Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Pictures from the month of October

We had a really fun month of October.  My brother and his family came to visit, and then there was Halloween of course.  Here are some highlights:

Matthew reading up on how to play one of the Wii games

"playing laundries"

Jumping on the trampoline with cousins

This move is called "triangle time"






Visiting Children's Fairyland in Oakland
Walking the plank. 

L to R:  Matthew, Sylvia, Luke, Sabrina, Isabel, Hazel
  



Trying out a flower costume

I made Matthew a Trick-or-Treat bag this year since I didn't make his costume.  One of my favorite features is that its reversible...


Matthew was a lion for Halloween.  Here he is with Daddy at the Trunk or Treat activity.

One last project we did in October; we put another shelf in our closet to give us a little extra storage.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Fun Pictures

Well, they aren't the best pictures I've ever seen, but its always fun to see that there really is a baby in there!





So far, so good.  Due ~ April 27.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Matthew stories

Matthew just asked for goldfish crackers. I buy goldfish in bulk at Costco so I keep them in a plastic container in the cupboard. Lately, Matthew has enjoyed putting the goldfish in his bowl without my help. Until today, he always put them in by the handful, but today he decided to put them in one at a time and count them as he went along. He counted to thirty-five! He did need help staying on track a few times, but I was impressed that he could do it.

Yesterday, he decided to take all the butter knives out of the dishwasher and play with them. I started to put them back while he was napping, but I couldn't find all of them. Then, as I was walking past the dining table, I saw the three missing knives - one at each place. Matthew likes to help set the table, and I guess he decided to do that with the knives.



A little while ago, Matthew found a box of envelopes in a desk drawer and pulled out all the envelopes. He calls them "bills". And asked me, "I have them?"

I just took some bedding out of the dryer and Matthew jumped up and down, saying, "Hooray! Laundries! Clothes!" Matthew is a big fan of rolling around in the clean laundry or sitting in the laundry basket while I fill it up with clothes from the dryer. Sometimes he says, "Too hot!" or calls the clothes "dresses".

Friday, August 12, 2011

Talking to Daddy on the Phone

Bye bye crib

Almost two weeks ago, we decided to give Matthew more freedom in his sleeping accommodations. We started by taking the front railing off his crib. It worked out pretty well except for at least one fall out of the bed and another that we're not sure what happened. And then there was this night when he fell asleep half way out of the bed:



We had a toddler bed from my sister in the garage, and we decided that we needed to get that into use ASAP.  We got it up and functioning over the weekend.  Then on Monday, we got offered a hand-me-down bed from one of my mother-in-law's coworkers.  So we picked it up last night.  I didn't really think he'd be transitioning to a twin size bed so soon, but Matthew insisted on having it be his bed right now.  So basically we've been having an awesome week of musical beds!

Matthew with his latest bed:


How did he learn about jumping on the bed so fast?



Sunday, August 7, 2011

A few more pictures


We took a drive into San Francisco to visit my former place of employment: Williams-Sonoma corporate headquarters. The drive was a little hectic, but it was so fun to see my friends there and show off Matthew's latest tricks!

Matthew loves, loves, loves these magnets. They're just orange squares with letters on them,
but he plays with them every day.


Matthew loves to eat his PBJ in the living room.  I'm trying to encourage more eating at the table.

Matthew has started wearing sunglasses in the car every once in a while.  On this day, he fell asleep during the drive.

Picking Peaches

 We went to pick peaches with Matthew's cousins.  They had a lot of fun together!  Matthew is lucky to have cousins living close by!








Those peaches were juicy!  Matthew's shirt did not survive unscathed!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Trip to Idaho Falls and SLC

We just got back from a fun trip to Utah and Idaho.   
We went to Idaho Falls for the wedding of our good friend Chris. 

Here are Scott and several of his closest friends from college:

They did an amazing job transforming the cultural hall in the church:

Also on this trip, we were able to go visit the grave of my grandma who passed away last December.  It was nice to be able to say goodbye to her.  I was also able to visit my grandpa's grave for the first time (at least that I remember).  He passed away when I was one. 

 On Memorial Day, we went with Scott's sisters to leave flowers at the graves of their mom's parents. I didn't have my camera there for that one.

We later visited BYU Provo and checked out the new addition to the Tanner building.  They have added dozens of team rooms including some with flat screens?  This would have made our group assignments so much easier!

 Scott was impressed by this classroom full of trading computers. 

On Tuesday, we visited the Church History Museum.  After teaching about Church History in seminary this year, it was really cool to go there and see some of the artifacts first hand like Emma Smith's hymn book, John Taylor's pocketwatch that stopped a bullet in Carthage Jail, some of the original transcripts of the Book of Mormon, and the stone that David O. McKay saw in Scotland ("Whate'er thou art, act well thy part").  I was really glad I had one more lesson to give to my class before the end of the year so I could tell them about it.

Also at the museum, we had a lot of fun in their children's area.  Building Nephi's ship and going fishing over the side of it:


Celebrating Mexican culture by learning a dance (complete with costumes):



We even got to practice speaking from a replica of the pulpit at the Conference Center (I'm willing to bet its much more fun than the real thing). 

I'm sure no one else has ever done this before:



If you check out the end of this video, you'll see a sample of Matthew's dance moves: