Back in the Saddle

It has been an amazing week for our family. Thad was contacted last week by Rain for Rent here in Bakersfield and interviewed with several people. Last night we got the call offering him a job as their Director of Construction Management. Basically this amazing opportunity was dropped right in our laps. Rain for Rent till now has been a rental/fabrication company and would like to expand to a service company. The problem is that they have no Construction managers or project managers in any of their branches across the country. And since amazingly enough this national company was started right here in Bakersfield and still holds headquarters here, they wanted a Bakersfield guy to develop and run this new branch of their company. They were really impressed with Thad's knowledge and we realized again just how much the Lord has been guiding our little family. Had it not been for Thads experience in Fillmore, he would not have gotten this job. We hated him being in Fillmore at the time, but now have to be very grateful for the things he learned on that job and the people he made contacts with.
About a month ago I told Thad that we really needed to learn whatever it was the Lord wanted us to learn from him being unemployed quickly, so that he could get another job. And I think now, that Heavenly Father is still trying to beat the same old lesson in to my head. Patience, and faith that He really will take care of everything. That His plan will always be better than my plan, and that he is fully aware of each of our individual needs. Now, the fact that I realize this is what I'm supposed to be learning will probably not stop me from stressing and worrying the next time one of my plans for life has been derailed, but I promise to try to have more faith and trust so that we don't have to keep re-learning lessons.
So yay! Thad is gainfully employed!
To celebrate we drove up to Fresno today and took the kids to the Zoo up there. It's a very nice little zoo and the weather was perfect. We saw elephants, monkeys, zebras, tigers, bears, giraffs, seals, sting rays, and lot's of birds and reptiles.

Andi with some Lazy Kangaroos.


Sammy concentrating on the Zebras

Thad and the kids in "the Rainforest"


Going back to last week, Sammy has started doing the Mowgli crawl for some reason. It looks painful on the hips, but he's very fast with it, as you can tell from the blur of the picture.


He also got Roseola for a couple days. He was a little fussy but for the most part was a trooper. Here is a close up of the poor little guy.

Close up of his polka dot tummy.

Andi has made the leap from tricycle to big girl bike with training wheels. We have had two skinned knees so far, but we finally got a helmet and knee pads and hope that will lesson future injuries.
I can't express how grateful we are to all of our family and friends who kept us in their prayers these last 4 months, and especially for Renee who made sure, yet again, that I had a means of income. We feel very blessed and are excited for Thad to take on this new challenging position.

Another week goes by

Our latest "growing pain" with Andi is sharing her toys with Sammy. What's funny is that we have the biggest problem with her baby toys and things she hasn't played with in months and months. As soon as I pull it out of storage or the bottom of her closet for him she wants it and more importantly doesn't want him to have it. Like this bear chair for example. She hasn't used it in quite some time, but now she and Sammy have to sit on it together because she can't stand to have him on it all by himself.


She is very good about playing with him outside and is teaching him all kinds of fun/dangerous things. Like how to climb up the slide.

He did crawl all the way to the top, but I had to put the camera down at that point to make sure he didn't crawl off the edge of the play house.


And now we have some before and after of the bathroom. This is the original before, like before we moved in. Don't worry, the walls and cabinets were painted since the week we moved in, but the tile and new fixtures are what we have just finished working on.


And here is the after. Note the gross linoleum on the before, and the lovely tile in the after.


This is what is behind the cute curtain now. before it was one of those solid plastic things.


And here's a close up of the new floor. And Thad was right, it really did take no time at all. He had it all laid in one day, and after the 24 hour required wait time had it grouted the next.


And this is the new piece of wall decor in my bedroom, painted by my very talented friend Chelsie. I gave her a color scheme and she came up with this. I am actually going to be make a quilt and drapes with these colors and re-decorate our bedroom with this as the inspiration. When? I don't know. But it's on my list.

New Discoveries

If you hadn't noticed from the blog re-design I'm back. Not because anything fabulous happened and I'm back at home during the day, but because Thad was over the blogging fun and I kept having to pester him to update "our family journal." So I took it back.
Sammy has made all sorts of new discoveries lately. He likes to help me unload and reload the dishwasher.


He likes to splash in water, not matter where he finds it.


He likes to watch Baby Einstein videos, and will sit there zoning with a goofy little grin.


He likes to drink bathwater, but don't worry, he only likes it fresh from the faucet.

I saw him do that and of course had to grab the camera, and realized that this little guy knew what I was doing. He kept taking drinks over and over, but in between drinks he'd look at me sideways like this to make sure I as still watching and taking pictures.


And then when he was done he had to come get a close up shot.

He's such a happy fun little tank of a guy.
Andi has been doing some interesting things lately too. First, she likes to wear hats, and when we leaves the house she usually needs to have a hat, her sun glasses and her purse, meaning she looks something like this for her trip to the grocery store.

She has also decided that it is no longer fun to smile nicely for pictures and ends up doing something like this.In project news we put a new light fixture in the entryway. There has been this gross gold one, but it was one of those small projects that just kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list because it would take no time at all. This is the before.

And this is the after. Of course Thad couldn't just switch fixtures, he had to re-center and cut a new whole for a new box and new wiring, so it would be perfectly centered on the tile.


Today's project. Tiling the bathroom floor! Again, he says it will take no time at all, but I'll let you know how that goes.

blog slacking= long post/lot's of pictures

August has been a busy and eventful month. It started out with Bobby coming home from his mission to Argentina. The last two years have flown by so quickly I couldn't believe he was really already home. We've been able to see quite a bit of him in the last few weeks which is nice and Andi acted like he'd never been gone. The first day he was home, after 30 hours of traveling, she had him out on the trampoline with her.
We were able to spend a week at Shaver Lake with Thad's family. His parent's rented a nice cabin and borrowed some wave runners and it was a really fun week. We "drove boats" as Andi called it, built sand castles, had a rope swing, ate way too much, and laughed a lot.

Our Sunday Walk/Hike

The boys are severely outnumbered so they stick together

Yes, Thad really let Andi steer for a while.

Even Grandpa Richards(92 yrs old) took a ride

Sammy's baby corral

Grandpa and Andi both fell asleep during story time ;)

We came home Saturday in time to get cleaned up and take Family pictures with my family in our backyard, and spend the evening with them before Kelsie and Cameron had to get back home.



Sammy has decided that he is over baby mush food. He wants whatever we are eating and if he sees you walk in the room chewing he will crawl up to you and yell till he gets a bite of whatever it is. He's very pushy. He cruises along the furniture like crazy and has finally mastered the art of "getting down" without hurting himself. He loves to follow Andi around and investigate what she is playing with, which doesn't always go well. Andi is not as fond of Sammy's new found freedom of movement as he is.
Andi, besides making adjustments with Sammy, is NOISY! She is always telling us stories, or singing songs, and she loves to make Sammy laugh, but her methods usually require some squealing. She loves her primary class and singing time. I think once Thad gets a job we are going to start her in dance lessons to help her use up some of her crazy energy.
Now that it's written it doesn't sound like we've been that busy, but it has felt like a crazy month.

Fatty-Fatty Bo Blatty...

Well we had our 9 month check-up for The Dude this last week and everything is fine according to the doctors. So what does a doctor do best, make things WORSE! How about 4 shots, blood sample, and a urine sample... to make things go smoothly. And for all those out there wondering how to get a urine sample from an infant...well just pray you will never have to do it.

Anywho, on a lighter sumject, Sammy stats are the following:

Weight: 24 lbs 8oz
Height: 30"
Head: 19 cm

He's in the 97th percentile for height and the 90th for weight. She didn't say anything about his head but I'm pretty sure by the time he's 2 years old, he will be a Jack In The Box look-a-like.


Sammy has stood by himself for 2-3 seconds a few times now and is getting very brave with his crawling and walking around.


Andi loves to swim and has reached another milestone in residential water sports by jumping off the diving board and sliding down the Villanuevas' waterslide.

Good times.

Possum Kingdom

Ok so the possum count continues to gain speed as the 5th possum was caught yesterday. I've posted them on Craigslist for sale but no one seems to want them... oh well.

Sammy is really getting around and walking around holding to furniture. I'm pretty sure he will not have any teeth after his walking experience. His love for adventure usually ends up with his face being smashed into whatever object he lost his balance on. He loves to swim in the pool and take baths. The other day Andi was taking a bath and Sammy came to see. He ended up face first in the tub flailing - I was kinda funny.



Anywho, Andi is becoming more and more like her mother...a princess (+10 brownie points). She had a party at Paiges house yesterday and was all dressed up for the occasion. She still loves to play with Sammy and nearly cries every time he has to go down for a nap.



And on another sweet note, Britt, Andi, and Sammy all have been sick the past week or so. Good times! Brittany was upset that I didn't get sick. I owe it to all the healthy meals I eat and the daily sleeve of oreo cookies watching the 9 o'clock news with a tall glass of whole milk... 1,000g of cholesterol a day keeps the sickness away! At least I think that's how it goes.

Interim Sheriff

Thad is at scout camp this week, which means I get temporary control of the blog again! It also means I'm only working half days so I can be at home the other half with the kiddos. Big YAY on that!
Being the blog author usually means you talk about everyone but yourself, and Thad has kept that up, so I'm going to take a few minutes to tell you all what he's been up to. Big project accomplishment, he tiled the front bathroom! The tile has been sitting in the garage for several months and lately he's had some time to work on it ;) I'd post a picture, but I haven't taken one yet, and now Thad has the camera at camp. But even without pictorial evidence you can imagine it's wonderful. Thad has also been catching things again. We noticed a few weeks ago that even though our strawberry plants were growing like crazy, there were never any berries. We also noticed that some of the zucchini we picked had scratches on them. Plus when Thad set a mouse trap in the garage, the food was taken and the trap triggered but nothing was caught. So he brought out the critter cage and 3 nights in a row we caught one of these nasty buggers.

An ROUS?! No just a big ugly possum, and yes, he caught 3 of them. I will not go into details about what happened to the possums after being caught, but now that Thad is no longer driving through no mans land he's not exactly relocating anymore. You get the idea.
I have been taking Andi to her swim lessons this week and it's been really fun. Sitting out in the 105 degree heat has not been fun, but Andi is such a ham in the pool! Today they were learning to dive, and after following instruction for a few attempts, decided to liven things up a bit by adding spins and turns to her dive. I wish I had the camera with me to video. All the parents were laughing and she knew it, and it just made her ham it up even more.
Sammy is getting very adventurous in his new found mobility. His favorite place to be is the bathroom. When things get "a little too quiet" he's usually pulled himself up on the tub and trying to get in. Obviously he's unsuccessful, but the shower is another matter.

He now loves to jump in his bed, so we've lowered the crib. And his top two teeth came in today to join the bottom two. Again, i'd post a picture but. . . .
Sammy also loves "real food". Anything we happen to be eating is his favorite, and he crawls over and begs like a puppy till he gets to try whatever it is.
Thad and I made out first canning attempt last weekend and it went really well. We canned a bunch of tomatoes, and cucumber(pickles). It wasn't very hard, which is good, because we are going to have to do it again in a week or so. We still have so much coming out of the garden!

It's been good talking to you all again. Next post I'm sure Thad will have more pictures ;)

And The Rocket's Red Glare...

Well we have had some interesting achievements this past week in Andi and Sammy's physical developments. Let's start with Sammy. He can now pull himself up to standing and has now mastered crawling and making his way around the house and loves to pull on any cords he might be able to grasp. This usually results in large objects falling from their perch and landing on him. This has not stopped him, however, from continuing his quest to destroy everything we own that plugs into the wall. I am pretty sure that he will be more cautious once a steady flow of electrons travels through his body. Stay tuned for that post.


Anywho, Andi was signed up for swimming lessons last week and has recently decided it was time to get serious about going underwater. She was reluctant at first, but now she swims underwater and can swim all by herself with little to no help at all. She loves the pool and would live there if she could. She began her swim lessons today and amazed the instructors as a 3 year old toddler jumped into the pool and started to swim. Good job Andi.



In other great news, Brittany had her birthday this past week and was treated to Andi's first gift she picked out at the dollar store. Andi was confused at first but then excited about the idea that she could pick anything in the store for Mommy's birthday. She ended up with some nice candles that are now in the kitchen on display. It was a close call between the candles and a porcelain train gravy dish that had the name of a casino on it. Good choice Andi! And happy birthday Britt!

Ahh yes, the 4th of July celebration. What better way to celebrate our nation's independence but by burning a small portion of it. We all had fun watching Walter singe his eyebrow hair off as he tried to master lighting 3 items at once. I have been videoing a lot recently trying to win my share of money in America's Funniest Home Videos but to no avail. Sammy did not like the loud noises and Andi plugged her ears for most of the show but the glow sticks were the most entertaining part. We know what we are going to get next year...

Our science experiment hatched this past week as we picked the SEVEN POUND ZUCCHINI from our garden. Yes that was not a typo. Although impressive in size and grandeur, a seven pound zucchini does not BBQ well.


And last but not least, Sammy grew some toothies the other day and decided to become more like his favorite cartoon character, Mater. "Shooooowt!"