Eleven Months Old

Can you believe it? Peanut, more recently christened Gus-Gus (a la Cinderella and the big tummied mouse) will be ONE YEAR OLD in 20 days. Time goes so quickly!

Peek-a-boo!!

4 teeth, with a fifth coming in today.

Ice Park Fun

A few weeks ago, we went to the World Ice Art Championships. Slightly warm, sunny weather made for a lovely afternoon.

My two favorites:

A bull caribou challenging three hungry wolves

A caterpillar crawling up a plant.


A chilly seat for us.

Sliding along.

Winter Fun

Winter keeps its grip on us in the great white north. 8 inches of new snow in the past couple of days. The chickadees and redpolls devour their weight in sunflower seeds daily. I still marvel that little birds can survive the winter at all.

As the sunshine pours through my lovely round window and warms outside temps from -20 to +20 during the day, we have ventured back outside.


Some time on the kick sled. They stayed on!


The great black Yeti. Didn’t know we had those up here, did you?




A walk on the wild side.



The road home.

Cheese Ball

Peanut warms rather quickly to the camera. When he sees the orange light, he lights up with the cheesiest grins. Here are a few for you.

No clever title.

Just cute boys.

A wiggly boy. He can't crawl yet, but he sure likes to move.

Look! Two teeth! (January 30 and February 2) He beat his big brother by 3 months.

Like his gotee? Peanut's still not so sure about the best cereal ever. (I don't know about you, but I STILL love Cheerios. With lots of sugar. Enough so you can drink the sugar syrup off the bottom of the bowl with the milk. I sneak the sugar on my cereal so Squirt Boy can't see me. Is that bad?)

Reading the directions so he can help Papa install the sink base in the kitchen.

9 Months Old

And how did we get here? Peanut has been outside of me almost as long as he was in. I'm SO glad he wasn't so big INSIDE. :)

Fun with food

This brings new meaning to the name "Squirt Boy".



Hmm. Are those pears a little tart?

Peanut's First Christmas

Granny and Grandaddy made the frigid trek north to be with us for Peanut's first Christmas.

Here, he's not so sure about it all.

Better now.

Squirt Boy and Peanut love their Granny!

A mean game of Candy Land with Grandaddy.

What a blessing to celebrate Jesus' birthday together with family. Before the big day, Squirt Boy would take baby Jesus from the nativity scene and sing "Happy Birthday" to him. Too cute!

Florida Fun

This fantastic creature greeted us at the Chicago O'Hare airport. I love dinosaurs; it made the 24 hours of travel with two small children MUCH more satisfying.

Dinner with the Graham family.

Pool Party!

Lawn Ornaments----or are they?

Sandhill Cranes

A hawk on the back fence

Piano lessons with Grandma




Giggles and Grandpa

Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo

Where's the Alaska town below?


Just hanging around....




The Petting Zoo

Angie the Llama

African Penguins (sweltering with us in the 80+ degree heat)

We saw giraffes, kangaroos, wallabies, rhinos, elephants, camels and more.

But the highlight of the entire zoo experience?

Feeding the budgies!

Ed. note: No animals were harmed in the making of this post. No baby heads were pooped on, either.

Cute boys!

Peanut adores his big brother, watching for him and laughing at him all the time. Thankfully, Squirt Boy loves his little brother, too.

Squirt Boy is two and a half, talking our ears off, building with everything, climbing over anything, and loving life. His new obsession is seeing a "whole moon". He sees it rise (at 4:30 pm, it's dark enough here) and watches it for a long time.

Peanut sits like a champ, and delights in grabbing toys and banging them around. His grins are infectious, and his life is delightful.

Boys are fun.

Peanut is Six Months Old

And that means he gets to eat wallpaper paste! Oh, sorry. I meant rice cereal.

Here’s his first attempt. It didn’t fare so well.

Ah. That’s better.