Sam the Manly Man & Avery is 2!

The big 2! I can't believe how big she is! She is becoming the sweetest little girl. So kind and caring. The only time she throws big tantrums is when we tell her to hop in bed, and she hasn't given Sammy a kiss goodnight yet. She always smothers him with love (a.k.a. her blankie) and tries to share her favorite foods (pretzels and goldfish) with him.



Sam has started smiling and cooing. I love it and it sure makes motherhood much more rewarding when they smile! I'm not sure how to shorten this video, but the good parts are starting at :45, and at 1:48 is the nice surprise. I would've stopped it at 2:35 if I'd known how to edit videos.



At the hospital, we were still trying to decide on a name for Sam. The staff always made signs to put on the babies' little beds, so Nathan told the hospital staff that we were going to name him "Wernicke." He told them he was kidding, but it kinda became this joke between them and us. Well, I went to visit Sam in the nursery and was admiring him, and the other cute boys on both sides of him with adorable names: Ethan and Joseph. Then, I looked at his big name tag that the nurses had made: Wernicke. After seeing that, I quickly became very embarrassed, and hoped that the two dads standing in front of little Ethan and Joseph weren't paying attention to Sam's name tag. :)



Sam has started to recognize his fist, and also scratches his face much less than before.


Sam is a manly man, as you can see above. As I was changing his outfit one day, I asked Nathan to get my hairbrush. The rest is self-explanatory. I couldn't resist. :) Hehehe.


Nathan took Avery to a cemetery for Memorial Day. There was a 21-rifle salute, which fascinated her (aside from the initial shock of the first loud gunshot). She also "said" the pledge-of-allegiance for the first time, which meant saying the last word of each phrase as Nathan whispered it to her in advance. :)


Daddy's girl on Sam's blessing day (at least I think it was on Sam's blessing day)!




In-N-Out for Sarah's (Nathan's sister) graduation. Avery had fun with the hat.


This is our last interfaith dialogue while we live in Utah. It was with Asuza Pacific from Southern California. I wasn't able to participate in this one because Sam was only 2 weeks old, and I was very, very tired. I went to bed at like 7 pm that night and let Nathan play host -- which he did a very good job at. He even handled the emergency we-ran-out-of-pizzas situation while being able to join different discussion groups throughout the evening.



Avery's version of the Hokey Pokey.


Avery and Nathan went swimming. It had been over a year since Avery went swimming last, but she seemed to remember he floaty penguin when I got it out. She loved it! It took her awhile to warm up to the idea of getting her hair wet, but after Nathan helped her dip her head in a few times, that's all she wanted to do!


To all you moms out there, I walked into my room last month to find this:



I'll eventurally remove these three pics from the blog, so no one can blackmail her in the future. I assume only the moms who read this blog will know what she's doing, right? :)



Avery blew out one candle on her own. Grandma tried to help. Thank goodness grandpa came to the rescue! :)


Avery loves to play in the dryer.



Nathan's school went fishing on a cold morning in May, so I got to take Sam and Avery along. Last year, Avery was afraid of the fishies. This year she warmed up to them and was intrigued by the men at the table who were gutting the fish. She kept saying, "Fish cut, blood." It was great to see how she didn't grossed out by any of it.



We're moving to Arizona at the end of June, and we found a great rental house with plenty of bedrooms . It even has a backyard (and front yard) with grass in it -- rare for Yuma. We're sad to leave the rain, mountains, and greenery of Utah, but we're excited to meet new people and for Nathan to start a new job. This will probably be my last post for awhile, seeing as things are crazy hectic right now in preparing for the move.

Until Arizona!

A Whirlwind Month

This last month or so has been crazy! We're trying to get everything done before baby gets here at the end of the month, so we've packed everything in to such a short amount of time.

Summary
Here's what we've been up to the past month:

• We hosted an interfaith dialogue with a group of evangelicals from Westmont College in California
  
• We are still re-tiling our laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and entry way (this has been quite the process).
  
• We went to two Expos for Nathan's book design business; one was a three-day expo, and at the other, he taught two classes (one on Word and one on Excel).
  
• We had two different house guests stay for over a week (one was a member of the Church from the Netherlands I knew from my mission).
  
• Nathan taught again for two evenings at BYU for the annual Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium.
  
• I got a new calling as Mia Maid advisor and Nathan got a new calling as 11 year-old scout master.
  
• We bought a new kitchen table and chairs that are a little bigger and more sturdy.
  
• We bought a minivan from my cousin
  
• We sold Nathan's Altima (he was sad to part with it ... it had really comfy seats).

Christmas
I realize that I haven't posted Christmas pictures yet. Nathan has already moved all of our camera pictures onto a CD, so I need to hunt down the CD to post any Christmas pictures.

Here is one picture I did get, though. This was in the box I opened from Nathan:

Yeah. That was my reaction, too. "Umm ... why thank you, Sweetie. How thoughtful. I've always wanted a bow holding a sword and a gun." But, it was actually a puzzle I was supposed to figure out. It took a little while for him to walk me through it, but I eventually got it. It is a "violent bow," right? That sounds awfully close to "violin bow," which is what he had repaired for me. It just wasn't out of the repair shop at the time. :) What a clever hubby!


Tiling
This next pic shows how much fun Nathan and our friend Ryan had demolishing the tile in the entry way. It was old, nasty, dirty tile, that actually matches the design one of our little cabinets in the living room. I bet this was fancy stuff back in the day.


This has been such a long process. We've had our floor torn up for 3 weeks, and haven't been able to use our washer and dryer. Thank goodness my parents were kind enough to let us use theirs. We had everything stuffed into the corner of the still-carpeted living room (including the table, chairs, 3 accent tables, washer, dryer, fridge, and the grand piano). Because the wood floor in the kitchen gives so much, three of our tiles have cracked in the kitchen (even through the backerboard!). The baseboards wouldn't come off without shattering in to pieces (which means we need to buy more, cut them, and paint them), and we were 30 tiles short (which means I had to go out and find tiles that matched as close as I could to the other tiles).

As glad as I am to have a tiled floor, I will miss the carpeted kitchen for a few reasons.

• I never had to wear shoes in the kitchen because the carpet felt so nice on my feet; no cold tile to worry about.
  
• It was hard to tell when the floor was dirty. If I dropped crumbs on the ground, oh well! They were forever lost in the abyss of the brown carpet until I vacuumed again.
  
• Vacuuming is much easier and faster (especially when you're pregnant) than sweeping and mopping.

What the Richardsons Do When We're Bored
Avery loves this game. We did this for about an hour the other night. She was being so silly -- and it never gets old!


Here's a video so you can actually see what the silly bean looks like now. At the beginning of the video, you can see her favorite habit: while she sucks her thumb, she rubs her fingers on the rough side of her blanket. It's so quirky; I love it. Her hair is getting pretty long and mop-like (this video was taken about two months ago, when it was much shorter), which means I probably should cut it, but that's a big step. And it's one that I'm ill-prepared for. I don't want to give her a mullet. Plus, her hair is really curly, especially in the back, and I don't want to cut the curls off.



Our "New" Van
I told Nathan I wanted a van because I had trouble getting Avery in and out of our little car without killing my pregnant back--and hitting Avery's head on the ceiling in the process. It turns out my cousin was selling hers, and we got a great deal on it! It's a silver 2004 Mazda MPV.

The back seats fold into the floor, it has a sunroof, and automatic sliding doors on both sides! I LOVE IT! Now my back doesn't hurt anymore. And when my hands are full, but I need to help Avery in to the car, all I have to do is push a button on my keychain, and viola--the door opens (and closes) by itself! This is a nice feature, especially because our little Hyundai has manual locks.


Notice below how the passenger bucket seat slides over to the center to make it easier to get into the back seats?? Genius!!


Westmont College Dialogue
This was a really fun one because it was the smallest group of students we've hosted...which meant that our discussion groups were no larger than 4 people! I was in a group with Nathan, Ty (an evangelical from Westmont), and Cat (a visitor from Maine who was United Methodist). We discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve to start off. They both believed it shouldn't have happened, and that pain, although inevitable, is not necessary to experience joy. They were surprised to learn that we not only believe the Fall of Adam was necessary, but a good thing -- and that it is impossible to experience joy without pain. I got to ask them about their belief in the time between death and the resurrection, and they got to ask us about temple work for our deceased ancestors, and how we believe spiritual gifts operate today.
We also got to each discuss what we believed constitutes a "valid" baptism.


I was sad to see this group go because we only had about an hour to an hour and a half to be in our groups because the group was running behind schedule. Usually we have about 3 hours to discuss in small groups. But, the topics were different than the usual, and that made it extra fun.