Milestones!

Sweet baby Riley hit 2 big milestones in one day! Yesterday, he finally figured out how to crawl! It's still mostly an army crawl, but he can move forward and he's quick too! He loves exploring and he's perfectly content just to crawl around and play with all the new fun toys that he can get to. I guess it's time to baby-proof again and get the baby gates back out. Hopefully, we can keep Jacoby off the gates so he doesn't break them and fall down the stairs.

Riley also got his first tooth! He has had swollen gums for 2 months now and he finally had a tooth pop through. You can't see it yet, but you can sure feel it! I have also taken away his binki. He had a nice little rash around his mouth and the Dr. told me that it wouldn't go away as long as he had his binki. I was also sick of the stupid thing. He would wake up several times a night looking for his binki and I'm ready for him to sleep through the night. So, we're going to try "sleep training" without the binki. We are on day 2 of him not having it and he's doing okay. He cries himself to sleep now, but it's not for hours. Last night, he only woke up once at 4:30 to eat and didn't wake up looking for his binki, so I think we might finally get him sleeping good!

I don't have any pictures of him crawling yet, but I will. So, enjoy these cute pictures of him with his Aggies hat on Superbowl Sunday!

Mom doesn't look so good in this one, but Riley sure is cute!

He has started pulling faces at me. He scrunches up his face and half-smiles. Cute little bug.

Books

My blog is mostly a picture montage for the family and friends that don't get to see us and our cute kids as often as they would like. Lately though, I have been debating on making my blog more of a "true blog" by getting more personal and posting things other than just pictures of the kids (although, they are quite adorable!). I'm sure that I will still mostly post about the kids, but maybe I'll throw in the extra post, such as this one.

Anyways. On to the topic at hand. BOOKS! I love to read (and it's even better with my Nook that my wonderful in-laws got me for Christmas!). It's a passion of mine that my poor husband can't even begin to understand. I'm kind of an odd reader though. I jump from author and genre quite often, and I'm not a fan of the classics. I just can't get into anything that's older than I am. I also find that I decide that I like one author and so I'll grab every book of theirs that I can and then get bored with them after a while because they all have the same story, just written in a slightly different way (i.e. Nora Roberts). I don't care for biographies or poetry, and I'm not big on real life stories either. I guess I'm just not "cultured" when it comes to books.

I love to talk about books and lately, I don't have anybody to listen to me that actually cares, so I've decided to take to my blog with a few reviews of my favorites.

First and foremost. My favorite author. Tess Gerritsen. I'm not a fan of her early books, but when she started the "Rizzoli and Isles" series that began with "The Apprentice" is when she became a favorite of mine. She is a murder mystery writer and she can be a bit graphic at times when it comes to autopsies and such, but she is a great story-teller and she just gets better with each book.

Another favorite is Tami Hoag. She is also a murder mystery author but she started in romance. So, a few of her books have love scenes in them, but I think she's mostly gotten away from that.

Lately, I've also gotten into Young Adult books. I jumped on the bandwagon and read the Twilight series and I liked it. However, the movies are atrocious. I also loved the Fablehaven Series and Percy Jackson. Both of those series were fun fantasy books. I also recently read The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and they were fantastic! I read all 3 books in 2 days.

Lastly, Barnes and Noble offer free books for the Nook. At any given time, there is about 50 free books and most of them are romance novels that you couldn't pay me to read. Every now and then though, they put a book on there for just a day or two that's actually worth downloading. Usually, it's the first book of a series and they're trying to sucker you into buying the rest of the books. I have actually discovered some good books this way. And, yes, I'm a sucker and usually end up buying the rest of the series. Case in point : the young adult series, The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa. There are currently 3 books in the series with more to follow. They are not the type of book that I thought I would ever read, but I loved them. They are a young adult fantasy romance books (they're even published by Harlequin - yuck!), but they have faery's instead of vampires. For a detailed description of these books, go here.

Vegas!

Every year, Dominic goes to California for a big conference for work. I decided that I didn't want to be home alone with the kids for the 5 days that he is gone, so we decided to go see Grandma and Grandpa! Dominic's work was awesome and let him book his flight out of Vegas instead of SLC, so off we went! We spent 10 days with them and it was such a good time. I'm a little (ok, a lot) more poor than I was when we got there, but it sure was fun. The kids enjoyed their grandparents so much and I loved having a break! The weather was gorgeous and we were able to spend time outside and we all took Jacoby to the park at least once. But, once again, I didn't take many pictures while were there. Here are a few that I did take.

Eating breakfast and Skyping with Bobbi!

Dominic was showing off his new toy (his new laptop).

Grandma and Grandpa having fun with Riley.

Grandpa was bathing Riley and Jacoby decided that he wanted to take a bath too. This picture was too cute.

Riley wants to crawl so bad, but he can't quite figure it out. He will get up on his hands and knees and rock, but he hasn't moved yet. He can army crawl and roll to get to where he wants though, so he is mobile.

We were going to take Riley's bouncer so he had something to play in while were were there, but we forgot the seat. So, Grandma got online and found an awesome exersaucer on Craig's list. Riley loved it! He was having a blast playing in it with Daddy.





And I had to throw in these next pictures. Riley has a double cowlick on the back of his head which makes his hair grow in several different directions, including straight up. His hair is getting long and now he has a small little curl that sticks straight up. It reminds me of Alfalfa from the Little Rascals! It's too cute, but it was hard to catch on film. He doesn't stop moving!



Such a happy boy! I love that smile.

Christmas

We stayed home for Christmas this year. It was Jacoby's first Christmas at home! We had a busy couple of days with family, but it was fun! Dom's parents came up for Christmas Eve and morning, but they had to leave that afternoon. It was good to have them here, even if it was short. Christmas morning was fun because it was the first Christmas that Jacoby actually opened presents and got into it. It was so much fun to watch him.

Jacoby and Daddy opening presents.

Grandpa and Baby Riley

Grandma


Jacoby sure loves his Grandpa!

I got a Nook! I also got a new camera that is idiot-proof so I shouldn't complain about my horrible photography skills anymore.

Later, Bobbi and Mattie came up to spend Christmas afternoon with us. We had to leave them for a bit to go to my parents house, but it was good to have them here!



Jacoby's wearing Bobbi's awesome new hat!

Grandma was feeding Riley one last time before she had to go.

Jacoby was getting in one last snuggle with Grandpa.

Christmas was awesome! Too bad it only comes once a year because there is so much love around the Holidays. Here's to a healthy and happy 2011!

Cute Riley Post

This post is all about Riley. He is so much fun and he's always so happy! I will post about Christmas in a day or two. For now, just enjoy my sweet baby!

He wants to crawl, but he's not quite there yet. He'll get his knees under him for just a minute and then he goes back down. It won't be long before he's really mobile.


He was having fun playing in Daddy's hair.

Playing with his monkey on his playmat.

Having fun in his jumper.


Bath Time!

Snuggling with Daddy. He was so mellow and relaxed, but he didn't fall asleep. So sweet.

Happy Jacoby! I had to throw in a couple pictures of him too!

Jacoby wearing his new slippers that he got for Christmas.

And, a cute short video of the boys! Enjoy!

My Cute Kids

Riley loves to jump and bounce, so he usually spends some time every day in either his exersaucer or his jumper. Last night, he was so full of energy, we stuck him in the exersaucer. He was so happy! Dom got out the camera to take a video of him and Jacoby had to jump in on the action too. They're so cute. It's not the best quality video since it was taken with our camera and not the video camera (the batteries were dead), but it's still cute.

Thanksgiving and Such

So, I've slacked off on the blog again. This isn't going to be much of a post; we haven't taken many pictures in the last month, but I'll post the few that I have.

For Thanksgiving, we headed to Vegas to see Dom's family. We had a great time and the kids were so good! They even traveled well. Unfortunately we only got a few pictures of our weekend.

Jacoby and I watching a movie on Monte and Cyn's bed

The boys playing cards.

Ma, Bobbi, and Cyn with most of the dogs.

Riley playing with Grandma and Grandpa

That's about all of the pictures that we got while we were in Vegas.


We finally got the tree up at our house! Jacoby loves it!

Sweet baby Riley

Riley has learned to scoot on his back but he doesn't have much control over his direction yet. He managed to push himself under our bed. He wasn't happy about it either, especially since I took his picture instead of rescuing him.