Day to Day Update

So we figured that this could be a more mundane post about what's going on in our lives.  We still have fun just without the adventures :)  We now have Tennessee plates and licenses which is fun and odd.  Tennessee only requires one plate on a car so we're still getting used to our cars looking funny. 

Sarah got called as the laurel advisor (or in other words she works with the 16-18 yr old girls in our ward).  She only teaches once a month which was unexpected but nice.  Sarah was also recently called to be the ward organist which is a new endeavor in her life.  She's doing pretty well, but she's no expert.  The foot pedals are still entirely intimidating and maybe someday she'll have enough courage to play them while people sing along.  Someday she going to make some curtains for Allen's room, first she has to figure out a place to set up the sewing machine.

Joshua has been busy with work and trying to find time to start a garden and take care of our yard.  He was hoping to get the garden dug this weekend but it was threatening rain all weekend, so maybe next weekend he'll get around to it for sure (unless it rains... again).  He is also extremely wonderful when he gets home doing double duty helping with Allen and making dinner on the weekends.  We bought a lawn mower which promptly stopped working the day we bought it after not even a minute of use.  We're going to get it replaced or fixed under warranty because we followed the directions they gave on starting and putting it together.  This weekend we made a really good Apple Caramel Pie, maybe we'll even get around to sharing the recipe someday; we all know that the pie won't last long enough to share with anyone.

Allen has been busy.  He gets into everything and sometimes we think that he has no reason to have toys because he plays with other things more.  Some of his favorites are mom's hair thingamajigs (that's what Sarah calls them anyway), the containers in the bottom cupboards in the kitchen, shoes, laundry, socks, pens, and any other random objects around the house.  We go to the library every other week if not every week and get Allen some books, which he loves to sit and flip through every once in a while.  He's not walking yet and he's still really not that close; we figure we'll worry if he's not walking by 18 months which is in July.  But he is getting more daring so maybe he'll decide he wants to walk soon.  He loves being outside though he's not sure about grass.  He is also an extremely picky eater.  Allen won't touch vegetables (except carrots on rare occassions) or meat (unless it's honey ham and sometimes not even then).  He loves fruit (most of the time), yogurt, and oatmeal.  Actually he has a passion for oatmeal; he would probably eat it for every meal if we let him.  He tries to eat apples and oranges though we have to be extremely careful because he tries to eat the orange peel too.  We also think he may have figured out who "mama" and "dada" are though it's hard to tell because he just likes to say those words.  Allen is also very obedient.  He follows basic direction very well (most of the time).  We can tell him things like "please shut the cabinet" or "put that in the box" and he will do what we say.  We love our little one as you can tell by the fact that his paragraph is longer than both of ours together ;)

And now pictures for you to enjoy!  Allen and Dad regularly share oranges together.  Sometimes Allen is impatient. 

Orange slice

Look mom!

 

I think I'll just eat the whole thing.

We had a little bit of snow earlier this week so Allen and I went out and played.  This is only Allen's second experience with snow, and his first good one.  In the pictures at the end you can see the trail he left crawling through the snow.  You can also see where he changed directions.  Rather than just turning he backs up like something is in his way and then turns the direction we wants to go.  Allen crawled around until his glove fell off.  Then he tried to crawl with it off, but didn't like the cold on his hand, and even after it was back on was ready to be done. 

 



This is actually earlier.  Josh wanted to show Allen the snow on Saturday.  It didn't even stick though.



All bundled and ready to play!





Allen kept having to shake the snow off of his gloves.





This is so much fun!



Trying to climb down the little ridge in our yard.  He got stuck so I helped him down.

 



 



 

The last 3 pictures are as close as you'll get to a video since I can't get it to work for some reason.

I took a picture of the trail as we went back.  You can see the ridge Allen tried to climb down in this one.

Allen's changes of directions are the pointy parts of his trail.

 

After Allen's glove fell off.

All of Allen's layers.



Tennessee Aquarium

February is always a busy month for us and it always seems to go by really fast.  Joshua's mom drove up to visit.  We had a lot of fun while she was here.  We were able to go to the temple in Atlanta when we dropped her off for the airport.  It'll take some getting used to having to travel so far to go to the temple, but we'll figure it out.

We had a family date on Friday to celebrate Valentine's Day and the following Monday we went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.  We were able to go because Josh gets a discount through TVA.  They have two buildings that a regular ticket gets you into:  an ocean building and a river building.  They have sting rays you can touch, penguins, jellyfish, and a huge ocean aquarium that has sharks, turtles, and lots of fish.  The river building has otters, turtles, crocodiles/alligators, snakes, and more fish.  They also have shows in each though we didn't get to go to any.  We want to go again even though it's expensive without a discount and spend more time.  Especially because Allen had a blast though he was tired by the time we were done.  

He liked looking even though he couldn't touch anything yet.

The only penguin in the water

There was a huge crowd and Allen liked watching them as much as the penguin.

Allen is as tall as a small penguin

Hello Mr. Turtle

Allen and Dad in the shark cage. 



duh nuh, duh nuh

Duh Nuh, Duh Nuh



DUH NUH NUH!  Allen really enjoyed the ocean aquarium

Allen and Mom in front of trout :)

The box is cool too!!

Freshwater stingray maybe?  It was in the river aquarium.

Little turtles

And fish!

Can I get in?

No? Ok I'll keep lookin'

The diver was feeding the fish from his hand.  It was pretty cool.

 Hopefully next time we'll have pictures of our house.  We tried to upload the videos we put on facebook, but for some reason they won't upload.  So we'll try pictures instead!