What Do You Think?

I obviously changed my blog. Should I keep it, or change it back to the way it was?

Tagged

Nicole tagged me. Taylor was 6 months old in this picture, and we we were getting him ready for a bath. I thought he looked like a plumber with his crack hanging out.

Alright Kelli, Megan, Bethany, and Carlie. Your turn. Go to your pictures, then the 4th folder, then the 4th file (or, like me, the 4th folder, 4th folder, 4th folder, 4th pic).

Lucky Number 7

Erik turned 7 months the other day. I thought it would be a good time to actually go through all our pictures and find one of Taylor at the same age. So here is Erik at 7 months:

On the other hand, here is Taylor. Now that I'm a little more objective, I see things a little differently. First of all, he had some funky hair and a big o' honkin' melon on his shoulders. And just look at those arm rolls! It's funny- Erik still weighs as much as Taylor did when he was that age. I guess they just carry it differently. And of course, Taylor has his bottom lip sticking out:

My mom swears that Erik looks exactly like me when I was a baby. Looking back at my baby pictures, I hope she's wrong because I wasn't a looker. So I either just can't see how cute I was or Erik really isn't as cute as I so un-objectively think he is. But some people say that Erik looks exactly like Kent. It was the same way with Taylor- half the people say he looks exactly like me, and the other half say he looks like Kent... which is funny, because we look nothing alike. Here are some pics of me as a baby. If you cross your eyes and squint, I'll look better.

If you look at this picture, I think Taylor looks more like my brother than me.

And here are some of Kent. If you ask me, I think both of the boys look more like him. What do you think?

Lost and Found

Well, I found them. Remember a few posts ago when I lost 2 different packs of post-its? After buying a third pack, I had found one, but the original pack that I had bought remained lost... until today. It was in the corner of our living room behind one of those stand-up picture panels. My guess is that Taylor put it there. So now I have 10 pads of those big 4X6 post-its. Need any?

Time Off

This past week Kent had 3 days off. So we took advantage of it and hit a few spots. First, we went to a beach nearby. It's called Saltar's Point Beach. Taylor loved it. It was a little cold, but of course that didn't stop him from jumping in the freezing water. There were a lot of little black crabs under the rocks. It was fun to try and find them. Taylor would pick them up and say, "Oh, he's pinching me" very calmly, but he kept picking them up. Regardless of the cold, it was still fun looking for crabs and pocketing the shells that we found (that we probably weren't supposed to keep).

Then we finally headed up to Seattle. We hit the Children's Museum, and then, of course, we had to go up the Space Needle. The boys did great, and we had a good time.

Did You Get A Haircut?

Nope, I get 'em all cut.

Since our kids didn't seem to get curly locks like Kent (not quite sure what happened- my hair isn't straight either), they look shaggy and homely when their hair gets long. So we had to give them a buzz tonight. Here are the before pictures:

Erik

Taylor

And here are the after pictures:

Don't they look like they had fun?

Pumpkin Pickin'

Today we went down to the pumpkin patch to do some pumpkin pickin'. So we brought the boys' costumes along to try and get some good pics. They did pretty well. So check out our slideshow!

Also, take a look at this picture. A lot of you know that Taylor sticks his bottom lip out a lot. He's always done it. Makes him look like a bulldog. This picture shows just how different Erik and Taylor are. Look at their lips:

P.S. There seems to be some confusion about the whole lawn-mowing incident. Let me just clarify that it will not become a habit- it was done in a brief moment of heart-felt charity. After all, I am still a woman.

Dedicated To Linda

Behold your maker, green blades of filth! Dare you grow more than two inches in a yard under the jurisdiction of one such as I? May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits! You will soon know the wrath of hard, cold steel against your sides and live a long, painful life! MWAHAHAHA!!

Anyone that knows me knows that I do not mow lawns. It has nothing to do with getting dirty or physical labor- I just DON'T mow lawns. It's a man's thing. No one knows this more than my mother-in-law, Linda. When we were in California visiting her and Steve last year, we would look at houses together. If we saw a house with a big yard, she'd say, "Remember, you don't want a yard that's too big. If Kent's too busy, you'll have to mow it." I'd kindly explain to her that I simply don't mow lawns. That's a man's job. And if Kent was gone, then I'd hire some young entrepreneur to do it.

Well, the missionaries in our ward live in a house rather than an apartment. We drive by their house every day because it's on the main road to and from town. And everyday I would think, "Wow, that yard looks awful!" The grass was about a foot high, and there were weeds everywhere. It wasn't necessarily that bad, in hindsight. Keep in mind, however, that by comparison it was pretty bad. People often call DuPont, "Pleasantville" and for good reason- every single yard is manicured. It's a very clean neighborhood. So Kent and I took it upon ourselves to take care of their yard. They have better things to do. So this past Saturday we realized it needed another mow. Kent was tired, and so was I. But I didn't want him to have to mow both lawns, because ours needed mowing, too. So I decided that I'd mow our lawn. It was a big step for me. Understand that I swore off mowing lawns- but I knew Kent was really tired.

Needless to say, the local golf course won't be hiring me as their groundskeeper. There was no discernible pattern, and I had to go around the tree in our front yard about four times. But I thought Linda would be proud of me- she probably knows how much willpower, courage, perserverence, and sweat this took for me. And I did it all in my rockin' pink rain boots.

Appeasement

I was on the phone with Nana D (Diane, for those of you who might be slightly confused), and she told me that I had to update my blog. When I explained to her that I had just updated it today, but it wasn't about the boys, she insisted that nobody wanted to read what I wrote- they just want to see pics of the boys. So I relented.

Here is Erik after breakfast the other day.

Taylor is holding up a piece of paper that was from school. Apparently he had written his name all by himself!

Handsome little devils, aren't they? Anyone beg to differ?

My Brown Thumb... And Post-Its Have Legs

I've tried to grow all manner of different things, but they all die. Like my cilantro, for instance. They sprout... and then quickly die. That's along with the other seeds I planted- basil, lavender, parsley, and forget-me-nots. But I also planted some sunflower seeds in the backyard. I apparently put them in the wrong place, though, because every kid that comes over gravitates to that corner of our yard, so none of the sunflowers are standing. By the time they bloomed, they all looked as if they had withstood varying speeds of wind. But they bloomed. So that counts for something, right?

They bloomed in the same corner of our yard that has blackberry bushes growing up from the other side of the fence into our yard. Yummy! There are blackberry bushes every here, and I mean everywhere. Like on-the-side-of-the-road-on-the-way-to-church everywhere. And they're good.

But they're not easy on the arms. You can't get to half of the blackberries because of the giant thorns-of-death all over the bush. Check 'em out.

On another note, I've bought 3 packs of post-its in the past week. When I bought my first pack, I unloaded all of the bags from the car. The post-its sat on the ground for about an hour, and when I went back to get them, they were gone. I looked everywhere. Hmm... So I bought another pack when I was at the store the next day. I unloaded all of my bags (I made sure I knew which bag the pack of post-its was in). When I went back to get them, though, they were gone. I was getting really frustrated at this point. TWO PACKS! I was tearing my house apart looking for my post-its. Where the heck did they go? They must have grown legs and walked off. So I bought a third pack. Of course, as fate would have it, the next day I opened my deli meat drawer in my fridge and found one of the packs. I have yet to find the last pack.

So Long, Farewell

For the past two weeks we've been lucky enough to have the Ballard family stay with us. They're our friends from Maryland, and they're totally awesome. Brad was doing an ophthalmology rotation here, so they stayed with us. It was great- Taylor was totally entertained for the past two weeks. We're hoping that they start their residency here this coming June: I've even picked out the lot where they should build their house- it would be about 4 houses down from us! Kent and I have also betrothed both of our kids to marry their kids. Kenyon is a year younger than Taylor, and Indiana is 4 weeks older than Erik. So both Amanda and I have decided that they're going to get married.

Unfortunately I missed a lot of good pics of the kids playing. The ones that I did get came out too dark.

This is Taylor and Kenyon saying goodbye- dark, but the best I got.

Here's Erik and his future wife.

We'll miss you guys!