Insinkerator Terminated

An unexpectedly active evening in the Lewis home....

I hate bad engineering.

Uh-oh

When Jake was a tike, he liked to drop things for his Mom to pick up.  Gran told us all about it, and how Jake would say "uh-oh" just as he was doing it... as if it was an accident!  She was tickled by the memory.

Well, the circle of life is a funny thing, and now Jake gets to spend evenings with Xander who has learned the "uh-oh!" game, just like Dad.  It is SO hard not to laugh.

Xander's vocabulary is really improving, and the "uh-oh" is actually a major step, since it is two new vowel sounds that he's starting to incorporate into other words too.  His sign language is also coming along, and he has signs now for Blitz and Otto and Cheese and Orange and Please.  His favorite is definately "cheese."

Getting the Piano tuned.. finally!

It has been ages and ages since I'd had the piano tuned because I was afraid of the amount of work it would need... and it did need more than the usual tune-up.  Luckily, it all went back together beautifully!

Now I just need to find the time to practice....

Planting an Herb Garden

It is spring in Colorado, and some days it is summer.  The garden is coming along nicely and I was finally confident enough that all snow and frost was a memory to plant the more delicate herbs like basil and the (pre-started) tomatos.  As usual, I decided on only one or two tomato plants and bought 4. I also bought a bunch of flowers to really do up the back corner of the garden under the shade tree, since I think that may be a favorite spot this year.  Of course, I took Xander with me and he showed the most interest I've seen from him yet regarding exploring, cruising and *almost* walking along the rows of plants, touching the different colors and textures.   He got filthy!  I feared for the delicate starter plants, but he was generally pretty careful and certainly he had a blast.  While the plants themselves survived nicely, I can't promise all the price sticks ended up in the right pots....

We got everything home and the whole way I was explaining to Xander about how we would spend the afternoon planting our herb garden and flowers.  I'm not sure if he connected the herbs in the pantry (which he plays with and re-arranges for me *all the time* with the "herb garden" but as soon as I turned my back he'd pulled the herbs out and had taken them outside with him and wanted to give them to me!  What a helper!

When I dip, you dip, we dip!

We thought we'd have a little fun today and teach Xander the fun of "dipping" his food into a sauce... a red sauce.  Then, of course, he and the highchair got a bath.

 

Moab!

Grandma Kathy came with us to Moab this year.  We decided that we would make life a little easier on ourselves and stay in a condo instead of camping.  We shared the condo with the Bunny Browns, Sarah, Levi, Leah, and Sarah's mom Jeanie.  Karen and Tucker Brown and Alex Hois also joined us in Moab.  We even got a short visit with the Ogburns and their friends who were there as well.  It was nice to have so many folks together.

In our past lives, a Moab trip meant riding our bikes ever day until our legs couldn't move any more.  As a result there is a lot of Moab that we haven't really explored.  This year we decided to ride a little less (can't impose on Grandma Kathy's baby sitting ALL the time...) and explore and do a few more things.  That said, when we got in friday afternoon we had to get out for a short ride.  Since we didn't have much time, we headed for known territory and Erin and I rode a nice section of the Sovereign trail.

The next day, Xander, Kathy and I headed out with the crew in the Jeeps (and Toyota, sorry Levi!) while Erin met up with Tina for a hike.

The trails were fun and the scenery was beautiful.

 

We took some time to get out and explore.  Sarah decided to try cliff diving, while Xander experimented with rock climbing!

That evening we had a wonderful dinner with everyone back at the condo.  It was fun to get all the kids together to play.

The next day Tucker and Karen and I headed out early in the Jeep for a trip up Cliffhangar.  Wow, what a trail.  I was really impressed with the capability of the Jeep.  Even without differential locks it could handle a lot.

After the morning Jeep excursion Erin and I headed off with Karen and Tucker, while Kathy and Jeanie took the kids to arches to explore.  We rode the Baby Steps trail, which was really fabulous.  Baby steps was a new trail to us and has fast and curvy single track.  I almost thought I was in Fruita!  There were cactus flowers everywhere.

 

Jeanie and Kathy had a lovely hike through arches and the kids got a chance to play and enjoy.  Kathy liked arches so much that we decided to go back the next day.

On Monday Erin and Alex and I headed out for a morning mountain bike ride.  We were still in pursuit of new trails, so we tried the MOAB Brand trails.  I was a little unsure what these would be like, as the Bar-M Loop is described as a "mellow family ride on a dirt road with rocky sections".  Not usually our style.  However the Circle-O, Rockin' A and Bar-B (get it MOAB...) were reported to be "more difficult".  These trails turned out to be really excellent.  The singletrack sections were fantastic, and there was tons of quality slick rock riding.  Not as much steep up and down as the slick rock trail, but excellent riding surfaces with plenty of whoops to be entertaining.  Very nice.

After lunch back at the condo we met back up with Kathy and Xander and headed back to Arches.  Kathy really wanted to climb up to Double Arch.  We did the short walk in to the arch and then scrambled up the rock face (with Xander in his pack on my back) to the highest point below the arch.  Absolutely beautiful.

 

Afterward we headed for delicate arch and did the long hike to it.  Neither Erin nor I had ever hiked to the arch, we had only seen it years ago from a distant overlook.  It was a much tougher hike that I had realized, and Kathy did an amazing job, having just had knee surgery a month prior.  The arch really is breathtaking.

Tuesday we had to depart so we had a nice breakfast in town, although we discovered the Jail house cafe is closed on Tuesday :(  Oh well, next year.  On the way out of town we drove up to Top of the World which has an amazing view over castle valley.  We then boogied to the Grand Junction airport where Erin dropped me off to fly to Huntsville and she, Kathy and Xander drove back home through some nasty weather in the mountains.

 

Working on the Jeep

We are headed for Moab in two weeks, so I've been doing some work on the Jeep to get ready.  New leaf springs, new brake lines front and rear, modified front bump stops, a mount for the hi-lift, and a few miscelaneous maintenance issues.  Xander has been very curious about what dad is up to and has helped out lots!!

Hopefully that's all the work on the Jeep for this year.  Next year I'd like to put in a Ford 8.8 rear axle and an ARB locker.

-Jake

Gran Comes to Visit

ran, Mom, came to visit this week.  Xander was a little fussy, he had a tooth coming in, but we had a wonderful weekend.  Xander got new birthday presents including a bubbling lawn mower, and one old present, Beauregard, a 3 foot tall playmate that I hade as a boy.

Mom took us out to dinner at Aji for an early birthday present for Erin.  Xander had his first ceviche there, he loved it!  We had lovely weather and were able to work in the yard for a whole day.  We got lots done, and Xander loved playing outside in the grass.   I had to leave for Philadelphia for part of the week, and Mom had a whole evening with Xander while Erin went to mommies night out.

-Jake

Xander is a 1 Year Old!

At his one -year-old checkup, Xander broke the trend, and fell out of the 90th percentile.  He is 30.25  inches long (50th%ile), 24 lbs 3 oz (75th %ile), and has a 48 cm head (still 90th %ile).

Xander can stand up on his own for a few seconds at a time, but still hasn't taken any official steps.  He has 6 signs: pick me up, more, food, all done, hi and milk.  He has 12 "words": Mama, Dada, Otto, Blitz, dog, Milk, Ball (his favorite word), Block, Jack, this, banana, and "roar"  Xander has 9 theeth, with the 10th on it's way.

We finally finished his photobook chronicling his first year, and that one of the big reasons we haven't updated the blog here in awhile.  Most of the photos came from the blog, but there were a few new ones, and each of the grandparents recieved a photobook for their own.  It was a lot of work to make it, but a lot of fun too, and I know I'll spend hours and hours looking through it, remembering all the wonderful days we've had.  It is so hard to belive that it has been a year- an so much has changed!

Here are Xander's 1-Year-Old Portraits for you to enjoy, as we have!

Yes We Did

Happy 1st Birthday Xander!

I'm not sure if it's more of Xander's celebration or ours, this first of many birthdays.  A year ago today we delivered Xander into the world.  In the last 12 months we've had ups and downs, adventures and misadventures. We've watched Xander grow up, and perhaps we've grown up a little too.  Certainly we've grown into a family, and although I didn't know it was possible, our love for our son, and each other, has grown too. What a year it has been! 

How to celebrate?  While Xander would have been perfectly happy with his dinner of strawberries and oranges and asparagus and salmon, we really felt the need to get the classic photo of our child eating his first cake.  This has been a blog with words describing our feelings, our family and our life, but it has also been a journey in photos- we needed a photo!  Okay, we needed 6!

And for those of you who like to see how generations change and stay the same, here's a picture of Erin enjoying *her* first cake!