Henry is 9 months old!

Henry is so grown up now, and so big. We are looking forward to seeing how tall he is at our next appointment, though we know for sure that he breaks our arms every day as we carry him around. He is hilarious these days. He love to try and put his pacifier in other peoples mouths and then laugh as he pulls it away. He loves to get into everything that we tell him not to and laughs pretty much all the time. We are really having a great time with him.

Here he is riding on the bike that Gavin got when he was 1. He can actually push himself backward a little bit.
And we now find him standing next to something almost every time that we come into a room. What a champ.
Just a fun shot of Gavin caught in the act of fixing the shelves in the laundry room with his wrench.
This is Gavin and his friend Paili caught in the act the other day. It was very quiet in his room where they were playing and when I came in they were trying to get the lid closed while both in the box. Pretty funny.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving. We had a pretty uneventful one at home. Rachel came for the weekend from BYU, and I am sure that she probably got bored with us by the end, though Gavin talked her ear off day and night.

Henry enjoyed his first Thanksgiving dinner, but didn't eat much before he gave up and went to take a nap.

Gavin pretty much just ate his weight in stuffing.
Here is Caleb making the mashed potatoes. What a good chef.
Mom and "2 Boys".

Bathtime

Just a couple of cute shots of the boys in their hooded towels. We just got Henry a new one since he has gotten too big for his little towel from Stacy. He got a dog to go with Gavin's froggie. They look pretty good together, even though getting a shot with both of them is harder everyday.

I love these boys. (Even if this shot of Gavin is a little funny. I love that you can see all his curls.)

Itty Bitty Soccer

Hurray for organized sports, though I think what we have so far witnessed with Itty Bitty Soccer (for kids ages 2-4) is much more sporting than organized. But it is fun. Gavin has now been to his second soccer class. The first day was interesting, since there was only one other boy in the class that day, and they were certainly acting their age. The main thing that Gavin told everyone about his soccer class was that he ran away, and he did. He probably ran 100 yards before I realized that he wasn't going to turn around and I think I caught up with him after atleast another 50 yards. For the second class today there were 5 total kids, which was alot better, and Caleb cut out of work for an hour to go and witness the fun. I think he is learning a few things, and hopefully getting some of his energy out.
Here he is excited for the first day.

Some powerful kicks.

This blog entry wouldn't be complete without some video of the action. This first one really shows you the way that it went last week. But the second clip actually got Gavin on a good run the first day, so we can actually show off that he has some moves.

This is really just a funny shot of Gavin doing what he likes to do lately... watch the video Ipod. The strange thing is that now he knows how to restart the videos when they end and how to play one. If he could read, he would be better at using the thing than I am. Pretty crazy.

Sweet Cheeks Henry

Not so much these cheeks...

As these...
Henry has got to have some of the most kissable little chubby cheeks that I have ever seen. I think we spend most of our day kissing them. Gavin sometimes tries to pinch them, maybe a little too hard, but Henry laughs about it nonetheless. Even people that don't spend as much time with him as we do, love to kiss Henry's cheeks. What a cutie.
He has been crawling for quite a while, but as of yesterday, we are on the scary road to pulling up on things, so far he is only at his knees, but getting more determined every day. Here is a video that I took today showing him in serious action. (The siren is the sound of the buttons he is pushing... not an emergency near our house.) You can also hear him say his favorite thing. Man this kid is fun.

Happy Halloween

Hurray for a good Halloween. We only had one costume event this year, which seemed to be enough for us. Henry wore the dog costume that I made for Gavin for his first Halloween (also sometimes called a cow costume). He looked fabulous. He is wild and crazy as always and had fun crawling all over the church getting into mischief and trying to get people to give him candy before Mom and Dad noticed.

Gavin was a fireman, this costume was previewed earlier in the month because of the excitement of getting to wear it. It looked great for its big night. He had a few people ask him where the fire was, and he would just smile as though they must be making a joke. I guess the fact that firemen go to fight fires was not what he had in mind when he picked this costume. The necklace he is wearing has ghosts that light up, the neighbors that share our duplex with us got it for him to use in the dark.
And off we go.
Just a little funny shot of wrestle mania as we tried to take a group picture.

Leaves and Laughs

Saturday afternoon we spent some time outside enjoying the really nice weather. We went on a walk to Liberty Park to play and to check out the changing leaves. Gavin loved it, we got to go the playground where we don't go very often and he kept saying, "Dad, this is the best playground I ever seen." or "Wow, this is the best slide I ever seen." Lately he has been busting out all new phrases that just make us laugh. Henry is also a big boy with the new tray attached to the stroller, so he is super happy to go walking where ever we want to go. We also decided that is would be fun to take some fall leaf pictures. Hopefully this was not a preview of how our family pictures will go in a month. We couldn't get both of them to look at the same time and could hardly get them to be at all still for even as second, they were so excited to be surrounded by the leaves. I included a few of the not so perfect shots so you can really get a feel for the pandemonium that we have lately.

We also painted Halloween pumpkins this week to get ready for Wednesday. Nothing like hanging out in your underwear.

This pumpkin idea looked a lot cute in the magazine, oh well, typical for my craft pursuits.

Henry wasn't really interested in painting, but loves to be tickled by Dad.

This shot is from a few weeks back, but I love it. What a cute kid I have!

Thank you for difficult times

So lately Gavin has gotten really good at saying prayer, and even when he says that he doesn't want to be the one to say the prayer, he usually repeats after whoever is saying it. There have been some stressful times for our extended family lately and today was another one of those days. While Gavin and I were saying prayers together tonight, he was repeating everything that I said, but with his own interpretation. Like I say, "Bless Gavin to continue to grow healthy and strong." and he says, "Help me that I can be strong." I say, "Bless Henry that he will continue to grow and be healthy." He says, "Help Henry to be strong too."
So even though I was hearing him repeat things that I said, he caught me off guard when I said, "Please help and comfort us through these difficult times." and then Gavin said, "Thank you for the difficult times." I think sometimes it takes the smallest people in our lives to help us realize what we should really be thinking and saying. And hard times are the times when our blessings become the most evident and obvious to us.

Celebrity look a likes

So we had to copy the Bergers and do a celebrity look a like collage. Kind of funny that it thought Caleb looked so much like Linus Pauling. hehe. Though not so nice that all of the pictures that I match have squinty eyes. It certainly was a fun time to try it though.

Fall Fun

Just a few fun shots of our last few weeks, which seem to have flown by. Fall really seems to go too fast for us. Henry is now crawling all over and seems to be getting too old. Gavin is staying busy trying to keep toys from his brother and keep up with Mom and Dad's crazy schedule.

Last Friday we took the afternoon to go to the zoo. We rode the zoo train for the first time and then played on the playground, after seeing the animals of course.

Here is Gavin in his fort, he could play in here forever.

Gavin also loves to hold Henry, though it is hard to say if Henry loves it as much.

This is what the boys were doing to Dad while we were watching conference. You can see that he puts up with a lot.

Here is Caleb hanging drywall... things in the backroom will some day be finished.

5 years of wedded bliss

Caleb and I marked our 5th Anniversary this last week. We agreed that it doesn't seem like it has been 5 years except when you look at our two offspring. Caleb's brother Nathan and his wife Stacy were fabulous enough to have our boys over to spend the night so that we could get away on a hassle free night. We stayed in town, in a nice cushy hotel that just made us wish for a new bed and lots of expensive pillows. As is the story of our lives (since this also happened on our honeymoon), we tried to relax in the hot tub and it was about 110 degrees, which for those of you that have known me a long time know that it meant that I could barely put my feet in for a few minutes before I thought I might catch on fire. It was very nice just to be without our children for a few hours while knowing that they were safe and taken care of. It was a great time to laugh at ourselves and think the past few years.The only picture that I tried to take was of Caleb in the car and he kept closing his eyes, and while I think it is cute, I am not sure he wants it on the blog.

On the way to pick up the boys it started snowing and continued to snow and sleet for most of the afternoon. Pretty crazy for September, so we are hoping for more normal fall weather to come back, since the heater isn't quite ready to be turned on yet.

Gavin and his animals headed out to get a little snowy.

Even though you can't see it very well, big flakes were really coming down.

Visitors from Afar

On an unexpected trip this week, Michelle and Lauritz came into town for a family funeral. Even though we were sad for them to have this occasion we were very grateful to get to spend a little bit of time with them and to refill our depleting Peterson canteen. They were also very grateful that Gavin remembered them and was so excited to see them and spend time with them.

(Can you tell that Gavin decided to be a fireman for Halloween and now insists on wearing the costume about daily, I guess I have learned not to show it to him before Halloween.)

This past week we also had Molly and her familycome to visit, as you saw in the haircut post. They were able to hang out with us and also visit their old stomping grounds in Provo for John to do some recruiting for his accounting firm. Of course we mainly took photos of the kids, as usual.

New Hair... Yea!

Well, I finally took the plunge and went for a major hair makeover. It was fabulous, and since my childhood friend, Molly, was visiting us, she was able to get her hair cut as well. It was very therapuetic for both of us and so far I love it.

Here is the before picture, not that bad, but also not that good.

This is the new hair after the stylist did it, she decided I should try straight, since I am not likely to do this to myself and have never worn my hair straight a day in my life. I really liked it and kept having to look to see if it was really my hair. So I also decided that this haircut makes me look a lot like my sister, Heidi, when it is straight.

This is the hair when I do it myself and most likely to be seen in the future. Here is Molly before... those that know her will really appreciate this. She has had similar hair to this for years and was also ready to mix it up a bit.

Here is the after... fabulous! Beautiful and sleek... Yea for Molly.

Manly push-ups

Much to my dismay and enjoyment, Henry has started getting around a room pretty well. Usually he is moving backwards or in a circle to get where he wants to go, but once in awhile he makes some forward advances as well. However, the thing that we enjoy watching him do the most are these manly pushups that he started working on about a week ago.

I took this video when Henry and I were home alone together before bed and it just makes me laugh to see his manly physique and watch him do his little pushups, so of course, I had to share it. Enjoy.