On to Maine...Cape Neddick Lighthouse

(Craig stepping in again to help get caught up on the blog)

Katie's Mom had two things that she has wanted to do ever since we moved back East: 1) visit the New England states, particularly Maine, and 2) go to New York City. Despite the fact that we're still going to be here a couple more years, we decided to do both of them in one trip (crazy!). We drove all the way from Central PA to Bar Harbor, ME (with a night at a sketchy Super 8 Hotel in Waterbury, CT) which is a little over 700 miles. As we crossed into Maine we stopped at a lighthouse near Cape Neddick Harbor for lunch. Looking out at the open ocean coupled with the rocky shore and the lighthouse was a sight to behold (see the below panorama). In fact, it may have been the most picturesque place we saw the entire trip.

Lucas was so happy to get out of the car, and the ocean just made it that much better. He loved every minute of it. Fortunately the tide was out, so Lucas could splash in the tide pools and chase crustaceans with Grandma Les.

Click HERE for higher resolution image.

Busy Bees

We have been really busy this past month, which is why it has been awhile since our last blog. My parents came into town this past month for a couple of weeks. We spent the previous weeks preparing for there arrival. Attempting to finish some projects up and de-clutter the house. There was a lot to get down, but we were successful and ready for their arrival minutes before they pulled up! Now we have to get caught up with all the things we've done and the pictures we've taken the past few weeks.....

Stay tuned.

mmmmmm

The last couple of weeks, whenever Lucas eats something he thinks is yummy (which is pretty much anything he eats), he will look at me and say, "mmmm... mommie that is good". It is pretty adorable and I have pretty much let him eat just about anything so I can hear him say it. Lucky for us, Lucas is not big into sweets, which is pretty surprising since that is what I am known for. Making and eating sweets is essentially my hobby! We have taken him to the dairy a couple of times for ice-cream, he will eat a couple of bites and then he is done. Guess we can't complain about that.

Whipple Dam

We went to Whipple Dam for the first time this season. It was a little cool, with a slight breeze, but not bad! My highlight was for the most part being able to sit by friends and chat, rather than running after Lucas the whole time. He didn't wander as much, and seemed to enjoy playing with his friends. I strapped his swim float thing on him, though he never got far enough into the water to use it. I think he was a little discouraged after he tried to swim like one of his friends tummy first and ended up floundering with a mouth full of water. After that he stayed on the outskirts of the water. All in all, it was a good day! Long, but fun!!!

Strawberries!

On Friday we went to a ward members house and picked strawberries. Craig more than hinted that he wanted Strawberry Rhubarb pie and they also had rhubarb that we could pick. Lucas picking strawberries consisted of him taking my bowl and dumping the strawberries into his bucket and then eating them. He was covered in strawberry juice by the time we left! Lucas wandered around there yard and at one point one of his little friends let us know that Lucas was in the pasture with the horses. That is my little wandered, so curious, and has no probably investigating his surroundings, even if it requires wiggling through a wire fence. The highlight was that she let Lucas ride a horse! Lucas loved it, he wanted another turn! He also helped lead the horse by holding onto the rope. It was a fun morning! I am so grateful that we are surrounded by so many wonderful people!

A crappy day (literally)

I had not planned on writing about this particular event, but after several of my friends mentioned that I needed to blog the story, I succumbed to peer pressure and am now blogging about it. A couple of days last week I would go get Lucas from his nap and find him without his shorts or diaper. An important thing to note here is that Lucas usually has a bowel movement during his nap and needs to be change after he wakes up.......Do you see a potential problem with him having no pants or diaper? The first time (yes, the first time, he did it twice in a row), was not so bad. I was impressed at how well I kept my composure as I cleaned up poop and in a calm manner explained to Lucas that we do not take off our diaper and throw it overboard. The second time or the following day, did not go as well. I decided to take a nap towards the end of Lucas nap, I thought I would sleep about twenty minutes, until Lucas woke up. I woke to Lucas crying about an hour later, with about ten minutes till we needed to pick up Craig. I went upstairs to grab Lucas and get him in the car. Only to find my child covered in poop! Unfortunately it was a little more mushie than the previous day. It was everywhere; on the floor, the handrails of the crib, the crib mattress cover was caked in it, it was on Lucas feet, and his hands were covered in it. I wanted to scream, and it was very difficult to maintain my composure and I probably did let out a few sighs of frustration with the little stinker, who was laughing as I cleaned up the mess, which included scrubbing the floor, cleaning the handrail, putting the sheets in oxi-clean (I love you Oxi-clean, you were heaven sent!). I ended up putting Lucas in the tub and then into his PJ's, all the while Craig is calling wondering where I am. Amazingly enough I was able to get everything, including Lucas cleaned up and in the car in just over twenty minutes. (No worries this story has a happy ending!) On the way home from picking Craig up at work, I explained to him what had happened, Craig had had a bummer day also, so I decided it was an ice cream day, we went home had dinner and went to the Dairy for a sundae. Yummy! A day like this needed to end with ice-cream!

Our Little Monkey

Saturday Lucas was entertaining himself as I was trying to tidy up the house. He eventually wandered up stairs, I could hear him wandering around, and then several minutes went by and I heard nothing. This is almost always a red flag that Lucas has gotten into something that he shouldn't be in. I quickly head up the stairs and to my surprise I find Lucas sitting on the changing table with a pile of wet wipes sitting beside him. Now at first you would think that I would be upset about the wipes, however, my first thoughts is how did he get up there? My child climbed the changing table, probably to get to the wipes. I am not mad about the wipes just relieved he is okay and the changing table didn't topple over when he climb it. Little stinker.

Craig also discovered yesterday that he can now open and shut doors, which is unfortunate, because now he has access to every part of the house, meaning the office and bathrooms. I don't want to even think about the havoc he could cause in those areas of the house. Why can't Lucas new skills involve using the restroom, cleaning up, and listening.

Goodbye Goldilocks

Lucas had his very *first* haircut last night. I put a caveat on that because technically there was an instance in the past that involved Lucas, his hair, scissors and a broken-hearted mom, but that was more of a "Mullet-Prevention" trim. Last night was a full-blown haircut, involving hand-fulls of Lucas' golden locks falling to the ground (to be promptly picked up by Lucas and displayed proudly). When all was said and done, Lucas' hair was about 4-5 times shorter than it was only minutes before.

I think he looks pretty good. He suddenly looks more like a little boy and has lost another of the few remaining "baby-like" elements.

Flowers

Now that summer-like weather is here, we actually have something growing in front of our house. Actually, it has been growing for quite a while, but the flowers are finally blooming. We never had irises this tall back in Utah, but then they probably didn't get watered nearly as often as these ones do.

Katie and her crazy ideas....

Every once and while Katie gets these ridiculous ideas (usually from the internet) that Lucas and I just have to put up with. Tuesday brought around another one of these ideas.

I came home from work and Katie announced to me that I needed to start up the grill, and get it heating while she got the pizza dough. PIZZA!! ON THE GRILL!!! ARE YOU CRAZY???

It actually ended up being really good, and is something that we'll probably do again in the near future. Thank goodness for Katie and her ridiculous ideas.

Memorial Day

In case you hadn't heard, Boalburg, Pennsylvania is regarded as the birthplace of Memorial Day (at least 2 dozen others towns also make this claim, but hey, we live in Boalsburg, so let's just go with it). With that in mind, the Boalsburg Memorial Day activities are certainly the biggest event occurring in Central Pennsylvania, if not the entire state. Literally thousands of people descend on our quaint little town for the weekend to enjoy the parade, street vendors, military re-enactments, period dress and other festivities.

We have been unable to attend these activities thus far, due to Katie and Lucas being gone last year and Lucas being born the year before, so we were looking forward to see what all the hustle and bustle was about.

Lucas had a great time, especially at the parade. In lots of bigger cities, the tradition of throwing candy has been banned due to unfortunate accidents, but that tradition lives strong in Centre County! Lucas made off like a bandit. Every fire truck (of which there must have been ~40), antique car, political hopefully, guy on a Harley wearing an American flag shirt, etc. was throwing candy. Tootsie Roll must have made a small fortune off of the sheer amount of candy purchases for the parade.

The actual Memorial Day activities were enjoyable, but very hot. We wandered among the street vendors, watched a civil war re-enactment complete with a live cannon ~50ft from our heads (we were not prepared for how loud that thing was going to be), bought an Amish made pretzel, and wandered around the corvettes at the car show. I think we all suffered a little heat stroke after wandering around downtown for a couple hours, because when we got home we all crashed on the couch unable to move. Lucas didn't even make it home before he was asleep, well in advance of his normal nap time.

Like everything about this town, the activities were quaint. Boalsburg is a very nice place to live.

(I've also included a little game with today's pictures. It's the "One of the pictures is not like the others, One of the pictures just doesn't belong" game. See if you can figure out which one.)

Lucas turns two!

For two days last week we celebrated Lucas' birthday. On Monday we had a party for him and his friend, Cooper, who had a birthday the day before him. The theme was "balls" (don't act so surprised). Lucas is still obsessed with balls. Cooper's mother and grandma made the cutest cakes decorate to look like balls. I did the same with cupcakes. Needless to say we had plenty of cake.

Lucas had tons of fun. It was fun to watch him when he blew out his candles, though it was more of a "drool out the candles", but it worked (we made sure to not serve that part of the cake). He ate his cupcake and some of another, that was left unattended. He had no problem opening up presents.

We have been trying to teach him to say he is "two". We have had minor success with this. Sometimes he says it, sometimes he doesn't. I don't think he understands the birthday concept, yet. I would tell him it was his birthday and he would repeat me and say "birthday", but I don't think he associated it with him, maybe next year.

For his actual birthday we had blueberry pancakes, went swimming, and ate lunch at the Subway in Walmart. About four weeks ago, we were running errands around lunch time, so we had Subway in the Walmart. He hasn't said anything about it even though we have been to Walmart several times since, but the other day when Craig was with him and they went to Walmart he started to point and say, "Lunch, Lunch". Later when we went to Walmart again, he commented about it and wanted to have "Lunch." So for his birthday we decided to have lunch at the Subway. We walked into Walmart, thinking he would walk up to the Subway and say "lunch", but he didn't. He just kept walking, so Craig and I said, "Lucas, lunch". That caught his attention, he got excited and ran back into the Subway!

We also had dinner full of Lucas' favorite things: beans. Pinto and black beans (in a casserole), and green beans on the side. Lucas loved it, and ate all of the beans on his plate! We sang to him again and had more cake and ice-cream and opened more presents. Lucas had a great birthday!

Crazy Bird!

Craig recently filled up our bird feeder so Lucas could see the birds. We do get several different types of birds (see picture in previous post). The trick is having them stick around long enough for Lucas to see them. When we tell Lucas that there are birds, he gets so excited that he starts shouting "Bird! Bird!", and by the time he gets there the bird has flown away. We're working on being quiet long enough so he can actually see the bird.

About a week ago, I was in the computer room, and I could hear this noise every so often, like something was hitting the window. Craig came home and and heard it too. He realized that there was this bird that kept flying into the sliding glass door. I went out to see, and sure enough this poor bird keeps flying into the window. We thought maybe he was hurt and was having a hard trouble flying, but no, he would fly away and then come back to do it again. The bird did this for a few days, until we got to the point where you just got use to the noise. Lucas liked it, he was sure to let us know when the bird was there. I have not heard or see the bird for a few days, but yesterday I heard it again, I went to investigate and sure enough there was the same bird at it again. Poor bird he probably has brain damage.

Ant Invasion

I love spring/summer, it is my favorite time of the year! But with every season there are pros and cons. Though there are several pros associated with spring/summer, there is a definite con, ants. The ants here are huge, were talking about some serious AOUS's (Ants Of Unusual Size). Every year at about this time, we find ants wandering around in our house. They are usually in the downstairs bathroom, but this year they have decided invade uncharted areas of the house. Recently we have been finding them upstairs in our bathroom. Every time you go to the bathroom, you are sure to see at least one ant, if not more. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you feel like something is crawling on your feet, well now every time I feel that I get a little jumpy, thinking I am going to look down and see an ant crawling on my toes (this has happened more than once). It is a little bothersome. Fortunately we have our own little "ant spotter", who can spot an ant several feet away. It is pretty impressive.

Spring is in the Air

We've had occasional days that tried to trick us into thinking that Spring had arrived, but it really wasn't until this last week that it really felt like Spring. There were birds singing and eating at our bird feeder, kids running around in shorts and t-shirts, and sunny days (4 consecutive days without rain). However, this doesn't necessarily mean that everything is bliss. Along with Spring, comes Katie's list of "Things we need to get done now that the weather is nice". (It also brought out the feral cats fighting under our deck, but that's a different story.) Katie got the garden weeded and prepped for planting, which we will hopefully get done this week. We also hope to refinish a dresser that has been sitting in our living room for the better part of 6 months now, and build an entertainment center that better protects both our equipment from Lucas, and also Lucas from electric shock. Hopefully, somewhere between all of the Saturday's we already have scheduled away, we'll be able to have some barbeques with the neighbors, do some fun things and enjoy the change in weather.

Echo........echo

Lucas has reached the stage of his development where he repeats, or attempts to repeat, everything you say to him. Sometimes it can be cute, while other times it can just be annoying. The other day Lucas was playing on our deck, throwing a ball over the side and his friend, Rhett, was throwing it back to him. When Rhett had to leave to go back inside, I said, "Lucas, tell Rhett goodbye". Lucas stared at me for a second, turned to Rhett and said, "Tell Rhett goodbye". Then he got mad when Rhett left.

Signs of Growing Up

Lucas has been more cranky than normal the past couple days, but we didn't think much of it until I was tickling him the other day and noticed something. Lucas is getting 2 new molars! Every time I look at them I think how painful it must be for a tooth that big to break through the skin for the first time. At least the incisors and cuspids are pointed on top and can 'slice' through the skin, whereas with molars it seems more like using a sledge hammer to knock down a wall.

The boy was born to sing...

Lucas has developed a fondness for singing the past few weeks. It started with "singing" along with the hymns at church (much to his joy, our embarrassment, and the dismay of the lucky family sitting in front of us). Recently however it has expanded to involve the use of actual words and the intended song can actually be deduced. Lucas' favorite songs are "Wheels on the Bus" (but only the "horn" verse) and "Ring Around the Rosie" (but only the last two lines). The best is when he does his own arrangement of "Ring Around the Bus" and combines the two into something that sounds like "beep, beep, beep.....beep, beep, beep......all fall down!"

(I know the picture has nothing to do with him singing, but it shows his love of music, and he's just cute.)

Galoshes

All winter long Katie was "heck"-bent on finding Lucas a pair of galoshes once Spring rolled around. Pennsylvania gets more than its fair share of rain in the Spring and Lucas was sure to not only have plenty of puddles to splash in, but we were confident he would want nothing more than to stomp in every puddle he came across. While it is true that Lucas does enjoy splashing in puddle while wearing his galoshes, what we hadn't anticipated was all the other things Lucas likes to do while wearing his galoshes. Lucas and his galoshes are nearly inseparable. Given the choice, I'm sure he would wear them to church (fortunately we're smart enough not to give him the choice).

Sunday Best

(Guest writer, Craig, continues his tirade.)

Lucas tried out his new church outfit for Easter. As one of our neighbors said, "Lucas is always dressed to kill." He looked pretty good, ignoring the runny nose.




Lucas also got a visit from the Easter Bunny, to complement the modest collection of candy he had already collected.

Lucas was actually more interested in setting all the chocolate sports balls on the table.

Egg Hunts

(Guest writer, Craig, continues his attempt at humorous prose.)

Lucas had the opportunity to have his go at 3 different Easter Egg Hunts this year. One community hunt at a local park, one hosted by the YMCA, and one with the neighbor kids in our backyard area.

When we went to egg hunts last year, Lucas wasn't quite old enough to understand what was going on and why he should be interested in grabbing all the colored eggs, especially when it seemed like all the other kids wanted them much more than he did (he was so accommodating). This year, Lucas not only grasped the concept, he also realized that if he got a head start into the field, he could grab as many eggs as possible without those pesky, meddling kids getting in his way (ahh, our conniving child.) It took some effort to keep pulling him back behind the rope and trying to distract him. Once the bell sounded, though, he was off.





The egg hunt at the YMCA was a unique experience. Lucas has been taking Mommy/Tot swimming lessons at the Y, so when we found out they offer a swimming pool egg hunt, we signed him up. For the older kids they actually sink the eggs to the bottom of the pool and they have to retrieve them. For the kids under 3, they are allowed to have a parent help them go collect the eggs that are floating on top of the water. Fun stuff.

Finally, on Sunday morning before church, we had an egg hunt for all the LDS families that hadn't left town. As you can see, everyone had a good time (not pictured is Rhett Van'O who was not having a good time when the picture was taken, but had fun getting the eggs). As you can see from the pictures, Lucas takes his egg hunting very seriously....

From left to right: Cooper and Sadie James, Cole and Parker Butler, Lucas, Autumn McDaniel, Hank Van'O (seated)

Easter Eggs

(Guest writer, Craig, continues to fill in.)

It's that time of year once again, when we wait for the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. One wonders how a furry bunny could possibly keep track of that complex system and always get the date correct (thanks council of Nicea).

Keeping with the pagan observance of one of the most important days in Christendom, we colored Easter Eggs with Lucas. This involves stripping him nearly naked and then still hoping he can somehow muster the ability to not drop the egg into the cup of dye being so gingerly held at arms length by an all too exposed father (who happens to be wearing a brand new pair of pants), while mom courageously stands at a safe distance and using the wonders of optical zoom to catch the action.

I'm glad to report that the eggs were dyed, the pants were not, and Lucas' blue skin has faded nicely.

First Haircut

(Guest writer, Craig, will take over for the next few posts.)

Despite the fact that Lucas is nearly 2 years old, we gave him his first haircut a week ago. It is something that has been a long time coming and was long overdue. (How overdue depends on which parent you ask. One of us preferred a child that was starting to look like Fabio, and the other preferred something a little more conservative.)

More or less what Lucas looked like moments before his haircut

Lucas did surprisingly well, considering he had no idea what was going on. He kept wanting to turn around and see what was going on. When all was said and done, Lucas ended up only getting a minor trim, so while he doesn't quite have the clean cut missionary look, he is looking distinctively less Italian.

A beautiful day!

Though it rained off and on, it was a beautiful day, it felt like Spring! Of course we took full advantage of the wonderful weather by taking a walk, playing at the park, and having a picnic, with another walk in the afternoon! I love spring!!! Lucas seemed to really enjoy running around and playing outside. He had so much fun he wore himself out and took a very long nap! We ended the day with a trip to the creamery for ice-cream! Great day!!!

An eventful Saturday!

On Saturday we took Lucas to the Space Exploration Day they had on campus. It was more for school aged children, but Lucas seemed to enjoy it. We wandered around, saw some bugs, made some slime, and got a yellow plastic hard hat......that he wears constantly. This morning we went downstairs and I was getting him his milk, and Lucas comes around the corner wearing the hard hat.



Of course the highlight of the day was later in the afternoon when, Craig bought and brought home a storage freezer. Yeah!!! The last several months we have been looking for one. Our freezer is bursting at the seams. It is a hazard to open the darn thing, you don't know what frozen food is going to come flying out at you. Though it was a challenge to figure out where we are going to put it, as of right now it is sitting in the front entrance, it is going to be well worth it. I already know what I am going to put in it. We couldn't have found it at a better time, with ham being on sale, fruit and vegetables coming into season, and we just ran out of freezer jam. With our new freezer the odds of that unfortunate event occurring again is going to be rare.