The past two weeks

Our past few weeks has really been uneventful.  It's been great to relax and enjoy some down time after the holidays. 

The critter in our roof:
That varmint came back.  Caleb went up there and set a mouse trap.  He checked a little bit later and the trap had been set off, but nothing was in it.  He then set a rat trap but he hasn't checked it lately.  Fortunately we haven't heard anything in the roof anymore.

Caleb's ickies:
Caleb got sick this past week.  I'm not totally sure what is wrong with him, but he has a bad cough and is tired a lot.  I don't like when he doesn't feel good.  :-(

Sewing:
I made Liam a stocking but I'm not a fan of how it turned out.  I'm going to make him another one soon.  I also got some kitchen towels from Target and I made a Valentines day towel.  I'll post a picture of it some other time.

Liam:
Liam turned 5 months old!  He also is pretty much completely out of his 3-6 month clothes, except for pants.  The wee little guy has such a long skinny torso.  He's also so loud and squirmy these days.  He's still napping a lot during the day and averages about 7 hours of straight sleep each night when he goes to bed. 

Here's a bunch of pictures of him from the past two weeks since I don't really have anything else to say:

Liam grabs onto anything he can get his hands on these days.

 

Looking at a picture of his friend, Ellie.

 

 I went to Target the other day by myself and was greeted by this cute lil face when I came home.

 5 months old!

 This month was more difficult because he was only interested in pulling the sticker off of his shirt.

 See?

 He finally started smiling more when Caleb came downstairs.

 And this is how a lot of his pictures turned out....blurred in some way and crying.  This is for those of you who think he's always smiling.  :-)

 Fuzzy picture, but still worth sharing.  :-)

 He loves his dad so much

 And putting his hands in his dad's mouth.  He likes them, so why wouldn't his dad?

 "This is my dad"

 A different kind of Gerber baby.

 Reading books with dad.

 All pumped for grandma Suzy-Q's bday!

 Possibly one of my new favorite pictures of him.  (Fun fact: he was passing gas when I took this picture)

 Checking out dad's book for school (well, mostly trying to eat the cardboard)

Week of December 29 and January 5

Week of December 29:

Monday
Caleb and I went to Mexico to get some shopping done. Nothing real exciting.

Tuesday
Glenn and Leah came to visit!  When they got here we went and had lunch at Cheddars, then Leah and I went to Target while the boys went to lame gun stores and went shooting.  That evening we played a game and hung out until midnight.  It was great to get to spend New Years Eve with them. Glenn kept us entertained for awhile by making up lyrics to randomness Caleb played on the guitar.  Here's a little snippet of the ending of a song that had been about a squirrel.

Wednesday
We went to Aunt Rachel's house to spend some time with Caleb's family.  Caleb and I had both ended up getting sick with colds.  I had the worst sinus pressure I've ever had with a cold.  It was even making my TMJ flare up and hurting my jaw.  I've never had that problem before.

Liam getting some Grandma Donna snugs. 

Thursday-Saturday
Caleb and I took it easy trying to get over our colds.  Fortunately Liam slept a lot too within those few days and gave us time to recoup.

Sunday
It snowed overnight and made everything pretty slick Sunday morning.  Caleb went up to the church to shovel and one of the deacons was up there as well. He told Caleb that he had talked with several people from church and there wouldn't be very many people showing up so we might as well cancel church.  With us living so close it's hard for us to know how bad the roads are.

I was finally starting to feel better so I got caught up on laundry and dishes which was a good thing because....

Monday
Monday morning we woke up to frozen pipes, thanks to the -9º temperature.  I got up around 6:30 with Liam and discovered it, and noticed that our furnace wasn't working right again.  I woke Caleb up and he went under the house to try to see if he could thaw out the pipes.  I reset the furnace and I had gone back to bed and woke up to the smell of something burning.  It turns out that Caleb had taken a sawdust candle he had made and used it to try to thaw out the pipes.  Nothing caught on fire, I was just smelling the burning sawdust.  When that didn't work at thawing the pipes I called the property manager and the landlord was at our house within an hour and put a heater under the house. He said things should be thawed out quickly and to call him when they did.  After about 2 1/2 hours, Caleb went outside and took another heater and a tarp to try to add more heat and keep it contained under the house.  After another couple of hours we discovered that the furnace was still not keeping the house warm.  I called the property manager again and the landlord showed up again shortly along with his son and a furnace man.  The furnace guy put in a new thermostat and replaced some other part.  The landlord put a salamander heater under the house and left that for awhile trying to continue to thaw out the pipes.  Caleb's parents showed up and Tim had another Salamander heater that they also put under the house.  After that still wasn't working they tried heating up the meter, and still nothing.  Finally we ended up getting some water around 4ish.  We were very fortunate to have a landlord who made sure we were being taken care of.  Our furnace still doesn't work 100% of the time, but hopefully we will have fewer problems with it. 

Brrr....

Tuesday
Tuesday night I went to bed before Caleb.  I went into the bedroom and heard some noises coming from the ceiling so I wondered if maybe there was some snow melting off of the roof or something.  I asked Caleb if there was roof right above our bedroom just because I couldn't remember exactly how our house was shaped.  When he said there wasn't, I told him that he needed to come into the bedroom because I could hear something in the ceiling.  When he came in he heard the noises too and went upstairs to check it out.  He said that there is an area kind of like attic space right next to his office between the wall and where the roof slants.  That probably doesn't make sense, but anyway, after he went up there I never heard the noise anymore.  I'm hoping that he scared away whatever critter was up there.

Also, warmerish days turning into cold nights, along with a roof with no gutters makes for some massive icicles!

Thursday
I finished up some new pillow covers for our throw pillows.  I made them out of some fleece blankets we got at Orscheln's on clearance.  It only cost me a little over $2 to make four of them.  I don't usually like working with fleece because it stretches so much, but I really like these covers.

Friday
We met up with some of Caleb's family in Mexico for dinner.  I win mom-of-the-year award for accidentally letting my child chew on a dirty table.  After dinner we went to Walmart and I found some clearance Christmas fabric for 86 cents/yard.  I'm pretty stoked.  I'll be making Christmas stockings!

Saturday
My parents came in town to visit Liam, and they claim they came to visit us too.  ;-)  We ended up staying in and watching a movie (really, we napped through it) and playing a game.  It was good to get to spend some time with them.

More pics from the past couple of weeks:

Liam has discovered his feet.  This cute little rump has become a common sight in our house.

 Socks are even harder to keep on his tootsies now. 

Liam is getting really close to rolling from his back to his belly.  It looks like he is no longer allowed to take a magic blanket with him to nap in his swing again.

 Liam got a fedora! 

 They are the Charlie Browniest.  I love these boys!

 EEEEEEE!!!! 

Liam absolutely loves his Sophie giraffe.  This sound has become a common noise in our house.

Week of December 22

Week of December 22

Sunday
Our children's choir performance was postponed until Sunday night because of bad weather.  We actually got a couple of inches of ice on everything.  Liam was baby Jesus for the program.  I was kind of nervous how he was going to do, but he did great.  He napped until right before the performance and I took a new blanket that we got and put it in the manger.  He just laid there like it was no big deal.  :-)

Monday
Caleb and I got the house cleaned up and ready to go for Christmas day.

Tuesday
We headed to Fenton to spend Christmas Eve with my side of the family.  We were blessed to get to go to FBC Fenton's Christmas Eve service and see many people that we haven't seen in a long time.  After that we came back to my parents' house and opened Christmas presents.

Wednesday
We headed out early Wednesday morning and went straight to church when we got back to Centralia for the community Christmas dinner.  It was a good time, except that I had a baby who was fighting sleep.  I spent most of my time trying to get him to go to sleep.

After the meal we came back to our house along with Caleb's parents and brother, then his sister and her family showed up and we had our Christmas with them.

Liam in his brand new wagon:

 The poor thing didn't get very many presents for Christmas.  (And for those of you who don't get my sense of humor, I'm kidding.)

Not pictured are all of the clothes he got and any presents he got after Christmas Day

Thursday and Friday
I don't really remember these days too much.  They were probably spent cleaning and sleeping.  Yeah, we'll go with that.

Oh yeah, so we got a new blanket for Christmas from Caleb's parents.  It's actually just like the blanket that we laid in the manger for Liam on Sunday.  He was fighting sleep when we were opening presents on Wednesday so I unwrapped the blanket and wrapped him up in it, and he was snoring in minutes.  So Thursday morning I had Liam sitting on my lap and he tipped over and fell right to sleep on the blanket.  We have come to find that wherever we lay the blanket, he falls asleep.  It has now been dubbed the "magic blanket".  And we went and bought another so we now have 3.

 I was able to get myself away and he continued to sleep for a few more hours.

Mom!  Come feel this blanket!

Saturday
Caleb's Grandma Connie had her family Christmas at her house.  We headed up her way and spent the day up there.  It was a good time!

Caleb got to shoot his new gun he got from his parents for Christmas.

 

We tried sending a pic to Seth while everyone else was skyping with him.  It didn't go through. 

 Grandma Connie got a magic blankie too!  Liam had to try it out.

 Here is Santa with all of the Christmas presents we made everyone.  Except for Christa's present, we forgot to get pictures of it.  Caleb made her a really neat shelf out of pallets.

Micah's presents (not homemade)

 Shutterfly books for our parents

 Trapper hats for Nehemiah, Ezra, Bert, and Tim

 Rice bags for Amy and Suzy-Q

 Skirts for Amy

 Handprint ornaments made from salt dough

Other pictures from this week:

Liam claimed this Christmas picture for himself when we got it in the mail from Lydia...it has a picture of his sweetie, Ellie.

Parent kisses are the best.  Right?

 Oops, we missed Liam's face.  ;-)

 I made Liam a new car seat blanket out of flannel.

 Liam has been sleeping in his snowsuits these days because he gets so cold now that he doesn't get swaddled anymore.  Doesn't he look precious?

 

 Watching tv.  :-)

 Asleep on the playmat thanks to the magic blankie.

 Learning how to do laundry.

  Loving his Sophie the Giraffe.  He likes to gnaw on her face

That's all for now.  I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!