High School Musical 3

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A day for snow play

It has been snowing non-stop today so this afternoon I decided Luke needed to be introduced to the snow. We geared up and headed into the cold backyard.

At first he wasn't sure what I was doing putting layers of clothes on him and just kept giving me weird looks until we got outside.

Then he seemed to like it.

"I can't get up!"

He kept having a hard time moving around in his snow suit.

After we went inside to enjoy a nice, warm drink.
(I think he was jealous of mine.)

Testing it out

Here's the excited little man testing out his new toys.
He loves to spin the letter blocks and look at him self and make faces in the mirror.

Don't forget the biting test.

It's FINALLY complete!

So we finally finished our BIG project!!!
Matt wanted me to post these sort of step-by-step photos of the process.
This was Luke's Christmas present.
Our problem was our old, dangerous, broken fire place.
Now it's nothing but fun (if your under the age of 4)!!!!

It was pretty easy for us to come up with a plan, but took a while to actually carry it out.
Matt cut all the shapes out with a jigsaw.

Matt really wanted to take a picture of me painting.
It took me all day to finish the monkey and croc, but I was SO happy when I was done!

Voila!!
What we have here is a little play center for Luke.
Let me explain what is included:

• The tubes cross in the back so you put the ball in the top left it comes out bottom right (ya get the idea).
• The monkey's belly and the croc's mouth are a bean bag toss.
• The monkey's face is a door that opens up and it's a mirror (this part is Luke's favorite, at this age).
• Alphabet blocks spin and have pictures of the letter (they are crooked for a reason, it gives them character, right?? Actually it was really hard to make them straight).
• The cut out squares, you can put our extra letter blocks in and they drop down and you open the door (on the croc) and they fall out.
  

Even though it may not be the nicest home decor for our living room Luke loves it, it's safer than the broken fire place. Plus, we rarely have people over and when we do they usually have kids with them. Not to mention we will only live here for a year and a half longer.
Yay for us (that we finally finished)!!!!!!

One year older and....well maybe not wiser this time.

Today is Matt's Grandpa Clark's birthday.
He is turning 108!!!
He will be the oldest man in Utah.
Since I have been doing a bit of typing for him I have a whole ton of pictures of him,
so we thought we'd post a few of our favorites!
It has been a lot of fun reading his journals and learning so much about his life. He was a great man, who did a lot of good and he has seen a lot of things in his life time.

He was born in 1900.
Served a mission in Florida.
The picture above is of him on his mission.
This one must have been when he graduated the at the University of Utah, I'm guessing.
He went to college at the U of U.
He went to medical school at Northwestern University, in Chicago.
He was a Family Practitioner and did a lot of Obstetrics.
(It must run in the family, because that's what Matt's dad does and that is what Matt is thinking of going in to.)

This is him (holding the ball, I think) with his high school basketball team.

And this picture is our absolute favorite, especially Matt's.
He loves this picture, he wants to hang it in his office someday.

Sorry we couldn't be there to celebrate.
Chances are good if you live in Utah, he'll be on the news.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA CLARK!!!

What a surprise!!

On Saturday night me and Luke were playing around on the floor and he took his first two steps!!!! I never thought I would be so excited when he started walking. It is so fun to watch him learn and grow. Since then he has taken quite a few more. He is very wobbly and only takes 2 or 3 every once in a while when he's walking to us or from the chair to the coffee table, but we're very excited!!!!

Thirfty Finds Friday

Who doesn't love something that was inexpensive, practical and has potential to be beautiful again?

Well last night my wonderful husband found this thrifty find and it was FREE!
He belongs to some Yahoo group called Free Cycle where people just post free things. It's great!
It is an old sewing table.
It's so pretty and I'm not sure what I'm going to do to it like paint it or just clean it up, but it definitely has potential.
Plus I love to sew and now I have a table devoted to it, that also just closes up and looks pretty.

This one I still haven't decided what I'm going to do...
We got it for 5 bucks at a hotel liquidation sale.
It is in good shape, but I can't decide if I want to reupholster it or not??
What do you think?

And my mirror.
This was 10 bucks at the same hotel sale and this is what it looked like before,
an ugly, old, gold frame.
(It actually looks good in the big picture, but it really needed a little TLC).

I painted it black and sanded it a bit, to get the gold to show through and give it a distressed look and I love it!
(By the way that stand you can see in the mirror was 5 dollars at a yard sale that we refurnished.
I love Ohio yard sales!!!)

It's a great mirror about 54x30 inches.
We're going to hang it in our dinning room, Matt just hasn't been home long enough to help me and its super heavy.

I love making old look new!

The mischeif that goes on at our house

Yesterday I found this little guy...well just like this.
Our desk is right next to the couch and Luke is usually blocked into our living room when he's just playing on the floor with his toys. I was sitting at the desk just checking my email and my back was turned to him. He usually is making so many noises either banging things around or squealing, but for a minute or so it was silent. I turned around and will never forget the feeling I had. Luke was on the couch sitting on his knees just staring at me, waiting for me to turn around and get a good reaction. And he got one! I said, "Huuu, You little turkey!!!! How did you get up there!!!!" It was the WEIRDEST thing ever!! He has tried climbing on things with short steps and can climb up the stairs, but just randomly onto our couch???
So I tried to see if he'd do it again (I know bad encouragement). I just wanted to see how he did it in the first place.

Well, he didn't quite make it. But you and I get an idea of how he must have gotten up there... what a sneaky little baby.

The same day we were in the kitchen eating breakfast. I'll feed him a jar of whatever and then give him toast and cheese or something like that that he can feed himself. While he was eating I was doing the dishes, with my back turned again for a few minutes (bad idea). When I turned around he had weaseled his way out of his straps in the high chair and was standing up. It scared me so bad, if he would have fallen it would have been a high fall. I picked him up and put him in his crib, but he doesn't get the whole being in trouble thing so he just played happily in his crib for a few minutes.

That night I came into our living room, while Luke had been playing in his pack'n play for a minute. You can imagine how I felt when I saw this!!!! Shortly I realized there was something rather big holding it up and it wasn't just Luke. Thank goodness.

Luke didn't seem to like it very much.
He looks terrified.

When Meg and Dave came out to stay with us for a few days they packed along some things for us (thanks you guys!!!) that Matt's mom was sending. One thing was this big dump truck that was Matt's when he was little. (He earned it when he stopped sucking his thumb, when he was little of course..hehe). Well thanks Grandma Clark because Luke loves it! His new trick is he'll climb up in it and rock back and forth so it will scoot along the ground. And aren't the pj's cute?

Oh and he learned another trick. He'll push it up to the T.V. stand and climb into the back stand up and try climbing onto the second shelf of the stand where all the cool buttons he loves so much are. We've got a nutty baby on our hands!!!

Matt took call the other night, he left at 6am and didn't come home until 1:00 pm the NEXT day...ugh...I life of a doc's wife (I don't recommend....jk). Well thank goodness we live in such an awesome ward, our Relief Society had yet another wonderful "Girls Night Out." We have one almost every month. What we do is all meet up at Mitchell's Ice Cream (this AMAZING place) and eat ice cream and just hang out...doesn't it sound great? Well thanks to my friend Kat I was able to go and Luke got to come too. It was a cold night and we hadn't gotten a coat or even a warm sweater for Luke yet so I tried this on.
Remember this??
We got this darn cute little outfit when he was born.
It is size 3 months I believe and it practically still fits him!!!
I have to let his feet hang out though, he's a little tall, but he looks so cute in it!
Unfortunately he wouldn't fit in his car seat while wearing it, so I took it off and I think he was happy about that.

Some other things Luke has been doing lately are:

• Balancing on his own (only for a few seconds, but its a start!)
• When ever he hears me and Matt kiss he makes kiss sounds, it's so funny!
• He has learned how to give kisses to mommy and daddy.
• He learned how to clap his hands.
• We've been teaching him a little bit of sign language and he did his first sign on his own yesterday. He wanted to "Eat."
• He watched his first Christmas movie, Elf...and it won't be the last.
• He slept until 7:15 this morning!!! It was amazing! The past two weeks he's been waking up at 5:00 am and not going back to sleep. And the past 3 months or so he's been waking up at 6:00 am. I think the time change messed him up a bit, but we've been trying everything to change his schedule and hopefully this time whatever we did worked!!!!!!!
• He dances. Whenever music is playing or someone sings he'll rock back and forth.
  
• And right now he is working on laying on his tummy pulling toys out from under the couch (which is really cute because he sticks him little bottom up in the air) and then he'll crawl over to the chair of pack'n play and try in crawl UNDER them, lying flat on his belly!

We love our sneaky little Luke.
We just can't turn our backs for a second!

P.S. That big project we've been working on...we'll it's still in the works. BUT it is getting much, much closer!!!!!!

I feel like a kid again!!!!

Christmas is an exciting time of year, but for some reason this year it seems WAY more exciting! Maybe it's because I have a son, even though he is still too little to do a whole lot and he won't remember it. I usually start doing "Christmas" type things after Thanksgiving, but I have already watched Christmas movies and started making Christmas gifts. I think I will be much more prepared for Christmas this year, than last year. (I know some people (like my mom) start Christmas shopping in the summer or sooner, but I can't get into the Christmas spirit that early. Plus I am making most of my gifts.)

So those girlies in my life, you will be getting a cute Christmas gift this year and I am so excited about it!!!!!

Anyway....Happy Christmas to come!!!
(I'm SO excited!!!)

By the way, Elf is my favorite movie and I highly recommend watching it. Especially on nights when you are lonely (or when your hubby is on-call)!!

Tis the season for Thanksgiving

A few small things on the big list of what I'm thankful for....

• Matt's famous chocolate chip cookies
• Luke's "Mama" & "Dada"
• The Stouffers outlet
• The discount bread store
• JoAnn's
  
• My sewing machine
• Online classes
  
• Disposable diapers
• A good book
• A dishwasher (and I don't mean my husband)
• Finger foods (for Luke)
• Matt's Internal Medicine rotation (better than the last few rotations)
• That nursery is only 2 hours
• My oven
• The movie Elf
• Good friends
  
• That Meg, Dave & the Egberts live close and we get to spend Thanksgiving with them!
  

Our fun filled week with the snaggle tooth baby

Here's the little teething man.
I feel like he has been teething for the past 4 months.
Fortunately, most of the time he's been pretty happy and not too fussy.

Here I am trying to get a picture of his funny little teeth.
(I love the Cheerio on his chin..hah)

This one is my favorite. He has the two bottom middle teeth
and now he has those two top teeth...a little off, but still cute.
I am pretty sure the other two top ones will be coming in shortly.
One thing Luke hasn't quite caught on to yet is that it hurts when he bites.
He bites us every now and then, but lately he's been chewing on his hands and bit himself a few times...you'd think he'd learn.

Lucky for us, we've had a few visitors this past week.
Last Thursday Dave and Meg (Matt's bro & wife) stayed with us on their way out to Maryland, where Dave took job. Unfortunately for them, their apartment wasn't ready so Meg had to stay here for an extra week. The night they got in town we celebrated Meg's 22nd birthday, had a yummy dinner and chocolate cake!

Over the weekend while Dave was still here we were able to do a few things that were fun. We visited the church sites like Kirtland and the Quarry.

These funny pictures were taken from across the pond.

Dave balancing on the bench.

And all of them making funny poses.
When I took the picture I wasn't sure if I'd be able to see them so I wanted them to stand out a little.

It was such a beautiful week while they were here. The weather was in the 60's & 70's. Cleveland behaved.
While Meg and Dave toured the Kirtland temple we sat out (because we've seen it so many times we could give you the tour) we took pictures around the grounds.

Haha this corney picture made us laugh.
Me and Luke so serious.

Luke has been balancing on his own lately, we're working on the walking thing.

He just passed the nine month mark and is growing, growing, growing!
For the past three months or so he will not sleep in past 6:30 a.m. and since Matt started his rotations back up he (Matt) has to get up around 5:30 a.m. most mornings so Luke thinks he needs to be up that early too. It is a killer!!!! So today I'm testing the shorter naps and staying up a little bit later, to see if he'll sleep in a bit tomorrow. Cross your fingers!!

P.S. The downfall of the week, our dryer broke. So the laundry is piling up. We're hoping to get it fixed this coming week. Fortunately our nice neighbors (who live below us) let us use theirs. Thanks to Ethel and John.