Projects!

Well, I decided I would post today since it is Sunday and I am not allowing myself to go out and work in the yard. It also helps that Casey is gone and Tel is napping. But I am somewhat bummed because I wanted to post the pictures of our new home (yes we are first-time home owners) and of the projects that we are working on but just realized that Casey has the USB cord I need with him in Powell at the moment. So, pictures will just have to wait.
We moved into our new home on Saturday, June 28th, headed out for Jackson the next morning and were gone until Wednesday morning. We came home just long enough to remove a deck from the back of our house and prepare the ground to be dug up the following morning for an addition we are putting on to our cute little 3 bed, 1 bath home. We stayed that night, had the hole dug the next morning, and immediately headed down to Utah for the 4th of July weekend. We returned Sunday night and have been hard at it all this week working on the addition and the front yard.
We hired someone to dig the hole and pour the foundation for us, but Casey has since put in the subfloor and framed the walls. He has some guys from the ward coming on Tuesday this week to help put up the trusses. Once that is done he will be able to close it in. Yea!!! He is a maniac worker! I, on the other hand, seem to feel really busy all day long and try really hard to accomplish SOMETHING, but it rarely happens. I always get started but fail to ever finish in the time frame I would like. Have you ever felt that way? At the end of the day you are exhausted and feel like you have been going nonstop all day long and then you look back at what you have done and not one thing has been accomplished to completion? Well, that's how the front yard project is going for me. I am working on a garden spot to grow some salad stuff this fall and two rock gardens on the corners of the front yard, but I am still digging through the piles of dirt we had dumped and pulling out rocks and what I would call boulders. Not one section is completed. However, I have managed to keep Tel from getting run over, as he loves the road over the grass, pool, dirt (though he does enjoy the dirt for a while, especially eating it) and toys. What is so exciting about the middle of a paved road I have yet to figure out, but he cannot help himslef. I have also kept him out of Dad's way and kept him from falling into the big hole we had in the back of our yard up until just yesterday when they finally came to backfill. He has gotten some lunch every day, as well as breakfast and dinner, and has run quite a few errands with me for his dad. The only mishap we have had is that Tel fell of our front deck, which is only about 2-3 feet tall from where he fell and he landed in the soft flower bed and then rolled onto the grass, so no harm was done. He was a little wet because it was right where the sprinkler was on and a little scared, but that didn't last long. He still likes to throw things off the deck and then try to get down from wherever it went over the edge. I guess he didn't get scared enough to remember what happened the first time he tried it.
Well, this post is probably long enough, especially without any pictures to look at, so I will hopefully post those pictures before too long and call it good.

Baby #2

Well, I have finally decided to make the announcement. We are expecting baby #2 on December 27th, which makes me at about 13 weeks. This first trimester hasn't been bad. I have mostly just been tired. I feel for those of you who get sick. Anyway, we are excited even though I'm not sure how I'll have time for two when one takes every second of the day. I'm sure we will be fine. Somebody told me that no matter how many or how few kids you have, they will take every second of your time. I'm sure that is true.

Well, here are a couple pictures from our first ultrasound just this past Wednesday. It is amazing when you actually get to see that there is a baby in there.

Tel's 1st B-Day!

Tel's 1st birthday was celebrated over the Memorial Day weekend with Casey's family down in Mt. Pleasant, UT. We had a great time watching Tel make a mess of himself with his first big piece of cake. He seemed to enjoy it as well. We also enjoyed spending the time with family and watching Tel and his cousin William get aquainted. (They were born just two months apart.) These are just some pictures and a video (if I can figure out how to do videos) from the weekend. These first two pictures are at our house. Tel got a card and a little truck from his Teichert grandparents.

Tel really didn't eat the whole piece, although he came close. We took some of it away to prevent a belly ache.

Tel and William playing in Tel's new pool from his Aunt Kathy.

Finally a tooth!

Well, this is just another quick post for my own records, but maybe a couple others will find it interesting, namely grandma. Anyway, now that Tel is just a few weeks shy of turning 1 year old he finally cut his first tooth. He has been so fussy and a little more lethargic than normal lately but I just figured it was because he wasn't sleeping well at night and that the cause of that was gas, not a tooth. I had no idea what I was looking for. I kept checking his gums with my finger to see if I could feel anything and everytime there was nothing until last night (May 4th) when I checked at bathtime and sure enough there was a little tooth starting to poke through the gums. The bottom left front tooth. Anyway, it's exciting for us. He's now one tooth closer to being able to eat whatever Casey and I eat without it having to be all ground up. Hooray!

Walking?

So this is just going to be a short post, but I want to have a record of it somewhere and I don' t do very well at writing in my journal. Just the other night (April 30th) Tel took his first few steps without holding onto anything. His Dad got to see it and I didn't! Oh well. Casey said he went about 5 steps before falling down. So we have been trying to practice the last couple days but without a lot of improvement. I imagine it will happen fast enough and then I'll be wishing he was just crawling again. I will try to get some on video and post it later.

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.