Extra Saturday

A lot of people go on vacation during Memorial Day Weekend. In fact the last couple of years, we have gone up to Utah to visit Robert's family. Well, this year, since we went up to Utah in March for Spring Break, we didn't make any vacation plans for Memorial Day Weekend.

So, since we are not out of town and Robert had Memorial Day off from work, we have treated today as an extra Saturday. Robert woke up really early (1 Snooze after 5 AM to be exact) to work on the yard. If you are thinking that it is still dark at 5 AM, remember that Arizona doesn't have Daylight Saving Time, so the sun comes up earlier here. Also, since it is almost June, it gets pretty hot here, so Robert needed an early start.

When we first moved here, the previous owners had a lot of cactus plants on the East and South sides of the townhouse. We were OK with leaving the cactus here because it was low maintenance and we didn't have any children. Below is the East side of our house with the cactus:



Well now we have a child that is walking like crazy. We have been fortunate that Luke has never gotten into the cactus, but realize that he could very well eventually. So we decided to get it removed.

We had to get permission from our HOA to have it removed. It took them a month and a half to respond, but they did last week, so today happened to be a perfect time to get it complete.

As mentioned above, Robert got up at 5 AM (OK, he did hit the snooze button once) and started. Our brother-in-law, Jonathan, came over at 6 to help. We borrowed tools from Shelley's dad and brother and Jon brought over a couple of tool. They removed all the cactus on the East side, but left the cactus on the South side. They also removed all of the bark that we had put out earlier. They were done by just after 8 o'clock. They were feeling very prickly by the time they were done, but it was satisfying to see the progress. Here is how the front yard looks now:

Well, Luke must love stew

We got a picture of Luke that we just had to share. Shelley had school late today, so she didn't have time to fix dinner. She found a can of stew in the pantry that she left for Robert & Luke. Robert is just above the maturity level of keeping his face clean while he eats, but Luke hasn't made it there yet. Robert gave him some stew in a bowl with a spoon. Luke tried the spoon at first, but decided that was too slow, so he ditched the spoon. His hands were much faster, and he shoveled it in:

From Luke

Luke had a birthday

Wow!!!! Has it been over 2 months since we have posted an entry in this blog. It sure doesn't seem like it's been that long. We were going to post an entry in March after we got back from our Utah trip where Luke experienced snow, but time got away from us.

It is now mid-April. We hope everyone got their taxes done. But for us, April 15 is no longer tax day. It is Luke's birthday. He is now 1 year old. Shelley went with her friend Tiffany Done to the zoo to get some birthday photos. We have posted a few:

From Luke

From Luke

From Luke

The zoo pictures were taken a couple of days before Luke's birthday. Since yesterday was Luke's birthday, we bought him a small cake and let him plow into it. He had a hard time with the whole thing, so we cut a big piece for him and he went to town. We have a few picture and a video to show:

From Luke

From Luke

From Luke

We have better pictures, but we put them in Luke's "First Year" video, so we didn't want to show them outside of the video.

Below is the "Luke's First Year" video that Robert created. Has it really been a whole year:

From Luke

Luke's first Renaissance Festival

We took Luke to the Renaissance Festival yesterday. He loved roaming around in his stroller. But, if you can believe it, Robert forgot his camera, so we only have 1 picture to show.

From Luke

This was a picture we had taken at one of the booths. And yes, they supplied the costumes. We don't own any of those type of costumes ourselves.

We're going to have a toddler in no time

Well, Luke will be 9 months old tomorrow. Kind of young to be taking his first steps, but I guess you can't tell him he's too young. Of course he's not running any laps around the house yet, but that's probably not too far behind.

Here is a video of him taking a few steps:

From Luke

Is Christmas over already????

Wow, it seems like December just flew by. We were planning to post a Christmas entry, but we got very busy.

Robert's parents came down from Utah over Christmas. It was very enjoyable to have them here. We're not sure if Luke remembers them from last July, but he warmed up to them really fast.

From Luke

We spent Christmas Eve with Robert's parents and sister, Stephanie's family at Steph's house.

From Luke

Robert's parent stayed with us while they were here. On Christmas morning, we opened out gifts to each other and Robert's parents at our place.

From Luke

We then went over to Steph's again to watch their kids open their presents and have brunch.







On the afternoon and evening of Christmas, we went to Shelley's parents'. We opened the gifts from Shelley's parents and those in Shelley's family that had our name.







To some people's standards, you might say we had a pretty boring New Year's. Robert had New Year's Eve off work, and we treated it like a Saturday. We went shopping and then watched a couple of movies.

New Year's Day was pretty much the same thing, except we got a new shirt for Luke.

From Luke

He's just so big

Wow, Luke is just getting bigger. When Shelley took him to his 6-month appointment, the Dr. said he was the weight of a 12-month old, the length of an 11-month old, and had the development of a 9-month old.

Well, that was a the day before Halloween. He hasn't gone backwards at all. Quite the contrary. We've got a couple of videos to post showing his development.

From Luke

You can see in this video that he can now get up to a standing position on his own with a low platform. This means he can now get into things and push buttons. We're trying to teach him the word "No", but he hasn't totally understood yet. We've been told that as soon as he learns the word, he'll know how to use it on us.

From Luke

Here is Luke taking a bath. He finds the plug and pulls it. He decides he wants to use it as a pacifier. He puts the metal holder in his mouth. Of course lately he wants to put anything metal in his mouth.

From Luke

Now this is the really scary video. This is the same bath as the previous video, but you can really see that he has gotten the assisted standing thing down. But what is really scary is that he knows how to turn up the water flow. It's hard to hear, but as he is turning the knob counter clockwise, the water is flowing faster. It used to be that when daddy would give him a bath, Luke would look at his hand and wonder how he got the water to flow faster. Now he's figured that out. What's the next thing he will figure out? I don't know if we're ready to find out.