1st Grade Music Program

Spencer had his 1st Grade music program on the 14th.  These pictures are terrible, but they were the best I could get in the crowded auditorium.  All four of the 1st grade classes stood on the risers and sang 8-10 songs together.  Each class was featured in one number.  Spencer's class got the best one - a dance!  Spencer got to dance with his teacher, Mrs. Ayers, because his partner didn't come.  The kids were all dressed up and it was really cute.  Spencer is the fourth from the right side on the top row in the first picture.  Even though he is tall for his age, you can see that he's not the tallest by any means!

Spencer was NOT happy that I made him wear a "Church" shirt, but he was glad he did when he saw that nearly every other kid was in their Sunday best too.  I was proud of Spencer for singing the whole time and not goofing off like some of the kids. :)

Personally, I wasn't too impressed with the elementary music teacher.  He wasn't dynamic at all and I would think that's a pretty important quality to have when teaching kids music.  I'm not complaining though because at least Spencer still has music class.  I know not every school can afford to keep it these days.

7 Months

This sweet heart turned 7 months old last week. I get comments about his stunning, blue eyes and fuzzy hair ALL of the time.

 

Here's what Mason has been up to:

Our days are finally starting to get a little more routine.  It's been hard to get him on a schedule because his naps vary in length so much - from 30 minutes to 3 hours!  He's old enough now that he can stay awake and happy for longer stretches to make it to his next nap time if we wakes up early.  Mason is an awesome night sleeper now though!  He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and wakes up around 7:00 in the morning.  Since I've been getting consistent, good sleep for a couple of months now, I've been able to get up early to run again.  My knee still hurts if I do too much, but I can run four miles three times a week just fine.

Mason is eating more solid foods now.  He had a horrible cold last week which made it hard for him to drink his bottle.  That helped jump start his solid foods a little.  I'm introducing new foods very slowly because of his sensitive tummy though.  Recently, he's had winter squash and oat cereal in addition to the rice cereal, sweet potatoes, bananas, and avocado he had last month.  No teeth yet.

Mason has started making a lot more noise just the past couple of days.  He had been mostly grunting, but is starting to babble a little.  He went to the chiropractor with me yesterday and grunted and grunted at the water fountain in the waiting room.  It was funny.  He still hates tummy time though and isn't even close to crawling or creeping.  Although, he did take a couple of dives from a sitting position to get a ball he wanted yesterday.

Last week I took Mason to a crainial-facial specialist at the children's hospital to get an opinion on the whether or not he needs a helmet for his flat head.  The doctor we saw was excellent at explaining everything to me and I really liked her.  She took some measurements of his head and discovered that Mason falls just beyond the border of where they would normally consider prescribing a helmet.  85% of babies' heads with measurements similar to Mason's look normal by the time they're three.  So, we decided to wait for two more months to see what happens.  Mason is sitting for much of the day now and mostly sleeps on his side, so we're hoping his head will start rounding out.  We'll go back in in June to have measurements taken again.

First time riding in the seat of a shopping cart.  He liked it, but was too wobbly to last more than a couple of minutes.

That hair!!!!

I am loving re-discovering all of the fun stages a baby goes through.  I had forgotten a lot of the fun, little things Spencer did until Mason started doing them.  We sure love this baby!

Easter & Conference

I've decided that I don't love having Easter and General Conference the same weekend.  Having them at the same time makes it hard for me to really focus on either one of them.  And, I love them both so I get shorted a special weekend. 

Spencer is always so careful when coloring eggs.  I don't think he's ever broken one and there were zero spills this year.  Next year when Mason is all over the place will be a very different story I'm sure. :)

Spencer was expecting the Easter Bunny to visit our house on Saturday like he usually does.  I guess the Easter Bunny wanted to wait until Alan was home from his race though, because he didn't show up until after the 2nd session of Conference.  It was a long wait for Spencer!

Alan is such a good sport with stuff like this!

We like to spend both Sunday sessions at Darwin and Debbie's, but Mason doesn't nap well anywhere except home, so we stayed home for the morning session.  That plan didn't work though because Mason only slept for 30 minutes.  :(  He was actually getting a good nap when it was time to go over for the afternoon session, so I stayed home with him.  Mason was only 3 weeks old last General Conference and Alan and I could not keep ourselves awake for the talks for anything.  Thankfully, we're much more rested now and listened to a lot of inspiring talks.

We had a delicious Easter dinner as usual with Alan's parents and spent the evening learning how to do some family history.  It is so nice to have one set of grandparents so close!  Happy Easter!

Tulip Festival

Spencer's last day of Spring Break was a Monday.  It was a beautiful day and I figured that most school districts were back in session, so it was a perfect day to visit the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival.  I think this was our fourth year going.  I haven't been brave enough to take both boys out to do fun stuff like this very often.  We need to do it more.  It would be easier if Mason liked his carrier a little more and if I never needed to use the bathroom.  :)

Spencer always loves the water pumps.

This bumpy slide looks so painful to me, but Spencer loves it and went down again and again.

Spencer could choose one thing that cost extra money.  It was a hard debate between the cow train and ice cream.  Ice cream won this time.

The only proof that Mason and I were there!  He was so fussy in the carrier that I got him out for awhile.  He loved watching all of the kids run around.  We had to walk a ways to the tulip fields this year though, so I put him back in and he fell asleep.

It was a fun afternoon and the perfect last-day-of-spring-break activity.  We just wish Alan could have come with us!

Wednesday & Thursday

Mason slept through the night in our hotel room, but woke up at about 5:00 am.  That meant we were all awake.  So, we got a much earlier start on the day than we had planned.  :)  We drove back up the coast and stopped at some tide pools.  We had to search, but we finally found a few star fish a lots of hermit crabs. 

 

We drove all the way up to Lincoln City where Alan's brother Geoff was staying with his family.  Darwin and Debbie were there too.  We spent a relaxing afternoon hanging out at the beach house with them.   It was even Nathan's 13th birthday so we got to share his birthday cake!

Evan, Spencer, Kaitlyn, and Nathan watching TV on the bed.

Mason doesn't nap well at home and especially not in other places.  He was grouchy so Alan kept him outside for quite awhile.  That baby loves being outside!

Playing catch in the street.  Evan is 15-years-old, but he was so awesome with Spencer.  What a great roll-model!

 

Since Alan and I hadn't slept well the first night, we decided to head home at bedtime instead of staying another night.  But we got about a 1/2 mile down the road when Alan decided he didn't want to go home yet and miss what was supposed to be a sunny beach day on Thursday, so we quickly booked another hotel room.  I wasn't thrilled because I'm not very good with spontaneity and I wanted a good night's sleep, but I'm glad Alan convinced me.  Spencer had a fabulous time on the sunny beach the next morning!

Nap time on the beach!  Ridiculously, I had forgotten to pack any beach towels, so we had nothing to sit on in the sand.  Mason got tired of being held after awhile, so I wound up playing with him in the car.  

"I love school" - what kid writes that in the sand?!!

Our beach day almost ended in disaster when we discovered that our favorite ice cream shop was closed.  Spencer was in tears.  He had to settle for Dairy Queen which can't compare to Snack Attack, but I guess it was good enough because he was happy all the way home.  :)

Spring Break - Tuesday

Since summers are especially busy for Alan with lots of races, he decided to take Spring Break week off work for some good family time.  We've had our fill of traveling long distances with a small baby lately, so we decided to stay fairly close to home.  Alan had heard about a Wildlife Safari about three hours south of here, so we decided to check it out.  Even that drive sounded too long to me, but luckily Mason slept the ENTIRE way down there!

Part of the park was like a small zoo.  We walked around there to stretch our legs for a little bit first.  I liked the flamingos and the aviary best. 

The rest of the safari was an open-range that we drove through.  Most of the animals were free to wander around the park.  There were animals from Africa, the Americas, and Asia.  Spencer was especially excited to see the giraffes and cheetahs.  Alan handled the camera (because I was handling Mason) and took lots of pictures of the bears, but claims he didn't really like them.  :)  It took about an hour to drive through.  Spencer got bored in the parts without animals, probably because we had already been the car all morning!  Mason was fussy, but I think we all still enjoyed it.  It was fun to do once.

Spencer was really excited to use some of the money had gotten from recycling to buy a souvenir.  He chose a white tiger and a pressed penny and couldn't have been happier.

After the Safari, we drove another hour (so much for not traveling much!) to the small town of Bandon on the coast.  None of us had been there before and we wanted to check out someplace new.  We found a good pizza place for dinner.  Mason sat in one of those wooden booster seats restaurants have for the first time and loved it!

Our hotel was close to the beach so we walked down after dinner.  It was cool and windy though so we only lasted about ten minutes.  Mason's first time on the beach!

Spencer counted 137 stairs going back up (I think)!  It was good to work off some pizza!

Alan took Spencer swimming in the hotel's pool while I put Mason to bed in our room.  They had a blast and I enjoyed a few minutes of quiet, reading time.