Catching up on all the lack of news

So even from 2,000 miles away my dad can chastise me about slacking in my duties.  I know it’s been a while since the last blog posting but there is a pretty good reason.  All the fun activities we’ve had planned for the last few weeks have all basically fallen through.  In spite of the lack of news, I’ll try to catch you all up and make this post worth reading.

First on the list of fun activities was a trip to the Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington, DE.  After our last trip to the Plumpton Park Zoo we figured this one would have to be better.  Well, it was and it wasn’t.  At least it wasn’t just someone’s farm with a bunch of wild animals but it was microscopic.  We brought a lunch and figured we’d spend a couple hours there then have some lunch so we arrived at 10:00.  After taking our time at each and every exhibit we sat down for lunch at about 11:15…and that was stretching it.  I guess the zoo wanted to really go out of its way to represent Delaware.  And by represent Delaware I mean be extremely small.  I’m sure there’s a smaller zoo out there but people probably just refer to it as the cat lady’s house.

Even though it was a short trip, we at least got to spend some time with some of our friends, the Nairs.  They have two boys, Camden and Dallan, who are both within a year or so of Tyler.  Here are a few pictures of our outing (yes, there are more pictures of us by the river next to the parking lot – seriously it was a freaking small zoo.)

Ok, so the zoo was kind of a bust.  Hey, sometimes that just happens when you’re exploring new places.  So the next weekend we planned to go back to the place where we saw the horse races because they were having an equestrian competition.  Now I don’t know what an equestri is but on the website it looked like a bunch of horses jumpin’ over fences so that seemed like a fun activity.  To our dismay, however, Fall decided to arrive that morning bringing with it really cold and really fast winds.  Once again we packed a lunch and went out exploring and in the time it took us to walk from our car in the general parking to the bus that was to shuttle us to the event we realized this was a crappy idea and we were already sick of freezing our butts off.

So once again our plans fell through so we just went back and had a picnic at Tyler’s table in his bedroom.  In retrospect it’s probably a good thing.  I remember as a kid going to the rodeo for the 24th of July and thinking how cool it would be to get a cowboy hat, some cowboy boots, and be a real cowboy.  Of course, on the east coast you don’t go to a rodeo you go to an equestrian competition.  Had we actually made it to the competition, Tyler probably would have thought how cool it would be to get knee-high black leather boots, a cool black derby, and be a real douche-bag.  Yeah, a nice picnic in his room was probably a blessing in disguise.

Our last failed attempt at having something good to blog about was a Halloween birthday party for Dallan.  Luckily the party was a lot of fun and we got to spend some time with friends.  The only bad thing was that Tyler did not want to cooperate when we dressed him in his costume for a cute picture for the blog.  So here’s the best picture we have of Tyler in his costume.  In case you can’t tell what he is, he’s a 2 year old in an itchy fireman’s costume throwing a tantrum.  

Ahhhh… how cute.  I think he’s trying to honor those fireman who’ve lost the lower half of their legs in the line of duty. 

Those of you looking for a picture of Reagan in her costume have obviously never had to try and find a costume for a 4 month old ‘cause they don’t exist.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  It’s just hard to find but we probably have something now (thanks to another friend from the ward with older girls who’ve grown out of their baby costumes).  We’ve got a couple more Halloween parties lined up so we’ll try to get a picture (of both the kids) next time.

Reagan joins us at the table

It seems like just yesterday we were bringing little Reagan home from the hospital, but on Sunday she actually turned 4 months old.  In spite of our perception of how long it had really been, it was time to introduce her to the world of solid foods.  Well, as solid as you can call a bowl of mushy rice cereal.

Here’s our little sweetheart so excited to be sitting at the table.  She looked so tiny in that big high chair.

Well, this “food” aint gonna eat itself (and there’s no way I’m gonna eat it) so we strapped on the bib and got started.  Here she goes.

Yeah, I’m not too sure she liked it.  I don’t know why.  Flavorless, colorless, luke-warm mush.  How could it not be delicious?

After a few bites we called it good enough for a first run.  I’m not sure if she’s smiling in this next picture because she was happy to have been such a big girl eating her food or if she was just smiling because we finally took it away. 

Either way it was a big milestone for our little girl (and a good day for Dad as well because we got one step closer to never having to buy baby formula again).

In big brother news, Tyler has definitely entered the parrot stage (repeating everything we say).   I don’t remember what we were doing but the other day I said “This sucks” about something and two seconds later out came “This sucks” from Tyler.  I guess it could have been worse but we’ve definitely had to start watching ourselves a little closer now.