Erik is two!

Erik is now two years old and we are loving it! He is such a great blessing to our lives.

Erik got some great cards this year including one with a big two. Plus, he had fun birthday cupcakes that looked like frogs hiding in the water. Erik had already eaten the eyes in the first picture.

Here is a better one of the frogs.

We got a great tool set that Erik loves and played with for about an hour the first night. And we got it for free! Thanks Lance, Kim, and Lily.

Erik has been mimicking us a lot. He often puts his head in his hand and says "Hmm" like he is deep in thought.

He had a great birthday dinner, too. Scrambled eggs, sausage, olives, cucumbers, and donuts. All of Erik's favorites, mmmmmm.

Finally, Erik got some paints that he loves. He painted this picture and then a big posterboard. He even drew two circles and said, "Eight." We love Erik so much and are looking forward to making some wonderful memories with our wonderful son.

Sweet Moments

Erik's started to snuggle with us in the morning as he watches "Monkey George" as he calls it :)

We love every minute of snuggle time.

Play time! Erik and I were entertained by this "box car" for bout a half an hour a few weeks ago. Horray for diaper boxes, creative minds and free time :)

Playdough!
Erik got playdough as a treat when Trick-or-Treating and this was his first encounter with it. He really likes to make snakes and balls and is very good at smashing his creations.


I love how concentrated he looks in this picture.

We all matched one Sunday morning and decided to do a family picture. So glad we have a timer on our camera. This one might not be the best of Paul or I but I sure love Erik's grin in it :)
We are a happy family!

Halloween Fun!

So to start the season off right we introduced Erik to

Pumpkin Carving!

He wasn't a big fan of touching the gooey seed mess inside...

...but he liked being a part of carving and picking which shapes to make the eyes and nose. He know his shapes so well! He can even say Hexagon! He's also a wiz with A,B,C's and numbers!

Erik's pumpkin!

Our Pumpkin Family!

Can you guess which one is mine and which one is Pawly's?


Oh and it just isn't Halloween around here without some sugar cookies!

Erik helped me make, roll out, and cut out these cookies.

And he also helped me eat them. Just like his daddy he's all about the frosting. I think after he was done with this cookie the frosting and candy were gone, but only 1 or 2 bites were taken. :)


Halloween Eve!

We went to my parents' ward's TRUNK-O-TREAT!

We've been almost every year for the past 4 years!

We were a sporty family this year!
Dad-basketball player
Erik-baseball player
Mom-volleyball player

One of the MOST comfortable costumes I've ever worn!


Erik got his face painted by Daddy! He didn't want anyone but Dad near him with a paint brush, it took some coaxing to get these on, but after the job was done he was sooo proud! He'd keep showing my family his paintings by pointing to his cheeks, soo cute!

Dad managed to paint a great baseball and mitt on our little slugger!



Now on to the CANDY!

We were trying to teach Erik how to say Trick-or-Treat but he really only got out Treat this night. He did the usual, want to eat the first piece of candy put into his bucket, but quickly got distracted by MORE candy being put into his bucket. He caught on quick and was running to the next car for more treats! One time I lost his hand and he just ran up to the next person with candy without me. He had a great time and we had a great laugh!


We got a wonderful carving kit this year esp for kids, but the quality of the scooper and knife is WAY better than any of the yellow handle ones I've ever used. It made carving a cinch! We probably finished all these pumpkins in like an hour

A another look at our great pumpkins!

Autumn Time

We've been neglecting our blogging duties lately. We haven't been exceptionally busy, but we've had a lot to do with canning, working, school and everything else. So here's a much overdue post.

Pawly's had morings off this semester so he and Erik have had some fun playtime while I get ready for the day.

Fun with blocks and pockets!

Erik has found his pockets lately, he loves putting his hands in the pockets. These overalls have been tricking him though, he ends up putting his hands down the overalls, so we have to show him where the pockets are. :)

One mom's trash....
....is a kids treasure.

I was about to throw this laundry basket away, but Erik found it and loves playing with it. Gonna have to trash it when he's napping one day.

Funny boy.

I found Erik under the table with the hammer the other day. So I got him some hammering toys, to save our chairs. He loved it! And I loved watching him play with his toys :)

Summer Recap

Looking back at some of our Summer pictures I realized that a lot of them didn't make it onto the blog. I also realized that we did a lot more than it seemed. We spent a lot of time at the park, went to the Library a few times, had many family picnics-and I'm still not sick of hamburgers, it's amazing!

Erik had fun getting into some tight spaces. This is also the chair he fell off when he split his lip open-which has healed really nicely!

He fell asleep a few times in the high chair, soo cute, reminded me of his baby days.

We also had some inside fun! This was mommy's version of cleaning up the blocks. Erik posed well for the picture, what a ham he's become!

So Erik has Powder Milk on his face. I have it stored in a few buckets, apparently one bucket it a little to accessable for Erik. He opened it up and started EATING the powder milk, yuck! But he actually did it a few times! Funny kid. :)

Horray for broom hockey!


24th of July (pioneer day) celebration.

No relation to this kid except for she's the daughter of a boy I went to high school with, small world.



Snuggles with Grandpa!

I'm stuck here Dad!

We were BIG fans of Settler's Park this summer!

Labor Day Picnic brought to you buy....

.... the letter C!!

We had a picnic today during Pawly's break from work. I started to list what we could take to the park and noticed a theme. Here's my list:

Chicken

Carrot Salad

Chips and salsa-homemade, mmm and so fresh! Thanks to my mom's garden of tomatoes.

Cantalope-Erik's favorite, he calles it "Lope"

Chocolate Milk

and what could complete this meal but....

COOKIES!

but what did we forget?

Camera :(

So it's obvious we like watch Sesame Street at our house :)

It was a GREAT picnic! So nice to be together as a family and play on the playground together. The park we went to had a slide big enough for 3 people to go down at once, actually it was like 3 slides in one, all a little curvy and the middle one had 'speed bumps' I guess down it. So we took advantage of that and went down together. Erik really loves sliding, it's so much fun to watch him play at the park.

Now I'm back to the peace and quiet of our home, both Pawly and Erik are asleep.

Happy Labor Day everyone, please don't Labor today, it's a day of fun and a day off!!!

Fairwell Laurie Michael

Our wonderful smiling sis is leaving tomorrow to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to willing souls in Nashville, Tennessee. We're so proud of her decision to serve the Lord for a year and a half but we sure will miss having fun with her.

However, I'm very excited to receive letters from her and see how the work is going and hear how her testimony of Jesus Christ will grow as she teaches others!

So goodbye to our beloved sister. Keep making us laugh and smile through your letters. We know you'll be an amazing instrument in the hands of the Lord. Now go to and serve with all your heart, might, mind and strength. You'll be in our prayers!! We love you!!!!

Copy Cat

Kids pick up on the littlest things sometimes.

Erik will grab my glasses case, which yes looks like mommy's purse, and head to the back door to go outside. I know it's not very manly, but I think it's soo cute that he copies me! He's so observant to know that I always take my purse when we leave the house.

This is Erik's "CHEESE" face. We've gotten in the habbit of telling him, "Say cheese!" before we take a picture.

Pawly showed Erik how to put money in his Teddy Bear Bank one day, he picked up on it sooo fast. Now every time he see's change or the Bear Bank he wants to put the coins in.

We really took this picture because Erik kept his Easter hat on longer than 3 seconds, we're so proud!

Erik's also copying most of our words! Lately he's been saying, "Oopsie" but it kinda sounds more like "boobie" Yeah that was really funny to hear yesterday in Sacrament meeting at church. Pawly and I had the hardest time keeping our laughter under control.

*Note: Erik's lip is doing well. He really isn't playing with it much and I don't think it's causing him anymore pain. Thanks for all your comments on that :)

Erik's 1st Trip to.....

.....the Emergency Room!!!

Yesterday was a pretty emotional day for our family. At around 11am Erik fell off a chair at home and cut hip lip open, yuck, it was not pretty. But his Daddy was excellent at stopping the bleeding with ice cream, amazingly Erik stopped crying once the ice cream came out. :) Then they headed for my work to show me the sad face and I walked them over to the ER to check in. After a little while I checked in with them and the verdict from the Dr was he needed stitches. And to get those stitches in, Erik needed to be sedated, which meant he needed and IV. This is where things got really sad. As the nurses and I tried to restrain Erik to get the IV in he kept screaming and yelling, "NO!" and "Hold you!" which is what he says when he wants you to pick him up. I felt so bad for him. I was so sad that he was in pain and that we needed to cause more pain to fix his lip.

Here's a BEFORE shot of Erik cuddling with his daddy.

It gets worse. The Dr. and nurses explained that the sedation medication would knock Erik out while they stitched him up but one of the side effects are nightmares!!! "So he might wake up screaming." they told us. WHAT?!?!? Anyone else feel the guilt and tears piling up?


My husband is a wonderful bearer of the priesthood and had the clarity to remember to give Erik a blessing before the procedure began. I was so happy that the staff were willing and welcoming of that. I think it gave everyone in the room comfort and calmed us all down.


Erik woke up very calm to mom and dad leaning over his bed, what a blessing! We tried to keep him calm by singing him primary songs, I really think it helped.


After many tears, from mom, dad and Erik, he made it out of the ER with 4-5 stitches in his upper lip that will stay in till next week. He'll probably have a scar, which I was feeling bad about, but ya know, guys think scars are pretty cool, so I think it'll be ok. :)

This is Erik today. Such a happy boy.

I think he's gotten used to having stitches in his lip now because he's not playing with them as much as he was yesterday. So hopefully he won't pull them out with his teeth, the Dr. was concerned about that.

I really never thought I'd be so sad to see my child hurting, but it just killed me yesterday! All I wanted to do was take the pain away and hold my baby.

I Never Thought I'd say this...

...my baby's so BIG!!! Good grief! I realized that in a few months, Erik will be 2! What?!?!?! Didn't I just bring this kid home from the hospital? Where are the days where he fell asleep in my arms, oh how I miss that sometimes. WOW I'm such a MOM!!! I guess it's official now, once you obsess about how FAST your kid grows you become the mom (I) never wanted to be. Oh well there's a good side to this. Erik's learning to do more every day and that includes talking. It seems he's in a copycat stage right now and it's so amazing to see how easily he picks things up!

OK, moving on to pictures now:

This was Erik being a "big help" to Daddy doing Laundry, my husbands so sweet to do this, love him! Notice the nice pine cone Erik has in his hand. He's loved to pick these up around the front yard area and throw them or just hold on to them as little keepsakes, it's so cute! And I'm so glad it's not bugs or worms, but I know that day will come :(

Another great Laundry help. Erik LOVES climbing into the dryer! He'll play peek-a-boo with us with the door, it's so cute! Normally he gets in when the clothes are all out, but I guess he wanted to get in really bad and couldn't wait. :)


This photo Erik took himself. He loves playing with the camera, yeah my favorite too...NOT. But I let him do this one closely supervised. After we take a picture of him he always says, "See!" so then we show him the picture.
This is a quiet book Erik loves to play with, esp at church. I'm really amazed at how it keeps his attention, it totally rocks!



Funny face after dinner one night. I love this kid. He can make me laugh every day!

Daddy's lil sport!

This picture wasn't the best look of Paul, but Erik looked the best in it. Paul put those gloves on him and Erik just started to beam! It was so cute!

*note I think I just used "so cute" at least three times, sorry if that got annoying