A Much Needed Family Visit!

I have been so anxious to visit my family for a long time! I booked a trip awhile back to visit my family in Maryland in January, and the plan was for me to take Blake by himself so I could get a little vacation from Jacob and he could spend the weekend with his dad at home. In the end though I felt bad about not bringing Jacob since I knew my family would love to see him again since he's at a fun age, and I knew he'd love to see all them, especially all my sisters. Sooo, even though it ruined my idea of actually getting a nice break, I knew my family would gladly volunteer to help with the kids, so I worked it out to get standby flights instead and brought both the boys with me. So really, everybody wins! Except Luke, who got left at home alone. Sorry! But I'm so glad I brought them both! It was well worth it and we all had a great visit!

We flew in on a Thursday afternoon, and the boys did fairly well on the flight, sleeping majority of the time- minus the 10 minutes towards the end where Blake loudly fussed before eating for the third time and falling asleep a second time. But from the moment we got to the house, these boys were suffocated by their aunts- in a good way :)

Here's Blake with Andrea. And Jacob associated Andrea with dancing since she always had her itouch with her and so he had a good time dancing with her a lot, and using her itouch to watch Tangled.
And conveniently Andrea got this awesome playhouse for Christmas so Jacob had a blast playing in it with everyone. I'll even admit, that house was pretty cool. I can see why a 14 year old would specifically ask for that for Christmas haha.

Erika especially loved to be with her nephews spending every waking second playing with them and taking off two days of work so that she could spend the whole long weekend with us. Jacob adored Erika as well and they had so much fun playing together! Their favorite game was to play 'bedtime' and Erika would be the baby and Jacob would play the mom, and put her to sleep in his bed, haha it was too cute. I loved how they could spend hours playing together and I was able to hand over the kids and get a small break!
Friday I decided I wanted to go to Fuddruckers for lunch since all the ones in Denver already shut down. Tyler, Erika, and Julia came along, and while they weren't as impressed with their food, I love the burgers there and miss having one near us! And Jacob had himself a good time running around the restaurant looking at the arcade games, he would hardly sit and eat. As everyone often tells me, I guess I obviously have my hands full... Needless to say, after our lunch excursion, all three of them shook their heads and said they didn't know how I do it every day with both those kids. Haha, me neither.
Anyway, Friday night we all stayed home, ate pizza, played games and sat by the fire. Love it. Saturday for lunch I had my best girl friends from home over for lunch- Amy and Katie! I literally can't make a visit home without seeing them, it's great to always catch up and see them!
After my friends left, I put my tired boys to bed and went shopping for a bit with Erika and Andrea. That night we sat around watching a movie and then had a thorough discussion of it afterwards, haha. Then Sunday we went to church and snapped a couple pictures real quick beforehand.


After church, I took the boys straight down to Luke's grandma's house in McLean, VA since all Luke's family out there was getting together for dinner. I was really happy that I could see a lot of extended family that I hadn't seen in awhile, meet a new cousin just married in, and visit with everyone else all together. Jacob even had some new cousins to play with and were great in sharing all their fun toys with him. It's funny to see other kids with the exact same obsessions as Jacob: Buzz Lightyear, Lightening McQueen, and Thomas the Tank Engine. That pretty much sums it up.
Monday was Martin Luther King Day so I was lucky that everyone either already had the day off or were able to easily take the holiday off so that we could spend the day all together and go down to DC.
We decided to drive down instead of taking the metro so we could limit walking around in the cold, and it was actually a fun drive. Erika taught us a Martin Luther King song that she heard the kids singing at one of her elementary schools in Baltimore. It wasn't even really a song since the only line she knew was, "Martin Luther King was a great, great man!" But the way Erika sang it so reverently was hilarious and we ended up singing it all weekend since we couldn't get the tune out of our heads! Then we tried to think of any other patriotic song we knew that we could sing for the holiday and as we were driving slowly along the sights downtown, my mom tried to be sneaky and roll down the window of our 12-seater van so everyone could hear us obnoxiously singing "50 Nifty United States" while we bumbled down the street. It was actually pretty fun, haha.

We walked around the river for a little bit and then let Jacob play on the playground there for a few minutes, until he tripped and split his lip open for the second time in two days. Ah, poor guy.

Then we went over to the Jefferson Memorial, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't think I've ever been over to it before, at least not that I remember. It's pretty right there on the water though, and has lots of nice views.



From the Jefferson Memorial we could see the new Martin Luther King Memorial and it was packed for the holiday, so we didn't head over but it was good enough seeing it across the river and as we drove by.
Then we all went over the Musuem of Natural History, which I thought would be a lot of fun for Jacob.

I was glad Jacob did like seeing all the dinosaur bones and animals. Here I think he was saying the dinosaur was sad and tired and was taking a nap, haha.

And little Blake got a view of everything too since he insisted on being carried instead of staying in the stroller.
Here we took a "family" picture since it said that we all descended from this original animal that looked like a rat... haha, whatever.

Yup, it was a fun little day trip, but after checking out nearly the whole musuem we were ready to go home. That night we picked up some Jerry's pizza (another place Luke and I desperately miss in Denver!) and then I stayed up with my sisters to watch an eventful episode of the Bachelor! By Tuesday I decided we should probably get home, so after spending the whole morning packing, it quickly came time to say goodbye to everyone...

Goodbye Grandpa!

Goodbye Erika and Julia! We had such a fun time seeing everyone and can't wait to come back and see the whole family in August!

Blake at 7 months

So I totally missed blogging about Blake turning 6 months and now he's just turned 7 months old! It's going so fast and little Blakey is really growing up quick!
At 6 months we took him to the doctor and on 12/23 his stats were: Weight- 16 lbs 5.5 oz (28%); Height- 26 1/2 inches (52%) and head circumference is 53%. To be honest though, I'm not sure pediatricians are all on the same scale because at this age Jacob weighed a pound less than Blake but was in the 45% for weight and was only a half inch taller but was way up in the 75% for height. Maybe I'm just not good about math, but I'm starting to think these percentages are all nonsense numbers!
Somewhere in the 5th month he learned to sit up on his own and my life is suddenly easier, seriously. Now that he can sit up I don't feel I need to carry his carseat into the stores when we're running errands and Blake loves sitting in the shopping carts. And now that he can sit up he can see his toys and will sit and play for extended periods of time completely satisfied. He also likes being around Jacob and watching him play or just sitting on the floor sucking on all his toys.
The boys still play really well together and I love how they make each other laugh. I love when Jacob tells Blake that he is his best friend, and both these boys love getting time together with their dad too!

And this poor little guy has been teething for some time, but other than losing a little sleep he's handled it pretty well. So at 6 months, in the first week of January he got teeth number 3 and 4! He loves to suck on his fingers or bite down on anything, and we all think it's funny when he bites into a sweater or blanket and gets his teeth stuck! He's kind of crazy when it comes to biting...Blake also makes lots of funny high pitched squeals and low growls, and a couple times he's even babbled ma-ma-ma. He's been eating babyfood for awhile but I just need to remember to be more consistent in feeding him every night- (I don't know why this is so hard for me to remember!)
He doesn't take very long naps at all, especially when sometimes it feels it takes me more time just to put him down then he'll actually sleep, but he will usually go down 2 times a day if he sleeps in a little. Now that his teeth have cut through, his sleeping at night has gotten better again (for awhile there he reverted back to waking up every 2 hours), but he usually still wakes up once in the middle of the night to eat, and then again when Luke's leaving for work around 6:30 and then he'll sleep in for a couple more hours.
A weird fact about Blake- he loves to scratch things? Even in this picture he's turning around to scratch the wall, but all while smiling. I guess all babies like to scratch or rake with their fingers, I just think it's funny how he scratches everything, all the time. I'm not sure if he just likes the sound it makes or the way it feels, but his nails are very sharp and the sound of him scratching the walls or our leather couches makes me cringe!

And although Blake learned to roll over both ways months ago, now that he sits up so much it seems he's forgotten how to roll off his belly, which is weird because he learned to roll that way first. But if he's ever on his belly now he'll just keep kicking and wiggling in circles but seems to forget that he can roll over. And he's not crawling yet (thank goodness) but he's pushing himself up more and just wiggles a lot. Even when people hold him he is so jumpy it's exhausting.
Blake does have a great smile though and seems to have mastered fluttering his eyelashes to make a perfect flirty smile to everyone he sees. He still loves to be held by anyone, and I am glad that stranger anxiety hasn't seem to set yet. He has a cute little laugh, even though we sometimes can't tell the difference between his laughs and cries. I would like to say that he's typically pretty happy, but he does like to get his way so he's given us some good whines lately too.

And almost everyone I talk to says that Blake looks just like me, and yea, it's true. I came across this picture of me when I was one years old, and I was amazed how much Blake really does get from me!

I couldn't get a very good side by side picture of Blake with my picture, but I think it's still pretty funny. But I just adore my blue eyed, chubby cheeked, swirly dark haired baby boy!

A New Start

So not only is it a new year but we are starting fresh this year as Luke starts a new job! I know some of you are thinking he just got a new job at Quiznos, and yes he was only there for just over a year, and so he was not planning on looking for a new job for a couple more years. However, this opportunity practically fell in Luke's lap as they came to him and asked him to apply. We even were friend's with the guy who previously held the position, but it became available when he got promoted and they moved to New York this summer. The company did not realize that he and Luke were even friends from church, but had his resume from over a year ago and were referred to Luke through a random recruiter.
So despite the fact that Luke was not interested in leaving his job, let alone thinking he'd even receive an offer, he went through several interview processes around Thanksgiving and after almost a month of waiting, he received the offer days before his birthday!
So even though he felt awful leaving his position where they desperately needed him at Quiznos, he knew it was best for him to leave now, not to mention they gave him a great offer that he just couldn't turn down.
So he will now be a senior internal auditor at Ball Corp. and he is really looking forward to the opportunities that this will present for him. We know that this is a stable company that he will be able to stay with for a long time and be able to move up and within the company. And today is his first day, so hopefully he likes it because this is it now- no more job hopping!
We are so proud of Luke and how hard he works for us, and we can't believe how blessed we are that Luke was able to be offered such a great job, especially when there are so many others around who struggle to find jobs for such a long time. We realize that our family is definitely being watched over and we hope this job becomes a good fit for him.
I got to admit though that are some perks from Luke working at Quiznos that we will miss- the free drinks and Quiznos gift cards for one. Luke will also miss getting to ride the bus downtown and meeting with all his other downtown friends for lunches. His new job is in Broomfield and so it will be a 25-30 minute drive west so that won't be as fun for him. One better thing about his new job though is that there will be no more "month-end" and so he won't be as busy and have to work late as often- which is what started happening much more frequently at his last job.
Luke working at Quiznos also marked when his interest in running and eating healthy began- ironically because Quiznos is a fast food company. But thanks to their gym downstairs Luke lost over 40 pounds while he was with them, but luckily Ball will have a nice gym there too so Luke plans to continue running after work. Now if only I could find myself a little set-up so that I could get in some work-out time...
Either way, we're a little sad to say goodbye to Quiznos since it was a good job for Luke at the time, but we are both excited about the possibilies that this new job will provide for our family, and looking forward to a new and even better year!