The Boys' Big Night!

Many of you that know our family, know that we're Jazz fans. It's fun to have a professional team locally to follow & cheer for, and even more fun when they're really good (and have such likeable players too)! We were a tiny bit concerned at the beginning of the Utah Jazz's season, but they went on to have a great season & even currently carry the best home court record in the NBA. So! You can imagine how excited we were when my dad scored four tickets the the fourth game of the playoff's first round (Jazz vs. Rockets). And, since kids 2 and under are free - even Noah got to go! Here are the boys before heading off for their big night...

Here's Noah with his uncle Josh. As you can see, Noah wants to be walking right here, not to be held. "Self! Self!" is a common thing for us to hear these days.

This is Mark & Noah in front of the arena! Of course Noah doesn't really follow the basketball game itself, but he sure has caught on to the excitement. Several weeks into the season Noah started saying "go, Jazz!" and knows how to say "Boozer" (notice Noah's jersey is a Boozer replica). As the playoffs started, the Jazz's homepage started including an intro that Noah frequently requests to watch because he likes the song. It's quite a hoot to watch him try to sing along.

Here's a clip of cute little Noah trudging on up the stairs (by himself, of course) to the arena. Note his little "go Jazz" at the end of the video :)



Mark bought Noah a hat for his first ball game - pretty cute. Here's a picture of Noah enjoying a sucker at the game (which he's still talking about) while sitting on Uncle Matt's lap.

Just a little goofing around.


Here is Noah just chillin' on grandpa's lap. I'm assuming this was a request directed to dad for more to drink.

They tell me that Noah was unbelievably good (the game wasn't over until around 11:30...well after Noah's bedtime of course). I know that Mark let him run around in the concourse with him during half time and that Noah enjoyed yelling, clapping, and cheering during the game. I was so glad to hear that he had fun (I already knew that the rest of them would)!

Dad and son after the game. Pretty sweet.


...oh, and the Jazz did win, and it was a great game! If they win again tomorrow, then they'll move onto the next round of the playoffs (which will be against the L.A. Lakers assuming they win their series too, which looks likely). Go Jazz!!!

Zoo

We've been enjoying our zoo pass a lot lately, so I thought that I'd include some photos from a couple of our trips to the zoo. The first picture is from Lincoln's first time to the zoo.

I looove our new double jogger stroller. It handles like a dream. Here are our little guys trying it out.

Noah and his daddy.

It's kind of funny that Noah is almost as excited about the various animal statues at the zoo, as he is about the actual animals. He loved sitting on the baby tiger, but sitting on the big tiger was a bit too scary for him.

Our little Lincoln is such a smiley guy. And, that gummy grin now is adorned by his first tooth as of this last week - soon to be followed by number two.

Here's a funny. When we were at the zoo looking at the gorillas, Noah was really staring at them. Then, out of the blue, he points at the gorilla and excitedly proclaims "cousin!". Now we got a good chuckle out of it, and I said "yeah...I suppose so, depending on how you look at it". Assuming that our child wasn't referring to one of his actual cousins (they look nothing like gorillas), and that he wasn't trying to explain evolutionary theory...I couldn't figure out how he came up with such a comment. Then I remembered that we'd recently watched Jungle Book, and that one of the characters (a great ape) is 'cousin Louie'. Ha! :)

I know, this picture is kind of sad. Noah is trying to come back into the zoo. I snapped it really quickly as I was going through the turn stall though - to show how heartbroken Noah is each time that we have to leave the zoo. He's always so fun and adorable during our visits to the zoo, but it is always really sad when it's over...

Jack's Party!

Our friends' cute little boy just turned 3 and we got to attend his birthday party. It was such a fun party, we had a great time. Here's Jack anxious to taste his birthday cake :)
Mark & Lincoln enjoying the beautiful weather.
Noah enjoying some popcorn.
This is my friend Jenny (Jack's mama) and her darling daughter Grace.
Noah "catching" a ladybug.
Allison & her little guy Isaac. Noah keeps talking about "Isaac...at Jack party".
Isaac and Noah enjoyed running around together. Cute little guys.
Our boys.

Cars

I couldn't help but include a couple quick shots of one of Noah's current obsessions. Cars. He likes to line them up in the windowsill, bring them with him on errands, and is especially fond of the ones that have names (aka Lightning, Sally, Ramone, etc).

Now this stinks!

Our latest news is nothing to envy. This weekend our basement flooded with the neighborhood's sewage. Yuck! It's gross enough if your own toilet overflows and has to be cleaned up, but to have your whole basement covered in other people's waste...something is extra disgusting about that.

We were all upstairs Saturday morning when Mark went down to our laundry room to start a load of laundry. He noticed an area of standing water, so he quickly grabbed stuff to bucket it out. The faster he tried to empty the stinky water out of our house, the faster it seemed to keep coming up the drain in the middle of the floor.

To make a long story short(er) we were lucky enough to have two great neighbors that were willing to come over and help us quickly move belongings that were on the floor out of the way. Eventually a service arrived to start pumping the sewage away from our our home...soon followed by the city who started checking the main sewage lines. They were shocked to find out that every manhole on our entire street was backed up all the way to the top!! So, they quickly started notifying everyone on the street to check their basements, expecting that most of the homes would have the same problem as we did. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) we were the only house that got it! They suspect that since our home is at a slightly lower elevation that we just got hit first, and that if we hadn't caught things so quickly that things would've moved on to other homes also.

Anyhow, after getting the boys situated upstairs, I hurried downstairs to jump from the dry spots (as the sewage continued to spread throughout our basement) and collect the things I'd need to take the boys with me and get out of dodge. Our bathroom ended up with so many inches of the nasty stuff that I couldn't even get in there to get anything, but I got the necessities...as well as all of our dirty laundry. So! As we've been running our laundry (here at my parents house, where we're staying right now) and finding out what we've inadvertently brought with is, it's been like hitting the jackpot - "Oh, sweet! I have a clean bra with me now!" or "We're lucky that Lincoln had so many dirty blankets & bibs!"

All three of our bedrooms are in the basement (as well as the laundry room & a bathroom, as I mentioned), and everything was contaminated except Noah's room. So, after the sewage backup issue was cleared up, the carpet & floorboards were all ripped out. The disaster cleanup crew that came cleaned the floors with this superheated device and with some sanitizing chemical. We had to sign some paper saying that we agreed to keep any kids, pets, or people with respiratory disorders out of the house for a certain number of days. Nobody that could smell would want to be in the house anyway, not to mention all of the nails sticking up everywhere.

We'll find out tomorrow when next week that we'll be getting new carpet (at least that will be nice - sayonara ugly, old, burber carpet), and when we can move back in. *sigh*

So! If any of you have tried to reach us at home, or have left messages there - don't feel avoided, we're not there! Just call our cell phones or email us. And don't worry L&A - we'll have things back to "normal" before you come out to Utah in a few weeks and stay with us! We're looking forward to seeing you.

In the meantime, I'll try to enjoy my pretty good excuse for not wearing makeup for a while (couldn't get to it, to bring it with us!) and I'll continue to be grateful that not only were we home Saturday morning, but that I have a husband that does laundry - otherwise who knows how much worse things would've been before we ever noticed!!!

Update: We got home Sunday night, after being gone just over a week & we're just about settled back in now. New carpet and all *sigh*

Another month gone by...

We love you Lincoln!

• He is now 19 pounds, 12 ounces of squeezable baby
  
• He's found his voice & loves to squeal, yell & growl
  
• Enjoys his playmat & excersaucer
  
• Has been to the movies (Horton) and the zoo for the first time
  
• Loves bathtime & singing time
• Does lots of funny things with his tongue & drools like crazy

Easter Weekend

The Egg Hunt

Well, I wouldn't exactly say that he hunted, but Noah was delighted at the idea of gathering eggs and putting them in his very own basket. I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember doing it last year, and he seemed to think this was a pretty fun thing to try out!

Once Noah discovered that some of the eggs were plastic and filled with candy, he stopped for a taste test. And then things became serious business for a while...
We had such a great time watching Noah run around and collect eggs at his great-grandparents' house. It was a cool, but sunny evening & we had lots of fun.

Of course Lincoln didn't participate in the egg hunt, but he seemed to be enjoying himself anyway! We sure love that smiley little guy.

Easter Morning

So, I doubt this will turn into a tradition, but this year we had a "family" Easter basket. Each of us got a chocolate bunny...then Noah got matchbox cars, stickers, and a sippy cup, and Lincoln got pacifiers. The candy was for all of us to share. We just put it on the porch and rang the doorbell for Noah to find (how else do you "hide" a basket that big?).

It was a lot of fun, but like I said...I doubt we'll always do it. Who knows what our kids' personalities will turn out like, but I was a child that liked to hoard and ration my candy, and my Easter candy was particularly special. Therefor, it was a good year if I finished all of it before the next Easter. It would have been devastating to me to watch my brothers devour all of our collective candy before my eyes. So, even though a community basket sure was easy this year - I'll expect individual baskets to start again next year (although I won't expect much hoarding from our 3 & 1 year old).

Dad generously let Noah dig into both of their chocolate bunnies.

Hey - this stuff is pretty good!
Lincoln & Noah in their new (matching) Easter outfits. I can't resist.

Noah affectionately refers to his grandparents by an association. So, Mark's parents are the "horsie grandma and grandpa" - he gets to go see the horses that live in a field adjacent to their house when we visit. And, if he's just referring to Mark's mom then she's "mama delicious" (since she uses that word often). Really.

So, you can understand the chagrin of my mom in being "mama ogre" or "elephant mama". Alas, it is such. He refers to my parents as the ogre grandparents since they have a Shrek toy at their house that he likes to play with...and to my mom as the elephant grandma since she recently bought him a cute stuffed Horton the elephant that he loves.

So...here he is doing a little egg hunt inside at the ogre grandparents' house on Easter.

Originally I hadn't planned on including one of our family Easter pictures since none of them "turned out" (certainly not because we didn't try, both indoors and out)...but then I decided that I should post one anyway. After all, this is more realistically our real life with a baby & a 2 year old, right? :)
And, just in case we hadn't eaten enough sweets I made some cupcakes...
We hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Four months!

Well, Lincoln turned four months old yesterday!
We went in for his check-up today and here are the stats...
Weight: 18 pounds, 11 ounces (95%), Length: 26 inches (87%), Head: 46 cm (off the chart big - over 100%), Smile: 110% adorable, Cheeks: unmeasurably squeezable!

We got these pictures taken today and I had to choose this one of him sucking on his fist since that it what he does all of the time right now. Another bonus of this picture...it shows those cute little "rubber band wrists"!

Here's our little dude - just hangin' out.

If Lincoln isn't sucking on his fist, then he usually has a binkie in his mouth - or this fish rattle. His favorite place to sleep right now is our recliner. He's his daddy's boy, I guess :)

Pardon his cough at the beginning of this clip, and his raspy voice (he's just getting over his first cold)...but his little giggle is so darn cute!

Gotcha Day!

As many of you know - the adoption community affectionately refers to the day that adoptvie parents are placed with their child as "gotcha day". Today, March 3rd, is Noah's gotcha day! While we naturally still love to celebrate Noah's birthday, his gotcha day is a very special day too. It is the day that we saw him for the first time, and became his parents.

That week between the day of Noah's birth and the day he was placed in our arms was the longest of our life. We cannot adequately describe in words the joy that we felt when his sweet birthmother placed him lovingly into our arms. We will forever be grateful to her for her selfless, loving decision.

This picture was taken just after placement, still at the agency office. His birthmom had dressed him in this cute yellow bumble-bee outifit & wrapped him in this yellow blanket. He was our peaceful, perfect gift from heaven.

We pretty much just stared at him for a week straight in our hotel room...since we had no other distractions and couldn't leave the state until inter-state legal paperwork cleared. It was nice to have that time together before returning to Mark's crazy school & work schedule. Here are a couple more pictures from Noah's original gotcha day. I love the one of him and Mark...it was like he already knew who dad was.

February clean-up

So, here's the scoop on this random post. I was just going through February's pictures on my computer and organizing them, and I pulled several aside that I liked that I hadn't posted. Hope you like!

Noah:
A few random shots of Noah. This one is of Noah with some of his favorite sidekicks. He has to know where they are at all times. They all corespond with either Toy Story or Finding Nemo. And, yes...the big fish is actually our tub's faucet cover (which Noah is convinced is really a shark).

A sight many moms are familiar with. Dirty knees.

Just watching the tube and chillin' in a box...with post-nap bead head.

Waiting to go out for a walk. Yes...Woody and Jesse came with us.

Lincoln:

What's more squeezable than a chubby baby in a onsie?

Then we've got cute baby shoes, binkie baby, and chubby fingers...

Brother Bonding...
It's been fun to watch Noah and Lincoln begin to have unsolicited interaction with one another. Lincoln tries to watch what Noah is during during the day, and now and then Noah will ask to hold Lincoln. In this case, the other morning, Lincoln was set down on our recliner. I turned my back for a moment and when I looked back Noah had climbed up onto the chair next to Lincoln and was giving him kisses and laughing. So, I grabbed my camera and got a couple quick shots.

I love that they're looking at each other in this picture. Too cute.

A little video clip of some brotherly interaction...