From Christmas to Easter

You know the story… Facebook and other things like that have sucked the life out of blogs like this one. But I still want to keep blogging here. I find it a convenient way to chronicle our lives in a linear way.
Things have been mostly uneventful. Kori and I are raising our two little kids, and anyone who has done that knows that pretty much takes up life for many years.
And when I start to edit pictures to include, Keelie will climb onto my lap and demand to watch videos and see pictures.
So I don’t get to do these updates as often as I’d like.
I’m still working for the same place, and that’s good. There are good people there who do good work. Kori has become very skilled at couponing and bargain shopping. It has become a sort of hobby for her. It’s amazing how she can walk out of a store with bags full of merchandise, having paid maybe a couple of bucks out of pocket… and it is all legit. And, of course, she’s still doing everything else that she does to keep the household running.
We’re starting with some pictures from Christmas 2010…

Grampa Pellman keeps the kids entertained…

It’s great when we visit family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins keep the kids entertained and safe. It gives us a bit of a breather.
Cousin Macon and Uncle Mike keep Keelie in line…

Aunt Vicki and Cousin Blaine…

Christmas Eve at Auntie Kim’s was great. Christmas morning started out great at home…

Keelie is growing so fast!

Keelie and Kyle love to spin in these chairs at Puma & Granddaddy’s…

These outfits the kids are wearing were gifts from Uncle Steve’s parents… how nice was that???

Later in January, we met up with our friends Lynn, Erin, and Luke in the evening at Disneyland. Keelie and Luke bonded…

To this day, Keelie talks about her buddy Luke and can identify his state, Utah, on the map. Lynn and I need to discuss a dowry.
And now a picture of our messy eater…

There have been a few times lately when Keelie has fallen asleep before we could do our nighttime routine…


Again…

What are little brothers for?

So next time, Keelie found another place to fall asleep…

I’m surprised Kyle didn’t paint Keelie up with his food the way he did himself…

Then, of course, there are times when they mess things up together. After noticing it was too quiet, we discovered why… the kids had emptied the full paper shredder…

That brings us to Easter. Here’s a nice family portrait…

But it wasn’t the only picture Granddaddy Keel took…

And this one is very telling…

The kids love to color, especially with their Aunt Kirby…

And they both love their Cousin Lainey. Kyle and Lainey are thinking of taking their act on the road…

Kyle strikes a pose…

Keelie in her Easter dress…

Keelie tells Puma and Granddaddy what’s up…

Kyle and his Daddy…

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Taxed For Time

Finally, the moment you have been waiting for is here!

Keelie loves playing with red plastic lids.

Greetings from record-hot Anaheim. Certainly no flooding or snow problems here.

It’s been almost a month since the last update on what we’ve been up to. Mostly, we’ve been watching Keelie grow and develop. I’ve been working, but Kori has been doing the really tough job of holding down the fort. Keelie is very blessed to have the Mommie she does. One of the things Kori does is make Keelie’s food from scratch from fresh fruits and vegetables, instead of using jars of store-bought baby food. What a dedicated Mommie.

Kori did our taxes already, thankfully, so we’re not running around trying to get those done this weekend.

Keelie dives for the floor in an escape attempt. It's okay, Keelie. We file our taxes honestly.

Getting back to Keelie...she’s now almost ten months and has progressed quite a bit since our last update. When we go shopping, she loves sitting in the cart and trying to make eye contact with everyone. She’s become quite the quick and determined crawler, much to the dismay of the dog. But she’s also good at standing and walking, as long as there is something nearby to hold as security. Keelie does brief stints of standing without support - she doesn't even realize she's doing it, really. For some reason, she loves tearing up paper napkins and trying to eat them. She gets a little upset when we remove the pieces from her mouth to keep her from gagging.

When she is on the couch standing next to me, she’ll sometimes start jumping from a squatting position, over and over again. Her legs must be getting strong. If she’s not doing that, she’ll the glasses from our heads with the speed of Bruce Lee. But mostly, she isn’t content to stay on the couch anymore. She'll start climbing up the back of the couch, or slide off head first down to the floor so she can stand up at the coffee table and grab stuff, or move on to other parts of the room. I just want to hold her and play with her, but she has better things to do! At the coffee table or television, she’ll “slap” the surface like she’s a drummer. She’ll also do this when she crawls over to me when I’m in bed... standing there and slapping my shoulder and arm like she’s giving me a massage.

Keelie with Grampa Pellman on Easter Sunday. She was tired.

She gets thrilled when she's in the playpen, and standing at the side and looking out, and we'll play a game where we are face to face, then we both duck down and are looking at each other through the mesh of the play pen, then we straighten back up to look at each other over the top... she finds that hilarious.

The other night, she was having a good time dropping food over the side of her feeding chair and laughing at Shelby, who would franticly it up. Shelby loves to act as though we don’t have a bowl of food available for her at all times.

Keelie still hates going to sleep, hates changing clothes, and has now developed an aversion to the car seat. The moment we get to the car seat, she’ll arch her back and then, when she feels something, she will flip over, preventing us from snapping her in. It’s quite the effort to finally get her in, now, and she protests.

Speaking of protests, Keelie has picked up clapping, but doesn't quite know the uses for it yet. For example, she will clap in the middle of a crying session. Perhaps she is being sarcastic?

Awwwww!

Easter Sunday, we fell behind schedule because Keelie wouldn’t go to sleep the night before. We stopped by to see Grampa Pellman, Grandma Kathleen, her niece, and everyone else at her niece's place. We couldn't stay long, but we did take some pictures, as you saw. From there, it was on to my mother's, where the rest of my family was getting together. My youngest maternal cousin, Jennifer, was there from out of state on Spring Break from college.

Keelie was really tired because she hadn't taken her usual naps, so she ended up falling asleep in Kori's arms for about two hours (above). We waited for her to wake up before we left my mother's.

We’ve returned to my mother’s place on a weekly basis since, so that my mother, sisters, brother, brother-in-law, and nephews can see Keelie. We’ve also been over to Kori’s parents’ place, but not as often because Puma left town on a trip.

I took Shelby into PetsMart for grooming, as she was getting stinky and her fur was getting bad, and the weather is getting hot. Shelby now looks like a different dog and Keelie probably thinks she is.

Last weekend, we were able to slip in a short visit to the Disneyland Resort. Keelie really enjoyed the tram ride. Heck, we could have turned around and gone right back home and she would have had a great time.

We walked around Disneyland Park a bit and took Keelie on Peter Pan’s Flight for the first time. She didn't like it, because we had to hold her to make her face forward with that lap bar in her face. We ran into the same problem we’ve been running into lately with placing her in her car seat. We slipped into California Adventure to check out some of the recent construction there.

So, as you can see, nothing too exciting going on these days, and that can be a good thing.


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