Halloween 2010

We have to thank Grandma Chatterton for making this year's Halloween such a success. She gave us Tommy's costume and then made Ben's and my matching pirate costumes. We got a ton of compliments and it was so fun telling people that my mother-in-law made our costumes. Tommy was scared of Ben when he first got dressed up, but once Ben took of the bandanna and the eye patch Tommy was much happier.

Tommy was also scared of his dog costume. When we were getting ready at home he screamed and ran away anytime we even touched the costume or tried to get him into it. We took him to our ward Halloween party in his pj's. We ate dinner and then went to the car to see if he would put the costume on then. Surprisingly, he didn't protest at all when we put it on! He cooperated and seemed happy to be dressed up. We think that once he saw everyone else in their costumes he wanted to wear his, too. He was the cutest little doggie with the cutest little tail. Even though it was close to 75 degrees that night Tommy never complained about being in such a heavy costume. He even did great trick-or-treating. He held his bucket and held it up to everyone so they could put candy in it. As soon as we got home he dove right into his Halloween basket. Since then we have been able to use the candy to bribe Tommy to obey:)

The above video is Tommy playing the cake walk game by himself. He's such a cute little doggie.

September - October in Review

September and October were such busy months! After we got home from Denver Ben left on a business trip to Portland for about five days. While he was gone I bought lots of stuff for our home and started painting Tommy's bathroom (three months later and I still haven't finished it). We also enjoyed visits from Uncle Wes and Grammy Ward. The pictures and videos tell it best:

Tommy dining with his monkey on the new table I bought him from IKEA.

Uncle Wes tickling Tommy. Wes mastered the art of tickling after practicing for years on me!

Tommy giving his doggies a ride and insisting that they both be on the lion together.

Making cookies with Grammy.

Helping Mommy stir the cookie dough.

Four of Tommy's favorite things all at once: snuggling, drinking juice, hugging Wrinkles, and reading

Tommy making sure Monkey is reading on grade-level.

Tommy helping Mommy make more cookies.

Daddy and Tommy reading in their cool fort.

Tommy loves to steal my slippers. He even gets mad sometimes when he sees me wearing them.

Swinging at a park in Estrella. Life is good swingin' with Mr. Wrinkles.

This is a video of our darling boy playing peekaboo with his apple.

Here are Tommy and Daddy having a pillow fight.

This is Tommy feeding Mommy pizza. Yum!

And last, but not least, Tommy giving Wrinkles the love that he deserves.

Labor Day in Denver

We got to spend a nice cool Labor Day in Denver in this year. After spending August in Phoenix it did feel quite cold in Denver! We loved spending the week with the Chattertons. We got to play at an awesome splash pad/park with Rachel, Hillary, and Steph. Even though it was a chilly windy day, the kids had a great time in the water (it was too cold for me, though:). Rachel is such a great cousin to Tommy. She always includes him in what she is doing and makes sure that he feels loved. She's a pro at sharing, too. Thanks for being a great example to your little cousin, Rachel! You are going to be an awesome big sister!
Grandma bought Tommy and Rachel a couple sets of matching shirts. Rachel wouldn't wear hers unless Tommy wore his, but if Tommy was wearing his shirt, Rachel had to wear hers, too. It was so cute. In addition to the cute orange striped shirts they also have matching blue space shuttle shirts. And even though Rachel is about 21 months older than Tommy they wear the same size so it makes it easy for Grandma to shop!
Grandma got us all ready for Halloween while we were in Denver. Tommy was a doggie and this is the only picture we have of him smiling in his costume. I love that the doggie is holding on tight to his doggie in the picture. Great picture of Grandma, too.
We went to a fun petting zoo/park with Hillary, Mike, and Rachel. We got to ride this cool train around the park. It was $3 well spent! The kids liked the petting zoo, but they got bored with it pretty quickly. They liked the train and the park much better.

This is a picture taken in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. I think Tommy played in their dirt almost every day we were there. Rachel had to join in the fun, too, since Tommy was doing it.
On Labor Day we went to a reservoir not far from where the Chattertons live. It was pretty amazing to see a beach in the middle of suburban Denver! Since it was Labor Day there were tons of people there barbecuing, playing volleyball, and playing in the water. We built sandcastles and waded in the water. They had paddle boats that Mike, Hillary, and Rachel road after we left. It was a great day!
The last three pictures and the video are all from the Denver Children's Museum. We had a blast there! Tommy was just old enough to participate in a lot of the activities. We got to paint a picture, play with bubbles, shop for food, play with toy trains, and explore tunnels as we pretended to be rabbits and ants. We were all pretty exhausted after such a fun-filled day!

We love you, Chattertons! Thanks for letting us spend such a great week with you!

August in Review

Since I don't keep a very good journal anymore (I wish I did better!) I figured that I need to do a lot better documenting the everyday stuff that goes on. Lucky you, you get to read it! I've done a decent job of posting big things like vacations and outings, but I need to do better at posting the more regular stuff. Here it goes!

Tommy got his first haircut right after we got back from Utah. I was so sad to see those cute baby curls go, but it had to happen. He was growing a curly mullet. Here is the "before haircut" picture. I hope to see those blonde curls again soon!
Tommy loves to play outside in our little swimming pool. We play out there at least 3 or 4 mornings per week when the patio is shaded. He can play in the water with a cup and a few balls for at least an hour, and even then he is sad to get out most days. I sit out there with him and read and splash him occasionally. Playing outside in the water has become one of our favorite things to do together. This picture is of Tommy playing with his friend, McKay.
We also love to go the splash park. Sometimes Tommy is more interested in the wood chips at the adjacent playground or the rocks that border the sidewalk, but I can usually keep in the water for at least 30 minutes or so. It's the perfect thing to do on those really unbearable Phoenix summer days.
Here is a video of Tommy using my shoe to smash imaginary bugs. You know you kill way too many bugs when your 0ne-year-old thinks that is what shoes are for. We kill several crickets every evening (hate them!), but luckily we wash off the shoes before Tommy can play with them!

Tommy has learned to help me clean up the floor. He sees me wash the floor underneath his seat after he eats so sometimes he grabs a wipe and helps me do it. He has also been known to grab any washcloth (wet or dry) and clean the floor with it on his own. It just goes to show you how much our kids watch and mimic us even when we don't expect it.
Here is a picture of Daddy and Tommy reading together. Tommy loves his books and he sure loves his Daddy.
Below is a video entitled "Wrinkles on Wheels".

Speaking of Wrinkles, my heart just melts sometimes to watch how much Tommy loves his little dog. Sometimes he brings me Wrinkles and a towel. I swaddle the doggie up and then hand him back to Tommy. It is so cute to see how excited Tommy gets when I wrap Wrinkles up. He gently holds Wrinkles in his arms and gives him some hugs and loves and then we do it again.
Lastly, here is my most successful shopping trip of the month: I spent a total of $1.52 on all of this, which included $1.15 in tax. Awesome. I guess you could call couponing one of my hobbies since I get such a thrill out of it.

Go Utes!

After we enjoyed a couple of days in San Diego we headed up to Utah to spend almost two weeks with my family. We had such a great time! Everybody was apologizing for the heat wave that was passing through Salt Lake at the time, but it felt great to us. I made sure to get Tommy outside every day we were there because it was so beautiful. Tommy got to play with his cousins, Makayla and Jarom. The above pictures is when they were all playing with the same toy and they each had to hold a few balls to do it. They also played outside together in Grammy's huge sandbox. Tommy and Jarom played in the sand while Makayla preferred to play with the hose on the grass.
It's really hard to get a picture of all three kids together with Grammy, but we try every time we are together.

Tommy (1), Makayla (almost 2), and Jarom (3 1/2).
On Sunday we got to attend my brother, Wes', ward in Lehi. He teaches nursery so we all went to nursery together. Tommy loved these sunglasses. It was so amazing to see how his ward juggles 5 nursery classes like it's no big deal. It inspired me to come home and make some major changes in our ward's nursery since we have almost as many kids, but we were all in one big class together. Thanks, Wes and Jamie, for teaching us how it's done!
Tommy loved playing in Grammy's sandbox. It was a lot like being on the beach in San Diego, I guess. He was happiest when he had control of the hose.
Daddy and Tommy playing in the sand together.
Tommy and Grammy together in the sand.
Tommy loved that hose! I had no idea he was so easy to entertain. The weather was warm, but the water coming out of the hose was pretty dang cold, but Tommy didn't seem to care. He let the water run all over him and he loved every moment of it.
We have played with the hose a lot since coming back home to Phoenix. It provides at least an hour of entertainment with relatively little mess or effort on Mom's part:)
We went to the park a couple of times while we were in Utah. Unlike Phoenix, we could actually play on the park equipment because it wasn't searing hot. However, Tommy preferred to either sit and dig around in the wood chips or wander off and explore the pavilion and surrounding areas.
My brother, Carson, and I ran the Deseret News 10K on the 24th of July. We had to wake up at about 5:00am to run, but it was worth it. Carson did awesome, finishing in about 53 minutes (not bad for his first 10K!) and I was proud of myself, finishing in about 57 minutes. If I had just kept up with Carson I would have beat my personal record! Oh well, maybe next year:) We missed the big parade downtown for the first time in years, but I don't think anyone was really too upset about that. Later in the day we went to my Aunt Linda's home and enjoyed lunch with all the cousins. I haven't seen some of my cousins since I got married two years ago, so it was really fun. I miss my family lots.

Tommy had this love/hate relationship with my mom's dogs. This is a video of Tommy and Sammy. Sam looks really ferocious in this video, but she is the sweetest thing in real life and she would never hurt anyone. She just gets nervous around little people. It seems like every trip Tommy starts out being afraid of the dogs, and by the end of the trip he is chasing them around and getting right up in their faces. It's good for him to have some time with the dogs at my mom's because we aren't getting a dog around here for a long time:)

Overall, it was an awesome trip. We played at the park or in my mom's backyard almost every day we were there. One day I took Tommy swimming at the community pool and he loved that. I tried to teach him how to blow bubbles in the water. He thought it was pretty funny, so he tried to do it and ended up drinking some pool water. Yum! We were also able to go to Provo to see Ben's friends, which was so fun. They even did a Happy Pirates reunion show (the Happy Pirates is the improv comedy troupe Ben performed with at BYU).

We are so happy to have been able to make the trip to Utah. We love our friends and family there and we miss you so much!

San Diego Shores

We enjoyed a quick trip to San Diego last month on our way to Utah (it was actually only about 5 hours out of the way, so why not?). You can't pass up the opportunity to soak up the sun on the beautiful San Diego beaches! At the time it was pushing 115 degrees in Phoenix so we were more than happy to get out of town. When we stepped out of the car for the first time in San Diego the air felt amazing! It was warm and moist and smelled like the ocean. I felt comfortable to be outside during the day. I didn't feel like I was going to melt into a puddle or vaporize on the spot, so that was an improvement over what we were experiencing in Phoenix.

Tommy was amazing on the drive, especially since we woke him up at 4:00 am to leave. We listened to a lot of NPR, which kept Ben and me entertained and put Tommy to sleep, so it worked out for everyone. We went directly to the San Diego Temple for Katie's wedding (a great friend from BYU). The temple was getting a face lift at the time, which I thought was hilarious for all those wedding shots the couple took afterward (see the picture below). After the wedding we went to the beach. Since we couldn't check into our hotel for a couple more hours we had no choice:) The beach was so AMAZING. Seriously, I think it was the first time I have really relaxed for months. Tommy and Ben had a great time digging holes in the sand, building sand castles, and chasing the water. I played a little bit, but spent most of my time looking out into the ocean and just taking in the whole experience. Tommy had a great time. It was his first exposure to sand and he loved it. He dug in it, threw it, ate it, put it in his hair, and just held it. He loved the water, too. Every time the waves washed in Tommy got excited and just giggled. He was covered in sand from head to toe by the time we left, but I don't know that I have ever seen him more happy than he was at the beach. We got checked into the hotel, washed up, and changed just in time to get to Katie's reception. It rained a little bit on our way there. I guess you have to live in the desert to really appreciate a little sprinkle of rain. It was heavenly.

The next day Tommy and I went to the beach early while Ben worked from the hotel. Since we got there around 9:00 am we were some of the first people there. As soon as I put Tommy down on the sand he ran right for the water in pure bliss. We played with his beach ball and found sea shells, dug some more holes, and buried each others' toes. Tommy giggled when I buried his feet in the sand, so of course we did that a lot. We went back to the hotel in the afternoon to get lunch and take a nap and then we returned to the beach with Ben later in the day. It was much more crowded, but we still had just as much fun. By the time we left San Diego the next morning everything was covered in sand, but I didn't really care. It was so much fun that it was worth the mess. We got to meet up with some of Ben's friends from BYU for dinner, Jake and Michelle, which was so much fun. Overall, it was a dream vacation (we are pretty easy to please). We made a promise to ourselves to return to San Diego more often since it's so close and we love it so much.

Tommy in the car playing games with us ( or trying not to listen to us).

Our family in front of the San Diego Temple. Love the construction.Tommy and Mommy on the beach.

Daddy and Tommy on the beach.

Our little Mer-man.

Covered in sand from head to toe.

A picture of all of us on the beach.

Tommy chasing his beach ball.

Tommy Feeding His Doggy

Just a note about this video: Tommy started doing this completely on his own. I have never pretended to feed Wrinkles or pretended that he was hungry or eating. On this day, we sat Tommy down in his chair and he started to try to feed Wrinkles.