I owe you one

It appears that my attempt to update more reguarly has not gone so well. I have several weeks worth of information to share. Luckily, (for everyone but me) not much happened so it won't take long to update.

I have been working on the world's worst project for work. Due to circumstances beyond my control I have had to redo almost an entire year's worth of work. Everything from 7-1-06 to 5-18-07 had to be redone. The best part...I had about a week and a half to do it. It was horrible. I can take comfort in the fact that there were people at every Cal State campus doing the same thing but that didn't make it any more fun. I finally finished on Monday and have now been working on everything that I neglected the last to weeks while I was focused on this other project. It is a vicious cycle. So, after that project was done I promptly put in my notice and told my job I would be quitting soon. I tried to have my last day be July 13 but that didn't work for them I guess. So, for now my last day is Sept. 1 but hopefully that will change and I can be out of there sooner. There are a few things that need to happen between now and then so we will see how it all works out.

Walter's last quarter at CSUB started yesterday. He is taking two classes online this summer. The nice part about the online classes is that he doesn't have to drive all the way to Cal State. He can get on the computer at his liesure and take care of his assignments. He will be done sometime in the end of August though we don't know the actual date. I turned in his "Grad Check" yesterday. This is what they use to tell you if you really are done, how your name will be spelled on you diploma, where they will mail your diploma, and so on. I am so proud of him.

Little Walter is doing well. He still refuses to walk because walking is for sissies. Real boys crawl super fast with their mouth wide open and their head down. At least that is how he does it. We are working on the walking thing a little each day but he is still just too afraid to fall. I get that he is tall for his age, but his tushy is only a foot away from the ground. How much damage can he really do?

Other than the walking thing he is just working on growing more teeth. He no longer looks like Nanny McPhee and now has six teeth. He looks like such a big boy when he smiles now. I love it. Of course he bites occasionally, but we are working on that.

There really isn't much else to report. I told you there wasn't much going on. That work project really stopped us from getting anything done.

Here are a few recent pics. In the videos at the bottom you can see him as he helps clean up his tissue paper mess and in the second video you can hear his weird laugh. This is the same laugh he likes to use during church. Very entertaining.

The Widow

As usually, we have been a little busy lately. So busy that I have forgotten to take the camera out to take any pictures so you won't get any on this post. Sorry. We travelled up to Napa this week to visit my family. We kept trying to figure out the best time to go and couldn't come up with an ideal time. it seems that there is something going on every weekend. Weekends are the time that we like to get house and yard projects done but those will have to be put on hold for quite a while. Anyway, Napa was really nice and we enjoyed getting to visit with the family. We saw my great-grandmother while we were there. She turned 90 this month and she is still as feisty as ever. They were all amazed how much little Walter has grown. He was great with everyone and very well behaved this weekend.

On our way back on Saturday we got a phone call letting us know that Bobby (Walter's brother) got his mission call to the Argentina, Buenos Aires West mission. He has to be in Provo at the MTC on August 29. This is going to be a wonderful experience for him and I think Walter is secretly a little excited that there will be another Spanish speaker in the family even though Walter says that Bobby will "sing like an Italian" when he speaks Spanish.

On Sunday Walter got a new calling. He is now the second counselor in the Bishopric. This means that he will now attend High Priest Group and will be the youngest guy there by more than a decade. I told him that he should get a hearing aid and then he might feel like he fits in a little better. I believe the median age is somewhere around the mid-50s. It was a bit strange for me when I was sitting in Sacrament meeting and realized that I was going to be sitting alone every Sunday. I can not tell you how thankful I am that I have family in the ward that will keep me company and help with little Walter when I need it. I think the oddest part of the whole thing for me was how many people congratulated Walter and then turned to me to offer their condolences. I was told that I am now a widow and to kiss my husband goodbye. This calling will take some more of Walter's time but he is a good guy with his priorities in line so I am not too concerned.

Walter is currently working on one of his final papers. He has a presentation to give on Tuesday for his Master's project and another assignment or two for his online class and he will be done with this quarter. I know he is a little stressed but he is trying to hide it as much as he can.

The baby is still teething. He has 4 teeth now and is working on at least one more. He is still doing well with saying Nana and Dada and we are sure that he said "duuuuCK" on our way home from Napa. He actually said it a few times when he was repeating me after handing him a rubber ducky. I know that he has no clue what a duck is but it is pretty cool that he will copy me. I guess I have to be careful about what I say from now on.

Walter and I will be spending the evening at a young married people family home evening so I should get to the making of treats.

It's been a while. I've missed you.

I can't believe I have gone so long without posting. Almost two weeks. That is a long time. I really want to be better at the regular updates but I have been a little busy. With all of the working, the Young Women activities, taking care of things around the house, oh yeah, and taking care of the kid. It just takes all of my energy. Unfortunately, I have to pay a little less attention in one area and I chose the blog. I think I might try to get into the habit of doing one post a week for certain. I will post during the week if something exciting happens or I have exciting news, but I will definitely set time aside once per week. What do you think?

Well, now that we have that out of the way I can get to the update from the last two weeks...if I can remember that far back. May 4 I left Walter home with the baby. This was a Friday night, which is traditionally date night, but I had to chaperon the Youth Conference for the 14-17 year-olds at church. I had a good time. Some of the youth from our ward (including Bobby and Bryce who are no longer youth but don't have much else to do) have a band that played during dinner. It was great to see them up there and they did a great job. I could never have gotten something like that together at their age. Forget the fact that I couldn't play an instrument if my life depended on it, I just wouldn't have the wherewithal to organize it.

The next day was filled with shopping, a baby shower and getting Alexis (Renee's daughter) ready for the prom. She looked so pretty. I was in charge of hair. Actually, I was in charge of a dress, shoes and jewelry earlier that week, but that day it was just hair. I have never dealt with so much hair. If you want some tips on growing a lot of hair, ask Alexis. I finally managed to tame it and it turned out pretty well. There isn't much to talk about in regards to the baby that weekend because he was passes back and forth between Walter and I quite a bit and was really a trooper.

I must interject a bit of upsetting news. It is not upsetting for anyone but Walter and I really, but I still want to share. Our neighbors moved last week. Their names are Justin and Anji. They were great neighbors. They would visit with us, keep an eye on the house if we were out of town, never loud, just all around good neighbors. We used to have good neighbors on the other side of us as well, but they moved in December and the crazy lady moved in. She uses our trash can, complains if you park in front of her house and lets her dog use our front yard as a lavatory. That is just not okay. Her dog was in our yard on Sunday, May 6 when Walter was having an Elders' Quorum meeting. One of Walter's counselors comes walking up the front and her dumb little dog with the bandanna around it's neck tries to bite him. I understand that the dog was trying to be protective of his yard, but he wasn't in his yard, he was in mine. So anyway, the experience with this new lady has made us a bit leery of new neighbors moving in. I am hoping for the best, but if the lady that was looking at their house who had the HUGE tattoo on her arm is any indication of what is to come, I don't think I will be very happy.

Things settled down a little last week and I got to spend more time with just the baby and I. He is doing the weirdest things these days. He grinds his teeth now. That is a noise that bores into your skull. He only has three teeth, but he learned how to grind them. Ugh. He has also become a little bit of a sleep stripper. I have gone into his room twice in the last week to pick him up from a nap and found him without pants. Yesterday he took his pants off and threw them into the middle of his room. Why? I don't really know. He has started saying "dada" and "nana". I think nana is supposed to be mama which is close enough for me. I don't know if he understands that I am mom and Walter is dad or if he just likes the fact that I clap and get excited when he says nana to me. I just figure that wishful thinking is probably the best way to go on this one.

Oh, one more thing before I scurry off to get ready for work. I had my first official Mother's Day on Sunday. It was great. Walter and I picked out a new dining room set on Saturday. That is my Mother's day/Birthday present. I am very excited for it to actually come in. The tentative delivery date is my birthday so I hope it comes in then. Walter made me stuffed french toast for breakfast. It was delicious. He usually has meetings Sunday mornings but they were cancelled for Mother's day so he got to stay home and take care of breakfast and getting the boy ready for church. I don't know if I expressed this quite enough that day, but I have a wonderful mother and a wonderful mother-in-law. I am truly grateful for both of them and all that they do for our family.

I must go now. Obligations await.










Little feet during a nap.













Ready for his Nascar debut at Lowe's.













Being destructive. As usual.

In the absence of exciting news

I feel bad sometimes when I don't update the blog. I feel as though I am letting you all down. My fan base is pretty limited but I still feel that I owe it to my family and friends to write something. Unfortunately, there isn't much to write about right now.

Little Walter is still teething. Tooth number two should be in any time now. Husband Walter is still going to school and is getting more and more eager to be done. He will be able to do his last two classes online this summer and will not actually have to attend campus. That is a great blessing. I am still doing the same things I always do and they aren't particularly thrilling.

That's all. No life changing news. No funny anticdotes. Nothing really.

I suppose you can all take comfort in the fact that I don't have anything bad to report.

I promise that as soon as something exciting happens I will let you know.

Just one of those days

There are some days when it seems like Little Walter is out to get me. Every time I turn around he is in something, on something, eating something, etc. I know that you are probably thinking "he's a baby, that's what they do". I get that, but I just can't seem to understand the fact that he is only a menace sometimes. Do I feed him something different that makes him hard to handle? Did I look at him wrong? Does he have a little baby stress disorder that makes him act out?

At the end of the day he is still a very good baby, but sometimes he seems to have too much of his dad in him.

Here are a few pictures from one day of fun. What isn't included is his attempt to be king of the toilet paper mountain. He crawled on to the costco pack of TP and then took a spill. I tried to stop him.

The Tooth

Here is a picture of it. I don't know why you wouldn't believe me, but in case you didn't I now have proof. If you click on the picture it will be bigger so you can see it.










I also tried to get a video. That didn't go so well. I suppose it is a good representation of what I put up with during the day.

I am busy right now canceling my denture order

Yesterday little Walter finally got his first tooth. He has been working on it for almost two weeks now. I was starting to worry about his lack of teeth but I was assured by Corinne (Nurse Practitioner Extraordinaire) that toothless children are not a concern until they are two years old. Exactly what they do with them when they are two I don't know. Luckily, my kid seems to be on his way to actually being able to chew, so I am not worried about it.

The teething process hasn't been too bad. There have been a few rough days. More so for me than him, I think. He was a bit whiny but all in all he was pretty good, I guess. I think it was more traumatizing for me because I am used to him being so pleasant that it is difficult to relate to him when he gets fussy. I seem to have come out of it all okay and the baby came out of it with a tooth so we are doing alright.

There still isn't enough tooth visible for me to get a picture so you will have to wait on that one.