last couple days

The Cardinal game on Sunday was fantastic (thanks for the anniversary present babe!) They won! Cayle did pretty good, but it's a long time for him to sit still. After the game, Natalie had gotten us a hotel room where they had a pool. Cayle loved playing in the pool. He loves the water! Bonus: We got to get Coldstone while we were in Denver! LOVE IT!!!!
He has this new thing he does with his tongue. He loves to stick it out while he is playing and crawling around...
A couple of weeks ago, we bought some play sand for Cayle's turtle. Now that the sun has been out a few days, he loves playing in his sandbox! However, it seems as if his favorite thing to do with it, is to throw the sand out into the rocks.... Oh well, we have a couple extra bags of sand I guess. He loves to get messy!
Saturday afternoon we went for a short hike up Spring Creek road which is just behind our house. It's a little dirt road that climbs up on Hardscrabble and is heavily used by motorcycle riders. But after you get up high enough, the motorcycles pretty much disappear. Cayle road along in the backpack. It was a beautiful day! Sunny and 70.My attempt to photograph some bright orange flowers growing in the high country.

We have some veggies coming up in the garden! This is very exciting, as it is our first gardening attempt. So far coming up are carrots, romaine, leaf lettuce, spinach, green onions, and just tonight I saw the peas poking through the dirt. The radishes are going to be ready to harvest in a couple weeks already.

Dates!

Lots of fun planned for this weekend - can't wait!
We have our 3rd anniversary coming up on Tuesday, so Nick and I planned some fun events for each other this weekend.
We are going to dinner tomorrow night at Pastatively, an amazing, local little Italian joint in Eagle. Mary is going to watch Cayle. Then Saturday morning, I'm getting a massage. Oh how I love massages! I haven't had one in years, so I'm really looking forward to it!
On Sunday, we are heading to Denver after church. We're going to see the Cards play the Rockies (go Rockies!). Then, we'll be staying at a hotel with an indoor pool! And free breakfast! Cayle will love that! (Many thanks to my sis for being the internet troll that she is and finding us a great deal on the hotel!) Monday we plan to go to the Denver zoo. Yay for zoo admission discount coupons from Wendy's!
Now, I know some of you are wondering, who's going to take care of the dogs? No worries everyone...it's all under control. One of Nick's students lives a few doors down from us and she is going to stop by the house Sunday and Monday to take care of Wrigley and Rusty. We're going to use this weekend as a sort of "try-out" for our summer vacation...see if this girl can handle the dogs and watering the garden for our trip back to IL in July. Sophie will be staying with our friend Mary Sunday night. (Yes, the same Mary who is babysitting Cayle so that Nick and I can go out to eat!)

NBA Playoffs

Not a Huge fan of the NBA by any means, but that was a pretty great comeback by the Dallas Mavericks tonight against the OKC Thunder. Down by 15 with less than 5 minutes left and came back to tie it in regulation, then to win in overtime! Dirk was amazing at the end of regulation. So, regardless of how much I dislike the NBA in the regular season, it seems like the defensive efforts step up a bit in the playoffs.

Somewhat sad...

Somewhat of a sad event today...
I cleaned and sterilized my breast pump and all of Cayle's bottles, nipples, and pacifiers. They are all neatly boxed up and ready for the next baby. I also installed Cayle's new "big boy" car seat in the car - which means his infant carrier is also boxed up and awaiting a little sibling to make use of it.

He's such a big boy now! No bottles (all milk is in a sippy cup or straight from mommy) and he sits in his big seat in the car. The good news is he took to the whole milk and his new seat like a champ! He loves them!

1st Birthday Party

Although Cayle officially turned one on Wednesday, we didn't have his party until today. The weather didn't fully cooperate, so we had our meal in the garage...and made sure to have the fire pit going out in the driveway. We had grilled individual pizzas for lunch with all the toppings you could imagine. Cayle really enjoyed his pizza :)
Then we had cupcakes, brownies and ice cream after we sang to Cayle. He loved his cupcakes but wasn't quite sure what to think of everyone singing to him.
After dessert, Cayle opened his presents. Mostly mommy opened the presents and tried showing Cayle what he got. Lots of gifts were shipped in from family and friends. Cayle got some clothes and lots of books...super-cool books, which is nice, because we read a book every night before he goes to bed.

Cayle was pretty tired by the end of the party...

What a year!

It has been an amazing experience this past year watching Cayle grow and learn. Nick and I have learned lots about ourselves :) Cayle has truly been more fun than we ever imagined possible. His party is set for Saturday, but here are some shots from our mini-celebration today.

Effingham Reunion

Heading down to Denver for an Effingham area reunion... We missed it last year, but committed this year. Should be good to see people. I think there are a bunch of people that live in Colorado from the Effingham area. We shall see....

Love this Concept

Eagle Community Gardens

Especially nice for those that don't have their own land to garden on. It doesn't take up a lot of space in the community, but I think it's pretty dang cool! Not sure what the fee is to have space in the garden. Rained here ALL day! Good for my garden and my freshly planted grass!

Mothers Day

It was such an awesome day yesterday for Mothers Day. I took Natalie and Cayle to Paradigms for mothers day brunch! It was fantastic. I had Cinnamon French Toast with Blueberry Cream Cheese (I don't even like French Toast) and it was fantastic! Natalie had an omelet with Feta, Spinach, and Tomotoes, with a Bellini to drink. We tried to drink the place dry of coffee I think. We were able to sit outside in the sun and just hang out and relax. It was super nice! Cayle seemed to enjoy his fried potatoes, and he offered me some of his eggs and bacon... :) Each breakfast came with a little serving of granola and yogurt. It was so much fun hanging with my beautiful wife and son in our gorgeous little mountain town.
After brunch we went to Lowe's and picked up some garden seed and spent the afternoon planting our first garden ever! Can't wait to learn new gardening skills!

Gardening has begun!

We got seeds into the ground! Early season veggies including lettuce, spinach, red, yellow, and green onions, radishes, peas, and carrots! Within 2 weeks we should see signs of them growing or not... hopefully they grow! :) Natalie and I planted in the 75 degree afternoon sunshine during mothers day while Cayle was napping. It was beautiful outside!

Tractor Time!

I love driving tractors around my parents property in IL. It is so much fun! It was so great to be able to share that experience with Cayle. It was more fun for me to drive the big tractor than it was to drive the little tractor... but Cayle seemed to enjoy both! :)

Swingin

This is a swing dad made for me when I was a youngster. Dad got it out for Cayle when we were home. He LOVED it! He spent a ton of time swinging, and just chilling in it. Laughing, sleeping, just relaxing. I think he has a new favorite reason to go back to grandma and grandpa's house!

10 years later

Never thought it would be almost a full 10 years later before we got the guy!

I got chills listening to Glenn Beck on AM radio this morning driving down to Grand Junction for a conference. He did a live radio segments a couple minutes long on sounds and interviews from the actual moment that the twin towers were hit. It brought back all the terribleness that went along with that day. There was actual transmissions from aircraft pilots demonstrating the confusion of that hour. It was crazy!

I'm sure most people probably remember exactly where they were, or what they were doing when they got the news. I don't usually remember things like that, in fact, it's one of the few things I remember so specifically. I just remember waking up in bed at college and thinking that I was having a nightmare. I went back to sleep for 5-10 minutes, before realizing that I had actually seen it on the television, and then proceeded to watch as the 2nd plane hit the tower. It was so SURREAL!

I would be naive to believe that we will never see anything like that again, but I hope for our children's sake that we never see anything like that again! The horror, the pain, the memories, the deaths...