Ollie goes on his first weekend getaway

So last week when we were having a horrible week, our friends the Davids had a horrible week too. They called us and asked us if we wanted to join them for a weekend getaway and we said YES! Hotel rooms in Park City are really cheap now because it's off season there so we were off. It was a great weekend. I only wish I pulled my camera out a little more often.

We got to see a Banksy in person!!!! (I wasn't sure if any of his work would be left after Sundance and was so happy to discover this one was still there!)

We lounged around in our hotel rooms a lot.
We ate a lot of amazing food including the bread pudding French toast with strawberries and peaches at The Homestead.

We made new friends
We walked around downtown
We came home with good finds from the outlets (every store we went into had pretty much everything on sale)

We toured Homestead Crater (something on my list of things that I wanted to do in Utah)
This is the only picture that I got of the Davids and it's missing Jeff and Baby Ruby
We did a little thrift shopping

Some of us swam in the pool.

And we lounged around the hotel a little more.
It was a pretty great weekend!

Ollie at Two Months

I can't believe Oliver is already two months old! He's changed so much in the past few weeks. My favorite change is that he has started to smile! Larry is the best at getting him to smile and he was not at home when I took these pictures today so unfortunately, I didn't catch him grinning, but I promise to try soon!

He has started filling out a lot and is finally starting to get some chubby cheeks and rolls! He's still fairly skinny though so he's in the 90th percentile for height (I think 22 and 3/4 ") and 25th for weight at 11 lbs. even (but that's up from the 10th percentile so he's doing well)

Our doctor kept commenting on how active Ollie is so I guess he takes after Creed. Sadly, he also is starting to get reflux like Creed too. He's on the first medication they tried with Creed at this age and he hates it. He squeals and sobs every time that I give it to him and it makes me so sad.
He still is so calm and relaxed compared to Creed as a baby (maybe it's because we have a better idea of what we're doing this time around?)
I was hoping to get some better pictures of him, but this photo shoot quickly went from this
to this so it ended quickly.
Creed decided that I should take a picture of him with the letter O instead. When I asked him why, he said, "Because I love Oliver!" I guess Creed has come a long way too because the first month of Ollie's life, Creed insisted on calling him "Yellow" and got upset every time we called him Oliver instead.

Progress report - Part Two

I finished almost everything on my monthly to do list!

I grew Wheat Grass for the first time (thanks to Brenna's mom for passing along the wheat)
We ate lunch at the Chow Truck (pretend Larry and Creed are in focus in the picture)
It was delicious and these pictures are making me hungry!
And Creed, Ollie and I ventured out to Wheeler Farm (although there are no pictures of Ollie because he was strapped to me in the Moby Wrap). Creed wanted to spend the whole time watching the ducks, but I am scared of ducks (no, I am not joking, they swam around you in big groups and I swear they are planning to take over the world) so eventually I convinced him to move on.
The pictures speak for themselves


I snuck this one of him on the tractor ride. He held my hand the whole time. I don't want him to grow up!

Glass Half-Full

Not much has changed around here; my hard-drive is still dead (although on the positive side, I had the Apple Care plan and they replaced the hard drive for free so now I'm busy setting my computer up and downloading the pictures I still have on my camera), our landlord is still making us move so she can live here temporarily, but I am feeling much, much better about life and it's mostly because of you, dear friends, reading this. So many friends, some we know and some we don't, have come forward to offer whatever they can (help, advice, words of support) and I don't think we could possibly feel any more loved, and that would make just about anyone feel pretty happy.

I thought it was cute that even Larry was touched by how many of you have commented. I didn't even know that he was reading the comments and he said he thought it was really cool how many people that we didn't know commented such thoughtful things. It's like we have secret friends all over, which sort of feels magical.

At any rate, we are doing our best to move on. We think we found a temporary apartment that will let us have a month to month lease (we filled out the application today so keep your fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan). It's literally half the size of where we live now so most of our things will go into storage (but I think it will be sort of refreshing to see how little we can live with. We have way too much stuff), and its a little shabby, and when we did a walk through tonight we realized that it does not have central air conditioning, BUT it's clean, it's only two streets away, the manager is really nice, the rent is really affordable, and we can stay there as long as we need to while we figure things out.

And Larry has a job interview that he's really excited about. The problem is that the job is in PITTSBURGH. Ummm, Larry always promised that when he was done with his training, I could choose where we would live, and I definitely did not choose Pittsburgh, BUT it's a huge opportunity for him. If his Salt Lake job hadn't fallen through, we wouldn't have even considered this opportunity so I can't help feeling like maybe this was meant to be. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Did I mention that they just rescheduled this job interview to exactly when we were planning to move? UGH! Well, it will all work out, right?

In the meantime, we're focusing on the positive and seeing lots of sunshine around here. Can you guess who just got a magical new pair of shoes?

I wasn't sure I should buy them because I knew they would be a pain to put on and lace up, but Larry said we HAD to get them because they would make Creed so happy. He was right, and Creed wants to wear them all the time.
So I guess it will come as no surprise that this is what he chose as his summer footwear?
He recently asked me if I would buy him all yellow clothes for Christmas.

Oh, I love this boy!

I've also finished some really fun little projects lately that I can't wait to tell you about so stay posted!

Looking For Four New Roommates?

The last 24 hours have not treated the Ford family well. We were already feeling stressed around here because Larry's fellowship ends at the end of June and the job he thought he was going to accept fell through (which, I should note, was no reflection on him, just frustrating hospital politics). I kept telling myself that it would be ok, we would just continue to rent here and a take a couple of months to figure it out if we needed to.

In the midst of all of this, yesterday, my computer stopped working. If you know me, you know that I struggle to function with out a computer and I NEED it to work when I get a spare moment. Ahhh!

Larry walked in on me trying to reboot the computer and realizing that it was not going to happen with a note addressed to me that he found on our porch. It was from our landlord and it was a note terminating our lease. What? I reread it three times in a row thinking I must be misunderstanding it, but I wasn't. She started out saying this was such an exciting time in our lives with Larry finishing fellowship and a new baby and she hoped that we were doing well. Then she wanted to give us an update on the timeline for our home, she was terminating our lease and wants us out in mid-May. She continued to say that we have been monderful tenants and she wishes us best of luck and that we should be sure to leave things and clean as possible to get as much as possible back from our deposit. WHAT????? No explainations whatsoever as to why she is suddenly kicking us out when we have two months left of fellowship and how are we supposed to find a place to live for two months? Any place that I know of with a short-term lease like that would be too shady to live in with kids.

I spent all night on the verge of tears wondering what we are going to do and dreading what moving twice this summer is going to put our little family through. I told myself worse comes to worse, we could live with my parents for two months and Larry could commute two hours a day, but their house in under construction and my sister and her family will be living with them for the summer and my little brother is getting married in June so that plan is not going to work so well.

The landlord didn't answer our calls until this morning (I'm sure she was anticipating how upset we'd be). She says she put her house on the market and it sold way faster than she predicted and she needed a temporary place to stay while she buys her new home and she chose our house (she owns a bunch of rental homes). She showed no remorse at all and kept saying, "I can't believe I'm going to be out of a home!" as if we should pity her when she will be moving in and now we will not have a home and we have two small children. And if she was selling her home and thought this might be a possibility, why didn't she gives us a heads up?

Then the news came back form the Apple store that my harddrive is dead and they do not think they will be able to recover anything. All of my work, all of our music, and most heartbreaking - all of our pictures from the last year: GONE. (At least I blog and can try to download all of photos that I blogged, but I still lost a lot of my favorites).

I feel like staying in bed and avoiding everyone for the rest of the week because I cannot handle any more bad news.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be Just Like My Older Sister

What's that? She's only two years older than me? Well, that gives me two years to get my act together, right?

Candice flew out a few days after Ollie was born to take pictures. Meanwhile, I was an emotional mess, and not feeling great about myself and she helped me put myself back together. She is WAY more stylish than me, and I'm jealous of the clothes she puts together every time I see her (I tell myself this is because I have no money to spend on clothes, but honestly, it's because she is talented that way). Oh, and did I mention that her house looks like this? (I'll have to ask her if I can share some of the other photos I have because it is AMAZING).
While we were picking up photo props at Target I made her pick out a few thing for me to wear postpartum. Of course they were things that I never would have picked and of course she was right about all of them. She helped me and my mom sort through all of my old clothes and toss about half of them, which felt much better than you might think. I was so sad when she had to go. I need more time with both of my sisters. Her short visit left me wishing that she lived next door, and we could hang out all the time. I guess that next best thing is that she started blogging again! Oh, how I have missed her blog. If you need a little Candice in your life too, you can check in on her here.

Or even better, you could sign up to go to France and pick up some photography tips from her (Yes, she hangs out with cool people like Nicole Hill and stays in places like Stephmodo's la Maisonette. See, you want to be like her when you grow up too, don't you?)

Easter 2010

We had a great Easter; lots of spiritual messages from General Conference and the Easter Bunny found us too.He put books in both of the boys' Easter baskets. Tools by Taro Miura for Creed
and some of the Gosling books by Olivier Dunrea for Ollie (because he HAD to own Ollie the Stomper and Ollie's Easter Eggs, right?)
Creed was thrilled that the Easter bunny knew of his love for Cheetos
Ollie watched Creed hunt for his eggs

The Easter Bunny brought us all yellow eggs, of course.
Creed didn't hesitate to start eating all the chocolate he could find.

So we ended up with lots of pictures like this

And this (those chocolate covered teeth crack me up)

Then he was off to make use of his new bubble maker and sunglasses

Life doesn't get much better than that!

Happy Easter

Love, Oliver!

April?

Um, I did not expect to wake up to this in April.

But Creed and I decided to take advantage of the snow and hurried out to make one last snowman.

And as long as Creed is going to insist on eating the snow, we might as well use it to make snowcones.
Meanwhile, Ollie looked like this.

Creed's Easter Birthday Party - Part 4 - The Activities

When Creed's friends arrived we had bunny ears for each of them.
Creed already had a pari that he was very attached to so his was a little different and I added a party hat that I made with a number three on it.
They were all very cute and excited to pretend to be Easter bunnies. First, they each took turns hiding a big egg and looking for it.
Then we talked about how the Easter bunny has to be very smart and tricky so we went on a hunt for bunny treasure and had to figure out the tricky clues. The clues were little egg-shaped cards hidden all over the house.
And they ended at this bunny treasure (Carrot-shaped bottles of bubbles).
They were a hit.
And after blowing bubbles, a special guest arrived; a real bunny! The kids were so excited and I wish I could have caught a picutre of Creed's face when the bunny arrived. He looked like he was going to burst with joy (it helped that the bunny belonged to his favorite babysitter, who he wanted to invite to his party)
After that we headed outside for the big event the kids were all looking forward to, an Easter egg hunt. I had baskets waiting for the kids and told them each to find eggs the same color as their basket. That way everyone got the same amount of eggs and I could make sure they all got the same things in them so there was no arguing.
The kids were all really good and excited to help each other when they found each other's eggs.
We also hid cascarones (confetti filled eggs) that made the hunt a little more fun.
I tried not to put too much candy in the eggs since they were sure to get more this weekend and I had fun looking for things to put in the egg. I made these bunny finger puppets using this tutorial from the Purl Bee.

There was egg-shaped sidewalk chalk
egg-shaped wooden tops
punching balloons and those little capsules that dissolve in water and fun-shaped sponges pop out of (I loved those when I was little and Creed's at the perfect age to think that they are amazing)
Easter tattoos (ok, Easter and tattoo, don't exactly go together, but hey, I had a lot of eggs to fill!)

It was nice to be able to send each guest home with a basket full of goodies
The party went well and this picture of Creed says it all.