I Love Spring!

I just wanted to show off some of the pretty flowers that just popped up in the last few weeks at our house. (We can't take any credit...it must have been someone that lived here before us that planted them. We haven't done a thing!)

Family and Fun!

Chase and I flew to Houston to visit Preston's parents on Tuesday and Preston came out on Thursday. Chase was so good on the plane (coming and going). He's a born traveler! We had a wonderful time visiting family. Here are all the people that were there: Us, MiMi, PaPa, Aunt Wendi, Uncle Wade, Great Mema, & Great Aunt Sharon (& of course Lulu the poodle). It was so great to see everyone! We went to the IMAX Theater, did some shopping, took walks, & of course ate way too much. Here are some pictures from our stay:

A crazy Easter weekend

Well, most of this weekend has been a little less than perfect. Preston came home from work on Friday feeling fine but by the end of the night had a very bad stomach virus or something. Over the course of the weekend Chase had a little of it too. Luckily I have been well. On a brighter note I had a friend from high school, Amber, come visit me on Saturday evening. It was really fun and nice to catch up. This morning (Easter Morning) of course the Easter bunny came and we took pics of Chase with his basket. This is a picture of our family this morning on our way to church. While at church Preston was down stairs serving communion and I was in the balcony with Chase when Chase decided to caugh uncontrolably and then procede to throw up all over himself and me. And yes, it did happen during a prayer when it was all quiet. I'm pretty sure a few people around us heard it. After that I changed his clothes and saw that my skirt had a huge throw up spot on it so we decided to leave. Crazy morning.

Anyway, Chase went to the doctor on Friday. He weighs 18.5 lbs (25%) and is 28.5 inches tall (50%). His percentages have gone down a lot. He started out at the top of the chart on both of these!

Happy Easter!

Showboat

Take a look at this little show off. He just likes attention. (Preston, Leah, Jared, and I were all laughing to get Chase to copy us. I don't know if it's funnier that Chase is laughing or that the rest of us are fake laughing...it's kind of embarrassing!)
Click to see video...

Teething...finally

Chase is getting his first tooth! I haven't managed to get a picture of it yet but hopefully I will soon. So far we have only had a couple of hours a few days ago with some pretty intense fussiness. It was in the middle of the day and not at night thank goodness.

Yesterday we went to the zoo with some friends here are a few pictures:

We had a nice weekend. Not much went on...and that's a good thing. Is it sad that for the second weekend in a row we stayed home on Friday night and just watched a movie...and that was exactly what I wanted to do.

Here's some more funny video...

Never slowin' down...well, except nap time

Chase is all over the place now! I came in the living room one evening a couple of days ago and Preston had rigged up the "chair gate" (pictured above) to keep Chase away from the TV. He seems to always want to get into things besides his toys! :)

Chase has been eating more and more solid foods. He likes cheese, cereal bars, cheerios, bread, tortillas, bananas, noodles, and lots more. He's down to only 4 6oz bottles of formula a day.

Things are good with the rest of the family too. Preston is busy with work and went on a business trip recently. I have been working on finishing up a few websites and am still trying to find time to get my photo card website up and running. It's so much more involved and complicated than I originally thought it would be. It's still several months away from being launched. Lucy still loves playing keep-away from Chase and likes to ride along in the car when I go run errands.

Last week my mom was here and that was really fun. She was on Spring Break and came for a visit amid all the other traveling she was doing on her week off. It's always nice to have another hand around...particularly someone who wants to do everything for Chase (including diapers) and does things like load the dish washer. Thanks mom!

Leaps and Bounds!

Things are changing around our house like crazy! Chase is getting more and more mobile every day. This is a picture of him as he managed to crawl over to the coffee table and pull all the magazines down and make a big mess! The other is of him standing in his crib. He hasn't managed this on his own yet (I helped him stand for the picture) but he is finally able to push himself up to sitting from lying down. I didn't even know that he could do it until I laid him down in the floor on his stomach and he immediately just pushed himself right up like he had done it a million times. Yesterday I went to get him out of bed in the morning and he was just sitting right up in bed looking at me. We definitely lower his mattress after that happened! Check out the videos below. The first one we like to call the "crawl, crawl, dive." Pretty stinkin' funny. The second one is very funny too. Chase is trying to get Lucy's toy away from her. At first he is laughing and then he starts getting really mad! You can hear him change his attitude. :) (The second one is kinda long and a really big file...FYI.)
Crawl, crawl, dive
Get Lucy's toy

Scootin' Around

Last night Chase played in the floor by himself for about 45 minutes. I think it was the first time that he actually realized that he could move around and go where he wanted. He's not crawling but he does scoot, roll and creep to where ever he wants to go. He played all over the living room floor finally ending up under the Exersaucer. He climbed up in there all by himself but soon began to whine b/c he didn't know how to get out. haha...pretty funny. Here's some video...

Zoo

Here is a picture of Chase and his friends Ty and Carter at the zoo a few weeks ago. I mean...grow some hair Watterson.

A few pics from the weekend

My family was in town this weekend for Spring Sing at OC. Leah (and all the other freshmen girls) were Darla from the Little Rascals. They were really cute. I meant to take a picture but it didn't happen. (Sorry Leah.) We all had a great time. Amy even came...though she had to leave early to go play on her "cool" kickball team. :)

Here's a picture of Chase and me that I thought was pretty cute. Hope everyone has a good week.

Curling

So I forgot to mention in my last email that on Sunday Preston and 3 friends drove all the way to Dallas for the day to try out Curling. If you've watched much of the Olympics you might have seen it. Here is a picture of the US curling team. Preston said he wasn't any good but I'm sure that he was as good as these guys. :)

The Sweater Vest

Here's Chase all dressed up for Church on Sunday. I thought he looked quite handsome.

Here's some more fun video...

A few people have said that they would like to hear more about my store brand products that I'm trying out. Whether they are good or bad, etc. In that case, I'll continue the "Tightwad Update".

Tightwad Update:
Target (Market Pantry) Cheerios = yes (they are a little different but are still good...I'm going to start Chase on these so he won't ever know the difference)
Target or Wal-Mart frozen chicken breasts = not a big fan but they're OK (I may stick with Tyson)
Wal-Mart Nutragrain bars = no
Milk at Wal-Mart, Sam's, or Target = yes (it's cheapest at Sam's)
Target (Market Pantry) frozen popcorn shrimp = yes (mmmmmmm)

Friday

Hey everyone. I've been getting in trouble lately for not updating this blog often enough. Sorry about that. But if you were wanting an update...get ready b/c this is going to be thorough. :)

Today is Friday...which is generally not my favorite day of the week. Every other day of the week Chase and I have somewhere to be around 9:30. Friday...not so much. I'm kind of a busy body so I like to get out of the house and have something to do most of the time. We'll get out and do something later...I just don't know what yet. I have decided to document Chase through photos throughout today....they may not be super exciting but hey, some of you said you wanted to see more pictures! :)

Leslie, this one is for you:
Click to see the picture. (Read on Leslies blog for a little back ground...)

Update on Chase:
* He likes to sit on the floor with a bucket of toys and has fun taking them out or dumping them out.
* He likes to sit in his Exersaucer and watch Baby Einstein videos.
* He likes to babble saying things like "dadadadadada" over and over. I don't think he quite associates saying dada as his daddy's name.
* He's not crawling just and doesn't even seem to be thinking about it much. He does not like to be on his stomach so it's hard to learn. (See the video link later in this list to see how he's getting in position to crawl.
* He eats lots of different baby foods and rice cereal. He's gotten a lot pickier since I starting letting him have fruits. Now I have to mix apple sauce with anything that is not sweet (like meats) to get him to eat it. Little stinker! He'll also eat a few things off of my plate if I offer it. He does not pick food up and put it in his mouth. Any suggestions on what he should or could be eating right now?
* He's been working on learning to drink from a regular cup first and now he's just warming up to the sippy cup. I try to let him do it himself but he seems to always pick it up upside-down and try to put the wrong end in his mouth. I even set it in front of him facing a different direction and he still tries to do it the wrong way! haha
* He still has no teeth.
* There are a few words that he understands what they mean when we say them: dada, Lucy, bite (like a bite of food), bottle (and maybe mama but he doesn't hear it as much as the others...I need to start talking about myself in the third person more.)
* He claps! See video...
* And the best news of all about Chase is that he is sleeping all night with out waking up to eat! Woo-Hoo! For those of you who don't know, this is not the same as "sleeping through the night" which just means 6 hours of sleep at a time or more before having to eat. He goes to bed at 9:30 and gets up at 8:30! Or at least he has for the last week and a half or so. (There is one exception...see below.)

A Sad Story:
Last night we could tell Chase was getting tired so Preston was going to give him his bottle and put him to bed. Chase was getting so mad while Preston was feeding him. He would just cry and put the bottle in his mouth then spit it out and cry some more and do this over and over. We thought maybe it was that he wanted to me so I tried but the same thing happened. Then we thought maybe he was teething and the bottle was hurting his mouth. Finally he went to sleep and I put the bottle in the frig. Later a light bulb went off in my head and I went back to the bottle and quickly realized that the opening in the bottle nipple was closed shut...it was a new one and sometimes you have to make sure they are open. Poor kid. He was hungry and we kept teasing him with food that he couldn't get to. So needless to say he woke up an hour later and I fed the starving kid.

Lucy Update:
Lucy played in the mud yesterday and tracked it into the kitchen...then she was mad at me when I put her in the sink and sprayed her off. haha. She's over it now and has been playing in the floor with Chase and me this morning. I recently took her to the groomer and they left the fur on her head and face a little longer than I like (she looked like a lion) so I trimmed it up myself. Disaster. Thankfully it has grown out a little and I've managed to make it look fairly normal. (Hey dad, remember when you did that to your daughter, Leah. :)

Preston and Sara Update:
Preston and I are doing great. We all traveled to Abilene last weekend for Sing Song and it was really fun getting to see friends and family. Sorry, I took no pictures. We're still in our Financial Peace University class. It's going well. We laid out a plan to save for several things including a new stove-top! Don't laugh at me for being excited about this...I only have one burner that works right now! Preston's class at OU is going good. He can't seem to make it to class on time though. :) He's likes the project that he's working on for the class. His work is great too. Busy busy. I'm enjoying working on a few new websites for clients. They are coming along great. I'm also still working on my card business that I'm going to start. I made some major headway in my web programming for it in the wee hours of the night last night. Yay! We're still going to the gym. It's a lot more fun now that we have several friends that have joined or rejoined. (Too bad I was the only one there last night...come on guys...what happened?)

Tight-wad update:
Here are a few store brand things that I have tried just to let you know what I thought -
White Cloud diapers = no
Target diapers = still yes
Sam's brand baby wipes = probably not (don't pop up well)
Wal-Mart (Great Value) blue box mac cheese = no (neon orange)
Target (Market Pantry) blue box mac cheese = yes (excellent)
Target facial cleanser (equivalent to Neutrogena) = yes
Wal-Mart Dishwasher liquid (equivalent to Cascade) = yes
Sun laundry detergent = yes

Happy Valentines Day!