malachi and i went to visit ella today. kurtis and i lived with her for about 9 months prior to buying our house. she felt bad that she didn't have any toys in her house and then she suggested malachi to try out the organ...that was better than any toy we have! i was excited to get this picture of ella with malachi! (i took some others of malachi playing that i posted on our dropshots site if you are interested.)

This was Malachi's first time on a carousel.
(I think this is a sad excuse for a new post but to be honest I don't have much else to say and I feel guilty...kinda...for not posting for so long. So this is just to let everyone of you, all two or three :), that we are still alive and well.)

Father's Day

What a fun day! It began with some great deals at REI (this chair was only $3 though it retails for $54) and ended with a relaxing time at the park.

malachi and his camelback

i purchased the camelback thinking we were short one and it ended up being the perfect size for malachi. kurtis put it on him, he put the straw part in his mouth and was drinking before we knew it!

I stink at taking pictures!

i downloaded my pictures from my camera tonight and realized that i managed to take only 15 pictures during the entire time my brother and his girlfriend were visiting us. and by the way, of those 15 only 6 have mike in it and there are none of alex, his cool girlfriend! what was i thinking?! nevertheless (is that really one word??) i thought i might post this picture of mike and malachi, uncle and nephew.

who wants to go camping?

so my brother and his girlfriend are out visiting us for a week and we decided to go camping in yosemite. i was a little concerned how my son would do with the whole thing being that he is only 14 months, but as it turned out i should have been more worried about myself.

this will turn into a much too long post if i write everything in story format, and i am much to practical to do that, so i will give you a run down of the "wonderful" events that occurred.

*planned on leaving on wednesday night, didn't leave till thursday morning
*7 hour drive to get to yosemite entrance (not bad time since we had to stop and let the little one run around and we needed to eat)
*passed up the first campsite because we thought we could do much better and the lady in charge of it was a tad too talkative.
*drove 30 minutes down a bumpy dirt road only to find a campsite that was uninhabited and did not have bear boxes
*the first two campsites were just outside of the park so we opted to take our chances inside the park at this point
*first campsite full
*stopped to ask a ranger about another campsite..."not open until tomorrow" he tells us and then says the only one he knows of that "might" have openings is another one that is almost on the other side of the park...we opt to take our chances
*it's not full (yay) and we can pick any campsite we want (double yay)...we find an AWESOME campsite, Kurtis goes to reserve it...can't have it because it's been reserved by someone that came from another campsite that had overbooked..oh yah, we find this out after we have put up one of our tents
*we drive around and find another one that we like...drive back to the guy at the front to reserve it...he's gone for the day and when we drive back we see someone unloading their car at "our" campsite
*we finally find another campsite and lay claim immediately
*we unload, girls start dinner, boys start to set up tents and then Kurtis says, "you're not going to believe this..."
*we forgot our sleeping bags!!...4 adults, 1 baby, 2 sleeping bags and 30 degree weather...
*we decide to ALL sleep in the same tent to be the warmest...but not the most comfortable
*Mike wakes up in the middle of the night and throws up...5 times!!
*Malachi takes up most of the space in the tent
*we decide we do not want to sleep that way a second night OR buy two sleeping bags...so we pack up camp
*make a quick visit to yosemite valley
*meet a crazy guy in the visitor center
*run over a squirrel...and kill it
*drive to sequoia national park....and take the LONG way home
*Malachi hit his breaking point and didn't stop crying until i nursed him in his carseat while we continued driving
*got home at 1am

the best part...we were laughing almost non-stop and actually had a great time bonding

wish I had my camera...

...to take a snapshot of the two neighbor kids, ramon and gissel, and malachi all sitting on the glider in our living room reading. what a blessing it is to have great neighbors.

ramon, a 3rd grader, and gissel, a first grader, live across the street. their entire family has been such an amazing blessing to us since we moved into our house but the relationship really began to grow when they surprised me with a baby shower about a month before malachi was born. they now invite us to all of their parties. slow but sure we are getting to know many of their friends and family members.

the kids were playing with malachi when decided to make chocolate cookies. i began to take out all the ingredients. i noticed ramon and gissel looking at me strangely. i asked them if they had ever made cookies from scratch before and neither had. when i told them they could help if they wanted, all they needed to do was wash their hands, they both ran into the bathroom to clean up! talk about flashbacks to teaching, but so much more fun with only two kids. :) they read the recipe, measured and mixed everything and ended up going home an hour later with 2 dozen cookies and very proud looks on their faces. it was a lot fun for all of us...well maybe not as much for malachi since he had to be patient and wait a little longer to take a bath and get to bed, but it was well worth it.

they played with malachi and his toys while waiting for the cookies to bake. they took out his little people noah and ark. that sparked a conversation when i asked if they knew who noah was, they didn't. when i told them who he was and what he did, ramon asked me, "did that really happen?" maybe it shouldn't have taken me more than two years of living here to begin to talk about god but we will be praying these conversations can become more frequent and trust god will be growing the small seeds we can plant.

Kids. They say (and do) the darndest things.

For all of you that don't know, Malachi is fabulous at most things :) but sleeping is not one of those. He has been getting better but just when we think we've got something mastered in this area, he throws us a curve ball.

Tonight is a perfect example...but first some background info.

A few months ago when I was trying to wean Malachi from his night nursings I discovered that if I gave him some water from his sippy cup instead of nursing him he would drink and then go back to sleep (that sounds like it was a lot smoother transition than it actually was but you get the point.) I finally got him to the point where he would nurse at 7:30, be in bed by 8 and would not nurse again until 4 But he would still wake at least 2 times and I would get up and give him water. Now to some this may seem crazy, but I was elated with the progress. :)

Anyway, I finally decided that having to get up and give him the sippy cup was unnecessary if I could just leave it in his crib and get him to figure out that he could get it himself (I know it seems like a no-brainer to most). Well we got him to do that pretty quickly and soon we were getting to experience a much longer chunk of time sleeping. However, the last couple of nights he has seemed to revert back to his old ways and he has been giving us a challenge...which leads me back to my original topic of tonight. :)

So tonight I go to lay him down and he immediately protests. I decide to leave the room and let him cry it out. Well, that didn't work so I go in the bedroom to see what is going on. It dawns on me that he doesn't have his sippy cup. I get it, give him a drink, put it in the corner of the crib (the normal spot) and tell him to lay back down, and this is what follows:

Malachi - crawls to the sippy cup, picks it up and hands it to me.
Me - (thinking) 'Okay he wants me to take his cup, he doesn't want it in the crib'
Malachi - sits up and says, "Wa" which is his word for water.
Me - 'He wants more water, okay' and I give him another sip.
Malachi - after his sip he lays down
Me - I put his cup in the corner
Malachi - cries, crawls to the cup, gives it to me then lays down...after 1 second he puts his head up and says, "Wa"

...so do you get the point, this continued on a couple more times before I finally caught on to his little game. That little stinker just wanted me to stand there and be his 'water girl.'