Fall + Malcom = Fun Fun Fun

What we've been up to:

Playing in leaves

Finding big sticks

Fun with Daddy!

Climbing toddler-sized trees

Skate boarding with friends

 Finding Malcom sleeping in the recliner at midnight, instead of his bed (this only happened once, that we know of... haha)

Pumpkin Patch! This is Aunt Becca and Uncle Kevin, pulling little Caleb in the wagon

Looking for the perfect pumpkins! (that's me in the background practically growing out of Malcom's head!)

Scouting for the good ones

Making pumpkin pie! (Malcom's a great stirrer!)

Little individual pies. So fun!

"Carving" his first pumpkin

I don't know what happened when I took this picture.. but you get the gist: Dinosaur chasing little stick people

Building forts in the living room! (I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of this one. Wish I had a better picture though!)

I finished Malcom's little ninja costume today, just in time to go trick-or-treating at Melalueca (Ben's work). He refused to wear his headband, and his little cardboard/tin foil/ electrical tape sword lasted less then 3 minutes (something that I predicted would happen). We'll go trick-or-treating again tomorrow, so I'll make sure to take some pictures then! Happy Halloween weekend everyone!

Midnight Shennanigans

We've got ourselves a sleepwalker. Who knew a toddler could sleepwalk?? I love this kid! Ben and I were up fairly late sometime last week (we're "night owls" so this is nothing new), just cuddling on the couch watching some show on Hulu, when a little man child appears in the hallway. With out a peep and eyes closed, he toddles down, turns the corner next to the highchair, walks into the middle of the kitchen and stops. Ben and I look at each other completely confused. "Didn't he go to bed like 5 hours ago?!" We laughed as we figured out that he was still asleep. Ben calls him over to the couch, and he comes like a little zombie, still eyes closed. Ben pulls him up to his lap, where he opens his eyes to spend a few minutes staring into space, unblinking... I think our laughing woke him up, but it was impossible to stifle the hilariousness of the moment! It took a few minutes, but it was so funny to watch him slowly wake up, blinking and squinting, looking absolutely bewildered. We put him to bed pretty quickly after that, still chuckling days later about the silly incident.

A few nights later we found him sleeping in the recliner in his room, instead of his bed. I know he didn't start there! He was exhausted before our bedtime routine even began.  He was so cute though, his feet propped up  on one arm rest, his head on the other. I don't know if he sleep walked over there or just decided to change it up for the night, but it was funny anyway. 

A few weekends ago we went out to Beaver Dick Park to try out Ben's new birthday hammock. Malcom had a fantastic time splashing around in the water and mud. Sooooo, picture time!

It's like a giant, muddy bathtub! Life is so good! 

(This is his splashing-really-fast-face.. Haha! It makes me laugh everytime!)

The sun set came, and luckily the man child was wise enough to get out and play on the shore instead.

Last week Malcom and I went with my brother and his family to the straw maze out in Archer. It was a lot of  fun! It was huge, too, esepcailly for someone like me who has absolutely no sense of direction. Here's Malcom taking a break.

It was all over! We made it out! Woohoo! And then we climbed on to some hay bails, where my bro Kevin was nice enough to snap a picture for us. Thanks Kev!

Becca and Kevin headed home after the straw maze, but I wasn't ready to go home yet. Instead, Malcom and I headed out to Heise (since we were already so close), and just chased each other around and explored. Malcom kept picking weeds and brandishing them like swords- the funniest thing was that he would stick it out infront of him, then run and scream like he was saying, "CHAAAARGE!" This isn't a very good picture, but I love it anyway. Here he is, mid charge.. 

Anyway, I have a whole bucket more of pics to share, but this has been a long post already. I'll just save it for later. Till then, hope everyone has a great week!

Technology

Another few weeks have gone by between posts, but this time it's not for laziness. I've been in the process of cleaning out and upgrading my comp, and let me tell you, it's been quite the project (normally wouldn't take more than a few hours, but Ben's been so busy lately it's taken a while to get to, and I'm too scared of messing things up to do it myself!). I'm glad I married a man that loves technology! It's quite a blessing.

Malcom's doing great as always. He went to nursery during church a few weeks ago and loved it! We missed him though. Turns out it's hard to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes when you've spent the past 18 months entertaining a child!  

Ben's been crazy busy, not surprisingly. It is the fall semester after all... We don't see him much during the week and sometimes Saturdays are spent in the library working on different projects/homework. At least we have Sunday! No homework, just church and family time. Wonderful! I can't wait till he graduates next year. It's gonna rock!

I've been busy too! I've done a few photoshoots for friends and family, and gosh, that's fun!! Editing pics keeps you pretty busy as well, especially when Malcom doesn't always like it when mommy sometimes spends a few hours in a day editing pics. Ben came home the other day with a (somewhat) surprise gift: Adobe Creative Suite 5 (it has the new photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, and a few other programs I honestly don't use but Ben does! haha). I'M SO EXCITED! The photoshop I was using was great, but it was a dinosaur program and I had spend a ton of time editing things by hand. It was a good experience and good to start with, but I've played around a little with the new photoshop and WOW! Some things are SOOOOO much easier! It should cut out a lot of computer time. Example: Trying to get rid of the large stream of nasty baby spit up spilling down a little tykes face used to take me hours (seriously) to get rid of and make the area look natural, but with the new software you can get rid of it in a minute! Malcom and I are both excited about that one! I have a few more photoshoots lined up for the next week, which is perfect with the fall leaves and weather! Mmmmmm, love fall.

Speaking of which, I started working on Malcom's costume a few days ago. I have all the pieces cut out and pinned, I just need to sit down and actually sew it together, then add the details. I'm crossing my fingers- so far so good! But sometimes things that look great cut out and pinned together don't work out as well sewn together. So let's hope this works! When it's done (and if it doesn't look terrible!) I'll post a pic.

I guess that's all for now. I'll add pictures when we're done doing tech stuff to the computer and I can load 'em up again, and when I have time. Might be another week or two, who knows?! ;) I like to live on the edge. ;)

Love to all! 

Face-Plant at Five

I don't know why, but I've definitely been going through a blogging lull lately. Who knows why? Meh.  Funny story though:

So yesterday  I had one of those severely klutzy days. I kept dropping things all day, and I also managed to slice my finger while cutting apples, bash my face on Ben's laptop (I'm not sure what happened there, so I won't attempt to explain)... The funniest thing was at 5, when Malcom woke up crying and I got up to check on him. I forgot that Ben had closed our bedroom door and ended up face-planting at full speed into it. BAM! (No joke, it was crazy loud) Ben stirred in his sleep and mumbled, "I love you", which was sweet, but even funnier. I was laughing so hard (and quietly) that I was literally crying. I found that it's confusing to laugh so hard you're crying at that time in the morning, when you're REALLY not awake. I kept thinking in my head, "This is so funny! It's doesn't even hurt... then why does my face feel like it's crying?... and I sound like I'm crying..?! But I'm laughing?" That made it even funnier, which made me cry harder. Ben said he couldn't figure out what was going on on my side of the bed. Haha! So it took a while to get to sleep, but it was worth it. A little comic relief in the wee hours of the morning is always welcome!

Anyway, we've had a lot of fun in the last few weeks, despite school starting up again.

Ben had his 28th birthday!

Malcom enjoying some of daddy's cake:

I was lucky enough last week to get a visit from some of my favorite roommates. I had SO much fun with these girls! Ben and I taught Rachel how to skateboard, and she was my dear friend and roommate when I jumped over the hurtle of friendship to relationship with Ben (she also started dating and got engaged to her husband during that time). Heather and Miriam were my adventure pals. We spent an entire summer sleeping in the back yard or some other random location along a trail or roadside. My first time backpacking was with them too! Love, love, love these girls! I do. L to R: Malcom, me, Miriam, Rachel and her adorable daughter Grace, Heather. 

I've been working on a LOT of projects lately. I have a new project I'm really excited about, but I won't let myself start it until I finish a few of  the older ones I haven't touched in a while. I've been averaging about a project a day (not easy to do when you're little one wants to be apart of it!). I'll have to post on those sometime in the near future, when I have a few more complete. 

Also, today's Malcom's half-birthday! He's officially 18 months today. Yay! He'll get to go into nursery for the first time at church on Sunday. I'm not too worried, he LOVES other kids and they seem to have a ton of fun in there. I'm just hoping I can pay attention for more than 5 minutes at a time now that I don't have to entertain anyone. This might be a challenge. ;)

That's all for now. Love to all!

Anniversary

So glad that this devilishly handsome dream boat...

...met this silly girl...

...And that they became such good friends...

...That they fell in love...

...And got married!!

Ben and I had our 3-year anniversary yesterday! Three years of marriage, four years of romance, and five years of spectacular friendship. It was fun going down memory lane yesterday with him, especially since I found a supper sappy CD that I had burned when we were dating. It made for great background music when we headed to IF for our little date night. Anniversaries are the best!

I could write a huge, crazy long lovey-dovey sappy post about Ben, but ya' know what? I think I'll save that for him. In short, I LOVE him, and I'm seriously the luckiest girl in the world to have him by my side. :)

So here's to marriage, and by far the best decision I ever made.

Random

I know it's been a few weeks, I've just been slacking lately. Not much has happened.... Here's a (very) quick review.

This is the manchild with snoopy on 4th of July. It was just some random booth set up in the park, next to a bunch of other random booths. He wasn't so sure about the big white dog, but they somehow managed to get a less scared picture of him.

Malcom found the left-overs of some steak we had one night, and commenced to gnaw on it with great pleasure. Kid's hilarious.

Grandpa Matheson's wedding to Vionne in Parowan, UT. It was really sweet and a good visit with family. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures, partly because the wedding took place in the scorching noon-day sun, I didn't have a ton of ambition, and my camera lens was sadly touched by a certain manchild's peanut butter fingers. Turns out that's hard to clean off a lens.. :(

Went to Egin Lake again yesterday. Malcom sampled some muddy sand.. He LOVES it out there!

Short post, I know. But really, there's not a lot going on. Plus I'm lazy. :) Well, that's all for now! Love you all!

Words

Busy busy busy buuuuuussssyyy busy. Isn't this summer? Isn't this supposed to be the time when you get to sleep in, stay in your PJs half the day, play outside and eat otter pops, with little to no responsibility?! What happened to that?? I miss that!

But really, beside all the crazy, it's been a great week. I can't seem to recall all that I've been up to, but I'm pretty sure it's been a good kind of crazy. Ben keeps telling me that I need an actual day off, because even when I'm not "doing anything" I'm still busy cleaning, working on another project or taking care of Malcom. I think he's right. Someday soon I'm going to have to take a day off and just, well, I don't know, but it's going to be amazing and full of a whole lot of "nothing". :)

Ben got offered an IT job in IF. He's really excited about it, but to work there he'd be agreeing to a $$ pay cut from what he's currently getting at Melalueca (which, by the way, he's been at their annual convention all day in SLC and won't get home till 2 or 3AM. *shakes fist at Melalueca* I miss my husband!!). Hopefully negotiations will go well and he'll be able to take it! I told him he needs to take it anyway because the experience alone will pay for itself. Graduating with actual working experience in the field is huge! Plus, this little company will work with him on the internship stuff. It's a pretty sweet deal... Ah well, we'll see what happens.

Malcom has been playing with words this week! I swear, it's out of nowhere. Sure the kid will babble and tell amazing stories that are (apparently) really funny (at least he thinks so, can't wait to understand what he's saying!), but he's never really repeated words, trying to imitate us. Just in the last three days he's said kitty, flower, and bath. Ben says we need to start teaching him more manly words like "fire" and "gun". :P I guess Ben and Malcom need to have a good "man" day while I take my personal day. ;) Sounds like a plan.

Son

Its been a busy week!

Sunday evening we took a walk around Eagle Park, ending up at the nature park/duck pond. We made sure to bring some muffins and bread for our fat little feathered friends! (This is a pic of Malcom playing with a wildflower along the way)

Monday we went to the annual International Dance Festival Parade. It was a lot smaller than it has been in past years, but it was fun nonetheless. Afterwards we went to Porter Park and played with Malcom's little buddy Hayley. They really enjoy putting handfuls of bark mulch on the slides... I don't get it either.

Tuesday was the best day of the week (so far)! We went to Egin Lake in the morning- it's a really cool little oasis-type lake that doesn't get more than waist deep. Malcom LOVED playing along the more shallower shoreline and splashing around with his mom and dad. I think he saw it as a giant bath tub outside- what could be better?! After Egin Lake, we came home and made some YUMMY grilled chicken alfredo and salad for a family in our ward who just had a baby. Of course, we saved some for ourselves too... :) We dropped off their dinner, then headed out to Kelly Canyon for some camping!

This picture is for Grandma Doreen: Malcom spotted a few horses while we were there and got really excited! Here he is pointing at them (and grinning, but you can't see that obviously.. haha)

Ben and Malcom had some great "man" time. We didn't get out there till after dark, which made Malcom a little apprehensive at first. It didn't take very to come around though- honestly, think this kid could be a mountain man. He was so happy! It must have been like spending all this time in a park with out having to go home (plus the bonus of trying his first s'more).

Ben said the cutest thing Wednesday morning as he had Malcom were cooking up some bacon for breakfast: "I used to have a baby, then I had a toddler, now I have a son." Gosh, I just love my boys!!!