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!

Christmas Trip and Birthday

Trip to Texas

    We decided to drive down to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Texas since Allen hasn't ever been to Texas and Josh had a two week mandatory vacation from work.  It wasn't too bad of a trip, it took about 16 hours because of traffic, but it won't happen again probably.  Next time we'll just fly.  It was good weather though and we had a great time.  Here are some things that happened over the end of December and the beginning of January.

 



We gave Allen his first haircut; it wasn't so much fun.

 

We went and visited this old battleship from the World Wars, the Battleship Texas.  It was pretty awesome!

Josh manned some guns with Adam to keep the planes from getting too close.  The guns actually moved too!

 

Then it was Sarah's turn!

 

 

Then it was Allen's turn, but it was too heavy for him to operate.

 

 

It was really tall when we went a few levels up, we weren't even at the very top yet!

  

Sorry it's sideways, but this is one of the stairwells; they were really steep.  Mom, Dad, and Grandpa had to take up positions along the stairs and pass Allen up or down.

 

Yep, Grandpa was exploring around with us.

 

Allen found some levers that he could try and pull, but they were stuck.  But they were just the right size to grab.

 

 

We also went and say the San Jacinto Monument.  Where a deciding battle took place when Texas fought for Independence.

 

Dad and Grandpa wanted to show Mom the Baytown bridge.  This is from the top, it was a cloudy but pretty day.

 

The wind was blowing so Allen got a little wind burn and he was really tired after a fun day exploring the ship.

 

Did you know boxes were so much fun to climb on!

 

But really hard to get off. "Help!"

Allen's first birthday present!

 

The cake Mom made was the best part.

 

Josh built Allen his own seat out of giant Lego blocks.  The seat didn't last long once Allen got off and started taking the blocks apart.

 

 

 

Tennessee

For anyone reading who didn't know, a few weeks ago Joshua accepted a job as an HR Representative working for Bechtel in Tennessee.  It's been pretty exciting.  All of our stuff was packed and moved November 30, our car was shipped December 3, and we flew to Tennessee December 5.  Actually the whole process from interviewing, accepting, and moving for the job has been a whirlwind.  Everything happened really fast and we were thankful to be able to enjoy Thanksgiving with my side of the family and Katelyn as well as visiting Josh's other siblings and Jeannie in Logan before we left.  This will be the first time for me being farther than a couple of hours from where my parents lived, but seeing Allen get excited when he hears my mom's voice on the cellphone has soothed most of my worries.  I am very grateful for technology and the opportunity it gives us to stay in close contact with our families.  We've got most of our things in storage while we visit Josh's parents for the Christmas holidays.  Josh worked for a couple of weeks and now has a mandatory 2 week vacation, we're taking full advantage of the time visiting Texas for the first time in a couple of years as well as moving in to our new home at the beginning of the year.

Allen has done amazing well with all this traveling and being in new places.  He's pretty comfortable no matter where we are as long as mom and dad are around.  Here's some of his new adventures and accomplishments:

Allen had lots of fun looking out at the clouds on his first plane ride.  Mom and Dad were extremely grateful, as I'm sure the rest of the people on the airplane were, that Allen didn't fuss once.  He was having fun.

Allen got to play with Mom and Dad the whole trip, and suck on a binkey to help his ears pop.  It was a tiring but good day.

We got upgraded to this car because the size we reserved was gone.

There are walls of trees on almost all the roads in Tennessee.

Allen was so tired but he didn't want to lay down and sleep.  So he fell asleep sitting up.

"What's mom doing over there?"

Piggy-back ride on dad!

His best friend is the baby on the other side of the mirror.

He stands up on his tippy-toes to look over the top of the bed.  Mom was playing peek-a-boo with him.

He figured out how to crawl on his knees.  This was a brand new thing he figured out his first day at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Texas.

Teeth, No More a Turtle, Look Alikes, and Snow

Allen has been a turtle for a little while; when he was put on his back, he was stuck and couldn't get on to his stomach.  A few days a go he figured out how to roll from his back to his front.  He's actually been able to do it for a while, he's flipped over several times at night, but apparently it wasn't a conscious thing.  His uncle, Tom, taught him how to do it consciously.  Now we have a runaway baby especially during diaper changes.

Another fun thing we discovered is that Allen is looking like Sarah right now.  Sarah's mom found several pictures of her at about the same age that Allen is now and we know where he got his chubby cheeks.  Here are a few pictures to compare.

Allen - "huh?"

Sarah - "huh?"

Allen not happy because we made him wear shoes.

Sarah not happy on Halloween.

Allen eating bread

Sarah 

Sarah with red hair and chubby cheeks

We also got to introduce Allen to his first snowfall the other day.  We pulled him around on the sled on his own and then with mom for the rest of the time.  Though he didn't like having to wear shoes.  He was also not having as good a time as he could have had because it happened to snow in the midst of Allen getting his first teeth while dealing with a pretty nasty cold.  We don't have any pictures of his teeth, but you can feel them and they're sharp!

Ready to go!

Sledding!

A Little Bit More

The past little bit has been pretty exciting around the house.  Allen has gotten a little bit more mobile, which makes life more interesting as he explores new things like the box of tape, books,dog food, and (as always) paper.  Here are a couple videos that are pretty funny.

He's figured out how to stand up on his own now and does it all the time, he'd rather stand than crawl around.  His cousins came over, one of them being the same age (almost to the day), and he watched her pull herself up to standing.  He had yet to perform that feat but after they left he did it for the first time and hasn't stopped standing since.  The down side to all of this is that we have to watch him constantly because he likes to stand on the TV stand which has the cable box, a game system, and the DVD player.  We don't really want those, not to mention the TV, knocked over.  And he hasn't quite figured out how to get down from standing yet, maybe he never will.  For now he just gets upset until one of us comes to save him.

He still doesn't like to go to sleep, because he's afraid he'll miss out on something exciting.  But every once in a while he'll go to sleep and not realize it.  He started teething yesterday and hasn't been too bad in the morning but in the afternoon his gums hurt him and so he cries a lot, and has a hard time napping.  But he fell asleep while dad was holding him.  These next videos are him falling asleep and not really meaning too.

He fights it pretty good, especially at the end.  You can see him jerk up a little bit.

He eventually gave in.  You can see that he's still half awake but by the end he's nodding off and a goner.

Teething hasn't been too bad really.  We think he's got two teeth coming in on the bottom at the same time and can feel the points poking through when he lets us put our fingers in his mouth.  Dad let him bite on a tootsie roll and we could see a couple of teeth marks but we shall see what actually comes through hopefully here in the next couple days (pictures are to come as soon as they come through).  

The first storm of the winter hit in full force today as well.  There's probably about an inch of really heavy, wet snow on the ground and it's supposed to continue all through the night.  Dad will have to be careful when he heads out to work at 6:00 in the morning tomorrow, maybe even a little earlier.  Allen hasn't gone out in it just yet, it's pretty windy, but we're sure he'll enjoy looking around at the changed scenery.