Are you ready for some football....

We have a few Bronco fans in this house!

I have a lot of pictures and things to post, but I am really far behind and so instead of making one huge post where details may get lost, I am going to stagger out the posts!

Happy Birthday Luke!

Today you are 1! We waited almost 5 years for you to join our family. We are so happy that you are our son! You do some of the cutest things ever and we always love how you make us smile and laugh! You have gotten so big and we are amazed at how much you have changed this past year. You keep us busy and are always on the go. You only cuddle with us when there is a show on that you like to watch on TV and so we let you watch those shows, just so we can cuddle with you! This last year went by much too fast, I was foolish to think that it wouldn't. And while there were less than good moments from time to time, there are a countless number of moments that we will remember for the rest of our lives! We love you Luke, happy birthday!

Can you see the goldfish?

I thought about titling this "look what I found in Luke's diaper" but then I decided against it because it might make people hesitant to read it. Well, if you look closely you can see the imprint of a goldfish cracker right below Luke's belly button. I went to change his diaper one day, after a nap even, and that is what I found...a goldfish cracker. I don't know how it got there because he was wearing clothes that had a onesie and pants. And I don't know how hours after he ate the goldfish, the one in his diaper wasn't crumbs by the time I got to it! But I think it's funny you can even see the smile of the goldfish imprinted there!

Grrrrrrr

I thought that those energy saving bulbs were supposed to have a life of about 7 years or something like that. I want my money back! We have been in this house 21 months, and the lights not even that old. This week we had not one, but two of them burn out. And we even tried twisting them just in case they were loose. Too bad we can't go back to the regular lights, we aren't saving any money at this rate!

Yearbook photos

This is what Michael would have possibly looked like in 1970.
And this is what I would have possibibly looked like in 1978.

Michael's looked better than most of the ones I tried for myself.
Try it for yourself at yearbook yourself and have fun!

Well...

...Luke is walking. He is now to the point that when he does go down, he gets back up and walks. Still occasionally crawling, but now he is walking a lot more than crawling. I'll have to get a good video of it! It's very cute!

Luke waving

Luke has just recently got the hang of waving. It's very cute to see him wave at you now! He waved his arms around before, but now it's like he knows when someone waves at him, he is supposed to wave back!

Making cookies

So the other day when I was making cookies, I noticed on the package that they were claiming that there were over 300 chips inside. So.....I had to find out! I'm not usually so obsessive compulsive about things like this, in fact, if it didn't say over 300 chips inside, I wouldn't have even given it a second thought about how many chips were in the cookie mix. Besides, 300 just sounded like a lot...I know they are small, but still 300. So I dump the mix into a bowl. It didn't look like 300, so now I just had to know. I didn't want to go through it and start picking out all of the chocolate chips, that would take forever and it wouldn't have been very clean. So I got a slotted spoon since I don't have a sifter and started sifting out all of the chocolate chips with the spoon into another bowl. Once I had them in the bowl and went through the mix twice to make sure I didn't miss any, I put the chips into a measuring cup. It still didn't look like there could be 300. From there I took a spoon and counted the chips as I put them into yet another bowl. And when I was done counting, and my curiosity had been satisfied, and I dirtied more dishes than was necessary, I put the chocolate chips back in the mix and finished making my cookies. And just so you know when they say there is over 300 chips inside....believe them, save yourself a lot of time and just make the cookies. After all that time, time I could have saved myself and could have been already eating the cookies instead of counting. And the final count was 307! And I figures that buying the cookie mix in the bag is easy, just as good as homemade (I think), and probably cheaper than buying the bag of chocolate chips and all the other ingredients since I can get a mix for $1.50 at walmart that makes about 2 1/2 to 3 doz cookies and all you have to add is 1 egg and a stick of butter. I think last time I looked at the store for chocolate chips they were over $5.00 a bag.

The Hippos win the pennant! The Hippos win the pennant!

I play Fantasy Baseball. The format is a game called Baseball Manager. In fact, I first played this version back before the internet was big and it was on the Prodigy Internet service in the early 1990's.

In 1998, I joined a league of managers who needed a replacement for someone who elected to leave the league. That league was known as the Highlander League. 10 managers, selecting players from the American League only.

I started as the Buggers (named from Ender's game).
I changed my name to The Matrix (named from the movie).
Then in 2001, I changed team's name to the Gauchos. I even had a guy create a logo for me:

Finally, I settled on the Hungry Hippos for the 2004 season. I had the same guy at Geeklogos.com create another logo for me.

From 1998 to 2007, I made the playoffs once. In 2001, I placed 4th in the league, and went on to lose in the first round of the playoffs.

However, this morning I woke up to the news that I won the 2008 Highlander League Regular Season! I managed to win the title by one game, and feel pretty good after wallowing in abject failure all those years until now.

As for my fellow managers, there have been some who stayed, and some who have left and been replaced. There are still 4 managers from when I joined the league in 1998. I have never met any of the 9 other managers in the league, but I've known some of them for over 10 years. You couldn't ask for a better group of guys.

So here's to the BBM AL Keeper Highlander League! Tigers, Yankees, Rabbits, Vipers, Lobstermen, GodKings, Rascals, Warthogs & Sharks! Well done guys, and thanks for your friendship!

Dinner time

You would think we didn't feed them! I made homemade pizza the other night, but Luke had already had his dinner earlier that night since he goes to bed early. Maybe he was still hungry, or maybe it's because lately anything we have he wants but he was right there hoping to get some! So was Ender...notice the lifted paw in the first picture, he thinks that if he does a trick that he will get whatever he wants!

Random pictures of Luke

Luke is 11 months old today! I can't believe it!

His next doctor appointment is at 12 months, so I have no idea how much he weighs now or how tall he is. I remember at Luke's 9 month appointment I would have guessed he weighed more than 19 pounds, he just feels heavier than he really is. He is close to walking and will randomly let go of things and take 3 or 4 steps but prefers still to crawl. And when we stand him up and try and have him walk while holding onto our fingers, his legs turn all limp and he won't do it! Luke and Ender really love each other, and I love it when Ender makes Luke laugh. Just the other day as I was unloading the dishwasher and I had Luke in his highchair eating dinner, and as I was turning around to see what Luke was laughing at, Ender had his two front paws on the counter trying to reach the plate of Luke's food that I left to close to the edge. Apparently Luke thought that was hillarious because he was really laughing! It was cute!

We got Luke his new carseat, but he can't go in it yet...one more month. He weighs enough, but he has to be 1. We got it early because we had coupons! Yeah coupons! And a refund from the bassinet, yeah refunds!

Luke also likes to crawl while he has things in his mouth, I guess since that's the way Ender does it, that's the way Luke is going to do it. Someday Luke will have human friends he can play with!

Meet my flat brother...

The last time I went up to Washington I spent some extra time there. At first I wasn't planning on even going up there, but we (mostly Michael, bless his heart!) thought that it would be a good idea if I went and spent some family time. This trip was planned around the time that my oldest brother Jared would be getting ready to deploy to Iraq for a year. My brother and sister in law have three kids, a 6 year old, a almost 4 year old and a 1 year old. To keep Jared involved in family outings, events, soccer games, and family time they decided to get a Flat Daddy. The kids are having a lot of fun taking Flat Daddy everywhere they go and getting pictures of all of their adventures and doing all of the things families do together. They are even keeping everything documented in a blog called A Year with Flat Daddy. Flat Jared even made it on the local news where they live see the news clip here. These are some random pictures from my trip. Top left picture: me, Joel (almost 4) and Jeff (6). Right picture: Luke (9months) and Mira (1) inside the house and Joel outside the house. Bottom picture on the left: Jeff hanging off the couch! I am linking A Year with Flat Daddy on the side of our blog under the family blogger section swing by every now and then and leave a comment, the kids love it!

I think this year for Christmas the one gift I will give myself is a donation to Flat Daddies.

Maybe I'll make one of these for Luke

Over at Make and Takes I found this idea for a do it yourself color book! I like it! And you just use things from around your house! I can do that! I really can! Just when I'm done doing all of the other projects that I have going, or want to have going....man, my list is long!

The other night

Many of you may or may not know that Michael has RLS. He has had it for years now, how many, I don't know. And when we were living in Idaho, he finally went to see a Doctor about it. The nights he has it or can feel it coming on he takes medicine for it. He can go weeks without needing to take something, and then some weeks he will have RLS a few times in a week. Well, the other night he could feel it coming on early in the evening so about 8pm he took his medicine for it hoping that if he took it early, by the time he was ready for bed it would have kicked in and he could get a good night sleep. He got a terrible night sleep. He couldn't figure out why what he took didn't work. I thought that maybe what he was taking just wasn't working anymore, that can happen, so that's what I thought. So then the next night he could start to feel symptoms, and asked if I would get him his meds. I go to the cupboard where all the meds are kept, and sitting there on top, was not his meds. so I asked him if that was what he took the last night. As he read the bottle, he now knew why it didn't work. What he took the other night was for something else, not RLS. No harm was done in taking the wrong medicine, good thing, but we realized how important it is to read the bottles of any medicine each time you go and get something. Especially with having kids, you always have to double check. I at times have had RLS too, but I haven't ever had it like Michael has it.

Luke and Ender playing

Luke and Ender play pretty well together. Most of the time. There are those times when Ender takes a toy away from Luke and Luke will go crawling after him with a sad little whine. And there are the times that Luke takes toys away from Ender, and Ender doesn't really seem to mind. Of course, there are toys of Ender's that Ender really hasn't touched since we got them (like the one in the video, we got it 1 1/2 years ago), but now that Luke is playing with them, Ender has decided that now he has interest in them. We were watching this video and we aren't quite sure what Luke is doing at the end. Perhaps dancing?

Our straw man!

We decided that we wanted to teach Luke how to drink from straws instead of sippy cups. So while we were in WA. I did just that. It took a couple of different kinds for him to pick it up. I finally got him cups that had lids and straws that I could squeeze a little like a juice box, and then he figured that he had to suck to drink! So now we have the toss and take ones from the first years for at home and only home because if you squeeze they get everywhere, and when we go out he has the playtex sport cup that has the straw! It's just so cute to see him sucking and his little cheeks pucker while he drinks with a straw! So cute!

He's so close...

...to walking! Ever since Luke took his first steps while we were visiting my family in WA. he hasn't bothered taking any more than 2 or 3 steps at a time, and then it was few and far between.

But tonight, he walked about 3 feet...which to him was 7 or 8 steps!

How do you ruin a rice cooker?

Well as I am sure that there are many ways, the way I ruined mine was to put it away after using it one time WITH THE LEFT OVER RICE STILL IN IT! I went to cook rice one day and opened it up, and then closed it as fast as I could, which wasn't fast enough! I will spare you all from seeing the picture I took, why I took one I now can't recall. It was gross, believe me, or ask Michael. I was trying to remember the last time I used it.... when was it....was it when...hmmm. The closest I can come up with was I used it when a friend had a baby and I took dinner to her.....4 months ago. I'm surprised I hadn't smelt it before that, I guess it had a really great seal! It was beyond cleaning, so we will be getting a new one. So if you are at our house, and we are having rice, I either cooked the rice on the stove, or we got a new cooker!

Problems, and solutions

This is the problem.....

Yes, those are teeth marks, underneath was worse. Well, atleast the crib was gently used and we didn't spent the money on a nice new one only to have Luke eat it!

The solution!.....

I know somewhere on some blog I have seen custom made thingies that you can make yourself to put on your crib just for teething purposes, but I couldn't remember where, and my sewing skillz are really poor. So I decided to buy a bumper and cut it to pieces, and then tie a piece of batting or felt around every other space! It worked, I can tell because now when I go to get Luke, it is all wet on the bumper where he tried to chew. Although now he has moved to the right side of the crib, so I will have to cover that too!

Recalled...

No...not the baby or the dog... the bassinet.


I got an email from Babies R Us and then went to the store site to view this. I guess just because we have owned this bassinet for over a year now, and used it for 4-5 months doesn't mean that we were in the clear if they are recalling ones from 2001 through August 2008. I'm just glad that things were okay while we used it. We got one of these recalled bassinets for Luke, and Luke loved it, and it was the one I really wanted...and Ender loved too! Now it has been RECALLED. I thought I would post this just in case anyone else has one of these, or know anyone who has one of these. You can look for this recall as well as recalls for many other things being recalled on the recalls.gov web site.

So I guess now we will be taking it back to the store, we even have it in the box it came in being stored for any other children we were to have, I guess any other babies will have to sleep in something else. We should be getting our money back, or store credit, which is fine because now we will add that to the money we were going to spend on a car seat for Luke (yikes, he will be one soon, and forward facing!) and that will give us a little bit more money for a car seat.