February Activities

We have all found a "latent passion" for new things this month. (It has not included salsa dancing, however.)
Ruthie has discovered her toes and her voice. She spends much of the day rolling around and playing with her piggies. She also babbles and blows raspberries and drools like there is no tomorrow. When she greets someone, she beams up at you and then has to touch your face. It is just a Ruthie thing, a little bizarre.
Seth has discovered a new love. Puzzles are always number one, but Play-Doh is the new fad. Seth played with Play-Doh for five hours straight one day this week. He didn't stop for a snack, a show, a puzzle, or even a potty break--which doesn't really matter since he is clueless on this concept anyway. He only stopped to show you his new creation and then he was right back and the counter making something new. (Anna enjoyed it as well--notice her pink flamingo--but got bored after the first hour.)
Anna and I have shared the same passion this month: High School Musical and High School Musical 2. Yes, we are late comers to the fan-mania, but we have spent all month singing the songs at the top of our lungs and learning all of the dance moves. I'm so glad I have a five-year-old to share my hidden desire with of being the next American Idol/Dancing with the Stars hit singer/dancer. With Anna, I can just let it all go and she thinks I'm wonderful. The second Rob walks in the door, I mute up. (By the way, Hannah Montana is also a huge favorite around here.)
Rob has been into economics and politics. (How exciting!) Actually, we both completely ignored the kids on Super Tuesday and watched the polls come in. We also watched the State of the Union. When Seth came in and saw George W. on the TV he exclaimed, "That's my cowboy!" I guess they share a common background, both being Texans. I won't bore you with the economics details. However, Rob did get accepted to BYU's EMBA program and will be starting this summer. I guess we'll be having more economics discussions around here for the next two years. (Yeah, me.)

Snowed In

I finally decided to get into the whole blogspot thing. I've been waiting for Rob to update our site, but after a very boring, very cold month, I figured I should find something productive to do with my time.

We returned from our marvelous trip in Mexico over the holidays to a very snowy and depressing winter. Vacation is wonderful, but it is always hard to come back to real life. Luckily we had a few things to look forward to. We celebrated Rob's 29th Birthday (next year is a big one), and Seth's 3rd Birthday. Rob's birthday wouldn't have been complete without a dark chocolate cake.
Seth's Birthday was quite the riot--a Backyardigans theme. We played musical spots and had a treasure hunt to find puzzle pieces. The puzzle, of course, made it a big hit in Seth's case. Grandma and Grandpa Tidwell were very good sports. As Seth was blowing out his candles, he began getting frustrated. The harder he blew the more spit he let fly. He finally yelled out, "Look out below!" and succeeded not only in blowing out the final candle but leaving a nice puddle on the cake as well. I don't know who started this marvelous tradition, but obviously it was not someone with children under the age of five. Next year we will be making two separate cakes.

Seth at Three Years Old

My only accomplishment for the month was to finish my snowman quilt, a project I started four years ago. It actually has been rather relaxing--a good break from the exercising and strain that my uncle Shane has been putting us all through. Despite the dreary winter, it has been nice to have an excuse to stay in my pajamas, stay home, watch shows with the kids (High School Musical has been the big hit around here) and just do nothing. Spring better come soon, however. I am not one to sit idle for too long.

Sweet Little Ruthie

Ruth turned a week old today. How fast time flies. As promised, here are some pictures. Anna is wearing the stethoscope that Grandpa Tidwell bought for her. I've had to limit Dr. Mortensen to giving me one checkup a day.

Ruth is about as sweet as they come. I've only heard her cry a handful of times, and only when she gets really hungry. Most of the time she's content to just lie there taking everything in. We decided on Marie for her middle name.

Emily is recovering very well. We've had so much help from family and from the ward. My mom has been staying with us for a few days. The kids absolutely love having her around.

Seth came in the room when Emily was holding Ruth and asked, "is that baby Rupee?" (his th's aren't very good). Anna helped him out, however, by responding, "it's not Rupee, Sef, it's Rufee."

I've been able to work from home for a few days, but plan on going back to work next week. It's been fun to be home and spend time with the family, but I'm starting to miss my job a little.

Seth has become a puzzle fiend. He started with his two small, 24-piece Elmo puzzles, but after doing them about a hundred times each, we thought we'd better get him some more. His day is not complete if he hasn't put together at least a dozen puzzles. He got bored with doing them the regular way and started doing them upside down. No joke. He still needs a little help with the 100-piecers, but I'm sure he'll be doing them on his own soon.

Anna is loving preschool. Our neighbor around the corner teaches her class Monday and Wednesday from 9 to 12. She rode her scooter there today with Grandma Mortensen. Anna's day isn't complete without coloring at least four or five pictures. She's getting pretty good too. This isn't saying much, but she's better than me. Honestly. Here's a barn she drew the other day. You'll notice the barn complete with doors, hay and a rooster on top, the farmer gardening his carrots, the sun, a bird, a windmill and miscellaneous fields (I had to ask on those).

Summer Fun

We've had a ball this summer. We planted a tree for both Seth and Anna to liven up our backyard. Daddy did most of the work, but the kids helped water them. Our yard isn't very big, but we have a lot of common grassy areas around for the kids to play in. They mostly spend their time riding scooters and bikes in the large circle in front of the house.




Anna was very brave and learned to do a back float as well as dunk her whole headThe kids also enjoyed their two week long swimming lessons. under the water. Seth wasn't as excited and spent a lot of time clinging to Mom and watching Anna swim, but he sure looked cute in his frog hat.





Cousins Eric and Rachel White came up in July and went to the Barker family reunion in Logan. Grandpa Barker took us all on a tour of his parents house.








Seth's new love is puzzles. He'll do the same Elmo puzzle fifty times in a day and still ask you for help with it just to have you be with him. We keep having to buy harder and harder puzzles just to keep him challenged.

One of Anna's favorite activities is coloring. She colored a picture for me yesterday of me baptizing her. Talk about breaking a parents heart! She then asked me to spell out "When I get baptized I receive the Holy Ghost." She wrote it down as I said the letters. Is there anything better than being a parent?


Little Ruth is set to come in a month. Emily is quite ready. Despite being so uncomfortable, she spent the whole day with me yesterday arranging, cleaning, and organizing the basement. We've got both our (auxiliary) desks set up in one room along with a desk for Anna, a play room for the kids, a storage room, and the eventual family room we're going to start finishing ourselves. It's so great to have a basement again! That's one thing I really missed in Texas.

Anna meets her preschool teacher this week. She is so excited to be a big girl and join the ranks of the big kids in school. I've been called to be Elder's Quorum secretary, and enjoyed teaching the Elder's Quorum lesson today. Work is going great; I'm loving it more than I could ever imagine. I spent last week in Austin for National Instrument's big conference NI Week. It was great to see all my old NI friends. When the humidity hit me as I stepped off the plane I knew I was home. I know it's strange but I sure miss it.

Hopefully next post we'll have some pictures of our little Ruthie to share.

Inspiration

Todd Sierer inspired me today. We met somewhat unexpectedly at the LabVIEW Developer Day at the Hilton in Salt Lake. He told me to check out Katie's blog and I told him I wanted to get our family website up again. He asked me why I didn't just create a blog. When I started thinking about what I'd write, it kept flowing, so I decided to try it. Thanks Todd!

Emily has her monthly book club tonight, so after getting the kids down I finished watching the Jazz lose in solitude. We (meaning the Jazz, because I'm on the team) actually played pretty well but San Antonio is simply too good a team for us. My only hope is that we'll fare better at home and gain some momentum going back to Texas.

I then started playing around with iFolder. It's a really useful application that synchronizes folders on different computers. It's developed by Novell and is open source. They have some great directions on getting it working on Windows. I had to build and run the server for the clients to work, however, so it's pretty involved but is still pretty slick.

We're still getting settled into our new home. We love it out here in Syracuse! My parents and Rebecca and her kids came up to check out our progress.

We didn't realize when we moved in that we already had a tenant. This robin's nest is right on our front porch. We saw the three little baby birds stretching their little necks out for food for the first time on Sunday.