Thursday, December 29, 2011

Rebekah

She is here!

Announcing the birth of





Rebekah Marie Reed
November 30, 2011
9:13pm
7 lbs 12 oz
20"




Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Halloween

We started off Halloween this year at our ward's Trunk-or-Treat on Saturday evening. Zach dressed up like a terribly cute puppy. I was curious how he'd react to the whole 'trick-or-treat' thing, since he's not a huge fan of candy (or so he lead me to believe) and hadn't really seen much of the stuff up until then.

After we had dinner, Chad took him out to the parking lot and apparently it didn't take more than once or twice for him to figure out to walk up, smile, get the goods, say 'thank you' and move on to the next one. He made the rounds (and ended up giving a good portion of candy to his cousins since his pumpkin got too heavy to carry) with a big ol' grin on his face.

As soon as we came back into the cultural hall, he was all about that candy. He knew exactly what it was and wanted all of it. So much for my belief that he didn't really like the stuff..

Then came the night of actual Halloween and we pulled that costume out again, he got all excited. We only went to a few houses in our neighborhood and the neighborhood across the way, but as soon as we went to the door, he held out his little pumpkin and smiled and then said 'thank you' once he got the candy. It was SOOO cute.

Because of all this candy now in our house, he's learned the sign for candy and asks for it all the time. The funniest part though, was when I washed his costume to put it away. He saw it, signed 'puppy' and then signed 'candy'. I asked him if he was ready to put it on and get more candy.. he got all excited and nodded 'yes'.. then I had to explain that it only really worked one day a year...



Balloon!!

So I was sitting there on the couch watching Zach play on the last Sunday in October. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a van with a trailer pull into the dirt 'road' between us and our neighbors. Since it's a pretty quiet street, I try to take notice of out of place vehicles, and this one definitely qualified.

The van read 'Hot Air Balloon Rides'.. wait a minute.. if that's a chase vehicle, that means..

Yup.. Hot Air Balloon landed in our neighbor's back yard.

How's that for a random sight on a Sunday morning?



Zach was SOOO excited (he loves all things that fly) and so Chad took him over and they watched it deflate and get loaded up.

(By the way.. the shot above was taken from my driveway.)

Pumpkin Patch

The weekend before Halloween, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and visit a local pumpkin patch.

We rode on the train, which Zach thought was pretty cool:





Visited the petting zoo



and took a hayride




In the end, we picked out a couple of pumpkins and called it a day.


Saturday, November 12, 2011

Random Zach Moments

It's amazing how fast babies grow up, isn't it? I've been amazed how much Zach has changed just in the past 4 or 5 months.. totally insane.

So.. here are a few of my favorite Zach moments over the past few months:

Mom finally got enough guts to actually give him is first 'real' haircut. Here he is (not smiling, of course -- there's a camera) showing off his new 'do:



He LOVES helping with housework, with mopping being his hand-down favorite. I even altered my swiffer so he had a 'mop' of his own. Oh if only this fascination with housework will last...



He has a recent fascination with bicycles. So.. I got his tricycle out so he could start to try and ride it. He loves getting on/off but has yet to master the whole pedaling concept. He must have been watching all the other OTHER bicycle riders, because he insists on wearing his helmet when he's outside playing with his tricycle, and for the first few days, he wore it a fair bit inside as well. Just can't get enough of that helmet. Oh well.. you're never too young to practice good safety habits.... right???



He went to his first Home Depot Kid's Workshop in October. Daddy's dream come true -- they built a helicopter together and he was totally adorable in his little orange apron.



We went to the go-kart races in downtown Lancaster where we got to see very cool 'race' cars. He wasn't convinced at first -- they were a little loud, but he was definitely hooked by the time the last race was going. He kept telling me about the race cars for days...



and he even made it onto the front page of the local newspaper (cuz he's so darn cute.. right?? Especially when he refuses to smile...)



Once the weather finally cooled off (he wore a polo shirt to church all summer because the Nursery room is terrible in the summer), we got to break out his spiffy suit. He looked so grown up..



Finally.. here he is doing one of his most favorite things -- 'riding' on Daddy's tractor. I like this shot because it looks like he actually knows what he's doing. ;-)

Project Completions

I mentioned back in the spring that this was the year of 'projects' -- and that it's been, with the biggest one being the shop we were building on the back part of our property. Now that we're nearing the end of the year, we've completed them all.

The garden was finally built in Mid-May and planted (All those milk jugs are attempting to protect my tender tomato plants from the AV wind):



Miraculously, in spite of wind, watering issues and, well, the fact that I was actually trying to GROW something (what was I thinking?), the plants did, in fact, start to grow:



We had our first harvest in Mid-June:



and, in spite of the rabbits killing everything else, we had more tomatoes, peppers and squash than we knew what to do with. In fact, it kept producing up until Halloween when we went through and picked everything prior to the first frost.

Amazing. Something I planted actually produced edible food. I learned a ton and will definitely be doing a few things differently next year, but as an overall, I'd count it as a definite success.

OK.. now for the shop.. the framing was completed in May and the stucco went on in Mid-June:




It then took us a few months of endless work to finally complete the electrical, the grading around the building, and all the other interior details needed to get a final inspection buy-off. We finally accomplished it and were officially 'finaled' on September 13th. We've been boxing up and moving stuff out there ever since. Chad has been busily trying to organize his area and hopefully once this baby is here and we've gotten over that shock, I can get out there and do some organizing in mine. The interior is still pretty rough.. but at least all the big stuff is DONE!!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

30 Weeks

The week after we got back from vacation, we had our 30 week ultrasound. All looked good and we got some pretty good 3-D shots.