Little Things

I think I too often forget to enjoy the little things in life, especially when the days get long and I am longing for a new adventure. I watch Tel and am amazed at how much he learns and how interested he is in everything. Everyday is a big adventure to him as he discovers new things. I need to remember to appreciate all those little things the same way he does. The invention of pots and pans, tupperware, and all the items you might find in your bathroom. I use them everyday, but fail to appreciate them quite the way he does.

I am always in awe at how much I can learn about life from an 11 month old little boy. To name just a few, determination, persistance, patience, love, trust, a desire to learn.....I could go on but I just know Tel is going to be waking up here soon, so I will get on with it.

Over the past month, one of the little things we did with Tel that was so much fun was taking him on his first bike ride. I took him to Walmart and we got him a little helmet. Casey worked on getting our $5.00 bike seat from a garage sale onto my mountain bike, and then we took off. Tel loves it! We have had to take a small break the last couple weeks from any bike rides due to cold, windy, and snowy weather, but I think things are turning around again for the better as far as the weather is concerned, so we will soon be out cruising around. We have also discovered that Tel loves the baby swings down at the city park, but I have failed to get a picture of him in one, so that one will have to wait.

Another thing that isn't so little, is that we got a new piano just this past Saturday. We got back from a morning run (Casey was home because his track meet was cancelled) and just a block from our house there was a grage sale. We decided to go and check it out and lo and behold there was a piano there that actually looked pretty nice. We asked how much they wanted for it and they said $400, but sold it to us for $300, which we felt was a pretty good deal because it is hard to find a piano for that price that doesn't need quite a bit of work on it. This one plays great and hardly has a scratch on it. I was so excited. Tel loves it too. It is his new favorite toy.

SLC Marathon

Well, it has been a while since I posted anything on our blog so while Tel is finally napping I thought I better get busy. A little over a week ago, Sat. April 19th, I ran the SLC marathon along with my mom, sisters (Taffy and Violet), and Aunt Linda and Tina running the half marathon. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to Aunt Linda and Tina having family in Salt Lake we were provided with a great place to stay Friday night. We all met up in the morning at 5:15 am to head for the starting line. We had to park down by the Gateway (the finish line) and take the tracks up to the start which was at the Olympic Legacy Bridge. The starting line and the morning chaos is always so exciting. Taffy and I started the race together, with the others starting further behind. We were able to run the first 5 miles together before our courses split (she was doing the half and I was doing the full). It was great to have some company for those first few miles. Anyway, to make a long story short, we all finished and I think we all felt pretty good about our accomplishments. I was able to finish in 3hrs. 39 min. which wasn't quite as fast as I wanted to go, but was my second fastest marathon out of the 7 I have run so I felt okay about it. I also had to remind myself that I did have to consider the wind (pretty good head wind for atleast 7 or 8 miles of the first half) and that I had been sick all week and Tel had been up almost every night the week of the marathon for atleast 1-2 hours each night. Thanks to Casey coming out to cheer me on the last quarter mile and Tina coming to run in with me I was able to pick up the pace just enough to qualify for Boston by about 25 seconds. Anyway, Casey and Tel were there at the finish line to welcome us all in as we finished our races, as were Linda's husband Bill, and Tina's husband Eric. It was a great time and I look forward to my next one.
This last picture is me with my little training buddy, Tel. He made it on all the training runs with me. He didn't always like it and neither did I, but we survived. He actually did surprisingly well on those long runs except for just a couple, but his screaming sure made me run faster once we were turned around and heading back home.

Sleeping Problems

Sometimes I think that being cute is a baby's defense mechanism. How can you stay upset with them for too long when they just grin at you every time they do something naughty or exasperating? Well, bedtime at our house is becoming a time when his cuteness is what saves him and me from losing it. Bedtime is beginning to be quite an ordeal at our house ever since Tel has discovered his freedom to get himself wherever he wants to be. He does not, and most nights, will not, settle down and go to sleep although I can tell he is exhausted. We try all the bedtime routines and everything else, but he refuses to just lay still or hold still long enough to relax and fall asleep. Then, once he does fall asleep, usually in my arms or lying next to me on the bed, he wakes up again as soon as I set him in his crib. We have tried the cry it out method and he can scream up a storm for over an hour and a half and not even be close to settling down. Eventually, we do get him to go to bed and get him in his crib, but then, for the past couple weeks he has been waking up in the night, sometimes only once, but when he does it takes me 2 hours or so to get him back to sleep and into his crib. I don't know what is going on for sure. He had some ear infections that we have given him an antibiotic for and he doesn't seem like they are bothering him during the day and is not pulling at them like he used to when he gets up in the night. So I am at a loss. If any of you out there have any suggestions or have had similar problems and found something that works, your advice would be greatly appreciated. All I can say is that it's a good thing he's so dang cute!!!

SPRING BREAK

For Spring Break this year we were able to take Casey's parents down to the four corners area and do some sight seeing. We spent time at Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Monument Valley, Gouldings' Trading Post, and Newspaper Rock. We had a lot of fun and were glad that Casey's sister Kathy was able to come as well.

The sights down there are amazing! Casey and I had visited each of them briefly a couple years ago and loved it so were grateful for the chance to go back.
Tel did surprisingly well with all the traveling. He normally hates the car, but I don't think he ever just had a screaming fit the whole week, (caused by driving anyway) which is absolutely amazing! He did learn how to resisit getting back into his car seat though. He arches his back and stiffens up and screams, but once you finally get him in he is just fine for the most part. I think a large part of his pleasant traveling attitude was due to the fact that he had some company in the back seat (Casey, Kathy, and I) who were willing to be quite wierd in order to keep him entertained. Kathy also took the time in the car to teach him how to wave, which he does almost automatically now when he hears the word goodbye.
I think that all that traveling and time spent in the car was Tel's motivator to begin moving. He was kind of crawling before and rolling around and getting where he wanted to, but it was fairly slow and he would still get frustrated really fast. But over the week of spring break he took off. Any chance he got to get down and move around (which were few and far between) he was going. He is crawling everywhere now and is getting to be a little speed demon. He is also pulling himself up on everything and walking along all the furniture. We are beginning that stage where he always has a good bruise on his head. It is a lot more work to keep up with him now, but it is also a lot of fun.

Weekend at the gym

This past week has been a good one with a lot of time spent with family. On Wednesday Tessa had a Jr. High game over in Farson so I drove over to watch her play and met up with Taffy there. Tessa played really well. She is a good ball player. After her games Taffy and Mylie came back to Lander to stay with us for a night. On Thursday afternoon Dad's basketball team was here in Lander for regional basketball and we were able to watch them play. (My mom was here by then along with Tessa.) They won their game. It was fun to watch Olivia. She is the starting point gaurd as a freshman. It's a big responsibility and she does a good job. Friday morning my mom, Tessa, Taffy, Mylie, Tel, and I headed out to Casper to state wrestling to watch Sullivan and Casey's team. They all did a good job. Sullivan ended up taking 2nd to a 4-time state champion. He wrestled well. Cokeville took first in the 1A classification. Casey's team took about 6th, I think, which is a big improvement from last year (11th out of 12 teams). He also had 8 kids place in the top six which is also much better than they did last year. It was a fun weekend and Tel did pretty well for having to spend so much time in the gym.
My Dad was able to come over and watch Sullivan in the finals which was nice. His team ended up taking 3rd at regionals. The third/fourth place game was supposed to be played at 6:00 Saturday night which would have made Dad have to choose whether to stay with his team or miss their game to watch Sullivan. As it turned out, Ten Sleep, the team they were supposed to play forfeited the game to them so they didn't have to play it. Ten Sleep only has 5 girls on their team and since they had made it to state they decided not to risk hurting any of their girls because they wouldn't be able to play at state without atleast 5 players. One girl on their team was having trouble with her knee and had twisted her ankle in the previous game, so they decided not to play. It worked out well for Dad, Olivia and other girls with brothers on the wrestling team. Anyway, that was our weekend. This week will be busy again with State Basketball this weekend in Casper.
I am training for a marathon right now, so this week I have a 10 mile run and a 12 mile run. The training has been going well. I push Tel in the stroller everyday and it usually turns into his nap time. He doesn't nap well, but he sleeps real well as long as we are out running. The weather has been beautiful the past week with temperatures right around 40 degrees and is expected to be the same this week. It's wonderful!
Well, Tel is sitting here crying under my feet so I better call it good for today. I will try to learn more about how to post pictures on here this week.

Update on the Parry's

For those that we haven't been in contact with much here is just a quick update of where we are and what we are doing right now.
Casey and I both taught school in Idaho Falls last year. Casey taught Spanish at Idaho Falls high school, was an assistant coach for the football and track teams and was the head wrestling coach. I taught third grade at Linden Park Elementary there in Idaho Falls. Tel Maxwell joined our family the last day of school (May 24th). He had the timing just right so I was able to finish out my year of teaching. We thought we would be staying there in Idaho Falls through about the end of May. We loved it there and loved the people, but a job opportunity opened up over here in Riverton, WY for the high school spanish teacher and head wrestling coach at the beginning of June. Because WY pays teachers soooo much better than Idaho or Utah we decided that was what we needed to do so that I could stay home with Tel without as much a a financial stress on us.
Anyway, so by the end of June we had been offered and accepted the job. We then headed out to Alaska for three weeks the middle of July. We had a great time visiting family and friends and fishing. The summer was pretty much non-stop traveling. After Tel's first couple weeks here we were on the road for about 3 days (at least) out of every week for the rest of the summer. It was an adventure but fun. He was a pretty good traveler.
A couple days after we got back from Alaska we packed up and moved our things here to Lander. We stayed with Casey's Uncle Lane and Aunt Brenda for about 1 month until we were able to get into our own place. Renting is crazy here. It is VERY hard to find a place and they are all expensive. But we feel blessed to have found a nice little duplex in a nice area of town.
The move has definitely made us do some adjusting and getting used to things again in a new place but we feel blessed and are happy.
I am loving staying home with Tel and Casey is doing well with his new teaching and coaching job. He again is busy, busy, being an assistant football and track coach and then the head wrestling coach. He has state wrestling this weekend though which I think is a relief to him this year. It has been a tough year trying to change some things in a program that needed it, but he has done a great job and is working to build a successful program. He is a very dedicated coach. Every kid should have a coach like him.
Well, that's pretty much the update for now. I will try to keep things posted on here but I'm not promising much. I'm not the best at sending out updates but maybe this will make it a little more fun for me and not so time consuming. I guess we'll see.

Just started!

Well, Tina just emailed me asking for some pictures of Tel. I started a family website on myfamily.com a while ago but have not kept it updated at all and the rest of the family hadn't posted anything on it at all. So, since it looked like it was going to be a one family deal of my own I decided a blog sounded like a better idea and I have loved looking at everyone else's blogs. So here goes nothing I guess.