Colorado Bound

Austin and I are heading to Colorado next week, and I am so excited!!!

I am attending the National Water Monitoring Conference for work and Grandma will get to babysit for Monday through Wednesday.  My sister Cathy is flying here tomorrow to help me drive or entertain Austin for the 10 hour car ride.  We were going to leave tomorrow night so week could stop in Meeker to visit my brother George and family, but it looks like George is not going to be home so we will probably wait and leave Saturday morning, drive part of the way, then finish on Sunday.  Dustin will fly to Denver on next Friday and we will drive home.

I am speaking at the conference, giving a case study of how we use the grants that we receive.  I used to be pretty afraid of public speaking, but I have been getting pretty good at it lately.  I finished my power point yesterday, so I am all set with it.  My talk is at 8:30am Monday morning, so that kind of sucks, but I will be getting it over first thing and then can focus on enjoying the rest of the conference.

I am going to try to make a trip to Fort Collins on Thursday.  I miss it so much and I want to see my brother's-wife's-sister and her family.  Her middle daughter is my Goddaughter and she made her First Communion last Sunday.  I was so sad that I missed it by one week.  Her birthday is next week though, so I will be able to see her in person to celebrate.

Gardening Update

I got all my cold season seeds in.  I planted lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, onions, beets, peas, carrots and radishes.  Yesterday we had a nice gentle rain all day, so it should be perfect for sprouting the seeds.

In the house I potted a yellow cherry tomato plant and it's growing like crazy.  It has a couple little tomatoes forming already, so pretty soon I will have fresh tomatoes for my salads.  I am not sure how long it will last in the house, I will probably have to transplant it to the garden when it warms up.

I have been loving my tulips, they are so pretty.  I will try to get a picture of them later.

15 Months

Today little man is 15 months.  Man has the time flown by!!!

It has been a challenging week as he had a double ear infection starting Monday.  We went to the doctor right away Monday afternoon and got on amoxicillian, but it wasn't until last night (Wednesday) that the fever finally broke for good.  By that I mean it was responding to the Motrin/Tylenol rotation I was giving him, but at the end of a dose the fever would come back until last night.  He hasn't had any of that medicine since 5 last night and no fever, yeah!!!  I finally bought one of those temporal thermometers and let me say, it's the best $30 I've spent in a long time.  Austin loves to play with it though and tossed it across the kitchen yesterday, so I'm not sure how long it's lifespan will end up being.

He is so independant these days, and really not a baby any more at all.  He runs from one end of the house to the other.  He loves to be outdoors and loves the park.  He is a little daredevil who would very much like to go down the big slide himself if Mommy would let him.  He still doesn't say a whole lot of words, but has other ways of communicating.  My least favorite is when he shows me he's done at the high chair by throwing things on the floor, oh well, what can you do!  He loves to play with Mega Blocks, tractors/cars, his riding toys, and anything in Mommy's purse, especially the cell phone.  On that, yesterday he was holding my new cell phone and I was using the house phone to check a message on it.  Since I was there anyway I dialled the cell phone and when the little ring tone came on Austin started dancing to it.

At the doctors appointment for the ear infection he was 22lbs 6.5oz.  They did not measure his height, but I would guess that it's about 32".  Our doctor is not doing a 15 month checkup because we got all the shots at 12 months. 

Happy 15 months buddy!

Horsee

Grandma and Daddy went to the barn to groom the horses and Austin got to sit on one for the first time.  We will get him a helmet before he gets to actually ride one.  He only lasted on there for about 30 seconds before he decided he didn't really care for it yet. 

Wordless Wednesday

Busy, Busy, Busy

Yeah I know, excuses, excuses, but I have been SO BUSY lately.  I have a bunch of stuff to blog about, but my in-laws are visiting so we have been super busy.  Here is a brief update and I'll write more with photos later.

• I went to a Congressional Subcommittee meeting for work last Thursday.  It was pretty incredible to see how all that process works.  The Congressional members present were Rep. Grijalva (D AZ), Rep. Shadegg (R AZ), Rep. Napolitano (D CA) and Rep McClintock (R CA)
• My in-laws came in this week for a visit.  They babysat on Friday night so we got to go on a date to watch Alice in Wonderland.  It only our fourth alone date since Austin was born 14.5 months ago!
• Today we took Austin over to the barn to see the Forest Service horses and he got to sit on one for the first time.  (Pictures of this for sure later)
• I got my garden all tilled today and ready for planting.  I bought some seeds this weekend including radishes, spinach, swiss chard, rosemary, onion sets and some other stuff that I will plant later.  Now it's time to get out there and get the seeds in the ground.
• My tulips are starting to bloom so I'm loving all the flowers blooming including hyacinths, daffodils, pansies, snapdragons, and daisies. 

That is the rundown.  I will fill in more later when I get some time.  I hope you are having a beautiful weekend!

Easter

Easter weekend was very nice.  Saturday we went to Kanab, UT where the Lion's Club hosted an Easter Egg hunt.  Austin found three eggs and a golf ball, although he was much more interested in the golf ball than the Easter Eggs.  Sunday we went to Church which was a packed house.  At the end of Mass Austin looked up at Jesus on the Crucifix behind the altar, pointed at Jesus then looked at us and clapped.  It's so great how even the little ones can understand the importance.  In his Easter basket he got a Mega Blocks tractor, an Elmo board book and a basketball and hoop for the bathtub.  We had a nice ham dinner to finish the day off.