Two Months Old

Man, does time fly.

Oliver is two months old now.

He is starting to smile and coo

and I love it.

Although, we are in trouble
His favorite thing is to sleep in our bed
and he gets his way most of the time
(mainly so I can get some sleep)
I've never kept a baby in my room this long
And while it's very convienent for night feedings
I'm afraid it's going to be rough
When we move him to sleep in his own room.
He prefers to sleep in our arms during the day as well
which makes it very hard to accomplish things some days
Oh well - I'm just going to enjoy
that he likes to be held
And I really wish I could just rock him all day
Without the constant nagging in my head
of things that need to be done

Here's a new batch of pictures
to see how much he has grown and changed
In the past month

Oliver's Blessing

Bad, Bad blogger...

I know

I actually had to put blogging on my list

of things to do today

just to make sure I got it done...

Anyways...

We traveled to Salt Lake this past weekend

to bless Oliver at Rhett's parent's house.

With all our families in Salt Lake or Logan,

(with the exception of my parents in CA)

It just seemed easier for us to travel

and have everyone be able to attend

rather than try to get everyone to travel to us

And I'm so glad we did it that way

It was so neat to have all our family there.

We blessed Oliver Saturday evening.

Rhett gave him a beautiful blessing

and it was wonderful to have the grandpas

and brothers there in the circle.

Afterwards, we had a nice dinner at the house

and a great time visiting and spending time with everyone.

Oliver looked so handsome in his blessing outfit.

This outfit was made for my brother, Matt

by my Grandma Peterson.

My other brother, Dan was blessed in it

and my other three boys have been blessed in it as well.

It has some special history.

How grateful I am for our family
and being able to spend time with them
and that they would help us celebrate
Oliver's special day.

One month old

My baby is one month old!
It's amazing to think that it's only been that long

but I feel like he's been with us forever.

We're still getting used to each other,

but we're learning

and getting more content everyday.

He's growing like a weed

and is already almost 9 1/2 pounds!

He face is starting to fill out

Which makes his cheeks even more soft

and plump to kiss

and he's got an adorable double chin

His brothers still adore him

and slather him with kisses constantly

Zach has proven to be my best helper

and prefers to be right next to Oliver.

By the way - this is not the same picture

as posted in a previous post.

It was taken today,

in the same place, and almost in the same position

to see how much Oliver has changed already.

Isn't he adorable??

Red Cloud Loop

Labor Day weekend, we had

my mom, brother,

two sisters and their families come visit.

There are lots of driving tours here in Vernal,

so we decided to check out the Red Cloud Loop driving tour.

It was a 74 mile drive

that took us past Steinaker and Red Fleet Resevoir

through the Ashley National Forest

past Dry Fork Canyon

and back into Vernal.

It was quite an adventure

and we stopped where and when we wanted to

to see everything.

We stopped at a resevoir halfway through

for a picnic lunch.

Here's Porter attempting to touch

a huge praying mantis we met on the way.

Melissa and Zach
showing us how tough they are

Savannah and Andrew leading the way
up the hill
on the trail to see the petroglyphs

Zach, Andrew, and Savannah
with a petroglyph

What we do

Since I've been an incredible slacker,

I forgot to announce that

Zach has started Kindergarten!!
He is loving everyday

and loves riding the bus to and from school

(which is a huge blessing,

so I didn't have to make three trips to the school everyday)

Here he is on his first day:

And what does Andrew do

now that everyone is gone?

Well,

we paint

we take naps

(well, at least Oliver and sometimes Andrew does)

we make forts

and do lots of reading

playing

and doing whatever we want.

Yesterday, after taking Oliver to the doctor

we had some time

so I asked Andrew what he wanted to do.

He said he wanted to go to the playground,

so we did!

We played on the swings,

the slide, the climbing wall,

the ladder, and the monkey bars.

I even showed him how I used to hang

upside-down on the bars

like when I was a girl.

It's what we do!

Our friend, Charlotte

This is our friend, Charlotte:

She lives in the corner of our sliding glass door frame

on the OUTSIDE, of course.

Now, I'm not a big fan of spiders,

but since this one is outside,

and we rarely use the door except to go out and BBQ

and since she's quite facinating to watch,

we've decided to keep her.

Now just to put it in perspective,

this is her next to a quarter;

just so you can see how big she really is:

(now mind you, she is about 1-2 inches from the outside of the window

the quarter is on the inside)

but just so you can get an idea -

I always wonder if one morning I'll wake up
and find a word written in her web.
We don't know what kind of spider she is
I can't look at the spider pictures for too long
before I start to get the willies...

In fact, I'm getting them now...
time to move on...

This Past week

Porter started second grade last week

You've never seen a kid so excited to start school again

He loves being able to go

and play with his friends and learn.

He also started flag football with his dad as coach

They played their first game today

and did quite well.

Zach starts kindergarten on Thursday

I'm counting the days...

We met with his teacher last week

and she was very impressed with how much he already knows.

I'm anxious to see how Andrew does with all his playmates gone

I guess he does have one left... me.

I am going to start lessons with him twice a week

To give him something to do

and to provide us with some one-on-one time.

Cute little Oliver is changing already

I hate how fast babies lose their newborn look.

He's a really good baby -

Loves to sit up and look around

and is even giving me a decent stretch of sleep in the night!