Choate Family

A blog post…….finally

2011-12-11T22:03:00.001-05:00

Ok, I know it’s been a while since my last posting. I’ll try to be better, but here’s at least a few pictures and a quick video that hopefully brings a smile to your face.

So here are a couple pictures from Halloween… I know, it’s obviously been a while if I’m just now posting Halloween pictures – thus the title of this blog post. So, Tyler was an Astronaut. As part of his astronaut training I taught him to put his hand to his brow and say “Yes, Sir.” I’ve tried to parlay that into other areas of his day, but for some reason things haven’t seemed to have worked out that way. Instead, he’s clung to a quote from Buzz Lightyear… well, kind of. He loves to jump off the furniture and shout “To infinity and be gone.”

Reagan went as a little lady bug. She was as cute as a bug, that’s for sure. We went to the trunk-or-treat at the church and all the 8 to 12 year old girls wanted to play with Reagan like she was their little doll. She got swarmed. It was really fun to see her running around all dressed up.

Outside of Halloween, things have been pretty quiet. We spent Thanksgiving with some friends from church (the family of the pirate in the picture above). The biggest news, however, is that Tyler is finally potty-trained. It took a few rounds of us getting frustrated and giving up, but now he’s finally got it. Yeah, there are the occasional accidents, but we’ll never have to buy him another diaper.

Since we won’t be able to go back to Utah for Christmas, I wanted to give everyone a chance to see a glimpse of Reagan’s personality. She is so different from Tyler. Obviously kids are kids and they’re going to get into mischief, but Reagan’s reaction is so different from Tyler’s when we get mad at her for doing something wrong. Tyler was always apologetic and tried to do what we told him. Reagan is… well… you’ll see.

In the clip below, Reagan is making a mess at dinner time (as usual). We've gotten upset with her in the past - telling her not to dump her food. You can see that she’s already started to throw her food off her plate and I started to say “No, No.” when I figured it was time to capture some video evidence of the attitude we were getting so I could use it when she was older to show her why I had lost my mind. Instead of responding apologetically to the reprimand and correcting the behavior, she turns it right around on you. First she makes fun of you by imitating your angry face, then she laughs at your pitiful attempt to get her to do something she doesn't want to do. Notice how she looks over to Tyler to get him laughing at me as well. Then she goes about doing whatever it is she wants – in this case dumping out all her food and plopping the plate onto her head. Then just to top it all off, she makes sure to look back at you to make sure you got the message.

I realize that the brown hair came from my side of the family, but I didn’t realize that attitude was hereditary. All I can say is that it’s a good thing she’s as cute as she is. As frustrating as the attitude can be at times, the reality is that we end up laughing along with her most of the time. I believe that’s called playing me like a fiddle. Our daughter – the fiddle playing prodigy.

Tyler Turns Three

2011-10-03T15:25:00.001-04:00

It’s amazing how fast time flies. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that we brought our little miracle baby home from the hospital. Of course it also seems like we just barely had Tyler’s 1st birthday party at the park behind our Roy house. Yet somehow time has flown by and here I am blogging about Tyler’s 3rd birthday.

Tyler’s birthday actually got a bit of an early start when Thesha’s folks came out to visit over the summer while I was at scout camp. Rather than ship a present out, they decided to bring their gift with them so they could see his reaction first hand. I don’t think they were disappointed as he gazed intently as the little motorized car zipped around the racetrack. This actually set the theme for most of Tyler’s birthday celebration – transportation in all it’s various forms. As much as Tyler loves cars, he loves trains, airplanes, horses, and apparently frogs as well. Frogs, you ask? You’ll see what I mean.

So to start things off, Thesha made Tyler this really cool train birthday cake. It was made of cookies, cakes, ding dongs, frosting, and a bunch of other candy. It was so cool and pretty freakin’ good, if I do say so myself. Then after gorging on a big red caboose, we started opening presents. Grandpa Choate sent a bunch of Cars items like a sticker book, Lightning McQueen, and a Mack Truck. Of course, it just wouldn’t be a car-themed gift from Grandpa Choate without a corvette with a flag decal running the length of the car. Tyler loved it all. We got Tyler a train table that had a bunch of tracks, buildings, and toy trains. It was a little anti-climatic because all he could see was the box the first night, but when he came out the next day and saw it all put together he was so excited.

All of the trains and cars got Tyler prepped and ready for his big day out. We loaded up the car and even though our destination was just over an hour away, we decided to stay in a hotel overnight to make it seem like we had gone on a long trip. It worked on me when I was a kid, so hopefully it seemed that way to Tyler as well. After spending the night in the hotel, we went to a really cool amusement park called Dutch Wonderland. It’s not the biggest amusement park, but it’s full of rides and activities that are perfect for younger kids. A lot of the other amusement parks are full of big roller coasters and rides that are too scary for little ones, but this one was perfect. We started out on the little train that takes you on a ride around the park. After just shelling out a lot more money than you’d want to for a bunch of kiddie rides, it all seemed worth it to hear Tyler scream in excitement and jump up and down when he saw that we were going to actually ride on the train. In the pictures below you can see one of Tyler sitting on the train yelling CHOO-CHOO!

While we were there we got to see a water show based on the Princess and the Frog, go for a pony ride, and ride on a handful of rides that both Tyler and Reagan were able to enjoy. Tyler’s favorite, however, was the leaping frog ride. As it went around-and-around the frogs would randomly JUMP up and lift the kids up off their seat. Tyler was having the time of his life. Our trip got cut a little short as the rain started to move in shortly after lunch. At first it was upsetting because we had a lot of other things we wanted to try and get in. We weren’t 10 minutes into the drive, however, when both kids fell fast asleep. As exciting as sleeping in a hotel is, it is not the best place to get a good night’s rest. Then running around all morning had worn them out. As I’ve thought about it more, I realize that the rain was actually a good thing because now we can go back again some day and see all the other rides as well.

Here is a slideshow of Tyler’s birthday pictures.

As the sugar rush from the cake wore off and the novelty of all the new toys started to lose its appeal, Tyler was welcomed into a new era in his short but eventful life. An era which includes visits to the dentist. Party’s over kid-o. All that sugar from the days gone past was now about to have its revenge. To prepare him, we read him stories about the dentist and what would be going on there, but it wasn’t until they sat him in the chair and he realized that this wasn’t some crappy story about Dento-saurus but was his real life that the whole dentist idea really sank in. As you can see from the picture below, he was about as excited to be in that chair as I was to be handing over my debit card to the receptionist.

After slowly warming up to the events unfolding in the dentist chair, Tyler was given a clean checkup with no cavities. Plus the hygienist promised him a balloon, so he eventually came to the conclusion that the dentist wasn’t so bad. Thankfully for him he has a mom who not only makes awesome cakes but also makes sure he brushes every morning and evening. So at the end of the day we were all smiles.

So, Happy Birthday Tyler. I hope it was memorable. I know for me and Thesha the past few years have certainly been an experience of a lifetime. We look forward to seeing all the fun adventures that life holds for you as you continue to grow up.

Heroic Tales of Survival

2011-08-29T22:02:00.001-04:00

As I’m sure you all know, the east coast has gone through quite a bit over the last week or so. First an earthquake measuring 5.8 then Hurricane Irene. The east coast is all abuzz about the great Hurriquake of 2011. It’s been a series of natural disasters we never thought we’d actually have to face, let alone have to face both in a single week. So how did we do it? How did we ever survive? Here’s our nail-biting, jaw dropping, bowel releasing recount of how we managed to come out alive.

First there was The Great Earthquake. It began like any other day. I went off to work while Thesha stayed home with the kids. As the afternoon approached, I sat at my desk conjuring up ways to look busy while Thesha sat at the computer at home gathering ideas from her food blogs on how to make me even fatter. Then out of the blue I swear someone started pounding on the wall next to me. “Who’s the idiot shaking the air conditioning ducts?” I thought to myself. Then I heard it again. “What in the world is that moron doing?” But then a bunch of people started leaving our building. As I looked out the window there were people leaving buildings all around. “Hmmm, I wonder if that was an earthquake?” I thought. “I guess I’ll casually follow the masses all wandering towards the exits.” Moments later, as Thesha found another recipe with the words “fabulous” in the title, she started to feel a rumble as well. Then the TV started to move as if someone had bumped the TV stand. It was all she could do to stay calm through the movement that while quite common when the kids were awake was unusual for nap time. She held the TV for a moment and then, as quickly as it started it was over. The only casualty was that Tyler was just about to fall asleep and now he was crying because “someone shook his bed” right as he was falling asleep.

Ok, that’s about as exciting as I can make it sound. Yes, it was an earthquake, but really aside from a little shaking there wasn’t that much to talk about. I can honestly say that I think I’ve felt Dad’s house shake more when a really big train has gone by. So, yes, we survived The Great Wobble… The Great Shimmy… The Great “uhhh, what was that?” of 2011. Please... hold your applause. The story is just beginning.

Yes, as if the frightening lack of events from Tuesday weren’t enough, next we had to face the terrible thought of Hurricane Irene ripping through our little town. Uncertain of just how devastating the storm would be, Thesha wisely went out on Friday morning to gather a few extra supplies – some water, batteries, a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts… just some essentials. To her dismay, Wal-Mart was already out of batteries and water was scarce. Somehow the Krispy Kreme’s had been spared so she quickly grabbed a box. Obviously the locals who’ve been through hurricanes like this know better than we do what the appropriate level of panic is and we had clearly underestimated things. So with cell service finally restored after The Great Head Bob of 2011, Thesha called me at work to advise me to leave early, search everywhere for some batteries and some propane for our camp stove. As I walked up and down the camping isle at Target I realized two things. One, we really were in trouble since all the camping supplies had been cleaned out, and two, I’ve sunk to a new low when I think that Target would be a suitable place to look for camping gear. In my defense, there’s not a Sportsman’s Warehouse or Cabela’s in the entire state of Maryland and there’s only one Bass Pro Shop and it’s apparently all the way downtown in Baltimore. If Wal-Mart’s sold out, Target’s about the only other choice you’ve got around here. But I digress… back to the saga.

So there we were, panic stricken but apparently not panicked enough. We finally found a grocery store where we could grab a few cases of bottled water. We made it to Home Depot just in time to grab the last propane stove converter so we could buy a propane tank for our stove. We still couldn’t find any D batteries so we drowned our sorrows in the box of doughnuts (which were delicious, by the way). Then, late Saturday night as the clouds and wind started to move in we got word via email that church had been cancelled. Surely this was a sign that we were in for oppression of unfathomable proportions. The rain began late Saturday night and between 2:00 and 4:00 AM the noise was enough to actually wake me up. Considering I slept through the burglars breaking into our house in Albuquerque, I guess you could say that it was a substantial noise (but I’d rather not relive that experience in Albuquerque). About that same time the inevitable finally struck as the lights flickered and then the house went dark. At least we were all snug in bed and it wasn’t too cold or too hot. Although it was kind of difficult to sleep with all the noise, it was actually kind of nice to be able to sleep in a little.

We woke up around 7:00 and got the kids up. With no power and overcast skies, it was a little bit darker than usual in the apartment, but with the blinds open it wasn’t that bad. It was funny to see Tyler’s reaction as he flipped one switch and nothing happened so then he flipped the next switch, then the next, all to get the same reaction – nothing. We explained to him that the power was out and we were going to have to struggle through it for a while. Thankfully a bowl of cereal didn’t require any cooking, so breakfast was pretty easy. As the morning went on, we tried to find ways to entertain ourselves without the internet, cable TV, or the DVD player. “What kind of world are we living in,” I thought to myself “when we have to live like it’s freakin’ 1982 or something.” Just as I was about to start looking through my old things to find a bandana and some parachute pants, I heard it. There it was… the faint buzz of electrons zipping through wires… of fans blowing to cool electronic circuits… of water automatically refilling an ice tray in the freezer. Yes! Yes! Yes! It was about 10:00 AM and we had survived long enough to see our precious conveniences returned to lull us back into a cathartic state of laziness. I gave Tyler a hug and reassured him that he could flip any switch he wanted and he would now get the expected result – light, precious light.

Ok, theatrics aside, we basically had a few hours awake without any power and for all our panic we had to endure a dimly lit breakfast table. That’s pretty much it.

I know. You’re sitting there wondering why I even bothered to blog about this – and to make such a long blog of it – when basically nothing happened. Well I’m sitting here wondering why you’re still reading. BOOOM, I just blew your mind.

Actually, the events of this last week were a bit of a blessing in disguise for us. There are lots of people around us who were not nearly as lucky. Some are still without power and others are still wondering when the water will subside so they can return to what’s left of their homes. We have been truly blessed. Plus it gave us an opportunity to discuss our emergency preparedness and to help us restore some of our food and supply levels that had been depleted with our move a couple years ago. So tonight for Family Night we took time to talk about giving thanks to Heavenly Father for all our blessings, and we thank all our friends and family for your prayers on our behalf. We’re doing just fine and have some more life experiences that help us appreciate what we have. I mean really, 1982 is so three decades ago.

I know, I know… Get with the program

2011-08-13T16:08:00.001-04:00

I know…. I’ve been slacking. It’s not like there hasn’t been stuff to write about – an anniversary, a birthday, a visit from Grandma and Grandpa… What can I say. Since no excuse will do, I’ll just get writing.

So, let’s start back in May. It was 10 years ago that I popped out of the sunroof of a limousine from under Thesha’s wedding dress and we began our crazy adventures as a married couple. It’s funny how things both change and stay the same over the years. May 17th, 2001 started with a lot of frantic activity to get everything ready, then a drive down to the temple, and finishing up the day with the family. Ten years later and there is still a flurry of activity trying to get everything ready to leave the houase, but this time it was about getting diapers changed, snacks together, pony tails in Reagan’s hair, strollers in the car, etc. Then it was off to the temple, but instead of the SLC temple it was the DC temple. It was a completely different experience then it was at the SLC temple 10 years ago, but as you can imagine the spirit we felt was the same. Then instead of a nice lunch in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, it was a chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. I guess lunch is lunch, right. Last but not least, it was time for an afternoon with the family, but this time instead of dozens of family members it was our little family. Of course this time we didn’t come home to a bunch of housewarming gifts like toasters, hand towels, and waffle makers.

Here are some pictures of our trip to the D.C. temple.

When we were at the temple, we went to the visitor’s center and watched some of the church videos they had as part of the information displays. All Tyler would ask about for weeks after was when we were going to go to the movie center again.

Ok, next line for catching up is Reagan’s birthday. It’s hard to believe that when we first moved out to Maryland Reagan was just a little peanut in Thesha’s belly. Now our little Maryland (actually Delaware) baby is a year old. To celebrate, Thesha made her an awesome cake using the techniques she’s been picking up from the Cake Boss.

Reagan loved it so much she went ahead and reached for it while the candle was still lit. The good news is that it was easy to get her to stop crying by giving her a giant slice of cake.

In addition to the cake, Reagan got lots of cute stuff to start filling out her room with toys and Mom and Dad got a bunch of new crap to pick up at the end of the day.

The most exciting gift for us was to get a chair for Reagan like Tyler’s so that they would finally stop fighting over who got to sit in the little chair. Of course, we apparently underestimate the power of the Little Tikes farm animals. So on the one hand we solved the chair problem, on the other hand we created the farmer problem – as illustrated below.

Ahh, how cute. He’s ripping the toy from her with one hand and using the other one to snap her wrist. I love birthdays.

Yes, Reagan is really growing up fast. Her favorite words are “tak ooh” for “thank you”, “Hi, Dahh” for “Hi, Dad”, and “whaaaaaaah” for “Tyler, you big jerk, stop pushing me.” She’s also learning some animal noises, a couple songs, and she even knows her alphabet…well, she knows one letter of the alphabet. Watch below and you’ll see what I mean.

Reagan’s Learning the Alphabet

Reagan’s learning what animals say

Reagan loves to play Ring Around the Rosie

Ashes…Ashes…we all fall…. Z

It’s really fun to see both kids growing up and developing such fun personalities. Reagan obviously gives us plenty to laugh and have fun with, but she has a good example from Tyler on how to make us laugh. Tyler always wakes up early and Reagan likes to sleep in. During the time Tyler is awake and Reagan is asleep, we’re constantly having to remind him to keep his voice down. “Shhhh, use your quiet voice.” we usually say. Of course, one morning I changed it up just a little. “Shhhh. Tyler, where’s your quiet voice?” Was totally caught off guard by the response… “Playing soccer,” he said. Now I’m the one cracking up and making too much noise.

The only other thing that’s been going on since the last post was that I went with the local Boy Scout troop to Scout Camp. We went to a camp in Eastern Ohio called the Muskingham Valley Scout Camp. We went there because of the cost and because they have an LDS week so they incorporate Duty to God requirements throughout the week as well as merit badges. The best part was that since I just went along as a second advisor, I really didn’t have to do any planning or organizing. Just show up and have fun. While I was there, I got a fly fishing lesson from the Scoutmaster. He helped me get set up, gave me a couple pointers, then believe it or not, before he could even get himself set up I had already caught a fish. Granted, I probably could have caught a fish about the same size by casting a line in Dad’s fish tank, but a fish is a fish. Over the course of the week I probably caught a couple dozen fish.

Since I was able to pick it up pretty quickly, the Scoutmaster was able to wander further and further away from me and I realized that fishing is a bit of a solitary activity. As it turns out, that’s a good thing. I lost track of how many times I found myself trying to get my line untangled when a huge bug started flying around me. As I quickly jerked away or swatted at the bug, I realized it was actually the fly at the end of the very line I was trying to untangle. Nothing garners the respect of a teenager like seeing one of his Scout leaders swat at his own fishing line, suddenly stop, then start looking around trying to act cool and seeing if anyone saw him make a jackass of himself.

While I was away at Scout camp, Grandma and Grandpa Checketts came out to keep Thesha and the kids company. It was a relief for me to know that there was some family around while I was away, and I know that Thesha and the kids loved having Grandma and Grandpa around. They were able to go to the Delaware Children’s Museum, the lighthouse, and a local dairy/petting zoo called Kilby Cream for some ice cream.

Here are some pictures from this summer – including pictures of the visit from Grandma and Grandpa.

Alright, I guess that’s probably enough catching up for one blog. We’ve got Tyler’s birthday coming up in about a month, so I’m sure I’ll have another blog post by around Christmas or so.

Work it…Work it… Own it…

2011-05-02T20:14:00.001-04:00

So there is a lady in our ward that runs an online baby boutique called Babybonkin. A while ago they asked if we would be ok letting Reagan model some of their baby girl clothes for her website. We would be able to keep the clothes as well as get copies of the pictures. About a nano-second later we said yes. She has another lady from our ward take the pictures so last week Thesha took Tyler over to play with the other kids while Reagan strutted her stuff for the camera.

Like any good model, she was overly demanding, required 2 grown women to constantly primp and pose her, and (of course) she threw up a little just before the photo shoot. The little outfit was adorable and the photographer did such a good job bringing out the cuteness in our little girl we just had to share a few of the pictures. Enjoy!

Happy Easter 2011

2011-04-25T21:32:00.001-04:00

I remember back when we were struggling to have kids that there were times when we thought maybe we would never actually have kids. Of course everyone would tell us that some day it would be our turn. Well, this Easter it was definitely “our turn” to experience all the joys that come with having kids.

We had a great time taking the kids to the church Easter Egg hunt. Because of the rain it had to be moved into the church, but the Primary still made it lots of fun. Like any dad who’s ever taken their 2 and a half year old to an Easter Egg hunt, it was my turn to encourage my son to actually pick up the Easter eggs and put them in his basket instead of just kicking them around like a soccer ball. Then, of course, when I convinced him of that, I couldn’t help but laugh as he stuck his whole arm through the handle and dropped the eggs out the other side of the basket instead of dropping them in the basket. He was amazed that the eggs never seemed to end! Of course he eventually figured it out and was able to enjoy the fruits of his labors - drooling pink and yellow down his chin as the Easter candy melted in his mouth.

Then of course there was Easter morning. Thankfully our church starts at 9:30 instead of 9:00 which gave us a little more time to pull things together. The kids both had their cute new Easter Sunday outfits and we wanted to get some pictures. We may not be the brightest parents out there, but we’re at least smart enough to realize that we better get them first thing in the morning or who knows what we’ll end up with. I only had to tuck Tyler’s shirt in about 8 or 9 times from the time he first got dressed until it was time to actually take the pictures (about 45 minutes after he got dressed). Then we had to wait a few extra minutes for the redness around Reagan’s eyes to go away since she was bawling her head off while Thesha gave her cute little pig-tails. Luckily we finally got a few good pictures to share.

For any readers out there who are wondering why we only have a few pictures posted, I assure you it was not for lack of trying to get more. Unfortunately I have a ton of pictures that look like this…

Or this…

Or even this…

(yeah, I have no idea what happened to that one) but the 4 you see above are about the only ones that actually turned out cute. Of course it didn’t take long for us to realize that those pictures would just have to do.

As Thesha was getting Reagan ready, Tyler tripped and slammed his head into the wall leaving a huge red mark on his forehead. Then Reagan took a short nap during Sacrament meeting and when she woke up her hair was all over the place. As we were walking out of church, Tyler ran over to a water puddle and started jumping in it – splashing muddy water everywhere. I rushed over to try and save his pants from being destroyed only to have him throw a mini-tantrum on the wet asphalt adding a permanent black hue to the knees of the pants. Sigh… they were nice while they lasted. Then…oh, but then… the coup d'état.

As I’m going through the pictures Sunday afternoon trying to find the decent ones worth Photoshopping out the giant red mark on Tyler’s forehead, I overhear Thesha asking Tyler if he pooped. “This couldn’t be better for me”, I think to myself. I’m doing something for the family, so I have an excuse to get out of changing a poopy diaper while still coming across as the good family man. As she checks him to confirm her suspicion, she sees that no, he didn’t poop. A few minutes go by and as I eliminate the runny nose in Reagan’s picture I hear Thesha ask if Tyler stepped in poop or something. I quickly put my head down as though it’s taking all of my concentration to click the auto-fix button. No, no poop on the shoe. Hmmm. So Thesha and Tyler go about watching the Disney movie as Reagan plays on the floor behind the couch.

For those of you who already know where this story is headed, I salute you. For those of you who don’t, you may want to stop reading now as what you’re about to read cannot be un-read and will persist in your thoughts to the point of revulsion and dry-heaving.

I finally figure I’ve doddled around in Photoshop long enough and I start to walk away when I see it. Playing peacefully behind the couch where Thesha and Tyler are quietly watching a movie, Reagan has pulled her poopy diaper out of the trash and started tearing it apart, playing with the poop, and ….ughhh… putting it in her…. ughhh…. mouth! She’s eaten some smelly crap before but never actual smelly crap. We’ve called her a little turd before so I guess they’re right that you are what you eat. And to borrow one from Adam Sandler…“He called the $#!T ‘poop’”.

Needless to say none of us had much of a stomach for the Reese’s Peanut Butter and Chocolate eggs after that. I’m just glad we got some good pictures before the onset of the chaos. Yes, last night it was our turn to climb into bed together after a long day, look at each other and laugh together like only a couple who has pulled poop out of their child’s mouth with their bare hands can.

Tonight Reagan reminded us why we do it, however. She’s been standing for a while now and walks really well as long as she’s holding on to something. Tonight, though, she finally started to make an effort to walk. We’d get her walking and then let go of her hand and she’d make her first toddle as she tried to keep her feet underneath her while falling forward. That’s the best part about being a parent – you know you’ll eventually get your turn with the good as well as the bad, and yes, sometimes even the stinky.

Visit from Gma and Gpa Checketts

2011-04-11T20:48:00.001-04:00

Well, I honestly thought I was going to have a lot of free time on my hands with the anticipated shut down of the federal government. I was not only going to get caught up on my blog, but I was finally going to write that novel I’ve been working on, fix the brakes on the car, work on my free-lance photography………ok, I was going to try and finally defeat Angry Birds but at least I had a plan. If there was a furlough, I had thought about trying to go to the workforce services office to look for a temporary job, but as I started to list my skills I realized my only hope was for the government to stay open. I mean, really, only the government sees bullets on a resume like “skillfully attends meetings”, “adequately applies 6th grade grammar to email correspondence”, and “usually stays awake” as commendable attributes. Thankfully Congress came together and worked things out so I was able to return to “work” today.

In spite of my hard day’s labor (actually I ended up taking most of the day off because I accidentally left my laptop at home – yes that’s true), I figured I had procrastinated blogging long enough and that I needed to at least post something. Thankfully we actually had something to blog about. Grandma and Grandpa Checketts were in the neighborhood on business so they stayed in town over conference weekend to spend some time with us and the kids. It was a great chance for Tyler and Reagan to reunite with Grandma and Grandpa and it was also nice for me and Thesha to have a few helping hands around to keep the kids occupied. We really enjoyed watching conference and sharing some time with them too.

Here’s a quick picture of the kids with Gma and Gpa Checketts.

Now, usually I would have at least a handful of pictures here but unfortunately we ran into some technical difficulties with our computer and the camera. For some reason when we move our pictures from the camera to the computer, the images come out distorted, discolored, or fragmented. This has happened in the past and I am usually able to get around it eventually, but this time was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. It took about 10 minutes just to finally get this one picture over and even then I had to crop it a little to get rid of the distortion at the bottom of the picture. So, we finally broke down and bought a new computer. Of course, it will take a week to get here, so you’ll all just have to come back in a week or so. By then we’ll have a computer that will match the performance of our camera, we’ll hopefully have something else to blog about, and maybe there will even be a federal budget that gets approved for the rest of the year instead of just another week. Ok, well, we should at least have a computer. I’ll just have to make up the rest.

Date Night and Other Fun Stuff

2011-03-14T21:13:00.001-04:00

Well thanks to some of our good friends from the ward, Thesha and I were finally able to go on a date. This was the first date since… well… probably since we were in Utah and we snuck out for lunch while Thesha’s parents watched the kids. Needless to say, it was a much-needed break. The kids stayed with the Nair’s who have two boys that are right around Tyler’s age. As we pulled up and Brittany opened her door, Tyler headed straight in and never looked back. Seriously, he was in the door, saying “Hi, guys!” to his friends and headed for their toys. We literally didn’t even get to say good bye to him. Thankfully Reagan was still willing to show us some love and at least shed a tear or two over leaving her with someone else.

For our date we decided to go out for sushi. Tyler has a hard enough time with fish sticks so we don’t usually waste our money taking him to places like that. Plus we wanted to go to a fairly nice restaurant. Ok, as nice a restaurant as you can find that’s still next to a Quizno’s and a Verizon store. As we entered the restaurant and asked for a table for two, the hostess asked if we had a reservation. A reservation? Now if I was joking about the Quizno’s and Verizon store I may have expected this, but when I literally parked in the same parking lot as the Quizno’s customers, I really didn’t think a reservation would be necessary. The fact that there were ten open tables and that when we said “No” the hostess just said “Ok, follow me.” and sat us at a table just confirmed how ridiculous of a question this really was.

As we were seated, however, I began to realize just what a reservation could have meant for us. We were taken all the way to the back to a small table in a corner right next to the doorway to the kitchen. To make it even more romantic, on the other side of our table there was a family of five with two boys (probably 5 and 8) and a little baby girl (about 6 or 7 months). Here we were, finally out on a date and to one side of us we hear the suite serenade of Spanish vulgarities by the Mexicans preparing fine Japanese cuisine and an occasional “CORNER” shouted by the waiters and waitresses as they come in and around the corner leading into the kitchen. On the other side is a gentle reminder of the life we not only tried to leave behind for the evening but also the life that awaits us as our kids get older and their kicking and kneeing and elbowing becomes more and more violent. It’s amazing we were able to overcome the romantic ambiance and contain our overwhelming urge to start making out.

So instead we just stuffed our faces with spicy tuna rolls.

Ok, actually the family next to us was pretty well behaved and the food was pretty good so it probably wasn’t as bad as I’ve made it out to be. And after all, a night out is a night out, right?

The next day was Saturday and after recovering from all the tuna rolls, I figured it was a nice enough day to go ahead and break out the Harley and take a little ride. It was a little chilly, but I was bundled up so I figured I’d be ok. As I started to pull out of the apartment complex, I didn’t even make it to the end of the road and a van started to make a left turn in front of me. I’m sure in the back of their mind they were thinking “Hmmm, that looks like a guy on a motorcycle, but it’s obviously way too cold for that to be true so I guess it’s ok to go ahead and make the turn.” Thankfully they realized they were wrong and there was a guy on a motorcycle headed straight for them and they stopped with just enough room for me to sneak by. After about another five minutes on the motorcycle, however, I realized that this person’s inner voice was actually smarter than I had originally given him credit for. It was quite a bit colder than I had originally anticipated and I froze my… uhhh… chaps off.

I only ended up riding for about a half hour, but it was at least far enough to check out when our favorite crab shack will be opening. As it turns out, they don’t open until May 1st. I guess I could have waited a few more weeks to take my ride.

Like a smoked salmon sashimi prepared by a guy named Jose and served to you by a waitress named Karen, sometimes you just have to look on the bright side and just enjoy the experience as best you can.

Ok, this next part is for all of you who read my last blog and called me names for treating Tyler like he was the intern who’s only purpose was to make my life easier. I’ll have you know I’ve decided to use my powers for good as well. Today after wiping Tyler’s nose with a Kleenex for the 5th time in a single hour, I was done. So when he started to have a runny nose yet again, I told him to go get a Kleenex, told him to pull one out (accompanied by “hurry, hurry”) and then told him to wipe his nose (“hurry, Bud, I’ll time you.) Like an old pro he wiped his nose. Of course then he wiped his hands and then wiped off his clothes all with the same Kleenex, but hey it’s progress. Now you may be thinking this is just me still being lazy, but wiping your nose is a critical life skill that will serve him well throughout his life. Just like bringing his dad a Mt. Dew.

They grow up so fast

2011-03-07T21:09:00.001-05:00

Well, once again there’s not too much to blog about in terms of fun activities or sightseeing adventures so I’ll just take a few minutes to share a few of the latest developments with the kids.

Tyler is growing up into quiet a young boy. He’s talking so well and is able to understand and respond appropriately. So, for example, he was repeating Thesha word-for-word as she was trying to ask him to do something and she said, “Are you just going to repeat everything I say or what?” and his appropriate response was “Yes.” Well, ok then.

The best part about him understanding and responding accordingly is that I now have someone who can start to do those menial tasks that aren’t real difficult but are just a hassle. For example, we were getting ready to go out and I needed to change Tyler’s diaper. So I just asked him to run get me a diaper. Amazingly he ran and not only got a diaper but grabbed the tub of wipes as well. Sweet. “Ok,” I thought, “let’s see how well he REALLY understands.” So I asked him to go to the fridge and get me a soda. AWESOME – he totally just brought me a Mt. Dew and I didn’t even have to leave my indentation in the couch. I felt bad that I had reached a new level of laziness, but I figure I’ve earned it and sooner or later he’s going to figure out that the whole “Hurry, I’ll time you.” bit is just a hoax to get him to do stuff he really doesn’t want to do. I have to be careful with my new-found powers, however. The other day we were at the grocery store and as we were checking out I almost tossed him the keys and asked him to pull the car up to the door. Yeah, I really need to save that one for later when I can really use it to my advantage.

Another fun thing that Tyler’s been doing is stretching his imagination. I don’t know where he picked this up, but lately he’s been “hopping” around on his hands and knees and referring to himself as “little froggy”. “C’mon, little froggy.” “It’s time for lunch, little froggy.” “Stop kicking your sister, little froggy.” I would worry about this but every once in a while he still comes up to me and says “Hi Dad it’s me Tyler.” so I guess it’s all normal. Plus as long as that little froggy can bring me some chocolate donuts from the pantry he can hop all he wants.

Here’s our little froggy… ready to serve.

The other really fun thing lately has been Reagan’s furniture surfing. She learned how to pull herself up on the furniture a couple weeks ago and there was no stopping her. You can’t sit anywhere without a scene like this…

I know you’re sitting there thinking, “Ahhh, how cute.” and Thesha and I would agree with you. Our pants that have puke stains all over them, however, would probably disagree. Sigh… I’m sure some day she’ll stop puking all over. I never thought I would want something more than a kid that was pottie trained until we had Reagan and found out what it was like to have a puker. I haven’t walked through this many wet spots on the carpet since I had a puppy in the house as a kid. But like the puppy, Reagan is too freakin’ cute to be too upset at.

The latest, however, is that Reagan took her surfing to a new level yesterday. We have a couple of the little walker toys and yesterday Thesha stood her up to one of them and like a rocket Reagan took off across the room. As if the speed crawling didn’t make her mobile enough, now she’s moving around upright.

Reagan taking her first steps with the walker

Thankfully she hasn’t learned how to go backwards or turn around yet.

As for us, it’s been pretty much life as usual. Thesha’s been having fun learning all the in’s and out’s of our camera lately and stumbled on a neat trick. She was able to make it look like Tyler is disappearing.

Now you see him…

Now you don’t…

I don’t know whether to be creeped out by that picture or not. I mean, I know it’s just a weird effect with the shutter speed and aperture setting and stuff but that’s just creepy. I mean, what if he really disappeared. I might have to get off my lazy butt and actually walk five feet across the room to get the TV remote. AHHHHHHH! Frightening.

Winters are So Boring in Maryland

2011-02-13T21:32:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I know it’s been a while since I blogged, but winters out here are so boring. Most of the things that we like to go see and do are outdoors. Even though there’s not much going on, I figured I had still better go ahead and blog before I get any more hate mail. So, here are some mostly-true stories that hopefully brighten up your day.

Well, Reagan is officially mobile. She’s crawling all over the place these days. As exciting as that is, it’s been a nice little reminder that we have a bunch of stuff that we now have to guard. Baskets stand watch in front of the computer as chairs take their post as centurions blocking the pathway into the kitchen.

The other day it all became worth it though. Normally when I arrive home from work, Tyler will run and meet me at the door and give me a big hug. Then I’ll give him either my lunch box or a piece of mail or something and while he’s distracted I’ll say hello to Thesha (or as Tyler like’s to say, “Hi to babe” – I give Thesha a kiss and say “Hi, babe.”). Then I’ll go and find Reagan and hold her for a few minutes. Well the other day she was following Tyler around so as I came in the door and got my hug from Tyler, here came Reagan following close behind. She crawled – well, she was still lunging at that point – down the hallway to meet me at the door. She came the whole way and was laughing and smiling the whole way. It was adorable.

In addition to gaining mobility, Reagan’s personality is really starting to shine through these days. I’m sure parent’s of daughters know exactly what I mean by that sentence. When Tyler is upset he’ll cry or throw a tantrum or something. When Reagan gets upset, she just yells at me. Yes, she looks me straight in the face and her demeanor goes from this…

to this…

Yes, we’re all learning to get (and stay) on Reagan’s good side.

In addition to crawling all over the place, Reagan is learning to pull herself up onto toys, the couch, our legs, or whatever’s in her way. One day she was crawling up on the little push cart (I don’t know what they’re really called, but you’ll see what I mean in the picture) so we decided to sit her in it and let her push herself around.

I instantly became the dad in the car insurance commercials nervously watching as his daughter started to “drive” for the first time. A proud but nervous moment. Here she is so excited to go out and explore on her new toy.

In my mind I thought of all the scary, dangerous, and life-changing events that might happen when she’s really out on her own. It went a little something like this…

It’s late on a Friday night. Everyone was celebrating the homecoming victory of the local high school football team. Suddenly the silence of the cool fall evening is disrupted by flashing red and blue lights. Now pulled off to the side of the road, an officer shines his flashlight into the driver’s side window of a classic 1st driver car and asks, “Excuse me miss…

… but have you been drinking?”

To her relief, her brother is there to distract the officer.

“Whu sheems to be the problem… Occifer?

As the Officer turns his head to avoid getting contact drunk from their breath, Reagan quickly throws the half-empty cup from the car. Looking back at the officer with her big blue eyes she asks…

“Can’t we just make this a warning? Wink…wink…”

NO…No…, oh… it was just a nightmare.

Still. I’ve already grounded Reagan for life and explained to her that driving is a total drag and that she should never learn how to do it. Tyler’s punishment is that he now has to clean up Reagan’s spit-up off the carpet so he realizes how bad it would really be to spend time with a bunch of drunks.

Ok, back to reality. If you look down to our blog about this year’s Christmas, you’ll see a picture of Tyler opening up a present that is full of books. Those of you from Thesha’s family are probably thinking, “Oh that’s so great that you’re getting him interested in reading.” Those of you from my side of the family are probably thinking, “You got him something cool, too, right?” Actually, Tyler has gotten more enjoyment out of these books than probably any other gift we’ve ever given him. I can’t imagine where he get’s his love of books from, but it looks like Thesha won’t be the only one around here getting books for every birthday, Christmas, or Cinco de Mayo … what? Mexican’s love to read.

Every night we get to sit together and read about Lego City, or Lightning McQueen, or the Cat in the Hat.

Reagan loves to reach out and touch the pictures and this drives Tyler nuts. He’s always pushing her hands away and sighing at her for disrupting the story. Ahh the start of wrestling matches which are sure to come.

As the final thought for this blog, we are excited that Reagan’s hair has started to get long enough that Thesha can do a little styling. We thought the earrings would be enough to help people realize she wasn’t a little boy (as if all the pink crap wasn’t enough) but apparently there are still some nice but dumb people out there. With her hair done, it’s impossible to mistake her for a boy anymore. Here are some glamour shots. (Well, as glamorous as you can get with a runny nose and a bib on.)

If anyone mistakes her for a boy now I’m pretty sure I’m legally bound to kick them in the throat.

Little Gems

2011-01-17T19:23:00.001-05:00

Well, there’s not much to blog about this week, but I couldn’t help but share one of the little gems that keep us smiling.

Ever since we got back from our trip, for some reason Tyler has started using a lot more adverbs, adjectives, and superlatives. Things that used to be hot are now “really, really hot” and things that used to be fast are now “more fast.” Well, tonight as we sat down to a bowl of ice cream for our family night refreshment, Tyler gave us all a nice little chuckle. As he sat there shoveling the ice cream into his mouth as fast as Chadli at Oktoberfest, he looked up with a drip of melted vanilla goodness oozing down his chin and said, “It’s freezin’ cold.” What are we going to do with this kid?

We also thought it would be good to share our family calendar pictures for those interested.

Happy Holidays 2010/2011

2011-01-12T22:36:00.001-05:00

Well, there are probably a lot of you reading this that have been waiting for several weeks for us to finally post our pictures of our trip back to Utah. Well hold your horses a little longer ‘cause first you have to read through the obligatory Christmas Day stuff.

Well, we made it through our 2nd Christmas in Maryland. With the trip to Utah scheduled for the day after Christmas we tried to keep the gifts pretty modest this year but Tyler and Reagan still seemed to love it. It was really fun to see Tyler start to understand a little bit more about what Christmas is. We found this site where you could enter information in about your kid then it would generate a movie of Santa Claus talking to your child. When Tyler saw Santa and heard him say his name he was instantly mesmerized by it. It was really fun.

We decided this year to get Tyler a little kitchen set. For the last two months he had been walking around with Mr. Potato Head parts in a cup sipping it like it was soup and asking us if it tasted good. Maybe it was all the times we had him help Thesha make cookies or something, but that kid loves to be in the kitchen. Since we’re in a little apartment, however, having him in the actual kitchen with us is a pain because there’s just not enough room for us all. So now we just let him pretend to cook in his kitchen and everyone’s happy. Of course now I have to pretend to eat a plastic piece of pizza and say “mmmm, it’s good” but that’s better than potato head soup. At 6 months old, Reagan was just happy to have something new to put in her mouth. I could go on about what we actually got her but the reality is that we basically got her a bunch of different things to stick in her mouth or puke on.

Here are some pictures of Christmas morning

Alright, assuming you didn’t just skip through that and jump to the pictures below, here’s the scoop on our trip.

It was kind of a different Christmas for us because once the Christmas morning activities were done we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for our trip. As we started to see a few snowflakes fall we began to worry about our flight. I kept checking and checking throughout the day and everything seemed fine until about 8:00 at night (keep in mind that we were supposed to get up at 4:00 the next morning to get to the airport in time). With basically no snow on the ground we found out our flight had been cancelled due to the weather. We spent the next 2-3 hours trying to get rebooked on another flight but the website kept giving us errors and when you called the customer service center you got a standard message that “Due to extreme weather conditions, we’re unable to take your call.” I realize different locations have different uses for words and phrases, but I’m pretty sure that “extreme weather conditions” means something a little more than just a few snowflakes.

After hours of frustration we finally got rebooked but not until the day after our original plans. We assumed we’d probably end up stuck at some airport half-way across the country, but we figured we should at least give it a shot. If nothing else it would give us some material for the blog. When our direct flight turned into a flight to Minneapolis then to Denver then to SLC, we thought for sure we were screwed. Then when our flight out of Baltimore was 40 minutes late and we only had a 45 minute layover in Minneapolis we pretty much resigned ourselves to the reality that we would be stuck in icy Minnesota for the evening. Luckily we got there early enough that they were able to fit us on a red-eye flight from Minneapolis to SLC arriving at Midnight (that’d be 2:00 AM for those of us on the East coast). Oh the kids loved that one. Actually they both did really well. And in Minneapolis we actually bumped into a pilot who was really nice and gave us a little more information about why our flight was probably cancelled even though our weather was fine. Apparently he was still trying to get home to see his kids for Christmas and he’d gotten stuck on the East coast as well. When he hadn’t even seen his kids for Christmas yet, we pretty much had to come to terms with our anger about the whole situation and realize that it could have been worse.

So at 2:30 in the morning on I can’t remember which day we finally laid down to rest at Thesha’s mom’s house. They made it so nice for us and the kids absolutely loved being with their Grandma and Grandpa Checketts.

Here are a few pictures of us catching up with Thesha’s family.

It was so much fun to see Tyler and Reagan with their Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grandparents. It was especially exciting for us to be able to introduce everyone to our little Reagan. It’s great that we have this blog to be able to share pictures, but there’s just no way to share her personality except through first-hand interactions.

For New Years Eve, we got together with my family at the Spare Time Fun Center in Syracuse. We were able to bowl, have some pizza, jump on the trampolines, play laser tag (which the guys totally kicked butt at, by the way), and just have a good time laughing and spending time together.

My favorite part of the evening, however, was watching Tyler climb in the inflatable jungle gym. The first time through it was funny to see Corbin hoisting Tyler up the climbing walls, shoving him over the top, then sliding him down the slides. It was fun to see him have a chance to interact with his cousins. Although I’m sure Tyler enjoyed it too, I think he preferred going through the obstacles without a diaper-wedgie, however, so he quickly learned how to get himself up the climbing wall and down the slide.

When he started up the climbing wall for the first time by himself I thought, “well, at least he’ll be falling onto something soft.” I was pretty shocked to see him navigate up the wall all by himself, figuring out how to reposition his feet, reach up, then steadily move up each obstacle until he reached the top. I spent time with 30 year olds that didn’t know how to climb up a wall when I was going to all those military trips a couple years ago yet here was Tyler figuring it out at the age of 2. I was a pretty proud papa that night and I could have watched him do that over and over again.

Here are some pictures of our New Year’s Eve party. By the way, I think Reagan beat us all at bowling. Whatever…

I know there are a lot of people out in Utah that we would have loved to see, but there seemed to be so many places to go and so little time to do it all. Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip a reality. We’re hopeful we’ll be able to get out there again soon – maybe for good if we’re lucky. Until then, thanks for the memories and we’ll see you all again soon.

Catching up

2010-12-19T22:02:00.001-05:00

I know it’s been a few weeks since our last blog post. I’ve actually meant to write something a few times but just got sidetracked by one thing or another. Excuses aside, let’s get caught up.

Probably the biggest news lately is that our little girl had her first milestone of woman-hood - - - she got her little ears pierced. The weekend she turned 6 months old we took her to the mall and turned the swarm of sales associates at the Claire’s loose. Reagan was such a good little girl in spite of the painful experience. She was done crying by the time we got to the register. Yes, her first milestone as a woman also marked my first milestone as the father of a woman – forking out an unreasonable amount of money for two microscopic pieces of jewelry. Here are some close-ups of her new bling.

One of the reasons we were so excited to get Reagan’s ears pierced was to finally make it impossible for strangers to mistake her for a little boy. Apparently the mountain of pick clothes, blankets, etc. weren’t enough. Obviously a little baby with two diamond earrings (ok, Cubic Zirconia, but whatever) would clearly be a baby girl, right? Well, the other night we were out and about and an older woman was commenting about our kids but still kept referring to Reagan as a boy. At first we were kind of bugged about it, but after the lady left we came to understand that she was obviously just mistaking her for an NFL wide receiver – the only other boys that have two diamond earrings.

In other news, we’ve been having lots of fun this year teaching Tyler about Christmas. We have a couple of Christmas books that we read each night, we’ve had Christmas related lessons during FHE, and we’ve been introducing him to the most common Christmas tradition – making and eating Christmas goodies. Here are some pictures of our Christmas Cookie making FHE activity.

While it’s been fun working with Tyler on his understanding of Christmas, it’s amazing how quickly he latched on to the words “Santa Claus.” We’ll say, “Tyler, can you say Christmas Tree?” … “Santa Claus.” “Tyler, can you say baby Jesus?” … “Santa Claus.” “Tyler, what does Dad’s belly remind you of?”… “Solid Granite.” "Good boy!”

Lastly, a couple days ago we celebrated my 33rd birthday. Yes, 33… Old enough that there’s no big birthday bash anymore but not old enough that you can start doing stupid stuff and blame it on old age. In spite of the mediocrity of the milestone, Thesha was so nice and made me a cake and everything. Now that Tyler understands the whole birthday concept, she wanted to make sure that he saw that it was Dad’s Birthday. What he saw was Dad making a goof of himself – like he needed a special occasion to see that. Thankfully she spared us all the fire hazard and only used two sets of three candles.

Well, that’s about it. This will probably be the last post before the holidays and our trip back to Utah. Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! We’ll catch up with you all in 2011.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-29T21:44:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving is a time to sit with family and friends and remember all the things your thankful for. Well, this year we were very thankful that we had a chance to sit with family and friends and remember that we certainly do have much to be thankful for. One thing quite prominent in our minds that we have to be thankful for is that at least this year isn’t last year. To quote myself from our Nov. 3oth 2009 blog post, “Well, it sucked.” Last year Thanksgiving dinner consisted of Ramen noodles and a turkey sandwich from the gas station. This year Thanksgiving was an awesome fried turkey with stuffing, two kinds of potatoes, rolls, Jell-o salad, pumpkin pie… a REAL Thanksgiving. We owe a HUGE thanks to our friends the Williams for inviting us over to their house to share the holiday. It was great.

In addition to getting the meal right this year and spending the day with friends, we also finally got a chance to Skype with my family. I’m sure most of them wondered if it was really worth the 45 minutes of work to try to get the technology to work, but it was great for us to see how big all the kids had gotten and to fill that spot in the holiday that requires you to get agitated around your family. Now we just have to keep practicing so we’re all familiar enough with the technology that it isn’t such a big deal for future events. I must admit, however, that I did at one point confess that it’s probably a good thing that we’ll be coming back for a face-to-face visit around Christmas.

In addition to being thankful for a plate full of extra calories and a family to make fun of you for eating it all, the other thing we’re thankful for this year is the fact that we had a really enjoyable weekend with the kids. Last year we spent most of the nights after Thanksgiving in the emergency room with Tyler having a fever of 104. This year we spent the weekend watching Reagan learn how to sit all by herself. It was so much fun. She had been sitting a little before, but this weekend she really figured it out. We found that the trick was to give her a toy to play with and that would keep her attention forward so she wouldn’t fall backwards. Here’s a picture of her with some toys giving it a try. Notice the huge puke rag … I mean burp cloth (ok, puke rag) in the background. I didn’t say it was a clean experience.

As we continued to work with Reagan we tried a handful of different toys to keep her attention. As it turns out, her favorite was a big rubber ball. Tyler would get in on the fun as well – sitting in front of her and rolling the ball back to her as she knocked it his way. The funniest part was the sound she makes. There’s no way I could type it so I had to include a video. The only way I can think of to describe it is that she’s able to make the sound that the old analog TVs would make when you went to a channel that wasn’t broadcasting and just got the fuzzy picture. Take a look and turn up the volume and you’ll see what I mean.

Baby Reagan learning to sit and playing with a ball.

Tyler’s favorite baby sound was the way he made the sound of a Rainbird sprinkler head. Between the two of them we’ve got quite a pair of noise makers.

On a final note, as a weekend project I figured I would give our computer a little upgrade and install some additional RAM memory. Those of you that know me well won’t find this as a surprise, but I figured the best way to accomplish this task was to run to Staples after dinner and just pick up the memory chip and go ahead and install it. How hard could it be, right? Well, although it really wasn’t hard, I got a friendly reminder that sometimes it pays to actually stop and think about what you’re doing first.

After purchasing the RAM, Tyler and I pulled out the computer, popped the side off, tore open the packing, and stuck the chip into the RAM slot… well, almost. As it turns out, the chip I was sure was the best bang for the buck was the wrong type of chip (DDR3 instead of DDR2, for the nerds out there). Best Buy has the “Geek Squad”, the show Chuck has the “Nerd Herd”, well Tyler and I were huddled over the computer like the “Jackass Crew”. Ok, I probably shouldn’t include Tyler in that designation. After all, I think in the picture below he looks like he knows more about what’s going on than I do.

When Thesha came over to take the picture she was so excited to see her two guys working together to fix stuff around the house. Thankfully she took the pictures before the illusion wore off and she realized I had just dropped $60 on something that didn’t work. Thankfully I redeemed myself and was able to make the exchange at Staples for the correct chip and all was made right. Our computer is so fast now it can almost open up a program before Thesha starts yelling at it to “just freakin’ work.”

Happy Veteran’s Day

2010-11-15T22:45:00.001-05:00

For this Veteran’s Day we decided that rather then celebrate by watching another war movie that we’d actually visit a site where veteran’s performed their heroic acts of patriotism. We’ve got a handful of places to choose from, but we decided to make it a Baltimore day by visiting Ft. McHenry. Ft. McHenry is the site of one of the battles of the War of 1812 where Francis Scott Key saw the stars and stripes fly after a 24 hour barrage of bombings by the British Navy and was inspired to write what later became known as the Star Spangled Banner. Before getting into our experience, enjoy one of my favorite renditions of the national anthem.

Thank you Enrico Palazzo!

Joking aside, it really was a pretty cool site to visit. Typically on Veteran’s Day we think of men and women who went “over there” to fight for the freedoms of others. Visiting Ft. McHenry gave us a chance to remember those who went “just right over there” to fight on our own soil to keep our country free. One of the most impressive parts of our visit was the impressive physical layout of the fort. Between the large array of cannons as well as the impressive earth structures, it definitely would have been a significant obstacle for an invading force in 1812. Top that all off with a huge American flag flying proudly and it’s not hard to imagine why it was so inspiring for Francis Scott Key. Here are a handful of pictures from our visit.

As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to make it a Baltimore day, so after visiting a classic Baltimore tourist location we decided to visit the Café Hon (Hon pronounced like a waitress in a 50’s diner asking you “what kinda pie can I getcha, hon?”). I heard about Café Hon on the radio and they talked it up like a great place with waitresses dressed up in “Hon” attire – paisley dresses, beehive hairdo, pointy glasses, etc. We were all excited but apparently we picked the Hon’s night off. Instead we got the 22 year old college student with tattoo’s up her arms and a nose ring. “That spike in yer’ nose itchin’, hon?” At least we got to sit next to the life-size replica of Elvis with a feather scarf wrapped around his neck.

Our Baltimore night wasn’t over yet, though. In visiting the not-so-Hon café, we had the joy of driving home during rush hour traffic. Thankfully we weren’t in a hurry but after about 30 minutes traveling 7 miles you start to get anxious for any type of movement. The monotony was interrupted, however, with one moment of laughter. Part of the reason for the delay was because there was some construction in the area. Because of the construction, they had placed one of those signs that shows the speed limit on one side and your speed on the next. You gain a whole new appreciation for “traffic” when you look at that sign and it says “Speed Limit… 55 mph… Your Speed… N/A.” C’mon man, at least give me a 2 or 3 mph just to make me feel better about myself.

To cap off the Baltimore night, I watched the Ravens game before going to bed. I’m quickly becoming a Ravens fan because I hear about it pretty much every morning on the way to work – even during the off season. They’ll have players on the air talking about the game so you start to put personalities with the names and numbers on the jersey’s which really gives a whole new feeling to the game. Unfortunately the Ravens lost which gives a whole new disappointment to the game as well, but I guess that’s all part of being a fan.

All in all, though, it was a fun day giving us a chance to enjoy a few truly American activities – Stars and Stripes… Meatloaf from the Hon’s… Rooting for the home team… Sleeping safely without the threat of tyranny… Thanks to all the Veteran’s who help make it all possible.

Catching up on all the lack of news

2010-10-25T21:44:00.001-04:00

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

2010-10-04T16:26:00.001-04:00

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.

Happy Birthday Tyler

2010-09-20T22:15:00.002-04:00

Well, it was a very different scene this birthday compared to Tyler’s 1st birthday. A year ago we were in the park behind our house in Roy getting ready to say goodbye to everyone. As we look back over the past year so much has changed.

We considered having a birthday party for Tyler with all his friends from nursery, but then we decided it would be a fun tradition to just have a party every other year and go somewhere fun as a family in between those years. Before heading out, however, we set up Tyler’s birthday gifts on the couch so they were there for him as he walked out of his bedroom in the morning. It was a lot like Christmas, but at least we didn’t have to bother wrapping everything.

Tyler enjoyed the Lego's and farm animals, but he made his preference clear when he went for this gift right off the bat. Here’s Tyler with his new “oder cycle” (Tyler for motorcycle).

As I sat on the couch putting this together at 11:00 the evening before his birthday, I told Thesha that this thing was so cool that if I could ride it I totally would right now. For all the dad’s who’ve assembled toys while you’re kids were sleeping, you know how good it feels to see your kids enjoy them as well. So you can imagine how cool it was when Tyler stopped pushing the blinker and engine noise buttons to give his new motorcycle a hug.

Best reaction EVER! The best part about this picture is that it wasn’t even staged. We actually got the picture in the act.

Here’s another picture of Tyler in his new Sunday clothes. He looks like such a big kid I just couldn’t help but include this one in the blog.

Yes, he’s pointing to his motorcycle and No, he did not give his new dress clothes a hug.

For our family outing, we went to the Delaware Children’s Museum. It was a ton of fun. Tyler ran and played non-stop for about two hours running from exhibit to exhibit. By the time we left he was so worn out that he didn’t want to walk to the car and when we went into a restaurant for lunch he just laid his head down on the table. Here are a few pictures of him taking it all in. See the rest in the slideshow at the bottom of the blog posting.

A really fun exhibit was the simulated NASCAR garage. In this exhibit you can tune the engine, replace a muffler, and change a tire. Here’s Tyler changing the tire. I kept waiting for him to say “Ohhh fuuudddggge” but it never came. Maybe when he’s a bit older he’ll risk the soap poisoning. (If you don’t get that reference you’re missing out on an American classic – A Christmas Story.)

I know it’s supposed to be all about Tyler, but I just can’t help but include a cute picture of the ladies.

At the end of the day we finished up the days activities with a special Birthday Cake that Thesha did such a good job putting together. While I assembled the motorcycle, Thesha assembled the birthday cake. It really turned out cute. For all those mom’s out there who toiled in the kitchen for hours trying to make your idea come together in cake and frosting, you know how rewarding it feels to see it all come together. Then to see your 2 year-old get a huge smile on his face and blow the candles out all by himself…best reaction EVER!

Tyler loves the M&M’s so we figured why not let him indulge – it’s his birthday after all.

It was a really fun day for all of us and even though it was different then last year it was still a very special day and one that will always be remembered. Happy Birthday, Tyler.

Here is the complete collection of pictures from Tyler’s birthday. Enjoy.

Holy Rollers Batman

2010-09-15T18:34:00.001-04:00

Well, it’s official. Reagan’s rolling over. She actually rolled over once a week or two ago but we weren’t really sure if she had rolled over or just fallen onto her side and back on accident. We put her on her stomach last night and she purposefully rolled onto her side then onto her back. To confirm it wasn’t a fluke, we put her back on her stomach and she rolled over onto her back again – this time with photographic evidence. Here are the pictures of our little roller.

Mama and Tag

2010-09-13T20:06:00.001-04:00

Well, Tyler’s starting to come into his true 2-year old spirit (even though he still has a week left as a 1-year old). As if on cue he suddenly realized that he can say no, so now everything we ask of him prompts an immediate “No.”

Tyler, do you want breakfast? NO. Tyler, will you pick up your toys? NO. Tyler will you ever stop saying no? NO. I didn’t realize we had raised Tyler to be such a fan of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign.

In addition to the perpetual No’s, Tyler has also taken to calling me Tag instead of Dad. I’ll come home from work and he used to run up to me and say something like “Hi Dad”, or ask Thesha “Where’s Dad?” but now everything is “Hi Tag” and “Where’s Tag?” My personal favorite is when he calls for me from across the room. “Tag…Tag…Tag…” We’ve tried to correct him and tell him to say Dad, but it always reverts back to Tag.

It’s not much better for Thesha, however. Granted, he still calls her Mom or Mama, but he’s gotten to where he just calls out her name over and over again. The other day he woke up from his nap early so Thesha tried to just let him settle back down and go back to sleep. After a little while, however, he started yelling for her… “mama…..Mama……MAMA.” When she finally broke down and went in to see what was the matter he just looked her straight in the face and said “I fine.” This is Tyler’s other new favorite saying, “I fine.” Whenever he falls down… “I fine.” Whenever he falls and slams his head into the wall… “I fine.” Whenever he lets one rip while sitting on my lap… “I fine.”

Well, that’s about it for this time. Here are some recent pics just for fun. Next time we should have some pictures from Tyler’s birthday and maybe even some pretty fall pictures (the leaves are starting to turn and it’s looking prettier every day).

These are some from a nearby covered bridge.

These are just some cute pictures of our little “Squishy” (as I like to call her).

Reagan’s Bumbo-rific and a Follow-up to the Picnic Story

2010-08-30T20:39:00.001-04:00

Well, there’s not a whole lot to talk about this week. We’ve just been hanging out around home relaxing lately. It’s actually been ok because it’s given us a chance to let Reagan start trying out the Bumbo. She’s still a little wobbly in it so we can’t leave her in it for more than a couple minutes, but it’s a start.

Here’s our little cutie…

Now before you all go get too excited, I’ll have you know I sat like this for hours on Saturday then again on Sunday. It was exhausting. How ‘bout an “ahhhh, how cute” for me!

As a follow-up to my post about my work picnic and Tyler hitting on all the girls. Apparently a coworker of mine got some photographic evidence.

Here’s Tyler hitting on a little girl his own age.

Then, just as she starts thinking she’s got a chance…Boom. He goes after the “cougar.”

I told Tyler I was going to post these pictures and he just said, “Don’t hate the playa’… hate the game.”

Tonight we were “that family”

2010-08-17T19:36:00.001-04:00

About 8 years ago Thesha and I wandered into a Chili’s near our apartment in Albuquerque. We sat down next to a nice young family with a happy-go-lucky Mom and Dad and their two sons. Shortly in to our meal the younger kid started screaming and about half-way through our meal the older kid totally puked all over. We felt pretty bad for the young couple but really we spent the rest of our meal mumbling beneath our breath about how bad it would suck to be them right now. Plus it sucked for us because we were watching it and it’s hard to keep an appetite after something like that.

We gained a whole new perspective on that couple this evening. We forgot to get the chicken out to thaw for dinner so we figured we’d just run to Chili’s real quick. Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and it actually started off pretty well. When the food arrived things took a dramatic turn, however. I had literally just pulled my fork and knife out of their pre-wrapped napkin roll when Reagan started to cry uncontrollably for no apparent reason. I tried in vain to calm her down while keeping her in her car seat but quickly realized I was fighting a losing battle. So with tears streaming down her face and the entire restaurant peering over their chairs to see what all the commotion was about, I pulled her out of the car seat and tried desperately to calm her down by rocking back and forth in my chair. I couldn’t hear it over the screams, but I’m almost positive I saw a guy lean over to his teenage daughter and point out that this is why he is always reminding her to not have sex until she’s married.

With my meal getting colder by the minute, Thesha quickly ate her chicken sandwich - her mouth burning both from the heat as well as the spicy sauce she usually savored. In between bites she “encouraged” Tyler (as only a mother can) to eat something besides tortilla chips. In retrospect, we probably all wish he hadn’t eaten anything at all. While still chewing and blowing on the last bite of her sandwich (you know what I mean when you’ve eaten something too hot), Thesha relieved me of the still crying Reagan and gave me a chance to eat my luke-warm hamburger.

Realizing that he had completely lost interest in the quesadilla, we gave Tyler the cinnamon apples that came with his meal and enjoyed a few moments of peace. Tyler did pretty good with the apples until he had eaten all of the sauce and started into the apple chunks. That’s when dinner became a spectacle instead of a meal.

Tyler started choking on one of the apples. He coughed it back up, but apparently there was some kind of chemical attraction between that apple chunk and the tortilla chips because as soon as the chunk came up so did everything that had proceeded it. Tyler was sitting next to Thesha who was still trying to keep Reagan quiet so she gave playing catcher a quick try then realized her best alternative was just to get out of its way. I hopped up but Tyler’s 4:00 snack had already made it to the floor before I got over there to help. With all the sudden movement, Reagan started crying again while we scrambled for a stack of napkins from the hostess.

Thankfully by now the teenage girl sitting next to us and her family had left – probably to go tell her boyfriend that she had been converted to the idea of abstinence – so we weren’t having to apologize to them for all the chaos. I did find it interesting, however, that while I was still trying to clean up Tyler the waitress decided to drop off our check. To her credit, she still asked us if we wanted to try a brownie sundae. I don’t know if she was just used to this kind of stuff or if she was so appalled that she just reverted to her training and routine while trying to find a happy place in her mind.

With a dozen or so soaked napkins piled up on the table and Reagan starting to calm back down, I stripped Tyler down to his diaper and sandals and put his stinky, wet clothes in a garbage sack we pulled out of the diaper bag. I don’t know whether to be grateful or disturbed by the notion that we were actually somewhat prepared for something like this. I’m not saying we didn’t get a few confused looks from people coming in as we walked out with a kid in his diaper and sandals and a garbage bag of clothes instead of a doggie bag of food, but we did get out of there with our dignity. Ah, who am I kidding. At least we got out of there.

As disturbing as it all was, we tried to keep our wits about us and as we got in the car we looked at the lighter side of the situation. Even with a screaming baby and a puke-soaked kid, we had at least avoided the trinity of all parenthood fiascos by not including a diaper blow out as well. I think we’ll save that for Applebee’s next weekend. As for now, we’re just going to sit and watch a few scenes from The Exorcist in order to get something more pleasant going through our minds before going to bed.

Here’s Tyler in his new Chili’s outfit – a diaper and sandals. Don’t ask what that is on the side of his mouth.

The Battle at Gettysburg

2010-08-09T21:44:00.001-04:00

After several weeks of having our plans thwarted for one reason or another, we finally made it to Gettysburg. It was such a beautiful day – we couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was about a 2 hour drive so by the time we got ourselves and the kids ready in the morning then made the drive it was just about lunch time when we arrived. We decided that it would be best to go ahead and grab some lunch before seeing the sights. Tyler apparently didn’t like this idea and in an instant became that kid that single people look at and wonder if they will ever want kids.

I’m not going to lie about it, it was pretty rough. Forget about the fact that we just paid $25 for a hamburger, chili dog, and two chicken fingers, we were now two hours away from home and quickly coming to the conclusion that we were probably going to have to just turn around and drive right back.

Finally after a good half hour of flopping around on the floor and crying his eyes out, Tyler finally relented and started to act normal. Much like the Union Army at Gettysburg, just when we thought all was lost, we found a way to hold the line, keep the high ground, and win the battle. At least for us the cost was just $8 for some stupid chicken fingers that he never ate.

The museum was really impressive. It starts with a 45 minute video narrated by Morgan Freeman about the events leading up to the battle and the lasting impact of the events of those three days in July of 1863. It was Tyler’s first time in a movie theater and we weren’t sure how he would handle it (especially after the tantrum during lunch), but he was actually really good through the entire show.

After the movie, you’re taken to a 22 foot tall, 279 foot long, 360° mural of the battlefield known as the cyclorama. It is incredibly impressive in and of itself, but then they add some lighting effects and some storyline and it’s just amazing. The slideshow below has some pictures of the cyclorama, although I don’t think they really do it justice. I was able to see a similar painting when I visited the museum in Waterloo, but it’s a lot different when its the history of your country instead of others. Plus, Americans know that some cool lighting effects and booming cannons going off over a loud speaker can really bring out the true emotion of the painting whereas Europeans would probably just say that it detracts from the art. Whatever Frenchy.

After the cyclorama viewing, we walked through the museum itself. It’s always kind of tough to really get everything out of a museum when you’re chasing a 2 year-old, but we were able to glean bits and pieces as we walked through hallways of civil war memorabilia. As we exited the museum, Thesha looked at me and said, “Well, if you don’t feel pretty patriotic after something like that then you’ve got problems.” It really was a moving experience.

Lastly, we went to the cemetery where the Gettysburg Address was given by Abraham Lincoln for the dedication of the national cemetery. There’s a hill just next to the cemetery (Cemetery Hill) that was a significant location during the battle and it has now become a place for monuments of the various military commanders and regiments that were involved in the battle. The area has basically been left alone, so it wasn’t that hard to imagine what it would have been like to be camped there prior to the onslaught of Confederate forces. I think only those who have actually been engaged in such warfare could actually imagine what it would have been like during the fighting itself. The slide show below has some pictures overlooking the battlefield.

While we were able to see some really cool things, we quickly realized that there is a lot of stuff in the town that we wouldn’t be able to get to on this trip. There is obviously a lot of history there, but also some fun and interesting shops, restaurants, etc. We’re definitely looking forward to returning there again some day.

Here’s the slideshow of our sightseeing activities. If anyone wants the full-size (5mb/picture) versions just let me know and we’ll figure out a way to get them to you.

P.S. Why is it that the chili dog always seems to get the last word in the argument about whether or not it was a good meal?

Just a Little Prick and a Picnic

2010-08-02T21:16:00.001-04:00

Well, we had a couple interesting events this last week. On Thursday, Reagan had her first round of immunizations. Before this she had some shots in the hospital and some blood tests run by pricking her feet, but this was the first time we had to actually hold her down and endure the cries of a trusting but confused and now hurting baby. Everyone who’s had to be there when their child gets those shots knows what I’m talking about. We were old pros by now having gone through this a bunch of times with Tyler, but it still just makes your heart ache when that first startled screech comes bellowing out. Then, in between cries, they just look at you like, “What did I do to deserve this?” and “Why would you do this to me?” Of course, much like Tyler, she was done crying before we were – I mean, before Thesha was. It was actually kind of interesting to see Tyler’s reaction though. I think he was as confused as Reagan was – wondering what the crap was going on – but I think he was just glad that it wasn’t him with the sore leg this time. We reminded him that his turn will be coming up once again in September when he goes in for his 2 year old visit, but I don’t think it sank in completely. I’m sure it will sink in soon enough.

After Thursday’s good times, we spent Friday enjoying the “mandatory fun” of my work picnic. It actually was kind of fun and it was better than a day sitting at my desk, so I really can’t complain. Everyone was able to bring their families, so we got to meet the spouses and kids of a lot of my coworkers. Reagan was a perfect little angel and just sat there looking as cute as ever and Tyler was able to run and play and completely wear himself (and us) out. He doesn’t get to do that as much as he would like since we’re just in the little apartment, so it’s always fun when he’s able to get out of the house.

My favorite part of the picnic was when Tyler walked over and started holding the hand of the daughter of one of the guys I work with. The girl (who was several years older, by the way) just smiled as Tyler pulled her around to show her how he could kick the soccer ball or throw the baseball or whatever. Then, as the girl’s dad (my coworker) started walking over towards them, Tyler let go of her hand and just walked away like nothing was going on, everything’s cool, just hanging out… what?

I told my coworker what had happened and he just laughed. I guess we can all just laugh for now, but about 10 – 12 years from now something tells me we won’t be quite so laid back with Tyler’s “innocent” hand-holding. Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much know I deserve it for all the indiscretions of my youth, but I didn’t think it would be starting before he even turns 2 years old. I mean, c’mon man, at least wait until you can say “hey, check this out” before you start showing off for the girls. Oh well, what’cha gonna do. (I mean besides teach him how to say, “hey, check this out.”)

Just to get caught up

2010-07-26T21:33:00.001-04:00

Well, I had actually hoped to have lots of cool pictures and stories to talk about by now, but the weather just hasn’t cooperated. Four score and seven days ago we were planning on going up to Gettysburg but it was raining like crazy so we had to cancel. Then this last weekend we were supposed to go to a maritime carnival with seafood, boating events, and “living history” (aka more nerds in old costumes) but it was 105° so we decided to just go to Target and Toys R Us and even then we were dying of the heat. So, no cool stories to tell, but there are a couple little fun things going on that I can talk about to hopefully make for some interesting reading.

Here’s an updated picture of baby Reagan.

We’re quickly falling in love with her big eyes that get bluer and bluer each day. Unfortunately a lot of her long newborn hair has started to fall out – we haven’t had this much black hair on our stuff since we had our black cat. But the long hair is at least being replaced with more hair, even though right now she just has a wicked-awesome mullet.

She has become such an even-tempered little sweetheart that I’m starting to wonder what we did to deserve such good kids. I’m hesitant to say it, but we’ve even been lucky enough to have her sleep through the night for almost a week. She still squeaks every once in a while so Thesha will get up and put her binky back in, but then she’ll fall right back to sleep. Of course we did have one night where Thesha had to give her a little bottle again, but at least it’s not two bottles a night for a hour each time trying to have her eat and go back to sleep. The first night it happened I was actually out of town. I got back and Thesha was so excited to tell me about it. She had just adjusted her schedule so she figured she would just let Reagan wake up and cry to let her know when she was ready to eat but then the whole night went by and there was nothing more than a few squeaks. So that night we tried it again and sure enough she was sleeping through the night with next to no effort on our part. We almost don’t know what to do with all the sleep we’ve been getting. Who am I kidding, we know exactly what to do with it – sleep. (That’s right you pervs that thought I was going to say something else.)

Tyler’s becoming quite the chatter-box. He’s started being able to mix in real words with his jabbering and has even graduated from single words to short phrases. His phrase de jour… “Uh, oh. I made a mess.” Now where did he pick that up from?

Here’s a fun picture of his latest sleeping habit. I don’t know how he manages to get all the crap in his crib piled on top of himself, but Thesha got the proof with this picture.

Since you can’t really see who this is under the pillow, blanket, and stuffed dog, I figured I had better add a decent picture of his face as well.

Well, that’s about it for now. Hopefully we’ll have something more exciting to blog about soon.

A Fun Filled Week

2010-07-06T22:31:00.004-04:00

I know this post comes a day later than usual, but there was just a lot going on this week and it took a little longer than usual to get everything together. While it was a little crazy, we definitely had a lot of fun.

Dad showed up on Tuesday night and spent Wednesday and Thursday driving Tyler around. They went…well…wherever the road took them. It’s a good thing Dad had his GPS otherwise we’d probably still be looking for them. I know Tyler and Grandpa had a good time, but in all honesty I think Thesha enjoyed the break even more.

It just wouldn’t be a vacation without good food, so we had to first take Dad to Woody’s Crab House for some crab, clams, and shrimp. And of course it just wouldn’t be dinner at a restaurant with Dad without him making an inappropriate comment to the waitress about whether or not she had a younger sister for Tyler and a good looking mom for himself. This is why I’ll never take Dad to Hooters – not even as a joke.

Thankfully the only thing more appealing to Dad than cute waitresses is his affinity for tropical fish and sail boats. So on Friday we went to the Baltimore National Aquarium (walking past the Hooters). The Aquarium is located in what’s called the Inner Harbor. We had heard about this, but never had a chance to go until now. There was a lot to do there but way too much for one day so we just stuck with the plan of going to the aquarium.

If you look through all the aquarium pictures you’ll see one with a pirate ship and a big hill behind the ship with an American flag flying. The big hill is actually Ft. McHenry. This is where the “Star Spangled Banner” was flying during the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our national anthem. We didn’t have time to visit but it was kind of cool to see the big American flag flying on the weekend we celebrated the 4th of July.

Later Friday evening, Thesha’s dad arrived. With two Grandpa’s in tow, we went to Turkey Point Lighthouse for a little nature walk and a view of the Chesapeake Bay. It was a really fun time for Tyler who took turns running around with Dad, Grandpa, and Grandpa. Afterwards we stopped by Captain Chris’ Crab Shack for some more Maryland seafood. Even though Thesha’s dad is “not much of a connoisseur of seafood” (his words, translation = doesn’t Maryland have a Steak Shack somewhere?) he was a good sport and tried some of their incredible crab legs.

In addition to all these activities, we found some time to sit and talk as well as take Tyler swimming a couple times, but the party really reached its peak when we went to the 4th of July carnival and fireworks in Havre de Grace. The Grandpas bought a bunch of ride tickets for Tyler and he had a ball. Thesha brought enough food to feed the entire Nicholas family so the five of us ate well, laughed loud, and stayed up late. We even got to enjoy something new for a 4th of July celebration…a view of something besides the back of North Davis Jr. High! Since the fireworks were shot out of a small island in the harbor, a bunch of boats pulled out into the harbor to watch the fireworks which meant we got a nice view of all of them.

Even though it was hard to talk about it over the roar of Neil Diamond singing “We’re coming to America” over the loud speaker, we all enjoyed sitting under a big tree in the park, eating some sandwiches, and looking out over the Chesapeake. Notice that I didn’t say we enjoyed watching the actual fireworks. As it turns out, there was a reason why no one had claimed our “sweet” spot. Much like the giant tree behind us, there was an equally obstructive tree in front of us which was specifically planted 75 years ago to stop us from actually seeing the fireworks. I ended up walking a few yards away and holding Tyler so at least he could see what the crap we had been keeping him awake for. At least we’ll know better for next year.

Then of course there was the baby blessing for Reagan. When we first found out we were pregnant and showed up here in Maryland I thought for sure that the circle for the baby blessing would just be me and some Deacon with a microphone. Then when I saw how small our chapel was I figured I was being overly optimistic about the need to include a microphone. Thankfully I was able to be joined by two Dads and a cousin. I guess technically that made us a square not a circle, but whatever. The member of the Bishopric rounded us out enough to make it enough of a circle.

Here’s our little angel with the members of the ~~square~~ circle.

In addition to these handsome young men, Reagan was also surrounded by some beautiful young women on her special day. Reagan truly is blessed to have such wonderful family members in her life. Thank you to everyone who joined us that day as well as to Thesha’s mom for sacrificing a month to be with us to make sure we were taken care of when Reagan arrived.

Well, if you’ve gotten this far you’ve probably neglected your family, work, or whatever long enough but thanks for hanging in there with me. If you want to push your luck a little farther, the names of the places we visited are a different color font because they’re actually hyperlinks to sites about those locations. Go check them out so you get really excited about coming out to visit us. Sorry Dad but you’ll just have to do a Google search for Hooters.

Finally some more pictures of Reagan

2010-06-28T19:43:00.001-04:00

I’m not going to give excuses for taking so long to post some more pictures because I’m assuming that everyone can understand that it’s been a little tough to find time over the last few weeks.

With that said, here are a few pictures:

Unfortunately for everyone out there Reagan is growing and changing every day, so these pictures are already a bit outdated. Fortunately for everyone out there we’ve got some great picture-taking opportunities coming up this weekend. My Dad and Thesha’s Dad are coming out to see their new granddaughter and assist in her baby blessing. It will be interesting to see how this works in our tiny meeting house. We just became a ward but we’re still in a branch-sized meeting house. It’s a good thing the whole family isn’t here – the family would outnumber our whole ward.

There haven’t been too many funny things happen lately to blog about (partially because Thesha told me that getting pooped on WASN’T funny) but the funny stories are what keep everyone coming back to check the blog. So, at the risk of detracting from Reagan’s attention, I’ll just add a little something based on something you may have noticed was missing from the pictures – my goatee. Yes, I finally followed my Mission President’s advice to keep a clean shaven face.

People have asked me why and there are a lot of reasons, really. Here are my top ten – mostly fake – reasons for shaving off my goatee:

10. I’ve been trying to lose some weight and figured I’d start with the easy stuff first.

9. With a new baby I just couldn’t afford it.

8. The aerodynamic drag was keeping me from realizing my Olympic swimming dreams. Yep, that’s all that was holding me back.

7. I’m finally having to say good bye to my rebel 20’s – next on the to do list, buy a mini van…not.

6. I was so tired from sleepless nights that I accidentally shaved off the right side and had to lose the rest of it just to cover up my mistake.

5. Bringing a new baby home wasn’t traumatic enough for Tyler.

4. I finally got rid of that zit I’ve been using my goatee to cover up for the past 6 years.

3. The red in my goatee clashed with all the pink crap around the house.

2. Let’s face it, facial hair is a lot of work if you want it to look nice and I’m getting way too lazy for all that upkeep.

1. It’s 2010…Goatees are so 2000’s…time get with it.

Our New Addition

2010-06-04T16:07:00.001-04:00

There will obviously be plenty more to come, but I wanted to make the quick update to the blog while everyone else was napping.

On Thursday, 3 June 2010 at 12:59 PM (Eastern time) Reagan Nicole Choate arrived weighing in at 6 pounds 12.6 ounces and 19 1/2 inches. Everything went great (with the exception of having to get the epidural re-done) and Thesha and Reagan are doing fine. We expect to come home on Saturday.

Here are a couple quick pictures…

Here’s Reagan all bundled up like a burrito.

Here’s one without the covers as we were checking all ten toes, then fingers, and ten inches of hair (ok, not quite that much, but still…)

And here’s one with both Tyler and Reagan. As you can tell from Tyler’s posture, he still isn’t quite sure what to do with this little lady.

We’ll have more stories later, but needless to say we’re all pretty happy with our new arrival. If you had told me about four years ago that we would not only have one kid but two kids by now I’d have told you that you were crazy. If you had told me that one of those kids was going to be born in Newark, Delaware I would have rolled my eyes and told you to stop making up crazy stories that just aren’t true and could never be true. It’s amazing what all can happen in just a few short years.

Off to the Races

2010-05-31T16:17:00.001-04:00

Well, yet another week has gone by and still no Reagan. This little girl is bound and determined to remind us that she operates on her own schedule. While our obvious preference would have been to spend Memorial Day weekend in a labor and delivery recovery room, we ended up making the best of the situation by going to the local horse race track.

Not that I think there are any horse racing aficionados that read our blog and would make an assumption about what race we went to, but I’m not referring to the Preakness horse races (one of the races in the Triple Crown – a pretty big deal, apparently, in horse racing). No, I’m just referring to a local track called the Fair Hill Racetrack. It was really fun to go and see our very first horse race. I remember going to the rodeo as a kid over the 24th of July and wanting to be a cowboy. I wonder if Tyler will grow up and want to be a jockey? If so, he better take after Thesha’s side of the family or he’s going to be one pudgy jockey. (Yes, pudgy – not fat. I’m still holding on to pudgy.)

Here are some pictures and stories from our Fair Hill adventure.

Tyler took his first pony ride. He was a little nervous at first, but once the pony started moving he just held on to the saddle and rode like a pro. We didn’t really know if he was having fun because he kept a very serious face the whole time. Once he got off and was back on the ground, however, he was laughing and smiling so we assume he enjoyed himself.

The people who provided the pony rides have a children’s horse/pony riding camp each summer. When the cousins get a little older we’ll have to have a pony party when you all come out to visit (hint, hint).

In addition to the horse races, they had Jack Russell Terrier (dog) races as well. They would stick 4 – 6 dogs in a starting gate and get them riled up with a rag tied to the end of a string then let them go as they pulled the string down the course.

Man, these little guys can really fly. It was a good thing we brought our good camera to take some quick pictures.

After a couple sprint races, they moved the jumps in to place. I thought it was impressive that they could run so fast and jump over the pipes, but then one jumped all the way over one of the little fences. Not only are they fast, but those little suckers can jump too.

At the end of the track they have to put a couple bails of hay. When they did this it seemed a little strange to us. It only took one race to realize why they were there. As you can see from the picture below, the bails of hay are the only things that stopped the dogs. Here you can see about 4 of them all bunched up in the hay after racing after the rag. The trainers had to wrestle them out because they were still doing every thing they could to get that rag.

Once all the big dogs (well, relatively big dogs) were done, they took one round for some puppy training. It took a while for the little guy to figure things out, but he eventually picked it up. You know this guy was just brining out the cute puppy to try and pick up some chicks – yeah, I’m on to you dork wad. :)

In addition to the races, they had a couple displays and stuff. Here Tyler takes a seat in a new tractor. I’ll give you three seconds to find Reagan…Three… Two… oh, you already see her. Yeah, she was kind of hard to miss that day.

Tyler loved this thing. He has a little puzzle with some farm animals and a tractor. When he puts the tractor piece in the puzzle he makes the “brumm, brumm” sound. When we sat him up there and starting making the sound he figured out that he was on the machine from his puzzle and started “brumm, brumm-ing” with us and turning the wheel and laughing. Something tells me I’m going to have to keep an eye on the car keys a little sooner than I anticipated.

Although Tyler was a little young for this next event, I couldn’t help but take a few pictures. They had a stand where the kids could pick out a stick with a blank horse head and then use stuff (glitter, construction paper, etc.) to personalize the horses face. Once they had their stick horses ready to go, they had stick horse races for each age group. You can imagine how fun this was to watch and I can’t wait until Tyler’s old enough to do this. I especially liked this picture because if you look just to the right of the goofy guy in the orange shirt and sombrero you’ll see that one poor little girl has fallen down and another girl is running over the top of her to try and win the race. Classic. Like her Daddy taught her, if you’re not runnin’ over someone, you’re not racing. Click on the picture to see a bigger version of the picture.

It was pretty hot and Tyler was still a little young to enjoy it, but we stuck around to watch at least one of the races. You can see from all the people that this was a pretty popular place to be. Here are the horses coming down the final stretch.

It looked like one horse was going to win without a fight, but towards the end another one at least made for a good show. Here they are sprinting towards the finish.

Needless to say, it wasn’t quite the same as the rodeo, but we all got to have some fun and Tyler got to be around a bunch of horses with his Grandma – an experience that I’m sure is just the first of many. While we were waiting for the terrier races, one of the horse handlers was walking one of the races horses back to the stables and stopped to let Tyler get a close look and pet its nose. He didn’t even flinch, so he definitely has what it takes to be around the horses.

Lastly, in case you didn’t figure it out, Reagan still hasn’t made her debut. We’ve done everything except throw Thesha up on the back of that freakin’ pony and nothing seems to be enough to induce labor. All in good time, I suppose.

Plumpton Park Zoo

2010-05-24T20:14:00.001-04:00

Well, since Reagan still hasn’t decided to make her grand appearance, we decided we’d try to encourage her along by walking around the local zoo on Saturday. Now, when I say zoo you may be conjuring up images of Hogle Zoo or San Diego Zoo or something. Well out her we have the Plumpton Park Zoo. This is more like the back yard of an old house where the people who inherited it decided the tax write off for donating it as a shelter for a few animals would actually be more lucrative than trying to actually sell the old house and barn. With your expectations set appropriately, it was actually a really fun place to go visit.

Up until now, most of Tyler’s experiences with animals came from story books and farm puzzles. It was really fun to have him see the real thing. To our surprise, he knew to say “Qua, Qua” (Quack, Quack) when he saw the ducks. Of course he also said “Qua, Qua” to the Ostrich’s, the Swan’s, and pretty much anything else with a beak. I was going to correct him, but I couldn’t really figure out what the appropriate noise was for an Ostrich so we just went along with it.

Here’s some pictures from our little adventure…

Insert donkey (ass) joke here…

Grandma made sure Tyler saw the kind of things he would see in Utah.

There’s a Turtle in one of Tyler’s books but it’s all multi-colored and has a big smiley face. It was good to see Tyler learn what a real turtle looks like.

The timing worked out pretty well so that by the time Tyler was tired enough that I started carrying him on my shoulders he was held high enough to be able to get a closer view of the Giraffe.

It only took Tyler a little while to warm up to being so close to the animals. He did really good to hold the food pellets and let the animals eat it out of his hand. To my amazement, he never cried even when he was a little nervous. Here he’s showing Mom his new goat friends.

Now time to show Grandma.

Surprisingly Tyler was fine getting right up close to the Goats and letting them eat out of his hand.

Too close…Too Close…

Last but not least, my favorite picture from the whole trip. What a cute little monkey.

It really was a fun trip and Tyler was such a good boy with all the animals. Unfortunately in spite of all the walking there was no unusual activity for Reagan so we’re still anxiously standing by. I’m sure it won’t be too much longer though. I can say that because it’s not me that’s getting punched in the bladder.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye…

2010-05-19T21:45:00.001-04:00

Ok so I was going to try and write something clever in the whole medieval/renaissance form of writing but that was way too much of a hassle for what it’s worth.

We’ve been looking for ways to get out of the house and stumbled onto a medieval encampment at one of the local museums. They had demonstrations, sword fights, medieval pipe music, etc. It was really cool and it was such a beautiful day to be out walking around on the nice green grass. Here’s some pictures of us enjoying the festivities…

Tyler, Mom, Grandma, and some swordsmen

Here’s a close up of the sword fighting – Medieval Ultimate Fighting Championship (with foam swords)

We found the perfect store for Dad …… look for it…

If you didn’t get the joke, I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with what’s beneath the sign.

Here’s a nice picture of the family on the rock retaining wall.

Say what you will about Maryland, they do have some pretty country side. We can’t wait to see it in the Fall.

One of the goals of the festival was to use the costumes and demonstrations to teach kids about how things were hundreds of years ago. What I learned is that there’s a fine line between teaching your kids about history and encouraging them to be one of those weird-o’s at a medieval festival. I guess we’ll find out if we left on time in about 20 years if Tyler ends up like this guy…

Aside from the medieval festival, we’re spending our time waiting for baby Reagan to make her big debut. Everything’s in place now if we could just convince Reagan to cooperate. All in good time, I suppose. We got some way cute blankets from Ali and Thesha’s mom has been staying with us ever since we left the hospital a few weeks ago. Sorry to everyone who was hoping to see her on Mother’s Day. I know it’s pretty selfish, but it sure was nice to have her with us. We went to a local restaurant called Mamie’s to celebrate. Yes, we celebrated Mamie’s Day with Mamie at Mamie’s. The Maryland Cream of Crab Soup was awesome.

Tyler’s been really good with all the arrangements for Reagan. In addition to touching Thesha’s belly and saying “bebe” he now says “Wreee” when we try to get him to say Reagan (kind of like how Chadli said “Is Wrobby Thewre?”). It’ll be interesting to see how he is with her when she arrives. Thesha was talking to him the other day about holding his baby sister in his arms and he said “Uh oh.” Uh oh in deed, little man.

Practice Round

2010-05-03T14:02:00.001-04:00

It just wouldn’t be a pregnancy in our house if we didn’t have a couple challenges along the way. For the past little while Thesha had been having some contractions, but last Wednesday they really started to intensify and get pretty regular. The doctor told us to go ahead and go to the Maternity Triage center and they would evaluate things there. Thankfully we have a couple in our ward (yes, we’re a ward now) who have a couple boys around Tyler’s age so they picked up Tyler and we headed out to the hospital for what we thought would be just a quick evaluation and some advice on how to get the contractions to subside. Five days later, we finally came back home.

So we showed up at the hospital and started through all the same old procedures with the nurse. Then, all the sudden, in walks the doctor and Thesha and I were both totally caught off guard by what we saw. The doctor looked just like Chadli. She had the same style of glasses, the same hair color (I don’t know if it’s the same brand, but it was the same color), similar personalities, about the same age, even similar hand gestures. It was kind of crazy. That is, until the doctor said, “Alright, let’s take a look.” Then it just got really weird, really fast. It’s one thing to have a stranger checking you out, but when the stranger looks like your sister-in-law, it just crosses the line, ya’ know. Nothing personal Cha, but if someone that looked just like one of Travis’ sisters put on a rubber glove with KY jelly on it and started walking towards you’d probably be a little freaked out too. Thankfully she was just the triage doctor and once she saw (and unfortunately felt) what was going on they sent us over to labor and delivery (just in case) where Thesha was then seen by her regular doctors.

Tyler was apparently having a pretty good time, but our friends, Brittany and Mike, could tell that he was missing his mom, dad, and home. She told us that Mike came home and her two boys ran to the door yelling “Daddy” and Tyler followed them along thinking he was going to see his Daddy too. When Mike walked in the door, it stopped him in his tracks and he got all sad and just hugged Brittany for a while. He eventually warmed up to him, but things were just not right in his world.

Thankfully on Friday night Thesha’s mom was able to fly in to take care of Tyler for us. What a life saver! Because the flight came in so late, I went over to pick him up and take him home on Saturday morning. When I walked through the door Tyler just stood there for a second to make sure I was real. Then he ran towards me but stopped just in front of me and just stared at me for a second. I wasn’t sure if he was mad at me or what, but once he realized I was in fact his dad he gave me a big hug and just latched on as tight as he could. When I tried to pull him away to change his clothes and get him ready to go he pulled me in closer and grabbed at my shirt so I wouldn’t put him down. I felt bad that we had put him through all this, but I was glad to see that he wasn’t too mad at me.

Unfortunately the initial reception for Thesha wasn’t quite as satisfying. To this day I still remember walking in to the hospital room where my dad was laying on the bed after he had hurt his eye. I remember that it was him but that I was scared to death of him. Tyler had this experience going to see Thesha. As we walked towards the door we said, “Are you ready to see Mom?” and he excitedly replied, “Ma ma, Ma ma.” but just a few steps in to the room and he stopped dead in his tracks and demanded to be picked up and held. As we walked towards Thesha’s bed he got the sad face with the pushed out lower lip and he pulled himself as close as he could to me. It was soooo sad. Thesha was so excited to see him but she understood why he was scared. He eventually calmed down and was able to sit by her for a little while, but he never really warmed up to the idea that this was really his Ma ma. Thankfully as we walked in the door at home today Thesha got the reaction she was hoping for. He latched on to her as tight as he had latched on to me and just hugged her for about 5 minutes. Finally, Mom and Dad were home and we could all be normal again. It will be interesting to see how he reacts when it’s not a practice round but the real deal and now it’s Mom, Dad, and a new baby Reagan coming in the door.

Here’s a picture of Thesha and Tyler in the hospital room. Notice that we had to distract Tyler with a cell phone for him to calm down and sit with Mom for a little while.

So, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the deal, then? Is Reagan alright?” She is doing fine. Throughout the whole ordeal she looked just fine on all the monitors. When it looked like things might be headed towards an early delivery, Dad suggested that maybe an ultrasound might help us know if she was well enough to be born without any problems. At first the doctor said no, but then she came back and said that it might be a good idea to do one to make sure there was still plenty of amniotic fluid. (Thanks for the suggestion, Dad!) So for all our troubles, at least we got another ultrasound. Thankfully Reagan was willing to cooperate this time as well so we could get a good picture of her. In our prior ultrasound, she had her face buried in the placenta which made it hard to see her face. As you can see from the picture below, she has a beautiful face (assuming there’s nothing freaky behind the umbilical cord that she’s holding over her right eye).

The technician performing the ultrasound also said that she could see that she would probably have a bit of hair as well. It never ceases to amaze me that they can get images and information like this.

Getting a closer glimpse of our baby girl has us so excited to have her. It just makes it that much more real when you see how developed they are and can start to put a face to the name and belly movements. Of course, we still have a bunch of stuff we need to get, so hopefully she gives a little more time to prepare. Not to mention poor Ali who is freaking out because she’s trying to make some blankets for us and what was supposed to be 6 weeks to be able to finish them seemed like it was going to shrink to 6 days or even 6 hours. I doubt it will be 6 more weeks, but hopefully we have at least a couple more weeks to make all the final preparations. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

We’ve already had our practice round, so hopefully the next time things act up it will be for real. At least now we know right where to go. Although next time we may ask if there’s another doctor available that doesn’t look like one of our siblings.

It’s Really Real

2010-04-19T21:01:00.001-04:00

Well, there’s really not that much to write about but since we skipped last week we figured we should probably at least write about something.

Last Friday we were sitting around the table and Thesha went to get up and bumped her now prominent belly on my chair. After a quick, “uhh, that hurt.” she made her way to the kitchen but bumped her belly again this time on the countertop. We both kind of chuckled at the realization that she’s really 8 months pregnant and that means Reagan’s bigger than what you expect. The funniest part, however, was that Thesha gets an email each Sunday from Pregnancy.com that talks about what’s going on with the baby and what to expect. Sure enough it said “you may be bumping your stomach on chairs and countertops.” The email couldn’t have been more timely had they known Thesha personally.

The other realization we’ve had to deal with is that our little boy isn’t a baby anymore but is in fact a little boy. Those of you with little boys can probably guess what it was that tipped us off. We went to the park and he was running and playing and it was a great time. We went back home and I had him sitting on my lap and found myself turning away from him because he smelled like a smelly little boy. Gone are the days of snuggling up with him and smelling the unique smell of baby powder, milk, and baby spit up. Now if you snuggle up and take a big whiff, you’ll be the one puking on his shirt instead of the other way around. Thankfully it won’t be too much longer and we’ll have another little one to snuggle and smell.

In addition to smelling bad, Tyler’s been such a big boy lately. He’s watched the Leap Frog “Letter Factory” video… oh, about a million times, and he’s starting to learn his letters. We got him a wooden puzzle with all the letters and he’ll pick up the W and say “wuh, wuh, wuh.” Or he’ll pick up the H and say “huh, huh, huh.” When he picked up the B and said “boob” I got a dirty look from Thesha and we spent the afternoon singing “the B says buh” to correct his pronunciation. (Just joking, by the way. Relax.)

The last thing for this week is just a quick little story. If you look back a few blog posts ago you’ll see the video of Tyler meowing. We were in Target the other day looking at stuff for Reagan and Tyler started meowing. I looked around and there were some little girl shoes with a Hello Kitty on them and Tyler was meowing back to the Hello Kitty shoes. It was hilarious.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-05T20:36:00.001-04:00

Oh what a difference a little sun and warm weather can make in one’s disposition. I got off work a little early on Friday so we stopped off at the local Wendy’s (which was dangerously close to the Waffle House, but we figured it was worth taking a chance) and got some dinner and went to the local park to have a little dinner picnic. It was so nice. The park is right on the Chesapeake so there were people fishing and boaters coming in and out of the harbor area. It was warm enough to play but not so hot that we got uncomfortable. We all had a really good time and followed it up with a Orange Cream frozen custard that confirmed to all of us that Spring had sprung.

Here’s some pictures of our Friday night at the park.

With Spring officially here, we were really looking forward to Easter. We weren’t really sure if Tyler would go along with the whole egg hunt thing, but he was totally in to it. Part of me wonders how much of it was just the clean genes he inherited from his mother coming out – after all for him it was just a cleaning activity except with Mom & Dad cheering him on with each egg that he put in a basket.

We bought a basket that looks like a football and plastic eggs that looked like little footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and soccer balls. We figured even if he didn’t like the whole egg hunt stuff at least he’d have something that looked like another toy. Here’s some Easter morning pictures:

Aside from parks and holidays, things are continuing to go well with Thesha and Reagan. Thesha’s 31 weeks now so not much time left. We’ve been trying to get Tyler used to the idea that he’s going to have a baby sister soon so we’ve been teaching him that the “baby” is in ma ma’s tummy. He’ll place his hand on her tummy now and say “bebe.” It’s adorable, or at least it was until I was sitting on the couch watching TV and he put his hand on my stomach and said “bebe.” No, buddy, that’s what the doctor calls a little bit of a weight problem. On top of that he’ll put his hand on Thesha’s other lady lumps and say “bebe” too. I don’t know if that should be considered a compliment or what. For everyone who’s been asking for more pictures of us, here’s a picture of Thesha and the “bebe.”

The other hilarious thing Tyler’s been cracking us up with lately is his sigh of disappointment. I don’t know where he picked it up, but we’ll tell him no or take something away from him and he’ll say “Ahhh.” It’s all nasally like “Ahhh, man.” It’s so hard to keep a straight face when he pulls that one out. It would be great to get a little video of it, but I’m sure he would only say it when the camera wasn’t rolling.

Well, hopefully everyone had a nice Easter. Ours was very different but still very enjoyable. Now we’re just looking forward to Spring and Summer East Coast activities which I’m sure we’ll be blogging about soon.

Anyone for some investment advice?

2010-03-29T22:05:00.001-04:00

There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George decides to go against his natural instincts because his natural instincts have always steered him wrong. To prove the point he walks up to a pretty lady at the diner and says something like, “Hi, my name is George. I’m bald, I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.” Instead of the “Get lost” reaction his natural instincts told him he should expect, the woman is intrigued and introduces herself right back.

That’s kind of the way I feel about my investments lately. Well, at least one investment – our house in Roy. The good news is that it has finally sold. We sent in all the paperwork over the weekend so it is officially a done deal. Normally this would have been cause for a celebration dinner or something, but unfortunately any extra money we had got sent in with the closing papers. My natural instincts have always said that if you buy a house then turn around and sell it after almost 4 years then you should probably make at least a little money off it. Well, unfortunately like George our natural instincts failed us on this one. It’s been kind of a hard pill to swallow, but the thing we keep having to remind ourselves is that at least from now on we’ll only have to make one housing payment a month. So if you want some investment advice, just let me know. I’ll tell you what I think you should do and as long as you do the exact opposite you should be just fine. :)

In other news, we’ve had a couple chances to use the web cam lately and it has been a lot of fun. We weren’t really sure how much of a response we’d get from Tyler, but he has been hamming it up for everyone. That little kid has so much energy now, it’s getting hard to try and keep up with him. And he’s strong enough now that if he wants down you have to really hold on to him tight or he’ll squirm his way out of your grip and take off like a lightning bolt. It’ll be nice to have another little one that we can just hold and snuggle with again. Just 2 1/2 more months! Now if we could just get a few more webcams in Utah, we could show Reagan off to everyone when she makes her debut. hint…hint…

A few little stories

2010-03-22T22:19:00.001-04:00

So, nothing major has happened over the past couple weeks – not that eating at the Waffle House was anything major, but at least it made for a good story. Consequently, here are just a few quick stories of things that have happened recently.

We went to the Ordnance Museum at my work a couple Saturdays ago. If you’ve ever watched a History Channel documentary about a war and they showed the types of guns, rifles, or cannons used during that war then you’ve probably seen the stuff they have in the museum. The museum is actually getting ready to move to Virginia as part of the BRAC moves, so we wanted to make sure we got in to see it before it left. It was really interesting for me and Thesha, but for Tyler it was just a new place to run around. With all the cold weather, this was probably only the second or third time since we’ve moved here that he was able to get out and run around. There was one area of the museum where they had put up a clear plastic wall to keep kids out or something. Tyler was running around and slammed right into the clear plastic. It was hilarious. I tried to snap a quick picture with him flat on his back wondering what the heck had just happened, but this was the soonest I could get the shot off. If you look close maybe you can see his face print on the plastic.

No need to fear, after a slight whimper he was up and running around again. Unfortunately the clear plastic wasn’t the only inanimate object that assaulted him there. When he was running around outside he stumbled into a big rock. He wasn’t going to take that one lying down, however, so he started to yell at the rock and told it “Na, na” (Tyler for No, no).

Yes, Tyler is learning all kinds of new words and noises. The other day I was walking out to the car to head out to work and noticed I had a flat tire. Thesha and Tyler came out on to the balcony to ask if everything was ok and when I yelled up to them that I had a flat tire, Tyler’s immediate response was “Uh ooohhhh.” It’s one thing to say stuff like that, but when he uses it in the exact right context it just makes me laugh.

Another sound Tyler likes to make lately is his version of what a cat says. One of the gifts we got at the baby shower was a saucer that had a bunch of activities on it. One of the activities is a button with a Cat’s face on it and when you push it, it says “Cat, Gato, Meow.” I don’t know if that’s where he learned it, but the other day there was an episode of Super Why (PBS show for kids) on TV and they had to save the cats. Tyler was staring up at the screen and kept making a “meow” sound except it sounds more like a wolf howling than it does a cat. I tried to get a good howling video, but this is as good as I could get.

This is so cute when he really makes the meow sound. When the meow turns in to a howl, however, it’s freakin hilarious. The best, though, was when we were riding in the car the other day and the song Zombie from The Cranberries came on the radio and he just started howling away. Ok, so I can accept the idea that maybe The Cranberries wouldn’t make it on American Idol, but howling, really?

Tyler is also now officially in the nursery at church. We were kind of worried that he would have a hard time making the adjustment, but he only had a short time of uneasiness at first and then he settled right in. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was more on edge about him being in there then he was about being in nursery. For a year and a half I had said I couldn’t wait until he went in to the nursery so I could actually get something out of church again. As it turns out the only thing I did for two hours was wonder if everything was ok. That only lasted a little while, though, because now he seems to think that half way through the Sunday School lesson is the perfect time to poop. Yes, the feeling of “I can’t wait until he’s in the nursery” was only one stinky diaper away from coming back.

In non-Tyler related news, we celebrated Thesha’s 31st birthday today – actually a day early, but today worked out better for going out to dinner. I caught about 2 minutes of a morning talk show that came on after Tyler’s shows and it had Jessica Simpson talking about turning 30 and she said she was actually happy because now she was a young 30-something instead of an old 20-something. It’s pretty bad when you’re relying on the logic of Jessica Simpson to rationalize why it’s ok to get another year older, but I figure if she can figure it out then there’s no reason why we can’t feel good about being in our young 30’s. Plus everyone in our branch thought Thesha was in her mid 20’s, so she’s got nothing to worry about. Happy Birthday, Thesha!

Lastly, this should be the last blog post that we’ll have while we still have a house in Roy. We FINALLY sold our house and we’re scheduled to close on Thursday. Things didn’t exactly work out the way we would have hoped, but at least it’s finally going to be a done deal. Now if we could only find a 2,000 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in Maryland for less than $300,000 we’d be set. Oh well, I guess we’ll just enjoy the razor thin walls of our “luxury” apartment for now.

Trying to fit in

2010-03-01T21:28:00.001-05:00

Well, I (Tag) finally broke down and became an official resident of Maryland by getting my Maryland driver’s license. It’s always hard to make the switch because now you know that the next time you show it to the security guard at the airport with an airline ticket to Baltimore that they could say, “Heading home?” and you’d have to say yes even if you don’t necessarily feel like this is home just yet. For a driver’s license the picture turned out ok. Of course there’s a heart on the license because I’m an organ donor and a crab because – well, you know. : )

To celebrate our new-found residency, we got all gussied up in our semi-clean jeans and sweat shirts without holes and went to a fancy-schmancy dinner at the Waffle House for our Friday night on the town. Why not, there’s still time to make another bad decision. It was Thesha’s first time at the gas station bathroom turned restaurant, so it was quite an occasion. In her words, “Up until now I just knew the Waffle House as a Larry the Cable Guy joke.” It wasn’t until later that the “ affle House” punch line really started to sink in. We figured, why not get the hash browns smothered and covered? Grits, good. Biscuits and gravy, great. Diarrhea at 4:00 in the morning, well that’s just the icing on the cake.

Tyler seemed to enjoy it and was laughing and being a great little boy as always, but just so we didn’t stand out we did have to shout out “knock it off or I’ll beat your butt.” After all, we’ve got a Maryland driver’s license we had better start fitting in.

Of course no one describes the Waffle House better than Jim Gaffigan, so I thought I’d share a favorite clip even if it means revealing the source of a few of my jokes.

Baltimore Motorcycle Show

2010-02-16T21:43:00.001-05:00

Well, thankfully the east coast snow storm let up long enough for us all to take a drive in to Baltimore for the annual motorcycle show. It was a really good time if for no other reason than it gave us a chance to get out of the house – well, apartment. Here are a couple pictures of us enjoying the scenery…

There was also one motorcycle at the show that reminded us of someone in particular. I wonder who that could be?

The rest of these pictures are for everyone that chipped in to get us the new camera. Thanks!!! It was really nice to have at the Motorcycle Show.

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Tyler joins us at the big boy table

2010-02-11T19:26:00.001-05:00

Well, well. Look who’s joining us at the big boy table. Tyler’s been doing a pretty good job of not throwing his food off the side of the tray so we went ahead and bought him a booster seat so he could join us at the table. He really seemed to like the idea as you can see in the picture below.

Of course, we haven’t completely lost our minds. We did cover his chair with an old towel and we bought a plastic sheet to go under his chair. It’s a good thing we did, because Tyler made the most of his inaugural meal at the table.

If that’s not the look of a kid who’s mischievously enjoying himself then I don’t know what is.

We’ll spare you the picture of him crying as we toweled him off after the meal.

Tyler Cookies

2010-02-08T21:18:00.001-05:00

It really wasn’t that long ago that the Choate family was introduced to Thesha Cookies – basically just chocolate chip cookies that Thesha makes from scratch with one small difference…uh, they’re freakin’ delicious! In fact, when we moved from Albuquerque back to Utah I was working with a lady I had worked with before and the first thing she said to me was “I remember you because you brought in those really good cookies.” That was four years after I had brought them in to work before moving to Albuquerque. Needless to say, everyone loves Thesha cookies.

Well, now Thesha has begun to pass along the tradition and we all enjoyed Tyler Cookies for Super Bowl Sunday.

A little sugar…

Some chocolate chips…

Scoop them up…

And enjoy!!!!!

In other, non-cookie related news, Reagan has started to make her presence known to both me and Thesha now. I felt a little kick a while ago, but the other day it was a definite bump, bump on the palm of my hand. In fact, when I lifted my hand up you could even see the little rise in Thesha’s tummy where she was kicking, punching, or whatever. It’s not quite to the point of ‘alien in the stomach’ movement, but there was definitely a little creature in there. Just a few more months!

Amen

2010-01-26T21:50:00.001-05:00

It’s funny what kids pick up over time. For the past several weeks we’ve been working with Tyler on saying and pointing to his ears, nose, eyes, toes, etc. He’s been doing pretty good but tonight he surprised us a bit by saying something we didn’t even realize we’d been teaching him. We’ve been having him sit with us for family prayers before going to bed and we were just glad that he was finally sitting quietly and not squirming or crying while we hurried through the prayer. Tonight, however, as Thesha and I said “Amen” and I let him get up to give Thesha a good night hug, he repeated “Amen” after us. Ok so it sounded kind of like “Na-nen” but it was obvious what he was trying to say. We just looked at each other and said, “Wow, I guess he’s learned how to say amen.” It was so cute.

Tyler also had to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Checketts today. It was kind of sad, but he gave them both a long, long hug before going down for his nap as they got ready to head to the airport. As if he wasn’t cute enough, he keeps doing these heart warming things that just make you melt inside. He’s such a good kid.

Bones and Bless You’s

2010-01-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

This week we have enjoyed having Mom & Chad in town. It was especially nice for Tyler to have so much attention. I don’t think he had a single minute over the last several days where he didn’t have someone looking at him encouraging his perpetual cuteness. It was really nice, but it’s going to make the next couple weeks a little tricky as we have to wean him off the spotlight. That’s a grandparent’s prerogative, though, right. As you can see from this picture, Tyler was so happy to see his Grandma … well that or he’s trying to give her a diaper to change.

During their visit we were able to visit the Concord Point Lighthouse and visit the parks surrounding the harbor in Havre de Grace, but unfortunately this isn’t really the optimum time for sightseeing in the rural areas of Maryland. In fact we have a book of things to go see and do in Maryland and the calendar of events section doesn’t even have a month of January listed. All the boats in the harbor were wrapped up for the winter and the museums were all closed so we relied on our imagination a lot. We tried to make the most of our time together, though. If nothing else, we made sure to get our fill of Maryland crab at Woody’s Crab House.

We also got a visit from Chad’s daughter Courtnie. It was really nice to see her again and spend some time together. Although we only had a day together, Courtnie left her mark on our family by teaching Tyler “Bones” or “Knuckles.” It’s cute enough to warrant a short video…

To make matters worse, Tyler was sick all week and Tag and Thesha got sick over the weekend. So most of our time was spent in doors plowing through Kleenex and saying “Bless you” every 10 minutes or so. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend a vacation, but it was at least a chance to spend some quality time together. If nothing else it gave us a chance to talk about all the things we want to do the next time they come out to visit – in the Spring, Summer, or Fall because obviously the Winter is not the best season for visiting Maryland. Something for the rest of you to consider when making your plans to visit us.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-28T19:35:00.000-05:00

Well, it wasn't a Christmas like we're used to, but at least it was a heck of a lot better than Thanksgiving was. We were still able to participate in some of our traditional Christmas traditions - most of which centered around food, of course. We had egg nog shakes, a ham for dinner, and a glass of orange juice before opening presents. We also opened up Christmas pajamas for Tyler on Christmas Eve and even found a toddler book about the birth of Christ to read before going to bed.

As anyone who's had kids can attest, the best part about Christmas was seeing how excited Tyler got with all the presents. We got him a big boy chair and he climbed right on it, turned around and just smiled and laughed like it was the coolest thing ever. Of course that was just the beginning. After we got him past the idea that wrapping paper or boxes were the coolest thing ever, he just laughed and played all day with the basketball hoop, DVDs, football, and tractor tunnels. We got to enjoy watching him and capturing the moments on our new camera. Here are some pictures of our Christmas activities.

And here's a fun little video of Tyler making his first baskets.

We hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas as well. Sorry we couldn't be there to enjoy it with you but rest assured that we're keeping as many of the Christmas traditions as we can alive and well out here in Maryland.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

2009-12-21T19:26:00.001-05:00

If we’ve learned anything about moving to a new state it is that you have to form your own opinions based on your own experiences. When we came out for our house hunting trip, the realtors all told us that snow really isn’t that big of a deal around here. Well tell that to the 20 or so inches that fell on our doorsteps last weekend.

Here’s what our parking lot looked like:

Here’s what my poor motorcycle looked like (I can’t wait for a garage unit to open up):

All was not lost, however, since it gave us a chance to take Tyler out in the snow. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the white cold stuff. He just stood there at first and when Tag put him in the snow that was deeper than a couple inches the fun was officially over. At least we got a cute picture of him:

Needless to say a pair of gloves have already been purchased for Tyler’s Christmas stocking.

Speaking of which, we went out and almost finished up our Christmas shopping. It should be a really good Christmas for Tyler as well as Tag & Thesha. We’ll be sure to take lots of pictures for next week’s post.

In other news, we had our first doctor’s appointment since moving here for the new baby. It was a little anti-climatic because they don’t do an ultrasound at every visit like they did at Circle of Life, but we at least got to hear the heartbeat. Thankfully our next appointment (Jan 21st) will include the 3D ultrasound and give us chance to finally find out whether Tyler will get a little brother or sister. We’ll be sure to keep you all informed.

Merry Christmas!

Serenity Now!

2009-12-07T21:49:00.001-05:00

It's amazing what a couple of bedrooms and a few hundred square feet will do for one's demeanor. On Thursday we moved the stuff from the 1 bedroom apartment (700 sq. ft.) to the 3 bedroom apartment (1460 sq. ft.). Even though nothing else changed - we were still sleeping on a foam pad, we were still eating out, we still had most of our stuff in boxes, etc., it’s amazing what a difference it had on our attitudes. In fact, conditions were probably even worse that first night because we still hadn't moved the couch or the TV so there was no place to sit and nothing to do to relax. But like flipping a switch, Tyler now had room to play so he was happier, which meant Thesha didn't want to pull her hair out so she had a better attitude, which made me less of a jerk and I was actually nice to be around, which put Thesha in an even better mood, which meant we could sit and talk and laugh again (something that hadn't happened in a couple weeks). It was like a breath of fresh air. Then the rain let up long enough for us to be able to move in on Thursday and Friday which also improved our moods. Don't get me wrong, there are still some frustrations, but now we get frustrated and a little time goes by and we're laughing about it or we've at least moved on. It was so nice on Saturday to actually get Tyler's room set up and have at least one space that was completely unpacked and back to normal.

So now instead of constantly hearing "this sucks" at home we're constantly saying "little by little, it's coming together." By the way, whoever said "we can do anything for a few months" never had to try and stay in the microscopic apartment we were in for almost 3 weeks. Oh yeah, I think that was us. Well, we now know why they have to screen astronauts for their ability to spend extended time in a confined area. “The right stuff” obviously refers to their ability to not kill each other even though they’re living in a space the size of a closet.

In other news, we were finally able to make it to church yesterday which was another nice thing to check off the to-do list. We were happy to see that all of the auxiliary offices appeared to be filled, so we won't be called up immediately to anything crazy. It was a pretty small branch, though. When we pulled in there were only maybe 8 - 10 other cars in the parking lot. Even by the time we got to the sacrament there were maybe only about 75 people there. One of the sisters we were introduced to said it best when she said, "it's a nice little branch."

The best news, though, was that there was another couple about our same age (maybe a few years younger, but hard to tell) and they had a little boy that was only two weeks younger than Tyler. We hung out with them most of the time and the boys seemed to have fun together. They invited us to dinner next week and Thesha and Tyler to their semi-weekly play-date with some of the other parents/kids in the branch. So needless to say it was a pretty good experience. There were a lot of Utah transplants, which we expected, but a handful of people who have either been there a long time or are from there. It will be interesting to start getting to know people in the branch which we'll have another opportunity for this Saturday at the branch Christmas party. Normally we've only gone to those if we absolutely had to, but we're trying to be better about being proactive and friendly in our new surroundings.

The better-est news of all... we actually ate dinner at our own kitchen table last night. I know that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but when you've been eating out for every meal except maybe a bowl of cereal in the morning a nice home cooked meal really put a smile on our faces. Then tonight for family night we moved the boxes out of the way and put up the Christmas tree and decorations. We even put on some Christmas music and drank some hot chocolate. The irony was that while we are finally starting to feel at home, the title of the CD that helped set the mood was titled “Home for the Holidays.” Go figure.

We’ll post some Christmas pictures of Tyler by the tree soon. We didn’t quite have it done by bed-time so it’ll have to wait until later.

And we thought there wouldn't be anything to blog

2009-11-30T20:31:00.001-05:00

Well, we must admit that when we started this blog we thought for sure that we'd have nothing to blog about. While that may be true in the future, that certainly isn't true for this last week.

The most obvious post needs to be about our first Thanksgiving in Maryland. Well, it sucked. We still don't have a table set up, so even if we had gone to the effort to make a Thanksgiving dinner it would have been eaten off our laps. As it turns out, Thesha and Tyler had some Ramen noodles and Tag went to the local gas station and got a turkey sandwich. We're hoping to make next year a bit more festive.

But that was just the first day of the Thanksgiving vacation. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday made Thursday seem like a dream. Tyler started getting a fever on Friday and he woke up at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday with a fever of 104. We had been giving him Tylenol and Motrin, but he was still burning up. We tried to explain to Tyler that there were other ways to get the 'find a pediatrician' task to move up on our To Do list.

Without a local doctor to call, we ended up calling our doctor's office back in Utah and they told us to take him to the hospital. So Saturday morning we strolled into the local emergency room as directed by the Utah nurse and the GPS lady. That's right, we weren't even sure where the local hospital was yet. They doubled up his Tylenol, looked in his ears, even took a chest x-ray but everything turned out to be negative. Once his fever broke we went home and took a family nap. We did go out and do some shopping on Saturday and he was ok, but still not great. Thankfully we were able to call the local branch president and had a member come over and help us give Tyler a blessing. If nothing else, we gave thanks this Thanksgiving for good members of the church who take time out of their vacation to come and help strangers in need.

Unfortunately we weren't out of the woods just yet. On Sunday morning at 5:00 Tyler's fever was back up to 103.6 and now he was puking. So back to the emergency room we went. The doctor looked him over again, they gave him a catheder to get a urine sample (always a blast on 3 hours sleep), and doubled up the Tylenol once again. The official diagnosis... "He doesn't really look sick. He looks like he feels like crap, but he doesn't look sick, sick." Yeah, that's a direct quote from the doctor. I think the same could have been said of all of us as well because we all looked and felt like crap, Tyler was just the only one with a fever. In fact, the information sheet that they gave us when we checked out said that we should call the doctor if we notice a "stiff neck, confusion, marked irritability, or sluggishness." We had to re-read that section to assure ourselves that it was only if we noticed these symptoms in TYLER that we should call the doctor because after just a few hours sleep over a two day period, all of these symptoms pretty much described both Tag & Thesha to a T.

Thankfully by Sunday evening Tyler was doing much better and by Monday he was well below 100 degrees and smiling and laughing like the Tyler we all know and love. We're hoping that he'll stay healthy because this week we'll be moving into our permanent apartment. Yes, we'll finally be in a permanent residence - and not a moment too soon. We made arrangements to stay in a microscopic apartment while we built a home, but on our trip out here we found out that our builder had filed for Ch. 11 Bankruptcy. They tried to assure us that it was just a restructuring filing, but after living in North East, MD for a week and a half we started to have second thoughts about whether or not this was really where we wanted to settle down. With all these doubts, and since we still haven't sold our house, we decided the wise thing to do would be to move into a better apartment for a year or so, then reassess where we really wanted to settle down. Plus by then we should have (hopefully) sold our house so we could just move right in rather than have to do a bunch of contingency agreements while we wait for our current house to sell.

Thankfully the apartment complex worked with us to find a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment that won't be too expensive and won't charge us for breaking a lease agreement. I can't tell you how excited we are to finally have our own bed to sleep in rather than the foam pad we've been sleeping on for the last two weeks. My guess is that the new place will likely be the subject of our next blog.

And we thought there wouldn't be anything to blog about.

Snack Time

2009-11-27T11:40:00.000-05:00

Here's just a quick post to share a piece of our life. Tyler is learning new words all the time with the latest one coming during snack time. Tyler loves getting his favorite snack, a "na-na."

The Choate's jump in to the world of blogging

2009-11-23T20:26:00.000-05:00

After resisting the blog-o-sphere for years, we've finally realized that with the move to MD we need to jump onto the blogging band wagon. Our intentions are to make blogging a routine part of our family night activities, but our lives aren't that exciting so don't get too excited.

Tonight's family night was simply setting up the blog. We'll have stories to share soon - especially regarding the move out to Maryland. For now we're still just trying to get set up - both with the blog as well as in every day life. We're down to just a few boxes left to unpack and Tyler seems to finally be settling in. Other than that, we're just trying to figure out what it's like to be a Baltimore Ravens fan - not that the Ravens are making that very easy this year.

We'll keep the blogs coming. For now, take a minute or two to respond to our Poll of the most useless item dropped off. By way of background, we're living in a temporary apartment and when they packed up our stuff back in Utah we had to tell them what we wanted dropped off at the apartment and what we wanted sent to storage. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that didn't show up (none of Thesha's shoes, for example) but then there was a bunch of stuff that did show up that really should have gone to storage - especially since we only got half the item. Thanks for participating!