"Snow! Awesome!"

That's all Lily could say yesterday when we received the first snowfall of the year, "Snow! Awesome! Snow! Awesome! Snow! Awesome..." She was purely delighted with everything about snow: touching it, eating it, throwing it, walking in it-- and it was purely delightful to watch her discover it! It brought back such vivid memories of being a kid. I love those moments where I forget about laundry and messes and what to make for dinner and just bask in her pure innocence and joy...those moments where I get a little teary-eyed because everything comes together and I stop and remember what life is all about--sorry to get cheesy on you here. (Note to self: have more of those moments) You may be able to tell from the pictures that she did a lot of eating the snow. Someone taught her that that's what you do...(Not thrilled about that one Chris)

 

 

 

 

What did I just tell you?

What did I just tell you?

Are you not listening?

I guess we need new couches anyway...

What can I do to make you more comfortable?

Life these days...

Hello Readers...assuming we still have any. I am finding it harder and harder to update this thing these days, for lots of reasons--3 in particular by the names of Lily, Ruby and Rex. But I am not ready to pull the plug on blogging and I still love reading all my friends' blogs so here goes...


This is my adorable girl doing her most recent trick- sitting up! I am loving every minute of being a mom. I can't believe that she is now 7 months old. It is a blast to watch her personality coming out. She is a sassy little drama queen, full of funny faces and pterodactyl-like noises. She is close to crawling and I am bracing myself for life to get even crazier when she becomes mobile!

This is our newest family member, Rex. He is a very sweet boy and we are glad Ruby has a playmate--although I must say that I feel very much like the mother of three children. These dogs are high-energy! They follow me around the house and can't bear to be apart from the rest of the family. Wherever I move throughout the house, I can be sure to have 8 little legs (soon enough it will be 10 little legs!) following close behind me.

Playing in the Pack n' Play

Lily in my favorite little yellow dress of hers.

This is our cute house. I'll post a picture of the front, but the inside still needs pictures to be hung, and lots of furniture to be purchased, etc. etc. We have moved into a wonderful neighborhood and ward, with no less than 21 babies having been born in the past year. We are finally settling into home-ownership. The idea quickly got knocked off it's pedestal in the 2nd week of living here. I will just say the modern-day-convenience gods had conspired against us...Things went something like this...closed on our home. Moved in. Washing machine broke-fixed it. S's car required very expensive repairs-fixed them. Broken sprinkler-fixed after three weeks of tinkering. Broken dryer-had to get that fixed too. C's car bites the dust- I mean completely. Sayonara '99 Subaru. Broken lawn mower- still in need of fixing. So all in all things are good now, but for a while we felt like the butt of a very mean joke.

Update

Quick update--We have been extremely busy and I intend to upload pics and such in the near future when life calms down a little. But just so I can shake my guilt for neglecting our blog for so long-here is a brief update:

All of us:

We are under contract on a house in Salt Lake in the Canyon Rim area. We close in a few days and are thrilled to be basement dwellers no more!!

Chris:

What started out about a year ago as an idea, a dream (a pipe dream, or so I thought) has become a reality--He and his business partners got funded and they now have a full-blown, fully operating business. His company deals with the land remediation industry, primarily with oil spill cleanups. It has been an amazing blessing and we are so grateful for the opportunity that he has to get paid to do something he is passionate about (which is to start and grow businesses--not clean up oil spills.)

Sarah

Sarah spends her days corralling (sp?) animals and playing peek-a-bo and doing everything with one hand. Her other hand is usually busy toting around an adorable, but demanding little one. I may or may not have mentioned that I quit my job and have been loving being a housewife, although I feel like I am more of a full-time baby carrier rather than a person who actually gets anything done around the house. How do some nice Lynn Wilson burritos sound for dinner, Honey?

Lily

Lily is almost 6 months old and is full of personality. She is rolling all over the place and eating solids and "talking" up a storm. She loves to play in her doorway jumper and she loves walks in the baby bjorn. She still insists on "hanging out" with me around 1:00 am and 4:00 am each morning and I am much looking forward to a full night's sleep at some point.

Ruby

Ruby had an acl replacement surgery for her knee a few weeks ago and we spend much time going on walks and doing an elaborate physical therapy regimen with her. She is so light and agile that we have had a hard time getting her to actually use and strengthen her knee. She can get around on three legs like you wouldn't believe.

Rex

What? Who's Rex you ask? Well we thought that we didn't have enough going on with starting a company, and moving, and hauling babies around, and recuperating Ruby--so what better time than to adopt another dog?? Rex is a two-year old black lab mix that we rescued. He spent his first night at our house smack in the middle of our bed. He is a big sweetie and he gets along great with Ruby . We always said that when we got a house that we would need to get Ruby a friend, but we figured why not rescue a fully trained dog instead of dealing with those first few nightmarish weeks of having a puppy. We will post pics of him soon.

Best Buddies

 

 

We were worried when we first brought Lily home that Ruby would feel displaced and ignored. After all she was our FIRST child and those of you who know us know that we really did treat her like our baby. We needn't have worried because Ruby is the sweetest, gentlest girl with Lily. She loves to be near her and is as social and happy a doggy as she ever was. She's always giving Lily kisses. Here are the buddies hanging out.

Just the Two of Us

I know a time will come when I won't be able to remember what it was like before we became parents, so I wanted to pay a little tribute to the times when it was just the two (er three) of us.

 

Passive Agressive Pup

Here is Ruby posing sweetly by the blinds she tore down when we left her alone to go to church last Sunday.
We thought she had warmed up enough to being alone that we could sleep in until 8 and forego her morning walk before our 9am church. And we did deviate from our normal routine by accidently leaving the bedroom door open when we left...silly us. I guess it's possible that the cheap things came down by accident, but their bent and chewed up condition lead us to believe she did it for spite. We thought we had seen the worst of it when we came home a few days ago to an empty butter dish sitting on the counter...not so...oh and the curtain you see in the picture is actually our disassembled shower curtain.

The Old Ball n' Chain

And by that I mean Ruby.
Let's just say this spoiled dog has barely left our sight since we have arrived here. The tennis ball symbalizes endless games of fetch or "Ruby tennis" as we call it (we use a raquette to hit the ball so she has to run farther and gets more tired) and the leash symbolizes the endless walks she requires ( 2 or 3 per day). It sort of breaks our hearts to leave her alone in the apartment so we plan most activities around things that are outside or dog friendly. She does make a great referee or ball girl when we play tennis.(picture and post to come)

A Very Close Call for our Ru

Last Saturday Ruby made an extremely narrow escape from getting hit by a car, which at the speed it was going, would most likely have killed her.

As she and Chris were crossing at a crosswalk, a distracted minivan driver came speeding across and slammed on the brakes just in time to run over Ruby's front paw!!

I am extremely grateful that Ruby (and Chris, of course) are okay...all you pedestrians and drivers alike, be careful out there!!

Recent Happenings

Ruby is now an "obedient dog"...usually
Biking Bear Claw Poppy in St. George
Dinner at the Cheesecake FactoryMy mile high Chinese Chicken Salad...oops sideways

Holiday Highlights

Holding our chubby niece on Christmas Day

Ruby and Chris on Christmas Eve
Visiting Whitney's new puppies, Hannah and Hank on Christmas Day
Ruby enjoying her new bed and reindeer toy on Christmas morning

Maggie and Ruby

Maggie is Chris' parent's dog and Ruby's best friend. The two are almost inseparable. I love this picture of them just hanging out.

Busted!

As Thanksgiving dinner was being prepared Ruby lingered around, watching for rare moments when the dishwasher door was open so she could lick up all that yummy stuff.

The pup grows up...

I realize it's very cheesy and a little pathetic to post so many things about a dog...but we don't have kids yet...please humor me. The truth is that Chris let us get Ruby to appease me. I kept bugging him about having a baby...finally one day he said "no, but maybe we can get a dog."

Puppy's First Bath

Ruby rolled in something stinky so we gave her her first bath.

Ruby Sue

This past August we were browsing the internet and came across an ad for lab puppies. We made the mistake of going and looking at the dogs... there was no turning back after that. This is our little Ruby girl on the day we got her. She's the sweetest thing! We love our lil' Ru-bear!