Trip to the east

We went to Raleigh, North Carolina this past week for the Gaseous Electronics Conference. This is the same conference that we went to in New Jersey last year. Stan presented again and we decided to make a family trip out of it. It was quite the adventure!

We left on Sunday late morning. Scott was a pretty good boy on the plane.

We had a layover in Dallas before we headed on to North Carolina. Luckily, Scott was still a good boy on the second flight.

Scott was so tired after a long day of travel. He promptly feel asleep on the comfortable bed. We moved him into his crib though :)

Monday was the start of the conference. Stan was gone all day. Scott and I went for walks around downtown Raleigh and while Scott slept, I rested and read, and hung out. It wasn't the most most fun to hang out in a dark hotel room, but it was so fun to be able to be with Stan during the week. I loved when he would come up for his breaks and spend time with us during lunch!

We were super excited that they had a swimming pool, so Monday night, we got all ready and headed down.

Scott LOVES swimming!

Living the life, hanging out on the pool chairs.

Turns out, the pool was FREEZING!! I didn't get it. But Scott had a fun time with Stan. We couldn't get an unblurry picture, but he has a huge smile on his face!

Scott's new thing is to chew on my chin. He attacks it...

And then gnaws on it

The next few pictures are in no particular order. The rest of the week was full of conferencing for Stan, and walks through downtown for me. Scott got less and less able to sleep well in the hotel which meant lots of walking. In the early morning, while Stan was trying to finish sleep before another long day of the conference, Scott and I hung out in the hotel lobby. Everywhere we went, everyone oohed and aahed over the boy, which, of course, we agree with everything they say. Despite his sleep antics, he is one cute boy!

He LOVES to chew on apples.

We found a Looney Tunes cartoon cd at Walmart before we went. Scott liked watching it on our bed with us.

This trip, he has really branched out with his moving. He was in every corner he could find. He LOVES seeing himself in the mirror.

On Wednesday, I rented a car and met Dave, Nikki, Hallie, Annie, Ethan, Janae, Nate, and Aubrey in Richmond. I was so glad to able to see them! They are so nice to meet me down there. Just wish Steve could have joined them :)

The colors on the drive down there were beautiful. I love the fall!

We met up at a mall and the kids checked out a few books at Barnes and Noble first. It was fun to have all six of them together. We struggled to get a picture of them actually all looking at us.

We then walked over to a little play area they had in the mall.

Nikki and Scott. He loved playing with everyone. Again, the kid is blurry because he is so busy jumping!

He liked the wavy mirror.

All the kids got on the floor to crawl with Scott.

He had lots of smiles for Uncle Dave

Our last destination before we had to part ways was a park.

Nate, Scott, and Hallie. This was his first interaction with sand and he didn't quite know what to do about it, but he sat there and ran his fingers through it some.

It was so fun to see them all play together!

I'm so grateful for such a happy boy. It would have been impossible to drive there if he had been grumpy!

Scott swung in a swing for the first time and he LOVED it too.

We struggled with the looking (and for Nate, smiling) at the camera, but we were all happy to be together!

Aubrey and Scott

I'm sure grateful for these two, and cute Ethan. I have such a wonderfully supportive family!

We had great cuisine all the time we were there! We went to a sushi place twice because it was so good. Here's a picture from our southern eating at The Pit. It was super delicious!

A tired Scott ready to go home!

We had such a great time but were so grateful to get home :)

Scott's Latest-October

It's been a bit since I've dedicated a post to our cute boy, but he is still growing and still adorable. Here are just a few pictures from the last month or so with Scott. He is getting so big! He is crawling like he has been to army boot camp. He is really into investigating interesting looking things. He is super persistent and tries different angles of reaching something he wants to hold on to. He was really into clicking his tongue but he hasn't been doing it as much the last couple weeks. He has started to say "mamama" but it isn't directed at me.

This was early on in the month, he was being super cute one night so I documented with pictures...what would we have done back in the day without cameras?? Probably just enjoyed the moment and moved on huh? :)

First time in a grocery cart. It lasted about another minute after this picture because he was still a little wobbly and would hardly hold still, he just about jumped out of the cart! And he is so little that he would have slid through any hole :)

Scott LOVES books. Especially eating them...

He's on the move!! He is officially into whatever he wants to get into. I had to clean up the area on the right (all the things I've never put anywhere since we've been in this house temporarily) because he was slithering his way into all of it, yikes!

He's eating more food! He LOVES to suck on whatever I'll put in there. Fruit and veggies, yum! He even tried beets the other day, and like them of course :)

This is his favorite position this month. He doesn't quite think it's necessary to get up on his hands, he just gets up on his knees and elbows and hangs out.

Scott got his 1st huge hair cut. It was a little shorter than I anticipated, but it has already grown back lots. He is as adorable as ever still.

One evening after dinner. Scott LOVES being outside. He loves to touch all of the plants and the grass.

I was inside doing dishes and looked out to see these two cute boys playing. I love them!!

One night ready for Stake Conference

He is so giggly sometimes, he puts his hands in his mouth and just giggles

He is looking so grown up!

Can't wait for more fun months with this boy!

Another ruin adventure

Last week, we took another trip to the mountains to find some history. There are so many ruins in New Mexico, it just makes me wish I could have seen it back in the day! It would have been so neat to see these pueblos in their hayday, The drive to the top of the mesa didn't take very long and we found this beautiful tree:

I feel like this year we have been able to see the fall colors much better than last year. It has been beautiful and wonderful. That's my cute husband in the car next to the beautiful tree.

We kept driving and came across this:

We felt a little excited to finally use a saw that I bought Stan last year for Christmas, so Stan began to saw away

And saw...

And then we had a problem. The saw wasn't big enough and the tree had collapsed where we had already cut! Our saw was stuck!! We were able to get the blade out eventually but we did bend it :(

So we had to drive around the tree. And off we went! We got to our take out point, parked the car, and headed out.

As we hiked along we started to see all these white ribbons around the trees. We found that they were marking where there were ruins, sometimes still standing, other times just a pile of rocks that looks like it could have been a small room. We saw a number of these throughout the day as we romped the hills of this mesa (Stan says these mesas are flat on top, but I contest that they are not. I do not get out of breath from walking on flat ground :))

Scott was wearing my sun glasses for a bit, when I looked down, he had them on sideways and thought he was pretty cool.

 Then as we were heading up to the big ruin on the mesa, where maybe up to 2,000 people lived, Stan thought he saw a bone, not uncommon out there. But when he took a closer look, he realized it had painting on it, it was part of a jar!

So then we kept hiking. This ruin hasn't been excavated officially so there wasn't tons to see, but you could tell where kivas would be and the placement of the mounds showed where rooms were. There was also a lot of potsherds on the ground.

Digging underneath these mounds would tell lots of stories

We noticed, in a large open area, this out of place basalt rock. Upon further investigation, it was clearly a metate turned upside down!

Scott and I took a little break while Stan wandered around some. This boy sure is fun and cute. He just about has sitting down like a pro.

He is into eating me these days...

We headed out to find a couple more ruins on the top

and came to this view:

We couldn't quite find the last ruins we were looking for, but on our way back to the car we found some neat ones we weren't expecting:

It was a pretty successful day overall. As we wandered back to the car, the forest was sure interesting. We don't know how long ago fire and storms blew through here, but it looked like a microburst in some spots and a fire in others. Can you find Stan through the tree trunks?