So much happening...

I don't even know where to start when it has been so long since I did anything on this blog of mine. Since Rodney is the center of our lives I might as well start there.

Rodney is doing quite well. He is having some spring allergies. We have found out recently that he is allergic to quite a few things. Dogs, Cats, some molds, Cashews (found that one out the hard way. Some benedryl and an ER visit later, he's all good.), pistachios, and he had an incident with watermelon when it was alone but not in a fruit salad. Not sure of what to make of the watermelon yet, but we will be having our share of it this summer so I guess we will find out if it happens again. He is obsessed with Choo-Choo trains. He loves anything trains and gets excited whenever he hears the horns in the morning as they are going through town. He is shocking me with things he is catching onto lately. He really hasn't watched finding nemo very often but he remembers parts of the movie. We are trying to wean him off of the binky (which he now calls winky... HAHA!) He is really catching on to emotions like sad, happy, crying. He LOVES babies especially new ones and wants to hold every one that he sees.

For Easter we went to Michael and Shelly's house and had a great time over the weekend. We hadn't seen them in what seems like forever and enjoyed our visit thoroughly! Rodney disappeared the entire time downstairs in absolute awe of all the new toys especially the train collection and I could hardly get him to take a break to eat. After all the Easter festivities he gets excited everytime he sees an egg. Sunday was the best he has ever done in a sacrament meeting and I actually got to pay attention! It was a wonderful easter program and the spirit was very strong. Usually I am so distracted it seems like I never get to feel much of the spirit on Sundays.

Tell me I'm not the only one that feels this way having a toddler....

All in all it was a very rejuvinating Easter with great company.

Mark has been accepted into the Arapaho Community College POST Academy for this fall semester. It will be a long 15 weeks with him living at our cousins Danny and Heather's house during the week and home only on the weekends but at least it is a condensed academy! We can start applying for jobs about half way through and hopefully we can get a job quickly so we can progress! He is very excited and doesn't think that this fall can come quickly enough.

I am finishing up my first semester at CSU. It hasn't been too bad. I haven't been too focused because of a few things that have happened during this semester. I lost steam a little early... hopefully I can still grab a 3.0 it's definately possible. I am practicing up for a wedding cake I am doing this summer at the end of July. She wants a mini cake which is no big deal but also wants about 200 cupcakes to go along with it. I couldn't remember the last time I did a cupcake so I am working on a couple kinks and pawning the cake off on anybody I can close by! I won't be making much off of the deal but it is the first cake that I am making a profit on so I'm excited about it. I'm getting excited about our garden this year. Dad gave me so great tips with how to treat the soil so it will hold water better this year. Maybe that will be the trick for our tomatoes. I am hoping for lots of tomatoes this year! I am also expanding it to be double the size if not triple. Planting cucumbers, zuchinni, squash, green beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce, basil, parsley, onions, green peppers, banana peppers, and red peppers, pumpkins, and well I think that's it. Hopefully this year it will be more productive.

I think that is about it for a general update on our lives up in this neck of the woods. Now hopefully it won't be another 6 months before I post anything on here again.... :)

Happy Birthday Rodney!

Yes, I started this post 3.5 months ago. Don't judge. ;) Here it is for the record.

Rodney is two as of Wednesday. We celebrated it by going to the stock show with Grandma and Grandpa Frieson. Rodney had so much fun and I think we have a tradition. We went on Tuesday which was half the price of going on the weekend and well worth the admission. We were napless since we went at 1 and he did great! We saw an event with cutting horses trying to get three specific calves into a pen on the other side of the arena. Rodney called everything a cow. I think that is his favorite word at the moment. He loved all the animals. We saw lots: horses, ponies, cows, sheep, goats (lots of different kinds), pigs, chickens, bunny rabbits, and llamas. There was so much to look at we were there for 4.5 hours and we still didn't see it all. Rodney would have spent all day watching the cows being chased by horses and climbing up and down all the stairs in the arena. But, he was also very entertained in the petting zoo. He was quite weary at first but warmed up after a few minutes. I had a hard time getting him to leave the gross peed on hay on the ground. He thought it was fun to pick it up. ICK! We promptly used the hand sanitizer and later washed his hands with plenty of soap. Grandpa really wanted to take Rodney to Chuck-e-Cheese for his birthday dinner but Rodney was so worn out he fell asleep in the car so we chose somewhere else to go. We'll go another day. Can't say Mark and I were too disappointed we had Texas Roadhouse for dinner instead of Chuck-e's pizza. Wednesday we didn't do too much but we did get Rodney his Birthday present. We went to the pet store and got his first pet. A fish! Mark promptly helped his choose a name. Hemi. Boys... haha. Rodney was being taken to his room for bed last night and had to say goodnight to his fish. We got him a beta since they are lowest maintenance.



Rodney's personality is so fun to see bloom! He is such a ham. He is all about being the center of attention. He has the best balance. He can jump off of steps and other similar things and land on his feet most of the time. He can climb most anything (if I let him). He loves climbing up to the top bunk at his friends Rowan and Kierans house. He loves to stack blocks and can stake 8 high without knocking it over. He LOVES Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. His favorite thing to watch on TV. We have a few episodes on Marks phone and he wants to watch them constantly. They came in very handy on our trip to Utah, but it's also a pain to hear him ask for Kiky all the time. He sure is a talker and I don't even know how many words he says. He will try to say anything we ask him to. Too cute! My favorite thing he does is when I say I love you he will say it back. If you whisper he will too. We also can growl it and he growls it back.

Ouch, Mom, Dad, Mama, Grandpa, please, thanks, ginky (binky), fish, cow, choo choo, gilk(milk), kiky (mickey), let's go!, Bye, more, truck, bubbles, dog, cat, wash, and a few more I can't remember right now.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Everytime we are up at Mom and Pop's house rodney thinks it is fun to climb up into the dogs bed and pretend that he is sleeping.

This is right before Thanksgiving dinner. It was quite delicious! My favorite was the mashed potatoes and gravy. Rodney at a little bit of everything and didn't seem to have a favorite.

He helped me make the pie crusts. He saw me rolling the dough out and had to have a turn. We are teaching him early! I have to give a shout out to Mom for teaching me how to do pie crusts! I have made quite a few pies lately and think of her everytime. It is one of the many things I have learned from her and by far not the most important.

Halloween

These pictures are at the ward Halloween party. My friend Amber brought Liam and Declan to town and came with us to the party which made it that much better! We went off of her costumes for her boys the boxes of cereal and made Rodney their milk. I had a lot of fun making the costume. I guarantee there isn't another costume like it out there! My friend Lacie thought of dressing him all in white, we thought of the letters and the got milk on the back and Pop contributed with the goldfish carton top painted to match the rest! It was definitely a collaborative effort! He wasn't too fond of the hat but he got used to it by the time we went trick or treating on Halloween night.

We had to constantly stop them from sitting down in the hallways to eat the candy they just got. At first they didn't understand what we were making them do. haha!

Someone in the ward gave my friend Lacie this sword when she was playing with Rodney and didn't know who it was...so we couldn't return it. It has become one of his favorite toys. He calls it his pshhh pshhh. It's pretty funny. We made that noise once when he played with it and it

stuck as its name!

For Halloween we went down to Justin and Sarah's house. This is the second year we've gone to hang out with them. Last year it was a surprise trick or treat from us that turned into hanging out and this year it was more planned. I didn't think it would be near as fun to do it alone with him as it would with cousins! We had so much fun! Rodney loves playing with them and really he looks so much like them too that we joke that he might as well be another one of their children. haha! Their street is so fun. People decked out their yard with haunted houses and there were so many kids on the street that you almost had to wait at every sidewalk for the people before you to come down. At the scariest haunted house Rodney did pretty good until we got to the doorstep and the lady was sitting in the dark and you couldn't see her face through her wig. She then said happy halloween in a very scary voice. That set him over the edge! He wanted up and had a death grip around my neck until we got to the next house. By the end he was saying trick or treat but it sounded more like tick keek but it was really cute. I am bummed I don't have any pictures of all the cousins together, but whats new? I always forget my camera... I think its genetic!

Awesome family pictures!!

My friend Dani took these pictures a little while ago. She brought them by the other day and I am just now getting enough time to sit down and look at them all and couldn't wait another minute to post them!! I love them. These are just a few of my favorites. I posted the boots one even though it is on my header so that family that just get the emails can see it too. That one just might be one of my favorites. I thought of it to hang in Rodney's room as part of the John Deere theme but I just love how it turned out! Thanks Dani! Which one is your favorite family photo? I need to pick one to update Mom and Dad's family picture wall, and I just can't decide!

Utah

How great of a Mom am I that I only have pictures of Rodney while we were playing at a park. Not one picture with Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandma, Jeff or Stephaney... nothing. It almost makes me want to cry. We won't get to see them for another 6 months and by then Rodney will almost be two. TWO!?! What?! ugh. Well here are some pictures anyway.

Rodney was sitting very well on a concrete barrier around the park. And then we realized he was trying to be just like somebody...

His Dad who was just sitting up a little ways. Mom thought of taking the picture from this angle. And I am so glad she did, because really, how cute is that!?

This is the only picture that I have from our trip to Utah for the family reunion...again, I'm a LAME-O! But at least it's a good one. We took him to the pool for the first time and he had a ball! We went to a pool that was huge and he would have stayed there so much longer if we would have had time. His favorite was jumping off the edge of the pool to Mark or I. He also loved to wander deeper into the pool until the water was all they way up to his chin. EEK! He sure was brave for his first time in any kind of water outside of a bathtub or shallow pool in the backyard. We had a blast.

For our trip for the family reunion we had a quick trip because we were close to the end of the semester and couldn't miss very much. We got there a day early which is when we went swimming and the next day we went up to the Heber Valley Camp which was very fun. We got to spend quality time with Sean and Anna, Brad and Angela, Justin and Sarah, Amy and gary, and Jeff and Stephaney. We had so much fun doing not much of anything but enjoying each others company and I wouldn't have changed it for anything! We did do the paddle boats and a ropes course that included a zip line which I braved for the second time. That thing is tall...

The second time we were just in Utah we spent 8 days of our break between semesters. I brought my Jean quilt that I cut squares out when I was pregnant for Rodney (yes that was almost 2 years ago...don't laugh!) But it's completed and another smaller one for Rodney is mostly finished but we didn't have time to finish both. We got to go through a session at the SLC temple. AMAZING! So beautiful and I am loving the tradition with Jeff and Stephaney we have started. Every time we go to Utah like this we go to a different temple for a session. We decided that next time we will go to the Draper temple. Quite exciting! We got to eat a few meals of the delicious Wallaby's grub. Went to a few parks. Mom, Dad, Mark and I went on a double date to Sundance to use some tickets they were given to a dinner and a play. It was a pretty good play. Mark and Dad would have much rather been fishing which they did all but 3 nights that we were there, but they were good sports about doing what us women wanted for a night. Jeff and Steph were nice enough to watch Rodney so we could go. But really the quilt took up quite a bit of our spare time. Mark loves it. Makes all the time spent on it worth it. And it is nice to finish a project that took so long to finally finish.

Camping!

Mark and I have been talking about camping for ever since we have been dating...and we finally got to go! With company no less! One of Rodney's very best friends is Liam. They are about 5 months apart in age and get along as well as you could expect 1 year olds to get along.


Rodney was making too much noise while Mark and my friend Amber were resting so we went for a walk and I took a picture to mark his age of 19 months.

Liam thought it was great fun to sit in this backpack whether it was on somebody's back or not. Which meant there was one less toddler to chase! Wahoo!! Especially for his prego mommy! Kudos to her by the way for camping and sleeping sans air mattress the first night...

This is Justin and Amber our great friends that are cooking up some breakfast for us. Donuts I believe!

This was us all hanging out at camp. I don't remember which day. We were up there for two nights. Although I don't know if you would call them nights or not because we didn't sleep very much. Well, maybe I should clarify that Rodney didn't sleep very much which meant that we couldn't sleep very much... He decided that wake up time was 4:00 am both mornings. The first day we were up there we took turns watching kids so we could all rest up as much as possible to catch up for lost time.

All in all it was great fun and we found an even better place to camp that will be FREE!! next time we go up there. We went up to dowdy lake and found our camping place next door at westlake. I think I would rather take up our own water to this new place we found than to worry about our toddler keeping the whole camp up with his very capable lung strength! So we are excited to go up again. Especially with such great friends!