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