Gilcrease Orchard

Whilst Paul's parents were still here, we were able to meet up with Hilary & Catherine at Gilcrease Orchard. Now, I know you're all thinking, "what's an orchard doing in Las Vegas?" The answer is...catering to families with small children for an extremely short time period. Arriving about 2 weeks before Halloween, we expected to find some good pumpkins and were sorely disappointed. The few we could find were incredibly squishy, green or mangled. Regardless, we plunged on, determined to get a cute photo shoot of our adorable children and managed to find several respectable candidates for photos.





Paul managed to find a 'Thomas the Tank Engine' outline for a pumpkin, so I carved Alec his first jack 'o lantern...with a Thomas face. I guess it was all right as he kept pointing at it shouting, 'Choo choo' or 'Eh! Eh!' (his current sound for pumpkins and all things Halloween, I guess it sounds spooky to him).

The jack o' lantern shrank in on itself within 2 days (sigh)...

Time with the Grandparents

Paul's parents were able to come visit for 2 weeks, much to Alec's delight!

One funny story: Alec came downstairs and saw his grandad eating and immediately folded his arms and started jabbering away at him. Grandad said he was telling him off for not praying in front of him!

And, of course, no day in Alec's life is complete without playing 'choo choo's...

Alec actually cried and fussed in the when they got out at the airport, we'll just have to get excited about next year's trips.

Lied Discovery Children's Museum & lunch with daddy!

On Friday Alec & I were able to meet up with Hilary and Catherine at the Lied Children's Discovery Museum. I was impressed with all the displays and interactive materials that kept Alec & Cat occupied for 3 hours:


In the 'Crafts' section for the younger children, they got to paint a coyote. I think Alec got more on his body than the paper.


Alec was giving hugs, though I don't think Cat was a huge fan!



I think I know how to make Disneyland a bit easier for myself in future...

On the way home Alec fell asleep...which means he refused to nap when we got home. Paul and I decided to go to lunch and try out a new Mediterranean place.

Turns out Alec is a huge fan of tzatziki-he perfected the technique of dipping the pita (and his hand) into the sauce each time.

Cute Pictures

Alec's so happy to have his daddy home!! The video chatting apparently worked-he had no problem immediately re-bonding.


It's also nice to have him around in the mornings for walks:



Here's Milo & Maggie waiting patiently at the door until we allow them to come in.

Alec is really into 'Thomas the Tank Engine', he now carries a plastic engine around and constantly wants to call out, 'choo choo'.


We started taking Alec into nursery at 17 months old and he's certainly enjoying it. I can't believe how fast he's growing...

Here he is enjoying his daddy taking off his Sunday clothes:

I was just playing around with color settings on the camera-I loved the dangling feet:

One of Alec's "party tricks" is to ask him to do his 'He-Man'. He tenses up his face & clenches his fists, SO funny!

Some days Alec's just incredibly photogenic and I get loads of cute shots:


Having a good time with Auntie Kelsey:

Updates, dogs & more dogs...

I'm sorry, I know I've done a lot of posts in a short period of time, but I'm making up for lost time. Be sure to scroll down if you haven't visited my blog in a while, there are 3 other recent posts!

Paul's work is taking longer than planned and since he'll now be waiting on another student to get some results that could take 2-3 months, we felt his time would be better spent (and more happily spent!) back home, studying for the actuary exam while wrapping up the PhD before next September. We still plan to move to Colorado, but our plans change so quickly, I'll wait to give a definite date until the moving van is booked.

We did have some good news. The college gave me an additional class, which makes 4, and means I'm eligible for benefits! Yay!

I also wanted to include some updates on the dogs, though I realize few people care. Humor me anyway, I've become such a dog lover recently!

Last week I found another stray dog and brought it home. That makes the 3rd stray I've brought home this year, and once again was able to find the owners. I've also been informed it will be the last one I bring to my parents' home. :) Hopefully I don't find anymore here as I seem unable to resist...

Maggie & Milo (hereafter referred to as 'M&M') are great. We started intermediate classes at Petsmart last week, which has given us more rules to practice.

There's a group of people who let their dogs play together each night at the park and we passed them on our evening walks for over a month. I finally felt M&M were ready to make some friends and get off their leashes, so we tried it out. It went wonderfully and it's become a surprisingly relaxing time of day for me now. I usually drive over to the park and let the dogs run around chasing each other, fetching frisbees, etc. for an hour or so (we take walks in the morning now). I think of it as M&M's playgroup. Alec runs around and hugs them all as well! His favorite is Torque, a 107 pound german shepherd.

Here's Milo with Cheyenne, a german shepherd. Milo likes to steal her frisbee and get her to wrestle. Never mind that Cheyenne's more than double his weight!

Maggie's not as social and I think it's so funny that if any puppies come, they tend to want to play with her. Here's Tessa, a little 8-week old lab trying to get Maggie to play:

My friend Jill's holding up a chew toy, that everyone suddenly wants. (Most nights we have about 10 dogs running around.) Here she has Torque, Loka (her husky), Cheyenne (her german shepherd) and M&M all paying attention. You can also see the two lab puppies in the back right corner wrestling.

A little head cold...

Poor Alec started with a slight fever on Wednesday, then added a runny nose by Thursday.

Yet, somehow being sick doesn't seem to slow him down.

Now that he's passed it on to me, I'm not certain how to keep up:

Reception Pictures

Sabrena and I had a good time all week preparing fondant and baking! My cousin Nikki was out from Utah, so we enlisted her aid in making the flowers, running errands and putting it all together on Saturday.

Kari was very happy with the cake, so it was all worth it:

Here's a photo with my siblings and some cousins:

Temple Pictures

Kari and Ben were sealed in the LA Temple on August 15, 2008 for time and all eternity.

Afterwards, we had to wander around and do loads of photos, before heading to the luncheon at the restaurant down the street. Kari decided on a Chinese theme, since Ben's father is Chinese. So, she asked me to dress Alec in his pajamas from Paul's Chinese cousins-she originally mentioned him being a 'Buddha' because of his belly...so I casually mentioned a sheet cake from the local grocery store being a lot easier than a 10 layer cake and the matter was dropped. He did look awfully cute:

Here he is learning to make a 'pop!' sound with a rose petal and my cousin Chad:

On the steps of the LA Temple: