Vacation! Part 1

Part 1 because there are too many pictures I want to share :) We started out driving to Moab, Utah, met up with our friend, Andy and enjoyed the warm (sometimes HOT) days. Enjoy the photos.


Hiking up Mill Creek, Moab. S spent a good part of 12 days in this backpack without complaint, but who would complain to get carried all over beautiful creation!

When it was hot, we hit the higher altitude in the La Sal Mts, I can't remember the name of this lake, but we heard elk.

This was my favorite hike, in a slot canyon called Little Wild Horse. S liked to be able to reach out an almost any point and touch the rock canyon walls.

Same canyon, pretty cool.

More of the same.

Andy got a turn to carry the backpack and cargo, it was a nice break.

This place is called Goblin Valley, very interesting erosion.

Hiking out of Goblin Valley.

Funny faces in the french press at the campground. The campground we stayed at was really nice with a pool and hot tub, S really likes to swim. Stay tuned...more will come when I have time.

Long and Busy summer

Our new house, it's so nice to have a fence, I can let S run free in the backyard. The grass is still coming up.

My dad made a child size table and chairs for my sister and I when we were little and now it's in our home, S loves it and has almost completely given up sitting in his highchair in preference for sitting at his own table. For dinner he still sits with us, but breakfast and lunch are informal enough to make good use of "his" table.

After the buzz cut, with my clogs. He actually walks pretty good in them.

The first house we built this summer, sold to a lady who seems to be a nice neighbor. Pretty much the same house as the one we built for ourselves, with the exception of some interior wall modification.

Before the buzz cut.

I haven't forgotten that I started this blog to tell you about S progress, I have just barely had time this summer to sit down at the computer at all. He has changed so much in the past 6 months and every new thing makes it that much more fun. His language surprises me all the time. We have the Chronicles of Narnia bound with a picture of Aslan the Lion on the front. When I was unpacking the books I showed it to him and roared, he loved that and I told him it was the Chronicles of Narnia, he repeated Narnia, and to this day gets the book and says 'nana'. Haha. He has also started to notice certain items at the grocery store, none of which I have ever purchased, but the marketing people sure know what they are doing...he notices all the gummi things and cereals with pictures of cars or tractors or dogs, that seem to still be at his level from the cart. So I just acknowledge what he sees and we move on :)

He still loves trucks and does everything he sees us do. The other day J said he smelt something funny and couldn't tell where it was coming from, the couch or the rug. I proceed to smell the couch and the rug back and forth to locate the odor, S gets down on all fours and I see him with a wrinkled up nose going back and forth on the rug. Too funny. I have seen him do this with everything from raking the yard, using the shovel, screwdriver, vacuum, hand saw (trimming trees), hairbrush, and toothbrush, and many other things. I guess that is how he learns, so I'm happy he's learning. His sign language vocab has grown as has his spoken language. He continues to ask to go outside, read a book, eat, sleep, play and it seems a hundred other things along with please, thank you, and help. His new thing is climbing, he gets in his highchair by himself and he gets the stool to look up on the counter, we've been training him that he can do that but feet do not get to go on the counter.

Some friends of ours have a lab who just had a litter of puppies, they are all chocolate and we are planning to get one in a couple of months, since that is one word S continually repeats "Doggy, Doggy, Doggy." As we have been landscaping the past week or so, he has thoroughly enjoyed the dirt, and I have enjoyed the Borax to get it out of his clothes :) He also likes to carry around an old cell phone that we gave him saying "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy (then mumbles of a toddler nature)". We are planning to take a little camping vacation next week, which is much needed after the 2 houses we built this summer, but I don't know how it will work with potty training...he has been wearing underwear mostly during the day, and still diapers at night. Being home and having a potty available at all times makes this process quite simple since he has been going on the toilet for over a year now, he knows what to do it's just the communicating that he needs to go that we are still working on :)

There is so much more but this is long enough for now.