Phoenix!!

We got the privilege of going to Phoenix over the long Presidents' Day weekend! We were excited to see Andrew and Sarah's home for the first time, and we were thrilled to celebrate Kim's mom's 60th birthday!! Every milestone birthday seems like an extra-special gift from God for a breast-cancer survivor! We love you, Mom!

 

 The first morning in Phoenix, we woke up to a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, FRESH grapefruit, and FRESH-squeezed orange juice! Yum!!

We all got a turn helping to juice the oranges that Matt and Ian picked from the orange trees in Andrew and Sarah's yard.

Not surprisingly, Ian was a huge fan of the orange juice ...

 ... as were the rest of us!

 As usual during family time, we spent lots of time just talking, staying in our PJs 'til lunch time, and playing together. Ian thought that getting lifted up by Uncle Jason was so fun,

 he wanted to give Uncle Jason a turn, too! :)

 While it was too cold to actually swim in Andrew and Sarah's backyard pool, it was certainly warm enough to enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful view.

 Ian thought that sitting on the diving board was especially fun,

 as was investigating what was in the pool filter.

 Ian was very thankful that Aunt Sarah had borrowed a couple of train sets and some toys from a friend! He had plenty of fun things to play with while in Phoenix.

 Aunt Sarah gave us an experience with In 'n' Out Burger, a burger chain in the Southwestern US. They only have about six things on their menu! The burgers have a special sauce, and all of the cups and French fries bags have Bible verses on them! What a fun place!

 While we girls (and Ian!) took an afternoon nap, Jason and Matt (not surprisingly!) came up with a little mini-golf competition. We woke up in time to see Jason retrieving a golf ball from under the TV stand.

What a treat to take a nap on the back porch, huh?!? :)

 We all went to pick Uncle Andrew up from work at his physical therapy clinic. During the tour, we took advantage of all of the "toys" we saw!

 Ian thought it was GREAT that Uncle Andrew has so many balls at his job!

 All of the guys took turns on this fun "speed skating trainer" (not its official name but that's sure what it looked like) ... :)

 Dr. Andrew even helped to give Ian a turn.

 We could play a lot of games on this "toy," asking Ian to jump between various colors on the mat.

 Of course, Ian had many "story times" with aunts, uncles, and grandparents!

While the guys were out golfing on Saturday morning, the girls and Ian went to a train park in Scottsdale. This was undoubtedly (and not surprisingly) one of Ian's top highlights of the trip. He kept running excitedly from place to place, shrieking with delight. We got to see a full-size locomotive,

 and walk on a track.

 Then, we took a train ride of our own around the park.

 After riding the carousel with Aunt Amy, Ian immediately asked to go again!

 Thankfully, Aunt Sarah was willing to take him!

And then Momma took him one last time.

Ian enjoyed seeing the model trains, too, and tried his best to keep up with the trains as they moved along the track.

At the front of the model train building was an Ian-sized train car!

 After lunch, we girls went out to help Sarah do some baby-supply registering at Buy Buy Baby. We took a break in the comfy gliders ...

 ... before registering some more.

 After dinner that night, Grammy's plane arrived! Ian wanted to play trains with her immediately!

 Kim was Chef Andrew's assistant in making some birthday chocolate souffles for Grammy.

 Ian helped to sample the batter ...

 ... and then give Uncle Jason a chocolate-y kiss.

 What a yummy treat!

 Happy birthday, Mom!

On Sunday morning, we got to attend Andrew & Sarah's church and take a tour of Sarah's classroom and school. What a beautiful facility! Grammy treated us all to fish tacos at Rubios for lunch.

 Back at home, we took naps and played games. Ian was a huge fan of the PaperBoy Super Nintendo game Andrew, Amy, and Kim had loved as kids.

 On Sunday night, we girls got to see Wicked!

 The costumes, scenery, and music were all stunning. We laughed a lot and were amazed at the talent. What a fun evening! By the time we girls got home, Papa's plane had landed, so we enjoyed more chocolate souffles and some games together.

 On Monday morning, we picked more fruit from Andrew and Sarah's trees -- including tangelos,

 oranges,

 and grapefruit!

 What a haul, huh?

 Aunt Amy and Ian enjoyed building blocks outside while everyone else was getting ready for the day.

 Andrew and Sarah treated us all to admission to the Musical Instruments Museum. We could "journey" around the world, seeing various instruments while listening on headphones to what the instruments sound like and watching on a TV screen to how the instruments are played. Very interesting!

 Ian's favorite place was the "Musical Experience Room" where everything was hands on!!

 We adults liked it, too!

the siblings ...

the pregnant sisters and sisters-in-law (about 27 weeks, 21 weeks with twins, and 13 weeks along)

 

the dads-to-be

 

Thanks for the great time, Andrew and Sarah! You did a lot of preparation to make our trip so relaxing and enjoyable. We enjoyed every moment! Thanks for being a great reason to celebrate, Mom!

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Ian and Kim had a good time making and decorating butter cookies together! Surprisingly, Ian wasn't a big fan of the cookies themselves, but he sure liked sampling the sprinkles. :)

 Ian was invited to a Valentine's Day party!

 The kids strung pony beads onto pipe cleaners, and then the mommas twisted the pipe cleaners into heart shapes. Ian thought stringing beads was VERY fun!

 Then, it was time for the kids to exchange Valentines.

 Ian and Caleb B. were happy to show off their Valentine "mailboxes." It was fun to eat the cookies that one friend gave out!

a group picture ... Caleb L., Caleb B., Carson, Hailey, Zane, and Ian

We were also happy to have a good OB-GYN appointment on Tuesday! The glucose test went well, and since we haven't gotten a phone call, we assume that Kim doesn't have any issues with gestational diabetes. Thanks, Carrie, for watching Ian and planning such fun activities so that Kim could have a smooth appointment. :)

Pillow Houses and Babies

 We had fun one day this week making a "pillow house." We collected most of the pillows we could find in the house, and then Ian wanted to "build the house" on top of Momma and Daddy's bed. It was such a squishy hit that we had to recreate the pillow house multiple times this week.

 We got to spend a lot of time with babies this week! My friend, Sarah, (not pictured) brought over her six-week-old baby, Owen, on Tuesday. Ian was fascinated by Owen! Ian kept asking to hold Owen, and Sarah said that was okay. Owen even fell asleep in Ian's arms! The next day, we baby-sat another friend's 11-month-old, Philip. We took Philip with us to Toddler Time at the library. Ian held Philip on his lap almost the entire story time and kept giving Philip kisses on his head. For a 2 1/2 year old, Ian seems pretty interested in and gentle with babies. We can't wait to see him as a big brother in just a few weeks!

Kim's belly keeps growing as we approach the third trimester! (It looks like I'm still about six weeks bigger than I was while I was pregnant with Ian. Check out this 32-week pic from March 2009.) I'm so thankful to still be feeling good, and so far I haven't had any foot swelling like I did last time. This coming week, we'll go in for another doctor's appointment, including the glucose screen.

A few videos

I wasn't able to place these video clips into the last blog post due to Blogger being uncooperative! Hope you enjoy them!



So you can see exactly the sort of things Ian likes to do in the mud ..

We talked a few blog posts ago about how much Ian likes to rhyme. Lately, he's been playing a "rhyming game" of sorts. Sometimes, we'll ask him to think of words that rhyme with a word that we think of; other times, he'll think of the starting word. Either way, it turns into a funny game with lots of made-up rhyming words. :) (And, no, I have no idea why Ian was standing by the trash can ...)



Ian has been VERY interested in letters lately. He now can identify all of the upper case letters of the alphabet with high accuracy, although he still gets R/K and M/W confused at times. He also can recognize numbers 0-9, though still mainly thinks 9s are 6s. He LOVES "reading" cereal boxes, ads, signs on the road, etc. We'll hear him spelling out the letters individually and then ask, "What does THAT spell?" In this example, he's reading "SALE" and "INCREDIBLE!" (backwards).





We've also mentioned how much Ian loves story. At least 30?? times a day, Ian asks us to tell him a story! He loves ANY story that we make up or any Bible story. Lately, he's also been very interested in fairy tales such as "The Three Little Pigs," "Rapunzel," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Hansel and Gretel," and "Jack and the Beanstalk." During his "rest time" (he still rarely falls asleep in the afternoon), he loves to tell himself stories, too. I tried to video the monitor so you could get a glimpse at the riveting stories Ian tells himself. :) Right after this story ended, he told an elaborate story about friends Mr. Kyle, Ms. Aliceson, and Caleb. :)

Happy birthday, Daddy, and other fun!

 We've been so thankful for the RAIN that we've had almost every day for the past few weeks! One particularly rainy day, Ian discovered the mud puddle in the "garden." Boy, was he excited!!

 It was fun to dig, drop, and jump in all of that mess!

 By the end, Ian was covered in mud from head to toe. He could easily have been selected to be in a Tide commercial! And it would've been a successful commercial, too, as the clothes came completely clean. :)

 Ian was very excited to make Daddy a few birthday cards for his birthday on Thursday. He mainly wanted to draw spirals, circles, lines, and zigzags ...

 ... but he also decided to draw himself! The drawing certainly doesn't look impressive, but when you see the labels of all of the parts he intended to include, it's precious! He was also proud to draw a letter "I" all by himself. The only other letter he can successfully draw is an "O." He's proud of that, too! :)

 We met some friends at a new indoor playground called "Wonderwild" on Thursday morning. It was a GREAT place (especially with the rainy weather!). Ian's favorite parts seemed to be the train table (not a big surprise), the slides, and the "ball pit."

 Whee!

 Ian liked to go down the slide at the same time as his friends (like Caleb B.), perhaps just so he could say, "On your mark, get set, GO!"

 Our once-timid Ian wasn't afraid at all about climbing up to the very top of the play structure and then sliding down the tube slide. (On a side note, though, our once-friendly Ian is now shy even around people we know and is reluctant to talk or wave at times! Silly boy!) You can also see Ian's friends Caleb B. and Caleb L. at the top of the structure, along with a small child who was screaming because he got stuck trying to go up. :)

 The playground also included one large bouncy structure. The slide was very steep, so Ian preferred to go on his belly! :)

 This is the ball pit Ian really enjoyed. He and Carson had fun throwing (and trying to catch) the balls.

 Jump, Caleb, jump!

 After our family went out to dinner at a local Thai restaurant, we decided to continue the family tradition of going to Chuck E. Cheese's to play some games. Ian was a little unsure of the "rides" that jumped and bumped around, like this monster truck ride.

 But he did really like this helicopter ride that went up and down if he made the pedals spin.

 We tried the kiddie skee ball game,

 but Ian much preferred playing the adult version. When we left, he told us his favorite thing was, "playing skee ball."

 Honestly, though, he seemed most interested in this motion ride (though not while he was on it). He had this intrigued yet panicked expression through most of the ride and then finally asked to come off during a particularly bumpy time because "my ears feel stuffy." Once he got off, though, he didn't want to leave that area and continued to want to "watch the movie" while other people were riding the ride.

 Matt and I most enjoyed the competitive basketball game. Unfortunately, Matt beat me EVERY time. (Maybe I can use my big belly as an excuse??? :))

When we got home, we sang to Matt and enjoyed eating brownie mallow bars together. What a fun birthday! We thank God for a wonderful husband and daddy like you, babe!