Our House Turns 40

My Parents moved into the home they built on January 1st 1973.  It was a modest home with some peculiar quirks, but it was a place of love and laughter for many years.

 Over the years the home evolved into what it is now.  As you can see it got a tan, it grew a foot or two, and it also has many more neighbors.  

We moved in about a two and a half years ago and we love it.  The house is now on it's 1st automatic sprinkler system, 2nd set of windows, 3rd Generation of Blakes, it's 4th TV, and 5th child.

Happy Birthday House! 

Stuff you Pawn

This year for Christmas we treated ourselves to some things we've been wanting.  I've been wanting to get a new gun of some sort and I thought it was a good time to buy my first AR-15.  I was going to get another shot gun for mom and Chapter, but I thought I would be more likely to be able to purchase one of those down the road.  Sydney blames Glen Madsen for me buying this "Tacky" gun, but she really should blame Glenn Beck.

For Sydney we got her a new opal ring.  a few years ago after we hiked Coyote Gulch, Sydney bought an opal ring to commemorate her first backpacking trip.  You see Sydney has a fetish for birthstones and opal happens to be my birthstone.  Last spring while listening to Elder Oaks at Stake conference the opal fell out of her ring and we lost it.  I guess you can't expect a 30 dollar ring from Ruby's Inn to last forever, but at least more than 3 years would be nice.  With Chapter deciding to be born in October instead of September. We decided that instead of getting two birthstone rings we should get one nice one.  Luckily we found a simple yet beautiful black opal at Mack and Sons Jewelry  which was good because every where else was out of them or had lame settings even the pawn shops.  I like the Black opal because it's different and blue, so it matches mine and Chapter's eyes, seems more fitting that way don't you think?

Chapter's 1st Christmas

This year was the very 1st Christmas for Chapter.  It was an eventful one at that. We started out at home and took some pictures after we had the "Christmas" dinner with my family.

We decided that we needed to participate in the tradition of eating soup and listening to the scanner in Elsinore, so we went up there for a couple of days and had a white Christmas. It snowed all day on Christmas Eve.   

 Chapter couldn't quite open his presents, but he tried, we think next year will be his year.

 He did like the left overs...

and sleeping on his Christmas pillow.

This year Chapter was also the star of the show at the ward party.  He played baby Jesus and made all the old ladies cry with his moving performance.   

Chap LOVES getting mail

Especially if it's a package:)

Ward Party #1

Let me begin by saying that we have THE BEST WARD in the whole world!  There are so many fun people here and we feel very blessed to be living in such a wonderful place with so many great friends.

This ward knows how to throw a party.  Like seriously.  Incredible!  This was the Relief Society party for couples.  But we got permission from the RS Pres to bring Chap.  And he didn't make a peep the whole time.  He was such a good boy.  Anyway, Logan was asked to participate in the program.  It was an original program that was written by Jill (I think, she can correct me if I'm wrong).  At least she choreographed it for sure.  Anyway, the premise was that Lail was going hunting on Christmas and Jamie didn't want him to and she was trying to convince him to stay.  I get that nobody will think this is as hilarious as I do unless you know everybody.  But Logan was a member of the Jackson 5.  Only there were 3 of them. 

 Here's a couple of pictures of Logan on stage.  His sweet shirt is his dad from the 70s.  It's "authentic":) We made his pants from some pants at DI and a scrap of polyester I bought at a yard sale and knew it would be useful someday.

 And this is Chap, the 4th Jackson 5, only he was sleeping during the performance, just kidding:)  He decided to sport Logan's wig after the program.  He seemed really bald to me when we took it off:)

New Job

Logan got a new job this year.  He is now an Estimator/Project Manager for Quality Excavation.  So far he likes it very much.  Since he gets paper paychecks now, I insisted that we take a picture with his 1st pay check.  

The year there was a Fall

This year instead of green leaves suddenly all dropping off at the same time we had fall.  Well, fall for St. George.  The leaves didn't change color all the way like they do in places with 4 seasons but this is probably as close as we'll get.  Here's a picture of Chapter when we tortured him and put him in a pile of leaves.  Enjoy:)

12:12 on 12/12/12

I thought it would be fun to take a picture of Chapter at 12:12 on 12/12/12 so that someday his kids could look at it and make fun of Logan's phone:)

Interestingly, I have a nephew that turned 12 today.  What a cool day to turn 12!

25

Yesterday was an exciting day.  It was my 25th birthday and we took exactly zero pictures of it.    We went to Pizza Factory on Saturday night and then went and got my buy 1 get 1 at Coldstone (which made us sick from all the sweetness).  Then yesterday we went to church, took birthday cake to the Beehives and had steak for dinner (which is the tradition we started last year).  But the main reason it was so exciting is that I was exactly the age Logan was when we met.  We met on his 25th birthday and he seemed soooo old to my 18 year old self:)  He was still a fun loving 25 year old college bachelor, and now I'm a 25 year old married mom.  So crazy how lives change!  Thanks for all the fun presents and all the birthday wishes! It was a fun day and so far 25 isn't half as bad as I thought it would be!

Yes, I'm one of those mothers

I guess I'm one of those moms who has a baby and then can't really talk (blog) about anything else.  But, hey, it's what I do for a living now:)  Here are some pictures of my boy.

 This is Chapter when we go for walks, or when we go to a store that doesn't have shopping carts.  He sort of hates it:) And he genuinely hates that hat.

 This is Chapter chilling on the "Meatball" aka tiny Love Sac   It's his downstairs lounge place and the only reason I am able to blog.

 This is what Chapter looks like at 10pm.  Wide awake while daddy (and mommy) are tired.  We wait to put him in his cradle until he is drowsy if not totally asleep.

 This is Chapter "Angry Sleeping".  Everybody wants to see what we're talking about so here it is.  Sometimes the kid just looks angry when he sleeps.  PS I didn't move his binky because I knew it would wake him up.  I wasn't being mean, I promise:)

 This is Chapter smiling.  He's super duper handsome!

And this one is just cute.

I didn't think this would happen to me but I guess when they say that having a baby changes everything they really just mean it changes your priorities and sucks up all of your attention.  And that they are really fun to look at! :)

Turkey Shoot

Logan dominated the 3rd Ward Elder's Quorum Turkey Shoot again this year!
Since nobody wanted a turkey, they decided to get a trophy that you get to keep all year until a new winner is crowned.  Logan anticipates having this trophy in the living room for years to come:)

Here are couple fancy pictures Logan took of his trophy and one I took of Logan with his trophy.

4 Generations

There's a new Blake boy in town, so that meant that we needed to get a picture of Chap with his dad, Grandpa Ron and Great-Grandpa Cecil.  We got this picture at the Blake family party this month.  Great-Grandpa Cecil even gave him a kiss on the forehead:)

Election Day

Chapter's Blessing Day

 Yesterday was Chapter's blessing.  Chapter wore the outfit that Logan wore when he was blessed.  We also used Logan's baby blanket.  I made the shoes he wore.  It was really touch and go to see if Chap would fit into this outfit.  He gained 3 pounds in the first 4 weeks of his life so I was a little worried.  Logan was a small baby and Chapter is not:)  Logan also wore his "special occasion" tie which is ugly:) He claims he wore it to the temple when we got married and on other special occasions but I really don't think he did, of course I could have been so deliriously happy that I didn't notice his ugly tie, but I digress...

It was an exciting day.  Chapter only whined a little during the blessing, which was wonderful.  He was blessed to have common sense, happiness and a good work ethic among other things. Logan did a great job:)   We had family over afterward for ice cream sundaes with all the fixings and it was so much fun.  Chapter got passed around to all the relatives and got pretty worn out which worked in my favor:)

I'm so glad that I'm married to a man who holds the priesthood and can bless me and our children.  That was something that was very important to me when I chose a person to marry.  I didn't have that growing up and I'm go glad that my children will.  

Too Much Halloween Fun!

This year we thought we weren't going to make it to Bobbi's annual Halloween Party which is always completely outrageously awesome but it worked out that we could go (that's a story we won't talk about) and it was really incredible again this year.

It was Chapter's first Halloween Party and he loved it.  He slept in his carseat or on our friend Lacy all night:)

Here are the pictures I stole from Bobbi's Facebook.  The theme was that one person had to be a vampire and the other person the victim.  Logan decided to be The Count from Sesame Street.  I was supposed to be covered in numbers, but somebody had to be fed and changed and it didn't happen.  The "victim" (me) had to wear blood bags on our wrist and around our neck.  We played a game like the Newlywed game and if you got it wrong you had to suck a bag.  Whoever had the most bags at the end won.  We almost won, but we missed the last question and our friends Jack and Jill got it.  Good job guys, some of those questions were hard!

On Halloween Day it was wild.  Logan went to work at 3 that morning so I had slept on the floor in Chapter's room so Logan could actually sleep.  Then he worked until 4pm and came home for a little while before he had to go back for meetings until about 7.  In between we were fortunate enough to have good enough weather to take pictures of Chapter outside, it was probably pushing 80 degrees, nice but nothing like the Halloweens of my youth.  He was so big and sat by the tree so well!  We didn't take him trick or treating except to Grandma Deb's and we didn't get any trick or treaters at our house either.  Lame.