Happy Birthday, Dear Spencer!

Hard to believe our Spencer Boy is already one year old! But at the same time, it seems like AGES ago since he was born. A few pictures and words about our boy...

Spencer has been such a fun, easy baby. He gave us some sleepless nights right at the beginning, but once he learned to sleep, (6-8 hr nights at 2 months -- 12 hr nights at 3 months), he got on a great schedule and has been so pleasant and easy going.

His first smiles were hard to come by, but once he got the hang of it, he became such a friendly little baby, and loves to smile for almost anyone, anytime.
He's also been a champ at eating, right from the start. He has always loved whatever we've fed him -- except this rare occasion where he rejected strained peas. (Can we really blame him?)
Baby lasagna! Yum!!!
Who can say no to that gorgeous grin....

Spencer is our little cuddle bug, always willing to lay his head on our shoulders and have a little finger suck...



I love, love, love those baby blue eyes! Just recently, I learned that my grandpa, Lynn Hone, had the same piercing blue eyes. I've always said he got them from Brian, but maybe they're a Hone trait after all?
Apparently the finger sucking is also a Hone trait... something that Grandpa Dennis and Uncle Blaine did...


A few things Spencer is doing right now...
-- He's climbing up to every thing ALL the time, making his way around furniture at a deadly pace.
-- He crawls everywhere, and FAST! He can really move, and has to be watched around cords and computer equipment.
-- He babbles when he's happy, and blubbers adorably when he's sad.
-- He can walk with a push-toy walker, but has NO CLUE how it's really supposed to be done.
-- He says one word (if you can really call it a word): uh-oh. I think it's darling, and I even pick up the things he drops, just so he can drop them again and say his little word.
-- He can climb up onto Sammie's bed, which seems to be a major accomplishment for him.
-- He goes up and down stairs safely, by himself. yay!!
-- He still naps about 4-5 hours every day (2 hrs in the morning, and 2-3 hrs in the afternoon) and then sleeps 11-12 hours every night.
-- He waves, and he has clapped. But he rarely does either of these things on demand.
-- He drinks 20 to 24 ounces of milk every day, and is now taking whole milk. yay!!
-- He sucks his finger every chance he gets, especially at bed time, between bites at mealtime, and when being cuddled on someone's lap.

That's a little bit about our boy. Happy Birthday Spencer!! (Birthday party details will be added later.)

Winter Carnival

It's winter out there, folks! Time to party in the cold and make the most of those mittens, scarves and gloves!! That's what we did a couple of weekends ago, when we went to the annual Winter Carnival in McCall. (For those who don't know Idaho very well, McCall is a smallish resort town, set on a beautiful mountain lake with very expensive real estate.)

Schedule of events included: delicious pancake breakfast, Mardi Gras parade, AMAZING ice sculptures, hay ride, and tubing on the lake. Brian and I took our kids and Brian's parents, plus we met up with Mark and Dalana and their kids, as well as Reed and Alysa. Here's most of our group, in front of one of the sculptures...
It was quite the celebration. For those "in the know," it somewhat reminded me of Maplefest, (a lovely, frostbitten March-time celebration in New England to announce the beginning of maple season, when all the trees are tapped and syrup is brewed.) The Winter Carnival was it's own festive celebration (no stealing from the uniqueness of Maplefest). I guess the only real similarity was that we started with a grand slam pancake breakfast at the Senior Center. I didn't get pictures, but you can imagine the eggs, sausage, all-you-can-drink o.j., biscuits and gravy, and piled-high stacks of pancakes with syrup. (No, it wasn't real maple, Randi. But it was still tasty stuff.)

After breakfast, we headed to watch the parade. It was one of the only winter parades I've seen, and was quite entertaining, for all the freezing fans. My favorite float was the cabana dancers...
They were all 50+, and totally into their dancing! This lady (below) had 3-inch long fake lashes, and a whole cornucopia on her head...
Here's our group watching the parade...
Since it was a Mardi Gras parade, they were throwing out all those funky beads, along with tons of candy. We came home with a whole new collection for Sammie's "princess" jewelry! Here she models her new necklaces...
Poor Spence couldn't stop sucking his little finger, so his hands got icy cold. But he was a good sport about things, even taking a nap during part of the VERY LOUD parade. Look at those blue eyes...

I just can't get enough of him...
After the parade, we finally met up with Mark and Dalana's family (so sad there was so much mis-communication all day long -- they missed the breakfast and parade, rats!) and we went to look at the sculptures. They were AMAZING!

This is the best shot (below) of the grand prize winner, though it's not a great shot. It was called "Camelot" and featured a knight, fighting a dragon, a king and queen inside a castle, sitting on their thrones holding court, and a very slick mote with drawbridge. As I said, not the best shot, but you get a bit of a feel for it...
Here was another favorite, called "Fantasy Castle" or something like that. It was sooo tall, with little caves carved in the trees below the castle. The group...
We thought this one was quite creative...
There was one that had a huge slide for the kids, with a really slick, twisty ride onto a huge sheet of ice at the end. Here you can see Sammie's head as she zooms past, and I think that's John in the black coat at the top, waiting his turn?
We were really surprised to see Cooper coming down head first, because it really was quite a steep, slippery ride. But he said it was fun, little daredevil!
My personal favorite was a whole yard set up to look like the Candyland game board. They had gumdrop mountains, peppermint stick forests, lollipop woods, etc. It was really fun, wandering through... they even had a little path with pieces carved to look like the game board. Here's Sam, on the slide at Gumdrop Mountains pass...
And here she is on the rainbow trail bridge...
Look at how huge the lollipops were in Lollipop Forest! And so detailed, too!
These little two-foot gingerbread guys were on the wall surrounding the entire display, so cute!
And this little candy shack was probably 10-12 feet tall! Wow! I thought Candyland should have won first prize, but they were fourth place.
After looking at the sculptures, (and piling 13 into our van to get Mark and Dalana back to their van. shh, don't tell), Grandma and Grandpa thought a hayride for the kids sounded like fun...
All the kids seemed to love it. (I personally was ready for a foot heater by that point.)

We stopped to watch people tubing onto the frozen lake for a little while. (This was before the Lake Erie icy fiasco last week, so no one felt too threatened to be out on the ice, I guess!) John and Cooper had brought their tubes, so they got to go down a few times. Our little family was too cold to stay for that part, so I didn't get any good pictures of them, but I heard they had fun.
I had to include a shot of this one-man-band guy that we watched for awhile. He had quite the set-up, and Sammie was completely mesmerized by his performance. She's watching, (with her purple coat and red pants). She clapped after each song, and even danced along for a bit.
That's all the pictures for now. It was a fun and memorable outing, even Samantha said so when we got home. I do have to say that my feet were WHITE and NUMB by the end of the day, despite my warmest shoes and two pairs of thick socks; I don't like to be cold. Samantha doesn't either -- she did more than a little bit of whining and crying about cold feet and hands, poor thing. But we will probably do it again -- next time with warmer shoes, a better cell phone connection (sorry again to Mark and Dalana), and a thermos of hot chocolate!

Living Color!

Big, BIG, B I G THANK YOU to my lovely cousin, Serenity, and her daughter, Brecken, who volunteered to have Sammie come play for a day this week... so Sammie's mommy could paint! Sammie LOVED having a play date with Brecken and all Brecken's toys.

In the meantime, here at home, I spent the entire day painting (and occasionally patting Spencer's head or handing him a cracker, etc.). After our start-up painting experience (explained in my previous posts), I was afraid it would all be quite the fiasco. But once I got going, things actually came together much more quickly than I anticipated. So... in one day, I finished the trim in Sam's room, painted the wall in our bedroom, and painted the kitchen wall, as well. Here are the results...
Spence loves Sam's new room. Above, he waves hello while holding onto her bed (which he just learned to climb up on!). It looks purplish, here, but really it's pink pink pink. (Check out Spencer's darling little snaggle tooth. He's cutting the second front tooth now, so these one-tooth-smile dayse are almost at an end.)More of a full-room shot, below. It will look more complete (and even more pink) once we get her pink stripey curtains hung and the pink butterfly pictures on the wall. Eventually we'll add a white board to cut between the two pink colors... not yet, but sometime soon.
Here's the lovely kitchen wall... golden honey yellow. I love it, especially at night.
And a daytime view...Here's our new little "computer nook" in the corner, with my new cute little laptop sitting at it's new roll-top desk home.
This picture shows the colors best, I think. Plus, I love the "peaches" sign, and how well it matches the paint.
I also love the green hutch on the yellow wall. Brian laughs at how much I love it, but it just turned out sooo much better than I even expected. And it was easy and fast!
Here's a shot of our bedroom wall. It's the same color as the kitchen, but the lighting is totally different (darker) in our room, so it looks like a different color to me. I have big plans for decorating that wall. Stay tuned!!
And, last but not least, I thought I'd add some pictures of our new couches. These shots don't show the reddish-orange and gold accents in the couch, but they show the overall look of the room. A nice change and so fun to see things coming together like we want them to look!

Once more, big thanks to Reni for her help in our decorating projects!! And thanks to Brian for putting up with all my woes and frets as we got things organized. Next paint project -- Spencer's room. It might be awhile though. :)

Our latest...

I've been a terrible blogger lately. And I have no real excuses (other than painting, as mentioned earlier.) But I do have things to tell, and a few minutes to write right now. So, forgive me for the lack of photos, as I share our latest.

1. We got a new computer! YAAAAYYY!! This really is BIG news for ME, because it's supposed to be MY computer, to keep in the kitchen at a new little desk where I can use it and still do all the stuff I'm supposed to do. I LOVE it so far! I confess, it's still not as easy as I dreamed it would be to log on while being climbed on by two little monkeys. But we're working things out as we go. It's been very exciting so far. Many new posts are in my mind now, just waiting to be typed up on this pretty little laptop.

2. We got new couches and a new entertainment center. Well, they're new to us, though they're actually from craiglist (our new addiction). The couches are gorgeous new ones, from a model home and they look great in our living room. We put the 3-month-old orange couch upstairs and it looks great up there! The entertainment center is still in the garage because it's heavy enough to give any good man a hernia. But we hope to get several good men over sometime soon to hopefully help us haul it upstairs and really start "finishing" our family room.

3. Spencer now has SIX teeth! SIX!! Unlike Samantha, who cut them one at a time, every month or so -- Spence cuts them two at a time, or three, it seems! And he bites FAST and HARD!! Ouch! He apparently is not familiar with the "don't bite the hand that feeds you" addage, because he's always chomping my fingers.

4. Samantha is the queen of trying new words, and mixing them up. I love all the little made-up words she comes up with... kaprise (for surprise); pasta flakes (instead of frosted flakes); tellable (instead of terrible). One of her favorite phrases is when she's sad or I tell her not to do something, she breaks down to near-tears and says, "that makes my feelings sooo sad!" I think it's cute. The other day I had both kids ready for bed and I said, "Oh, I have two of the cutest little angel babies!" Samantha got really serious and said, "No. Spencer is NOT an angel." I asked, "He's not??" "No. He's a sheep." (It's true, he was a sheep for the Christmas nativity; and she was an angel. Let's keep things straight, Mom!)

5. Brian has volunteered to help with the Special Olympics, which is being hosted in Boise, starting this coming week. He'll be helping with a delegation from the Middle East, and will be serving as translator. It sounds like a really fun opportunity for him to use his Arabic, which is great! But we won't see much of him for the next 10-12 days as he will be on site with his group for the games. Anybody fancy a road trip to visit Kamber and the kiddies??

6. I'm painting a wall in our bedroom yellow. It's more of a dusty golden color really (at least I HOPE it is -- you'll get an update once it's actually on the wall). I just find it interesting, because when I was 13 we repainted our house, and I got to choose which color my bedroom would be. I chose a bright banana yellow. I guess I like yellow, even though I've always teased my mom for her yellow kitchen.

7. I'm planning a trip to Utah for a few days around the middle of February. Unfortunately, Brian won't be able to come with me, but I'm looking forward to seeing some people and having a change of scenary. Unlike other Utah visits, I'm trying to resist the temptation of overbooking myself. There are always sooo many people I want to see (since all you fabulous people seem to congregate there), that I flit around spending an hour here, an hour there -- never very much quality time anywhere. So, I'm trying to be more "stationary" (or is it stationery... with an e? I never can remember which is which, but I mean I'll be staying in one place, rather than trying to be a piece of note paper.) Hopefully I'll still get to see people?

8. We have had four or five days of sunshine in a row!! That is FABULOUS news to me, because prior to that we had what Treasure Valley locals call "the Inversion." I HATE it. It basically means we saw NO sunshine (other than one 7-minute sunset) from the time we got home from Hawaii. (I know, I really can't complain because we DID go to Hawaii) But remember I am a SUN person. I LOVE the sun, hate the cold, overcast, dark Inversion. The fact that we have had several bright happy days in a row has filled my life with joy!

9. I'm hoping to finish up that paint job first thing tomorrow morning (with the very kind help of my cousin, Serenity, who volunteered to watch Sammie. YAY!! This means I must get to bed now so I can actually do the painting I've planned. I hope I'll be able to add some pictures soon.

Ciao for now!