We Do Exist

Despite all indications to the contrary, we are alive and well, although I can't say the same about my sister who hasn't blogged once since her baby was born...in September!!! I'm about to make a threat to not post again until she finally puts something on her blog, but we'll see if I have to take such drastic measures.


So the last time I blogged about the family was for Mark's birthday. As a gift from our friends Brandon and Cari, Cari took some more wonderful pictures of little Mark. As you can see, he wasn't really in the mood to smile or look at the camera, but that might have been because we had just taken him all over the country and he was a bit worn out. Anyway, you can see more pictures of this shoot here.

In March my grandpa, Ted, turned 90! I got to go out to Utah for his big birthday celebration, which was awesome. He's doing great and I hope he makes it to at least 100. While I was there, I couldn't pass up the chance to see some old college friends, Tiff and Kallista. The three kids are all Tiff's, despite what it might look like.

After Utah, we swung over to Colorado for a few days to see my dad who was busy with tax season. He really only got to see Mark for a few minutes at his office, but I saw him some at night. I'm very proud of him. His accounting firm that he started a few years after we moved to Colorado Springs was voted the gold medal in the Best of the Springs awards that the local newspaper puts out. They all deserve it.

A big motivation for my trip to Utah was to avoid another pre-test week with Bryce. He just has to spend a lot of time studying, so it's less fun. Mark still wished him goodluck though. We flew baack the night after he took his test and then headed down for a week in North Carolina with some of Bryce's family. I didn't take any pictures, but we had a good time.

Here's a picture of Mark at the airport in Denver. He was making friends with all sorts of people.

For Easter my friend, Amy, organized a giant Easter egg hunt at our apartment's playground. There were at least 30 kids with 8 eggs each so you can imagine the chaos. Here's Mark waiting at the top of the stairs to head down to find his eggs.

He got bored after only an egg or two and sat down to explore his treasure. I couldn't resist the baseball Easter basket.

We all ate lunch afterwards. Here are a few of his friends. We love having so many little kids to play with.

Mark sometimes thinks he has a pet mouse, although he prefers the wireless one. His new favorite thing is to sit in our laps with his wireless mouse while we play on pbskids.org with the corded one.

On Easter morning Mark was thrilled to find out that his eggs had something in them. He stopped and ate his puffs without finding any more eggs.

Sorry this is so small, but hopefully you get the picture of his attempts at running. This was over a month ago at the Cherry Blossom festival in D.C. He's much more stable now. He was so happy to be out of his stroller. He also loved the pigeons.

We went to D.C. with the Murdocks and the Jacksons. Cari, of course, brought along her camera and took more cute pictures of Mark and Mallory. Here's the post on her photography blog.

More recently, Mark loves to play on the deck. His friend, Caleb, has a box that he likes to sit in so we made him one out of his diaper box. He loves it, despite how this picture may look.

Bryce has finished all of his med school classes and is now just studying for Step 1 of his medical licensing boards. He takes those on June 23rd and then we are off to Utah/Idaho to see family and friends for a few weeks. Things are pretty normal for me: Mark, work, quiet book.

Why I Haven't Posted in a While

Late last year I decided to make Mark a quiet book to take to church. My sister-in-law, Ashley, was coming to North Carolina for Christmas so I recruited her to make one too since I didn't have a sewing machine up here in Maryland and two is always better than one. Being ambitious, we figured we might as well each make an extra for a friend as well. We were delusioned enough to think that we could do 96 pages + cover in only a few days during the break. Needless to say, we didn't get them even close to done. Instead, it awoke a new and dangerous hobby for me: crafting/sewing. Whenever I get bored/frustrated with how slow the quiet book is coming, I take on a new and easier project. This has happened multiple times (3 already this year), but I am happy to say I have completed these projects and am now going to actually finish the quiet book! Every free moment I have when I'm not working, taking care of Mark, doing housework, doing church things, or spending time with Bryce has been filled with crafting. I used to think people were insane that crafted figuring I could work an hour more and buy what took them hours to make, but I must admit, there is something fulfilling in creating something great from scratch. So, here's what I've done:

First, I made crayon rolls. I took this idea from my sister who took it from this site. Mark has a lot of little friends with birthday parties out here so every kid in 2010 will get one of these. Making them in bulk also saved a lot of money! They only cost $4-5 each, including the crayons and are great for church since they protect the crayons from getting crushed in plastic bags.


Second, another sister-in-law, Erin, wanted to make I-spy bags for her kids, but figured the more people we got to do it, the cheaper we could do it for (since the little items inside often come in multiples.) She collected the items and vinyl; I picked up the poly pellets and fabric. I then made a key by individually taking pictures of all of the items, used Photoshop to remove the backgrounds, and then compiled all of the photos of the items in a Word document with the descriptions that I then printed and laminated. I used another blog post to make sure I didn't mess up the sewing, but added the little pocket on the back of my bags to house the laminated key. Mark's still a little young for this, but enjoys looking at and bending the key when he can.


Finally, my friend, Adrienne, did a post about an FHE board she created. It was a great idea (which she adapted from another friend, Krystel) since it was magnetic (sheet metal) on one side and then felt on the other. I have a variety of FHE materials from a group I did, and some visual aids have velcro while others have magnets. A board with dual functionality was just what we needed. I was chatting with Amy about it one day and she mentioned that she would be interested in doing one too. Great! Split the costs = cheaper and cooler (double the ideas). Michael's was having their bonus buys that week so we got a bunch of stuff for at least half off, but couldn't find any frames with sheet metal (Roberts in Utah has them, but we're a bit far from there). As we were brainstorming cheap or free ways to get sheet metal, Amy remembered that dry erase boards are often magnetic. How great is that?!? So now we have something to write on and use magnets. Amy's husband James made us frames that encased the dry erase board completely after having glued a piece of felt to the back of the dry erase board. Awesome. So then we painted the frames black while Mark and Caleb played. We then recruited Tara's Cricut machine to cut out cute letters, and mod podged them on the frames. I decided that I could use the dry erase board for more than FHE so I made that side more general and the felt more specific. Then I attached a wire to the top and covered it with some cute ribbon. I must say, I am very proud of this board. It was a group effort, for sure, but very worth it. Thanks everyone.

That's all. I'll post some pictures and an update of little Mark in the next day or two.

Did We Mention...

Did we mention we got a little snow in February?

Our other pictures got accidentially erased, but trust me, there was a lot of snow.

Did we mention that Mark likes to play the piano?

Play might be a stretch, but he's got banging randomly down pat.

Did we mention that Mark discovered the tupperware cabinet?

He loves to pull everything out and play inside and throws a fit if we don't let him in the kitchen.

Did we mention that Mark turned 1? He's growing up so fast--

23lbs 4 oz (50-75th), 32" tall (95th+).

Did we mention that Mark got lots of books for his birthday?

He wants to read all of them multiple times a day.

Did we mention Mark had a little party on his birthday (Feb 27)?

Many of his little friends and their parents came.

Did we mention Mom and Dad got to choose the theme?

Cathi AND Bryce helped decorate the cupcakes.

Did we mention that we failed to teach Mark how to blow out a candle?

Well, if anything, at least he didn't try to touch the flame.

Did we mention Mark likes cake? He broke down right after this picture. He didn't like being confined to his high chair when all of his friends were down on the ground playing without him.

Happy Birthday Buddy! We never could have imagined how much our life would change when you joined our family a year ago, but we wouldn't trade it for the world.

P.S. Did we mention that Mark is walking now? We'll get a video taken sometime here.