Beardvember

Beardvember is in full swing and my beard is beginning to develop the maturity and sophistication one might expect from a pageantry caliber beard. For those who haven't heard, I am heading up a beard growing contest at work during the month of November. Myself and 12 of my co-workers are vying for the title of Mr. Beardvember 2010. We have been taking weekly photos to track our progress. On Nov. 30th, we will take our final photos. The women in our department are then going to judge the submissions and crown the winner. Since only one man will be lucky enough to bear the title of Mr. Beardvember 2010, we have also created honorable mention categories. The categories include:

Most likely to have a restraining order
Most likely to be flagged for additional screening at airport security
Most likely to be asked to eat in the other room at Thanksgiving
Most likely to make children cry
Most likely to be asked by HR to shave

...etc

I'll keep you posted on how the pageant goes and where I place.

Finally some birthday pictures

The turtle cake.


















The birthday boy with his turtle cake, though he doesn't look very impressed.


















The messy birthday boy.


















The messy birthday boy getting cleaned up.

Happy Birthday to Graham

Our little Graham turned 1 year old today. I'll save birthday details for another post. Here is Graham month by month over the past year. We sure love our little guy.


































Hours old and today at 12 months.

















1 month.






















2 months.


















3 months.


















4 months.

















5 months.






















6 months.

















7 months.

















8 months.

















9 months.






















10 months.

















11 months.

Mid week getaway

This week Graham and I traveled to the not so far away land of Walla Walla, WA. Considering that GW had a cold he did great on the car ride. My sweet sister, Jandi, is having a baby in a couple weeks and I just had to see her one more time before the baby came and be there for the baby shower.

















No matter how many times we took this picture we both felt like we looked sleepy, maybe it was because we had been chasing boys all day.

















Cousin Myles and Graham in the tub. Graham doesn't quite understand personal space yet and was up in Myles's face all the time, which understandably made Myles a little uneasy. But in the tub all the barriers came down and they shared cars and crawled all over and had a great time. Who knew a tub would be where his personal bubble would pop?

Boise State Fever

The season has started! (Okay it started over a month ago but we are just getting to blogging about it now.) Graham has been delighted to dress up for Boise State games with his mom and dad.
















Watching football is one of Graham's favorite things to do with his daddy.

Graham doesn't like...

A few things Graham doesn't like....
















Cold water at parks in Eagle, ID.
(He actually loves water...just not when we drop him
into the middle of a bunch of fountains coming out
of the ground)

















Mud...I thought he'd love it. He didn't.

















Eating.
































Firetrucks...or parades, we're not sure which. Maybe both.

















Laying on the couch with dad.

















Zoos. (He actually likes zoos,
but the elephants were a little
boring for him.)

Projects

It's been a while since we posted. We've been busy traveling and working on projects at our new house. We've been putting up a fence in our backyard and getting ready to install a sprinkler system and grass. Here's a few pics so you can see our progress:
















View from back patio (pre-fence project)

















If you look closely, you can see me behind the machine.

















Getting ready to set the posts.

















Finished.

















Fence, before stain.

















Fence, after stain.
















In other news, Graham likes to pull himself up on whatever he can. Among his favorite things to pull himself up on are: the couch, tv stand, tv dinner stands, any pair of stationary human legs.

Our New House

We will be making the move from Boise, the "city of trees", to Meridian, the "land of the rising sun" this weekend. (Meridian's nickname is made up, but who wouldn't want to live in a city with that nickname?) We closed on our house on Thursday and have been moving stuff over the last few nights. Tomorrow we'll make it official and move in completely. We're excited to move in to our new place.

So as not to leave our family, friends, and strangers out of it, we have decided to give you the opportunity to become a part of our home. For the first 36 months only, we will allow anyone to pay our monthly mortgage. Donors will get a special homemade plaque with their name on it hung on the wall in our coat closet. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity...don't leave yourself open to regrets.
















Front of the house
















Sale is no longer pending. It's ours.

















You can't quite see it from here, but I'm actually
just holding Graham up with my pinky.
















Our backyard. Not much to look at right now. We're
on a corner so we don't have neighbors to one side
and we've got a pretty decent sized area for yard on
that side of the house. Hard to tell from the pic
though.

Unicorn Killer

You may remember a post from Christmas showing Graham's new "Unicorn Killer" shirt. His destiny was fulfilled on Cinco de Mayo.








































Due to the graphic nature of this video, viewer discretion is advised.

Race for the Cure

Ryan and I did the Race for the Cure last Saturday. We had a lot of fun. We didn't even get too exhausted, despite our lack of training. We were on the Scentsy team, which made up at huge number of the participants. The Scentsy team was the biggest team they have ever had in the Race, I think there were like 2,500 on our team and about 15,000 total in the Race.






















Me before.

















Both of us before.






















Ryan in 50 years.


















Both of us after.






















Ryan after.

Meeting baby cousin Chloe

Graham and Chloe finally got to meet. I think they had a good time together. They even held hands, so what if Graham was trying to eat Chloe's hand, I think they will be great buddies growing up together.

Rainbow