Welcome to our family blog. I'm glad you came to visit our site and see what we are up to. Ben and I have been married for 4 years. We have a little boy who is almost 1. I can't believe how fast they grow up. It seems like just yesterday when I had him. I get to stay home and play with him all day. He loves to come to basketball practice with me and that's why we call him "baby coach." Hope you visit us again soon.
Ben and I had a lot of fun decorating this train cake for Alonzo. Luckily we did it the night before while he was sleeping. I don’t think he would have let us put all the decorations on without taking some off to eat. It was fun showing it to him. He was saying, “train cake” all day and “all-aboard the train.” I wish I could say I came up with the cute cake idea myself, but nope, I got it off the Internet. I’m very happy with how it turned out.
Here is Alonzo blowing out his candle. He still likes to practice blowing it out.
He started off eating the cake off his plate, then he moved to the frosting. He liked to point to the letters, say what they were and then eat them. His favorite part of the cake were the fruit snacks on the third cart. That is why there are no more on top in this picture.
I wish I could say that this is just a bad picture of Alonzo, but he was kind of out of it because he’s been sick. He did enjoy opening his presents, it just doesn’t show in the pictures. He loved playing with his new tools and fixing things like dad.
We looked all around for the perfect dump truck. I like the size of this one. It’s not too big or too small. And it looks pretty durable too. He likes to load things in the back and push them around.
We gave him 2 Dr. Seuss books. It was so cute because when he pulled them out he knew what it was. He said, “Go dog, go dog, go.” It’s called “Go dog, go.” And it’s probably his favorite book. He also got an ABC book because he likes letters.
Last but not least he got two new puzzles. The fish puzzle was a big hit. It came with a magnetic fishing pole. He really liked the dump truck puzzle too, even though you can’t see it in the picture.
Alonzo has gotten croup again. For those of you that may not remember, he got croup when he was only 3 months old. We were moving the next day, and it was very stressful. All I knew is my baby couldn’t breathe, so we took him to the hospital. Alonzo and I ended up spending the whole night and the next day there. Luckily for us, last night’s experience was a lot better than the one two years ago. He woke up in the night and was having a hard time breathing in and he had that barking cough. I knew from last time that there were things we could do to make it better without us having to go to the hospital.
We turned on the shower and let him breathe in the steamy air, and we took him outside in the cold air. We had a long night, but by 5:00 in the morning he finally fell asleep again. We called the doctor this morning and the nurse said we could give him some cough medicine to help relieve some symptoms. I’m so glad he is almost two so that we could give him something. Little did we know the cough medicine I bought tastes nasty and he would spit it all out instead of swallowing it. Once we figured that out, and got him to take some, he is feeling a little better.
I guess we are just going to take it easy today. I’m sad he can’t be around other kids for the next 5 days. I like to play volleyball and get together for a play group with some moms in my ward. More importantly, his birthday is Tuesday and we are going to have to stay home! How boring. I guess that will have to wait until next week to celebrate. Until then, we will just pray that his symptoms will get better and he can sleep more of the night tonight.
We got quite a lot of snow last night. I was happy it didn’t snow on us on our drive home from Bountiful last night. I think we got about 8 or 10 inches and it’s still snowing. I think it is so beautiful outside right after a snow fall. Our air quality really improves after a snow fall, too. Yesterday, before the snow fall, when driving you could barley see two cars in front of you because of the bad air quality. Now it is nice and clear.
Alonzo always enjoys shovelling. He was so excited to see the snow and know that he could got help daddy shovel the snow. In the video it looks like there is a blizzard outside, but really it is just lightly snowing while they are shovelling. So don’t call child services on me or anything.
Alonzo on the horse before the competition. This was the only thing that could make him happy.
Ben warming up his horse. You can see how many people were there. It was a busy night.
Ben was asked by a couple of his friends to help them do a horse competition called team penning. How it works is there is a team of three people, each on a horse. There are cows numbered 1-10 in a pen. The goal is to get the cows out in order with which ever cow they tell you to let out first. It is tricky because other cows try to sneak by and get out to follow the other cows before it is there turn. The team that does it in the fastest time, wins.
Ben and his friends got 3 tries at it. The first time they only got one or two right cows out before a wrong number cow got out. The second time was a little better. The third time they got almost all of them. What happened is they were having number 6 and 7 go out and 7 was following behind 6 until at the very end by the gate 7 ducked his head out first. That gave them a penalty and a “no time.” Ben said it was a lot of fun and he can’t wait to do it again, now that he knows what he is doing.
Alonzo has a different story for the night. It was bedtime. And just before betime he got to go see some horses. That was fun for a little bit, but it didn’t last long. Mommy wouldn’t put me down because there were horses and people packed in that little arena. All I wanted to do was run around and be free. I got a sucker and that helped for a couple minutes, but most of the time I just screamed for “Daddy” and more “horsey ride.”
That is why I don’t have any actual pictures or video of Ben doing the team penning. Alonzo could barley handle being there long enough for us to see two teams compete. Then we had to go home and put him to bed. Too bad. Hopefully we will be able to see him do it again sometime.
We just wanted to share our big news that we are going on a trip to Texas. I am so excited! My brother, his wife, and two kids live there are they are going to show us all the fun sights. Texas does a big rodeo and livestock show every year and this year we get to see it. I’m excited to take a real vacation and get away from the snow for a little bit. Alonzo will be coming with us and he loves to play with Megan. During Christmas break he talked about Megan a lot. We couldn’t be more excited about our family vacation. Watch out Texas, here we come!
Last night when I was putting Alonzo in bed I had a great moment with him and was reminded why I love to be a mom. We had read book after book. He loves to read. Sometimes I think it’s because he gets to stay up later, the more books he reads, but oh well. Win-win, I think. We had brushed his teeth and finally we both agreed it was time for bed. I was holding him there in the rocking chair after prayers and I started to kiss him. I kissed his cheek and said, “kiss cheek”. I kissed his hands and said, “kiss hand.” I kissed his tummy and forehead and let’s just say there was a lot of kissing.
Then he started to tell me where to kiss. It was so cute to hear him say, “kiss cheek” and wait for me to kiss him. As soon as I was done, he would tell me where I was to kiss next. This was a very precious moment for me and I’m writing it down hoping to remember it.
The Aggie Women’s basketball team played San Jose State tonight, and I was able to do the color on the radio with Evan Nyman. I had a lot of fun being on the radio and talking about the Aggies as they played. For those of you that may not know what the color is, it is adding your opions as the host describes the game. So Evan, the host, gave the play-by-play of who has the ball and what is going on the court. My job was to add some comments about what was happening away from the ball, some statistics, and my opionions on what was happening in the game.
I was pretty nervous to start and didn’t know if I was going to enjoy it, but I actually loved it! I had so much fun picking apart how this team or that team was getting a lead, going on a run, etc. It took me back to coaching, because that’s what you would look for. As a coach, you want to know how, and who, on the other team is hurting you. I did the same thing doing the color and enjoyed picking apart the game.
I liked having court-side seats and statistics handed to me every media time-out. I felt like I was really into the game and able to disect what was going on. I love basketball and being apart of Aggie basketball again was a lot of fun for me. Evan said I did a good job and he was very happy to have me there to do color with him. He invited me to do the color for the rest of the home games. There are 7 games left, so I’m looking forward to helping when I can. Go Aggies!
