Trip to Virginia and More

Time for the monthly-ish photo dump!

Lots of trips to the park (Caleb loves the sandbox the most)

Playing at the Frog Pond downtown. 

We got passes to the Museum of Science so we'd have somewhere to go with air conditioning. Caleb is clearly more intrigued by the stool than the gigantic triceratops skeleton behind him.

Went to the aquarium-- this was not a big hit. (Dark lighting and ominous large floating objects apparently aren't Caleb's ingredients for a grand day out.) Maybe next year. 

Caleb loves to cook and help me out in the kitchen.

Visit to the Lexington Green.

Sometimes he tires himself out.

Finished replacing torn letters in his room.

And added some numbers.

 

Whoops, embarrassing. You can see my finger. But the point of this picture was to show how we visited my parents in Virginia. We visited Frying Pan Park and saw the animals.

Caleb also helped water the trash can (and plants).

He loved playing the "ano."

We went to Chuck E. Cheese where he had more fun than all previous science museum trip combined.

His favorite part was putting in the token. Luckily this excitement has carried over to putting quarters in the washers and dryers when we do laundry.

And... I started a personal finance blog with my good friend Lisa. Check it out! And if you really want to do me a favor, like us on Facebook.

Button, button, who's got the button?

It's time for another photo dump!

Caleb is really into buttons these days, so whether we're at the zoo or any of the wonderful children's museums here in Boston, he gravitates towards the buttons (even if the associated exhibit is broken). He played with the one at the zoo for fifteen minutes (that was one of the broken ones). I was starting to lose my sanity.

And he's started climbing. Fortunately he is only into going up, not down. We're hoping that translates into not crawling (and falling) out of the crib any time soon. Several times I walked out of the room only to return and find Caleb in unexpected places. (Please note that I was ready to catch him in both of these pictures.)

There are a lot of awesome parks near our house. Caleb loves them (especially the water). His love of playgrounds has survived in spite of a run-in with a crazy four-year-old girl who tried to squeeze him to death before I could get to him. We saw her at the park again a week later from 20 feet away and Caleb completely froze and clung to my leg in terror. 

Aaron humored me and let me dress him and Caleb in matchy-matchy clothes. (The sacrifice of dignity counted as one of my birthday presents.)

We went to the Museum of Science and visited the little space pod. Caleb's shadow is standing at attention!

Went on a date night to Ben & Jerry's and World War Z courtesy of Valerie! I always hope seeing a good old fashioned zombie apocalypse movie will jump start my emergency preparedness efforts.

I found a stowaway, (or should I say MANY stowaways?!?) in my Amazon box. There was a webbed pouch that contained a live spider and her egg sac. Sick. They gave me 10% off what was in the box, but frankly, I think that did not fully compensate for the emotional trauma.

And here's a bonus picture with no explanation.

Liebster Award

Be warned: This post is a whole lot of Lauren with no cute pictures of Caleb, which, let's be real, is the only reason my readership (aKa the grandparents) follow this blog.

My friend Lisa tagged me for a Liebster Award (if you clicked on this post because you thought I had won an actual award, I'm sorry to disappoint you) which entails the following:

1. Post 11 random facts about yourself.
2. Choose deserving bloggers and tag them in your post.
3. Tell them you've tagged them.
4. Answer 11 questions the tagger has asked you and give 11 questions to the people you've tagged.
5. No tag backs.

I've chosen to do my Liebster a la carte and only follow rule 1 and rule 4 (the first half).

The Random Facts

1. I loathe seafood.
2. I love oatmeal and have trained Caleb into tolerating it (since that's what he gets every morning...)
3. I love getting rid of clutter and organizing (the great purge of 2012 was ruthless and oh-so-gratifying.

   

   Words cannot even describe how excited I was about these wire shelf dividers.

4. I'm a Mormon.
5. Our BYU team won first place in a national tax competition. What? You didn't know they had tax competitions?? Don't worry-- only the participants and their parents know about them.
   
6. I go on kicks- right now it's healthy eating, so hopefully it's a long kick.
7. I am a personal efficiency nerd and a huge proponent of David Allen. Fellow GTD-ers, are you out there?
8. I love money! Not in a greedy way, but in a personal finance kind of way. One of my life goals is to get all of my friends to open up a Roth IRA to save for retirement and a 529 plan to save for their kids' educations. Do it today! 
9. I have a master's degree in accounting from BYU and got my CPA license (currently inactive since I decided to stay home with Caleb. 
10. I love drawing, painting, reading, and writing. All through high school I thought 100 percent I would be a liberal arts major.

    

    Drew this in high school

11. I used to be a Democrat and now I'm a Republican. But I still like to think of myself as open-minded and aware of the fact that my opinions are shaped by my life-experiences which are unique to me. This world is complex and there are very few one-size fits all answers!

Lisa's Questions for Me

1. Superpower you wish you had: the ability to make my children fall asleep on the plane. Note that I'm not asking for this ability in everyday life because I'm pretty sure I would abuse my power.
2. Favorite musical artist you're embarrassed to admit you love: oh man, there are so many. But to limit damage to my image I'll just pick one- Miley Cyrus.
3. If you had to re-live one year of your life what would it be? Fall 2006-spring 2007. That was the junior year of the accounting program and a total blast. Valerie and I even started the JCoPPC (Junior Core Party Planning Committee). 
4. Favorite flower: lilies
5. What are you reading right now: How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.
6. Favorite ride at Disneyland/World: Soarin' Over California. Or the Buzz Lightyear one where you shoot aliens if I were better at it.
7. Pet peeve: abuse and misuse of the reply all feature on emails.
8. Dream church calling: early-morning seminary teacher (but only after all my kids are out of the house. Until then, it's on my list of nightmare callings.)
9. Favorite chick flick: Clueless, Emma, or Persuasion
10. Skydiving? I'd have done it before I had a kid.
11. Money is no object, where would you most like to spend a week? London, seeing a different musical each night.

Catch-up Photo Dump

I'm behind again on blogging. Shocking, right? So instead of trying to do a quality post-- I'm just going to photo dump on you all to get caught up through May.

Caleb's first dentist appointment!

$80 round-trip ticket to DC (including taxes, fees, and baggage) to see the grandparents?? Yes, please.

Play dates. (Real men play with kitchens.)

Caleb's favorite part of the zoo.

Boston marathon (explosions had not yet occurred, but we were 2 miles from the finish, and so we and everyone we knew were safe)

Made it out of Boston the day before the city went into lockdown after the explosions to go on our planned trip to California (Caleb is testing out the headphones).

Had so much fun with our wonderful hosts, Lisa and Blake (yes, Caleb wanted to switch laps). For those of you who haven't heard me talk about how awesome Lisa is yet, she is one of my best friends from college (a fellow accountant-- and that bond runs deep). You can check out her much more thorough account of the trip here).

Impromptu business meeting ("Whatever, dude. Wait-- don't hit F1! Now we have to wait for the help screen to load.")

Caleb, Blake, and Aubrey (my friend Paige's daughter) playing together. Lisa, Paige, and I were study buddies in the accounting program, so it was fun to see the little ones together. (We failed to get a picture of the three adults.)

Lovely Lisa had my brother, Matt, and his girlfriend, Kim, over for dinner-- so much fun. Matt pointed out that there are 2.25 Asians in this picture.

Caleb and Blake living it up at Happy Hollow.

A week after we got back, Aaron's parents flew out to visit us. We are so lucky to have such wonderful parents and grandparents on both sides of the family!! Here we are at the Vanderbilts' summer "cottage" in Newport, Rhode Island. We love being able to jump states in just a little over an hour's car ride. 

My mother-in-law is super artistic and got some great shots of our little guy.

My friend Valerie (also an accountant and basically the key "network node" in getting Aaron and I together in the first place) and I ran a 5K. We look like we hardly broke a sweat right? (Picture taken before race.)

It's been a great few months! We're so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends!

"The Blizzard of 2013"

People started talking about the "Snowpocalypse" a couple of days before it hit. It was potentially the biggest snowstorm in the area since the Blizzard of 1978, so Aaron stayed home Friday and we hunkered down while the snow began to fall. Fortunately for us, we never lost power and our maintenance crew had people out shoveling and plowing our walkways every couple of hours throughout the night.

All of my reading of The Little House books made me grateful that we weren't stuck inside for weeks on end twisting hay into sticks to burn in the fireplace. We just stayed inside our warm little apartment drinking hot chocolate. The huge piles of snow are annoying, though. The sidewalks really don't have enough room to let a stroller through, and we scrape the snow bank with our car when we try to pull into our driveway. That part of the blizzard did make me miss California.

Caleb was indifferent to the snow

Standing in-between two cars in our parking lot

All that extra money we spent on garaged parking in Boston finally paid off!

Snow piles!

All pedestrians, no cars

Time lapse of our apartment's front yard

Aaron and Caleb

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Happy Birthday Aaron!

Lots of holidays came and went-- now it's time for some belated blogging.

We spent Thanksgiving in Virginia. It was wonderful as always, except when every single person got sick. I'm not kidding-- Caleb, Lauren, Aaron, my mom, my dad, and Matt. No one is really sure who started it-- possibly Caleb, who ended up with his first (and second) ear infections.

The whole family!  My dad and I were sick at this point, but we still got dressed up for the post-church photo. 

We had a great time in Idaho for Christmas and Aaron's birthday (the 23rd of December) as well. Even though Aaron had to work a little, it was our longest trip to date as a family at ten days long. I especially enjoyed the luxurious left turn lanes that we don't have in Boston.

Caleb with his hand bell and elf hat that my mother-in-law made for Aaron when he was in first grade.

This was "Caleb's Cupboard" for the duration of our stay in Idaho. He liked to stash things in here for us to find-- like Boo Radley's knothole.