We're Baaaaaaack!

Okay, we never really went anywhere. I guess you could say that Ryan was swimming his way out of Mosquito Swamp and I was digging my way out from under 1000s of pages of savings directory. So, now we're back to a land where we have actual free time. Thus, a blog post. Yay! And hopefully a few more in the near future to bring us up to the present.
So, what's happened since July? How about we start with August.

Ryan and I had been dying to take Evan swimming forever. He loves his bath so so much that we knew swimming would be a hit. Tooele even has a great pool nearby and in August we finally got the chance. Guess what? It was a hit! He splashed us, himself, kids sitting nearby, etc...

I don't think he knew quite what to do on the waterslide, so Ryan taught him to say "Weeee." Then we couldn't get him to stop.

Then on the 17th, we went camping to Payson Lakes. We passed a lot of beautiful (and empty) campsites to arrive at the site we reserved online sight unseen. It was the campsite from Hell! The one scraggly tree in the area was too far from the firepit to provide any shade AT ALL. Poor Evan couldn't take a nap because the inside of the trailer was like an oven.

From 10-4 the only way to survive was to live by the lake. That was really fun for all of us. We didn't take swim diaper for Evan so he sat right on the rocks with just a onsie for cushion. It shows how much he loves water that he stayed in the water for a long time anyway. When he got cold, I held him on my lap to dry off and after a second my lap went from being cold and wet to being warm and wet. Yuck! I guess it had been a long while since I'd been peed on so it was probably about time.

We taught Pips how to swim (by chucking her in the deep end. Nice, Ryan :) and she had herself some fun chasing after ducks.

Whenever we were back at camp, you could hardly find Evan without a piece of chalk in his hand. He'd walk around the cement pad and every few steps, reach down and draw a single line. The cement was pretty well covered at the end of the trip.

The second day coming back from the lake, we made it back just SECONDS before a huge storm ripped through and soaked everything not already in the trailer. Here's the Lusty family trying to dry out our chairs so we could sit around the fire later that evening.

At least it was nice and cold at night! The trip was really fun :)

And we came back with a souvenir: Evan DEMANDS to play "wee" anytime we are walking anywhere. Let me explain. To encourage Evan to walk all the way to the lake instead of being carried, Sylvia and I each grabbed one of his hands and taught him 1, 2, 3 WEEE! Pretty soon, he was requesting "wee" every few steps. Later that day, Ryan and I tried to play with wee with him, but he threw down Ryan's hand and reached for Sylvia's. Apparently its a mama and grandma game only. Funny kid.

Aaaand, this doesn't have anything to do with anything but I think it's cute how Evan sleeps with head jammed in the corner.

He wakes up like this more often than not. I love him.

18 Months and Stinkin Cute.

My sweet little boy is now 18 months. Here are some things about him that I love and just don't want to forget.

Evan has been saying “Bwap” non-stop for about 2 months now and we’d always say back “that’s not a word!” Last week, he finally added an R to the end of it and we figured it out. “Bwap’r” is “Tractor!” Guess we should have figured that one out for him only saying it while looking at the tractor page in his farm book.

When he gets excited, he rotates his wrist and ankles furiously.

If a book has a car, truck or tractor in it somewhere, Evan will speed through all the other pages of cute animals, babies, etc so he can stop on the car page. When we’re outside and a car goes by, he stops everything to watch it go by. He can’t see a car without making a motor noise constantly for the next several minutes.

He'll eat something just fine until he sees something that he wants more. Then, he spits out everything that is in his mouth, throw the rest of the old thing on the floor and start shoveling in the new thing.

I can't put more than a few pieces of toast in front of him at a time because he shoves one after the other in his mouth until he gags and spits them all back out again.

Drumming is his new passion. He walks around the house hitting things with a drumstick and listening to the different sounds they make. He hasn't learned to eat with a spoon yet because the instant he gets one in his hand, he turns his plate upside down and starts hitting it with the spoon. He also likes to put the stick/spoon/whatever in his mouth and bounce it up and down with his jaw onto whatever he's drumming.

Books hold his attention for long periods of time. When he gets bored of one, he slides off our laps, grabs another one and walks back with it held high above his head.

Three things guarantee a total meltdown: coming in from outside, getting out of the bathtub, and taking away bobby pins that he somehow finds even though I’ve SCOURED the house for them.

He’s been on a spitting kick lately. We used to have contests with him, spitting back and forth. But now that he’s started spitting on strangers, we’ve been working to stop it. Also, one day he discovered that he could spit on the floor/my couch/my shirt and watch the spit droplets accumulate. A few days later he discovered that having food in his mouth while spitting gets even more dramatic results. Ah the things that fascinate a baby. Why do they also have to aggravate the mother?

Sometimes he walks with his eyes scrunched closed, just for fun.

Evan has always liked splashing in the tub. Now that he’s bigger and stronger, we can always plan on getting completely soaked. It’s intentional, aimed right at our faces and apparently very amusing. He loves his bath so much, he almost can't stand the time it takes to get undressed and into the tub.

He refuses to say “mama” on command and ALWAYS responds with an enthusiastic “dada.” (This has been going on for about 2 months now.) Since I usually end with a “grrrrrr” of frustration after several times back and forth, he’s added a growl onto the end of the exchange as well.

He says:

• Dada is “Dada”
• Mama is “Dada”
• Grandpa is “Bampa”
• Baby is “bebe”
• Milk, cookie and cracker are all “k”
• Tractor is “Bwap’r”
• Banana is “Nanananana”
• Hi, bye and night-night are “HI-EE!”
• Wow is “Wow”

Some words he won’t say because he has a sound effect for it instead, which I think he finds much more amusing than saying the actual word.

• Doggie prompts panting
• Kitty and mouse prompt a squeak
• Car prompts a motor noise (vibrating lips)
• Fire truck prompts a siren (singing quickly between high and low notes)
• Pig prompts a snort (which actually sounds more like he's getting ready to hock a loogie)

We sure love you, Little Bug!

Allred Family Reunion

I like that we’ve been having our own family reunion. Its fun and now that we're all spread out, I don't get to see my family as often as before.

We went to see Little Mermaid at the Tuacahan Theater and the first 45 minutes were really great. To open the play, water came rushing out to cover the stage and set the scene, and we got to watch the people on the front row scramble to get their purses off the ground :) They had some great special effects suspending people on wires behind sheets of water to make it look like they were floating.

All was going great until the scene where the storm destroys Prince Eric’s ship and Ariel saves him from drowning. At that moment a real (and huge) storm came up over the mountain and started soaking us. They couldn’t have timed it any better if they had tried. I think the thunder sound effect guy was timing the booms to the real lightning strikes in the sky so we couldn’t figure out which was real and which created. The rain was blowing in from behind us and looked like they were spraying us on purpose with a fire hose.

Alas, since it’s an amphitheater, instead of watching Poor Unfortunate Souls, we instead had to file out with the rest of the audience to find cover. We lost grandma in the crowd, which panicked my mom more than GG I think. Don’t worry. We found her again.

After almost an hour, they announced that the show was officially cancelled, but we couldn’t hear it because too many people were talking. Apparently this was just a little too aggravating for 2 guys who got in a fight over it. One of them punched an old guy in the face. Yep. Some people are so….

The next day we spent at Sand Hollow Lake. I like that lake and its warm water and red sand beaches. We went out on Dustin’s boat and he was nice enough to drive us around all day long.

I'm only posting this horrible picture of me because the lake looks so pretty in it. Don't judge me...

Cousin Jack loved the boat... and my sunglasses.

Evan loved loved loved loved loved splashing in the shallows. We could hardly convince him to come out.

We worried we might have to bail early to let him nap in the afternoon. He got tired and uncomfortable and super itchy. He kept scratching his head and pulling on his ears like crazy. Luckily, Ryan sang him to sleep and he napped right there in his dada’s arms. So adorable.

We broke camp in the middle of a windstorm which, when you add in the sand, was not fun. The girls went home and the boys drove the boat across the sea of death, braving 5 foot waves and a chain link fence to get out of the water during the storm. Then they went back in for a night of fishing. Ryan won with the first and longest fish. Of course, fish always look bigger when held close to the camera.Yay husband!

It was really fun to spend time with my family, even if all the spouses couldn’t be there. I hope we can all be there in years to come.

Camping with the Lustys

We’ve gone up into the mountains a few times with the Lustys and once with the Allreds. It’s been fun for our mouths, but not for our hips to have “fat potatoes” 3 times already this summer. Mmmmmmm. Fat potatoes.

Happy birthday to the redheads.

The first couple times, Evan was banished to his portable crib and was not impressed with our refusal to let him walk barefoot across broken glass and wander off the cliff into the river below.

But when we went to Lodgepole, our campground had a couple cement pads, connected by a ramp. Evan loved loved loved walking back and forth, up and down the ramp. He just learned how to walk in shoes (since I ALWAYS leave him barefoot) the day before so I was quite proud of him.

And that cedar stick of fire wood he picked up at the end of the video was his favorite toy EVER and he walked around for 2 days  hitting stuff with it.

He threw a couple fits when we wouldn’t let him out into the street until his dad came up with this barrier. He tried to get around it exactly once. He did a summersault off into the weeds and didn’t try it again.

The dog got filthy because she couldn’t keep her nose away from the dutch oven.

And anything we left out for more than 2 seconds got a filmy coating of this yellow powder we can only assume is pollen. Good thing no one was allergic because the air was thick with it.

In all, Evan loves loves loves being outside so camping is right up his alley. We're looking forward to many more camping trips in the future.

Guess Who's Walking? :)

Easter

We spent Easter morning at my parents’ with Kathryn, Dustin and their kids. While they ran around like crazy gathering about 50 dozen eggs, Evan was content to simply put eggs in his basket, take them out, put them in, take them out…

And this is the best picture we got of the little cuties all together. They were just too excited about their haul to bother with a picture, I guess :)

We had a lot of fun.

And the Easter bunny brought some fun stuff.

Laura's Wedding

On Cinco de Mayo, my littlest sister, Laura served chips and salsa to a few hundred people. Also, she got married. Yay! And welcome to the family, Bryce. P.S. That's not Bryce in the picture. That's my dad. :)

We had lots of fun talking with all the family and friends.

We even got to hang out with Brad, our missionary brother.

I’m pretty sure this little darling...

...got ahold of our camera and the result is some awesome candids:

We got their (borrowed) car pretty good, under the watchful eye of the actual owner.

Why ever we thought we could give Lisa a paint pen and not expect these results, I'll never know...

And, of course, all the hundreds of balloons made clean-up really fun!

Even my eloping sister Lisa dreams of being as beautiful a bride as Laura.