Camera Gremlin

Yet again I am having troubles with my new camera. So some of these pictures are posted because I may direct a customer service person to this site to see the problems. I have such horrible luck with cameras.
Wyatt and Noah are both doing great. Wyatt is close to running now. Last week he learned to go from sitting to standing and now he is truely unstopable. He is such a little guy to be walking so good that I have had a hard time finding real shoes for him. The shoes made to fit fat little 10 mth baby feet are not condusive for running in bark mulch and climbing concrete driveways. He was slipping all over the place in the little suede bottomed baby shoes. Not to mention how stinky they made his sweaty little feet. I finally found some sandals and a pair of tennies that I am able to cram his fat little foot into. He loves them. His favorite things right now are yard work (he can actually push the mower!), playing in Noah's big car (picture on the right) and playing with his 'Mozart Cube'. He is so cute walking up to Noah's car, opening the door and climbing in. He also likes to push it around. Noah is a little distressed by all this. The big car is very important to him. A ride in Ezra's big electric car helps him cope. Ezra lives across the street and he and Noah love playing together. Noah tries to drive the big truck but, in his own words, he is 'not a very good steerer'. So far he has only crashed into the Bronco and a few electrical boxes.

Yet Another Fun Weekend

I guess it has been about a week since I last updated- doesn't seem like that long ago. Pretty average week. Greg took Friday off to go tubing down the San Marcos with our Jr. High youth group. He took Noah with him. They had a great time. Noah was most excited about riding in the church bus and eating at Mr. Gattis. Later that day we headed to Point Venture for a wedding party on the lake. We stayed with Greg's parents. Here is Wyatt with a snow cone cup. Only at Mama G's house does Noah get to make pancakes, snowcones and cookies before noon. After a lot of wakeboarding, Greg and I are both sore and recovering today. Which means lying on the floor watching the boys run amuck. I'll clean tomorrow...

HOT!

Today was H-O-T hot. After a glorious morning of sealing and staining our deck, we took the kids to the San Marcos river. The city finally recognized what a hazard the old Rio Vista dam was and spent several million dollars to rennovate it. The dam is pretty much gone and was replaced by three sections of rapids. They put in a bunch of large rocks for sunbathing and made huge inmprovements to the banks. As you can see in the picture, it is THE local summer hotspot. Lots of free cold water. Greg loves it because on thursday nights it is a paddle spot for local kayakers. Playboaters gather to surf and do stunts in the three big waves. Greg has experience paddling in everything from the pacific ocean to Golden, CO and the Platte and he says the new waves in San Marcos are the best surfing waves he has ever paddled. Paddling is Greg's favorite past time and it is a huge blessing to have this so close. As pretty as the river is and as fun as the people-watching was, I never want to go there again on a crowded weekend. Not what I consider relaxing. Greg and the boys cooled off in the river after playing at the Children's Park.
Today I found about a hundred more features on my new camera. Here is a picture of Wyatt colorized so that the blue in the picture is accented. The camera lets you choose any color to accent and subdues all the other colors. Those are the actual color of Wyatt's eyes with the rest of the picture toned down. So Cool.
Yesterday a friend of mine begged me to let her watch the boys. Uh, okay! I am so fortunate to have so many friends and family that love spending time with my boys. Anyhow, she gave me a couple hours in the afternoon to run some errands and then her and her husband watched the boys in the evening while Greg and I went mtn. biking. We had such a great ride- it felt so good to be back on the bike again. Afterwards we came home and played cards with our friends and stayed up way too late. I need to get off this thing and get some sleep. This weekend has already been a lot of fun- we will see what more tomorrow brings!

The Past Few Days

My new camera has arrived! It is awesome. Since it came with such a dinky memory card I have not been able to take very many pictures, but hopefully tomorrow I will have the opportunity to get a larger card. It also came with some really cool new software that I am still learning so my picture are not cropped, sized and edited like usual.
Here is Mama G and Noah coloring while we waited for our food at the Texican Cafe last Sunday. They came down to hear Greg preach at our church. The pastor was out of town and asked Greg to fill in. He has preached once before in this church and spoken at various other occasions. He teaches the Jr. High twice a week and really loves working with the youth, but speaking to the rest of the congregation gets him a little nervous. He did a great job. I really admire his public speaking abilities. After lunch, Mama and Papa G hung out at the house for awhile.
Tuesday we took the Rav to San Antonio where Uncle Brad worked on it. He gave us a new decked out FJ Cruiser to drive while our car was in the shop. We had a lot of fun driving it. It is a really cool truck, but not exactly the efficient family-mobile we need. Maybe when the kids are older... Greg worked from his laptop and phone the whole day while the kids and I visited with Aunt Tammy and Jacob out in Sisterdale. We swam and the boys played outside. That is Noah on Jacob's 'motorcycle'. It was a fun, but long, day.
Today we are back to the same ol routine. We went to the pool this morning and this afternoon is gymnastics and then church.

Sweet Baby

Visit Dori's new photo site to see updated pictures of our kids. Hint for her new site: click on a picture and then click on the tiny icon in the top left corner that says 'all sizes' to see a big picture better for printing and downloading to your computer.

Glimpse into the Future....

Dori took this picture at the lake a couple weeks ago. How old does he look to you? Greg and I think we can see what Noah will look like as a teenager in this picture. Greg sees a lot of Geoff, his brother, in him. Hard for me to say because I did not know Geoff as a kid. I see a little heart throb- don't know how I'm going to handle that...

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday Wyatt turned 10 months! He is a small but very mobile 10 monther. Each day he is trying to communicate more and more. He uses hand signs for 'eat', 'milk' and 'more'. That is all I have really taught him or he might know more. Right now he is really into clapping. He learned to do it a long time ago but stopped for a while. Now he claps all the time- even while he is walking. He is finally sleeping through the night. I hope I don't jinx it. The past four nights he has slept from 8:30 to 7. It has been wonderful.
Here is 'Yankee Doodle Wyatt' according to Christie. Our Fourth began kind of crumby but got a lot better. We went to a 'festival' on the river in San Marcos that turned out to be really lame. There were a few booths selling junk, some junk food and it was about 99% humidity and h-o-t hot. So after some ice cream and funnel cake (while listening to a really horrible band) we left. Christie and che invited us to go swimming and eat hot dogs in the late afternoon. That was a lot of fun. Christie's aunt has a little boy close to Noah's age so they played in the pool the whole time. Wyatt and Ben kept Christie, Che, Greg and I busy entertaining, feeding and cleaning up after them. The boys were exhausted by the time we got home so we put them to bed, watched a bad movie and went to bed ourselves. No fireworks- other than the non-pretty, loud ones the rednecks in our neighborhood set off all hours of the night. They must have not had time to fire them all because all day yesterday and last night they were still goin at it. The boys probably would have enjoyed a big display, but they start so late and Monday night was rainy.
Here is Wyatt chowing down on a tomato yesterday. I was babysitting Molly and I had all the kids in the backyard looking at flowers and picking stuff int he garden. The babies wanted to inspect the tomatos and before I knew it they were both eating them like apples! The one Wyatt is eating is a variety that is supposed to be green. Don't worry, I woulnd't feed the babies unripe veggies. Molly ate most of a huge red one. Wyatt only ate about a third of that green one. Afterwards everyone went in the tub to get off all the tomato juice and dirt.
My exciting news is that I am getting a new camera! Canon has an upgrade program so I am sending in mine and they are sending me back a refurbished current model that is leaps better than the one I have. It takes much better video too. I am determined to figure out how to get video on the blog. I think I will work on that right now while Wyatt is taking an uncharacteristically long nap. Nevermind! He just woke up while loading that last picture!

It's Go Time!

It has been quit a while since I last updated! Wyatt is walking all over the place now. This picture was taken last week in Dallas (s a last minute trip to attend a funeral). At that time he was only able to walk about 6 ft max. He now can get from one end of the house to the other and make small turns. He still has a good many falls and he is not able to go from sitting to standing without pulling up on something. He loves walking and usually falls because he gets so excited by his progress he laughs and waves, knocking himself off balance.
Our recent days have been pretty busy. The unexpected trip to Dallas came with mixed emotions. It was fun to visit with the family but the death of the father of Greg's closest childhood friend was really sad. Last Friday Christie and baby Ben came over for a play date. Wyatt loves to hug and kiss and wrestle with his baby friends, but they don't usually respond very well. We figure that he interacts with other babies so physically because that is how Noah plays with him. Lately, it is a constant wrestling match around here. Anyhow, the babies made their way into the pantry and enjoyed shaking macaroni boxes and chewing on Diet Coke bottles. That was the best entertainment all day.
Saturday we went to the lake with some friends and rode the wakeboard most of the day. We were wiped and headed back home that evening. Noah and Wyatt did great spending most of the day on the boat. Sunday we were at church most of the day. Greg had to work on Monday but we had some friends over for dinner. They have two little girls close in age to Noah and Wyatt. Noah and Taylor played hard all evening, wrestling, jumping of the deck and generally running amuck. Today we tried to take the boys to a July 4th 'festival' in San Marcos but it was nothing more than some lame booths selling junk and junk food. Christie and Che saved the day by inviting us over to her aunt's house for a mini pool party. So the boys should be absolutely worn down by now. They went to bed tonight without so much as a peep.