Little Bear

I bought Jr. the cutest bear hat off of Etsy. My Grandma saw it and made me a matching one. She also made Ed Sr. a hat, but didn't put any ears on it, she didn't think he would want ears on his.



As you can see, we love homemade guifts!

Wyoming

As a Thanksgiving bonus we got to see Ed Jr.'s great uncle Scott. We had one hell of a party last night in Great Falls. We all played my mom's new Wii. We boxed, played jarts and tennis.

My mom beat everyone that stepped up to challenge her, she even beat Ed Sr. twice.





Thank you Joyce, Scott, Adam and Shea for the cool Wyoming football, sweatshirt and cowboy jeans. So cute.

Thankful

I am thankful for so many things. Ed Sr., Ed Jr., Miles, Selma, Ian, Faith, Ed Jr.'s grandparents, my grandparents, Ed Jr.'s aunt and uncles and all of our friends.

I am also thankful that I am stuffed today.

There was so much amazing food. Before dinner we took the Gunderson kids for a beautiful hike. The weather was perfect. Last year it was freezing and snowy. The sledding was awesome, but we were kind of like caged animals locked inside the house because it was so chilly. This year we earned our pumpkin cake, pumpkin pie and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Oh, and I am thankful that Ian is teaching Faith to talk like a Asian Stereotype.

More Flickr

We broke down and paid the money to go PRO on fickr. What does that mean? The link to the right "Ed Jr. on Flickr" has all of the photos we have ever uploaded, not just the last 200, plus we can upload videos. Youtube was making me mad.

Enjoy!



Fist bump!

7 Months

I won't bore you with "oh my god I can't believe that he is 7 months old. . ." All I am going to say is that hanging out with a 7 month old is pretty fun.

We celebrated his 7 month birthday by breaking out the walker.



He was pretty jazzed about it. He followed his dad into the bathroom this morning. Selma's days of freedom are just about completely over. Thankfully for her the distance between the couch and the coffee table is too narrow for the walker.

Sad Day

Tuesday our great friend Mark died. He lost a battle against a brain tumor. He was a completely amazing man and we are blessed to have had him in our lives. Today was his funeral. It was terribly sad and amazing at the same time.

Thanks to the Dockter sisters for watching Jr. for us while we celebrated Mark's life.

We are going to work so very hard to take good care of Dona.

The Never Ending List. . .

. . . of things left undone.

Every day and every weekend, I compile a list of things I need to do. None of which get done. Or so it seems. I usually can manage a load of laundry, wash the dishes or on a rare occasion write something on this blog, but it is all of the other things that get put aside. Exercise, dinner with friends, rake the leaves, paint the toenails. Those thing pile up in the back of my mind until I can't take it anymore and destroy the list (in my mind). I think that weekends will be my chance to catch up, but they aren't. Weekends are when we spend more time in jammies. Spend more time playing. Spend more time doing god knows what, and then suddenly it is Monday morning and we caught up on nothing.

The one thing I always get done is baby. He is one well cared for and entertained kid.



I hear other moms lament about the lack of ability to get anything done. Slowly day by day, we will let those things go or get better at multi-tasking. Right now I am petting Selma with my foot while typing. If only I could figure a way to shower and do the dishes at the same time. . .hmmmmm.



What helps out tremendously is when my mom comes over for the weekend to help out. Thanks mom.

Adrienne Talking

I shot this video last weekend. She is the sweetest baby girl.

More Chinook

Some of my favorite photos from the weekend.

We were trying to take a pretty photo of Alana and this is what Courtney did:

So Ed got Courtney back.

Rachel is pretty much up for anything. She was so much fun to take photos with.

We climbed up to the top of this amazing glacial feature (AKA Drifter's Knob) and put all of the horse bones back in place, they roll off of the edges.

Sheree admitted later that she didn't want to touch the horse's skull, but did it anyway. The skull belongs to Brandy, my horse. She died the summer before I first took Ed to the Ranch. My dad, Miles and I hauled her skull up there to be with Drifter, my dad's horse.

Ed Jr. was trying to pinch his great grandfather's eyes.

The old three sided barn. My dad says that a surly bull knocked off the corner. I am pretty amazed it is still standing.

This is what it is like to say goodbye to my grandparents. I never want to leave them. It is so hard to say goodbye.

Chinook

Ed Jr. took his first trip to explore the land of his ancestors. 20+ miles north of Chinook, Montana. It is a pretty amazing place where no one batts an eye when you wear olive green, blaze orange and aqua, and you always smell like bacon.

Jr. had an absolute blast hanging out with his great grandparents, great aunt and uncle and cousins. He loved watching all of those kids run around.

The other big news is that he is actively rolling from his back to stomach to get after things. If you hold your hand behind his feet, he pushes off on them in sort of a scoot/crawl. We are pretty excited and kind of scared at the same time. He can move!

I would write more, but after our 5 hour drive home, I am pooped.

Ed Jr.'s Mom is HILARIOUS

Mom + Baby

As much as we hate it when he leaves, when daddy goes hunting it affords us the kind of mom and baby time that we need to truly realize our amazing love connection.

Saturday Jr. wasn't feeling so great, so we took it easy. Other than busting my buns to get a job application in the mail, we didn't do much. Thanks Grandpa Bill for taking him for a walk while I ran to the mail. The true highlight of the day was the hour long bath. We had to keep adding warm water, but by the end, the plugged nose and ear rubbing was history. We just played, laughed and took some epic naps. We wore cozy clothes and even stayed up kind of late. To watch Saturday Night Live, of course. The baby slept, but I watched damn near the whole thing.

Sunday he was feeling much much better after sleeping for an unprescidented 11 hours. His momma got a ton done around the house and when his dad got home, we had a turkey dinner coming out of the oven. He got to play, nap and nurse just about as much as he wanted, I spent the entire day just watching him and responding to his needs. I was totally on his schedule. During the week it feels like we are always running around like crazy maniacs, but this weekend we only had one thing on the agenda, to love eachother.

I would hate to put an estimate on the number of hugs and kisses we had over the weekend, but it was easily 1 million.

Just when it seemed like everything was going his way. . . we took him to see Dr. Frank today. The good news is that he is 29 inches long, 22 lbs and 13 oz heavy and his head is, well it is still quite big. All of his measurements are in the 98% for babies his age. Dr. Frank said that he is very proportionate - proportionately big! My mom says that I was always over 100% and I am sure his daddy was no small turkey. The other good news is that he doesn't have to get any more shots for 6 whole months! YAY! I hate getting his shots. He cries so much. Talk about having a case of the Mondays. To have an amazing weekend and then whammo.

He did pretty well, little to no fever and has taken a couple of serious naps. He also went to sleep at 7 tonight. I just laid with him snuggling him for as long as I could stand it. I wanted to make up for the shots by being extra sweet to him. Since I got home from work, it has been all about making him happy. Nursing for as long as he wanted, playing with him on the floor, his first banana mashed with breast milk (not such a big hit) and for dessert a DELICIOUS maple teething biscuit. We both had maple smeared all over us. Selma was the big winner when he dropped it on the floor. These are the days she has been waiting for, the dropping of the food. It really makes up for all of that being locking out.

Oh and as for daddy, he killed a baby boy deer and a little lady antelope. He has been in the garage since butchering his kill. It was Uncle Neil's first deer kill, so he is out there with him. I will spare you the gruesome details and well, the gruesome photos.

Sweet Pea

Halloween started on Wednesday for us. Ed Sr. and I carved pumpkins and I made Ed Sr.'s costume. Ed Jr. got to enjoy chewing on a piece of pumpkin carved from one of the jack-o-lanterns. Ed Sr. made a Jr. inspired pumpkin, two big eyes and two lower razor sharp teeth.


On Halloween night itself, Jr. was SUPER tired and SUPER cranky and had to take an evening nap pushing back his trick-or-treating until pretty late. We only ended up going to see Mark and Dona, Grandpa and Straganona and Aunt Kim and Uncle Jon. Adrienne was also a sweet pea, but that sweet pea was asleep by the time we got there. It is a bummer because I really wanted to get a photo of the two sweetest peas together. You know, for their high school yearbook. . . he he he. I am sure we will have plenty of naked bath time and naked pool photos to embarrass them with.

Jr. didn't get any candy, but his Straganona bought him some DELICIOUS maple flavored teething biscuits. So yummy.