Bob the Builder

Can he fix it?

Spencer was Bob for Halloween. Of course he loved his toolbelt and hard hat up until it actually came time to wear them. Then he threw a fit and really wanted nothing to do with them. Fortunately he let me get one picture (though I wouldn't call it good), before my parent ward's trunk-or-treat.
Then on the REAL Halloween we went to an afternoon trunk-or-treat at a burger joint by my office. Lunch and trick-or-treating which was perfect. He refused to wear his toolbelt there, but everyone still knew who he was! He loved walking up to all the different people and looking at the "pooky" decorations and costumes. He especially loved when they let him pick his own treat. He favorite this year is definitely "sticker" (suckers).
One of my favorite stories from this Halloween season is that there is a house decorated on the way to his babysitters. They have a pretty scary looking werewolf along with some spiders, spiderwebs, a witch, and some pumpkins. Well everyday on the way to the babysitters Spencer would get so excited for "the pooky werewolf!!" We would slow down and look at him every day. We're gonna miss seeing that "pooky" werewolf!
After that, everything became "pooky". "pooky" spiders, "pooky" ghosts. Spence also loved passing out candy on Halloween. Trick-or-treaters are still alive and well in Nampa and we loved passing out candy and seeing all the "pooky" costumes.
It was so fun to see Spencer get the idea of collecting candy this year, and see him in awe at all the decorations. He was always the one pointing out the "pooky" things to me.
I love this age, I can't believe we almost have a 2 year old, I really can't call him a baby anymore!

July & August

This summer was a very busy one for us! I finished out my tough semester with straight A's! Along with working 25+ hours a week, it made for some late nights.

Nate still worked a ton, and tried his best to get in mountain biking and archery practice.
Spencer did very well with his summer babysitter. They spent a lot of time at the park and playing with Callie.

At the end of June he had his first real sickness. He had a really high fever, lots of puking (mostly on dad) and then a weird rash. I diagnosed him via Google with having roseola and the doctor said I was right. It took a few days to recover and he got a nasty rash but after that he was back to his good old self!

Spencer also got very independent this summer and will climb through the dog door to go play in the backyard by himself whenever he feels like it. He also helps himself to anything he can find on the table or anywhere else he can climb up to or reach.

His talking exploded and I've had many people comment on what a great talker he is. He has started putting together 3-4 word sentences and most of the time I can understand what he's saying. He loves to wear shoes and for a while loves wearing mittens too. He spent a lot of time in just a diaper this summer when it was over 100 for 9 days straight.

For my birthday in July we decided to redo out living room floor. The carpet was pretty worn when we moved in, and Spencer getting sick and puking on it multiple times just expedited the process of tearing it up. Nate and my dad spent about 3 or 4 days working on it and we couldn't be happier with it, it looks great! Now if we could just find some time to finish the molding...

After that we decided it was time to upgrade some of our furniture. We spent many Saturday mornings at the auction in Boise and got a new couch as well as a roll of carpet and plan to someday redo one of the bedroom's carpet (we also got a weed eater, a coffee table, and some other things at the auction. We've created a monster).

At the end of July we had a fun little visit from Nate's sister Allison and her little family on their move from Tennessee to Washington. Jake also came by to see them on his way to Arizona for his off semester.

Spencer and Lizzy had a lot of fun together and we crammed a lot into the 2 days they were here!
I had a 7 week "break" (I still took one class and worked) between semester so Spencer and I tried to live it up as best we could. We went to the fair, went hiking with friends and lost our dog, we went on lots of walks, played at the park and just soaked in the last bit of summer we could before me and Nate started back to school.

Spencer got a new babysitter who has a little boy a few months older than Spencer and we have really appreciated her taking such good care of Spence. She takes them to an indoor playground, has taken them blackberry picking, on lots of walks and to the park. He has a lot of fun with them and we love knowing he is in good hands.

In the middle of August, Brayden brought his girlfriend up and we took the whole family camping at a yurt. It was a short little trip but lots of fun. Brayden got his car stuck, Spencer beat his smore into the dirt, Porter tricked Nate into eating a smore full of dirt, and we didn't all kill each other.

 Summer quickly came to an end when Nate started school on August 24. In 2 weeks we with both be full time students again and Nate will still be working full time, and me part time. We have already determined that we won't see the light of day until the semester ends. But we are looking forward to a little break over Thanksgiving, and a big vacation for Brayden's wedding in December!
See you all then!

April, May and June

To say this year has gotten crazy is a bit of an understatement. I started a pretty hard semester at the end of April and about 2 weeks later I started working for a web development company in Boise which added a little commute to my day. My schedule is pretty flexible, but Nate's and my schedule still overlapped a few hours a few days a week so Spencer also started going to a babysitter.
I had called around to daycares (7 to be exact) and NONE of them were accepting toddlers. I even called a couple of at home daycares I saw on craigslist and none of them could take toddlers! I was seriously at a loss! So I posted a question in a local cloth diaper group about where to look, a really nice mom of 4 girls responded and said she would be willing to watch him. We met her and her family and felt like it would work, after working through all the details, she started watching Spencer 3-4 days a week for 3-4 hours. We have LOVED her and appreciated her taking such good care of Spencer, plus I know her girls love him! Every morning I drop him off they run out to meet him and give him hugs. They are moving at the end of the month and we are SO sad and going to miss them so much! They really have been great to him, he loves going to play with "the girls".
I also made my first baby quilt for my good friend Paige in PA. She is due any day and I can't wait to see her baby girl, we sure miss the Stewarts!!

this and the next pic are from Easter at my parents house.

my mom bought her grandsons matching Easter suits, the boys were adorable!

In the middle of May, Nate and I ran our second half marathon. I knew it was going to be tougher than the first as I had been so busy and hadn't been running in a few weeks. I walked way more than I would have liked and ended up 7 minutes slower than my first half's time. Nate didn't even try to stick with me and he beat his previous time by 10 minutes! We got cool medals and that's what really matters :) At the end of May for all Nate's future birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries, fathers days, etc. he got a dog. She is a german short haired pointer lab ;) she is 6 years old and luckily she is a very good dog. She doesn't care much for Spencer but we're not at all surprised since he tries to drag her around by her tail. We're working on that. She holds down the fort pretty well and my biggest complaint is that she's fairly picky and sometimes won't clean up Spencer's mess off the floor. And if we leave her dog food down low, Spence eats it. Yuck! Oh, and we named her Callie (she was previously known as Kaylee so we needed something fairly similar).

Our garden is looking like its going to be fairly successful, that's been fun! We have tons of tomatoes on (the ones that Spencer doesn't pick) our snap pea plants are getting big and taking over but no peas yet. And our corn stalks are getting big too, as well as pumpkins and watermelon. We have a few random plants we aren't sure what they are, or maybe they're weeds? I suppose we'll see in time!

yes, those are tomatoes from my garden ;(

The good news for June is that I registered for my fall semester of school which means I then only have 8 classes left to take! That makes it feel like there is an end in sight! Also in June (though it hasn't happened yet) a YW from our ward started babysitting for us. She seems very responsible and mature and we're excited to have her play with Spencer!

he loves to pretend to talk on the phone. 

he walks around the house with it saying "bye grandma, bye grandpa"

my parents drained their pool for the first time ever!

his first sno cone- he loved it.

we're trying to get back into running

Lake Lowell Half Marathon

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Nate and I ran our first half marathon last Saturday! I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, with moving and school and working a few days a week. But we both did better than we'd anticipated and it was actually fun!
It was a little chilly, but we managed.
At the starting line they announced that they only had 140 medals show up so if you weren't one of the first 140 people you would have to get yours the next week.
As we were getting close to the halfway/turnaround point, I started counting the people coming back toward us to figure out how close we would be to getting a medal. Well we were right about 145ish so Nate said if he left me and ran ahead he could get a medal. I told him to go for it!
He took off at that point and after about a quarter mile he was out of my sight!
I kept my slow and steady pace and actually passed about 5 people.
At the second to last aid station I was still running which I didn't think I'd be doing! Right before the last 2 miles, we turned a corner and were running a different direction which was right into the wind and of course it started raining!
It made for a very slow finish (as it was also uphill!) but I kept running! I also started to feel a pain in my toe and was pretty sure I was bleeding but I was so close to being done that I just finished it out! I beat my estimated time (2:30) just barely but I was still happy with it!
I ended up 154 out of 240 with a time of 2:29:01. 16th in my age group out of 26.
Nate was 199 and his time was 2:15:33. 7th in his age group out of 11.
Overall, it was a fun race and I'm glad to be able to mark that off my list.
Nate thinks he wants to start training for a marathon now, someday I think that would be neat to do, but I think I want to do some more halves first:)

P.s. this is only the first picture we've seen from the "official race pictures" so I'm sure I'll add more once they post them.

Spencer in 2015

     Spencer has already changed so much this year. He is running and starting to talk. My favorites are when he says "please!" and "thank you". He is turning into such a little boy and is no longer a baby! We've started taking him into nursery on Sunday's and he loves it! He puts up with all the bigger kids beatin' up on him and just does his own thing. Too bad he still has 2 months until we can leave him in there!

     We bought him a little big wheel that he really loves too. He's not quite big enough to touch the pedals but he loves to just sit on it. He also has a sandbox the loves to play in and with all the warm weather we've been having he's spent a lot of time out there digging and playing. It sits right against our fence and on the other side our neighbors have 3 dogs and he loves to peek through the fence at them and say "hi!" over and over. It's pretty cute and they seem to be very friendly and attention starved dogs.

     He is still our little climber and we finally had to move all our chairs away from the table because he kept climbing on top and standing on the table while he throws everything off and I got tired of that real quick! He had his first bloody nose/bloody mouth about 2 weeks ago. He had climbed up on a chair (that wasn't at the table so luckily he wasn't higher than he could have been) and out of the corner of my eye I saw him just dive face first out of the chair onto the kitchen linoleum. There was a lot of blood out both nostrils and mouth and I was sure he did some serious damage to his mouth and teeth but after the blood stopped everything looked ok and he really didn't cry for too long. We also reaffirmed that I do not do well with other people's blood. After he was ok I felt very sick and light headed and had to lay down :)

     The kid FINALLY had a molar break through, he hadn't had a tooth in almost 8 months but that didn't stop him from eating anything he wanted. The kid eats all day long and will eat anything! He sure is fun and keeps us very busy! We are so glad to have our own space that he can tornado through! We are looking forward to having a whole backyard for him to enjoy this summer!

the first time he saw his "bike". He saw it out the window 

and wasn't about to put clothes on first.

   

1 month in our house!

     We have officially been homeowners for a whole month now! We are loving all the space and Spencer loves making messes in it. We love having a garage and a backyard and can't wait till it warms up so we can start a garden and send Spencer outside to dig in the dirt. Nate's been working on the yard getting it ready for summer. There was a big rock circle that we think the last owner must have had some kind of fire pit in, and it was a waste of space for us, so Nate moved all the big rocks that made the circle to the corner of the yard and then he spent quite a few nights sifting the dirt to get the little rocks out. It is now an excellent pile of sand that the dang neighborhood cats are using as a litter box. So we got a sand box and will spend the day transferring sand into there so we can cover it and keep the cats out. We're hoping to lay sod on the dirt ring this summer. But Nate has been hard at work out there making it more enjoyable for us this summer. We can't wait to BBQ and hang out out there!
     We also are enjoying living so close to Nate's work. It only takes him about 10 minutes to get there or to get home so he saves lots of tie and lots of gas! Our location isn't so bad either, we've got a park just a few blocks up from us or an even bigger park we've been meaning to try a little farther away. We're also close to a mile stretch of the greenbelt that we've walked on a bit
     Our ward has been nice so far though we're still "new" and making friends is always hard. But people have been friendly and Spencer loves everyone.
     We finally hung some pictures on the wall so it's starting to feel more like our home!

Nate-ism.

I lost my wallet this morning while Nate was at work. When I texted him to tell him I found it in the CAR I accidentally said I found it in the CAT.
Nate's response was: "The cat that came into our backyard? Did you have to gut it?"