to my house.” Exactly the response Ryan was looking for. He laughed for days.

When he finally did shave, he did it in stages. I wouldn’t have dated any of these men had they shown up at my door 5 1/2 years ago:

Mountain Man

Redneck

Crazy Motorcycle Man

Bad Cop/Good Cop

Ummm… No

Ah, there’s the husband that I know and love