Owen's Birthday & Shaun's Graduation

My baby turned 2 last weekend. Boohoo. It's official. He's a toddler. What happened to that little 7 lb. 1 oz., 20 1/2 inches long, sleeping beauty. How fast they grow. He was not very happy when we were singing Happy Birthday, as you can see from the picture below. But he did have fun with two grandma's in town to celebrate with him. And of course he was lavished with gifts. Thank you to everyone who wasn't there but sent a gift. You will be receiving a thank you card soon. We also had Shaun's intern graduation last weekend. He was awarded "Intern of the Year". We're so proud of him. I'm so grateful that he is so passionate about what he does and he is able to balance both work and family. It has been hard this past month with his long hours and with friends out of town but we're coming home next month so we'll have lots of family to see. Can't wait to see everyone.

Camping with a Toddler

Little late but here it is - We decided to go on an adventure - camping with a toddler. We were nervous but we're brave people. We thought "we can do this." Shaun took his step 3 boards on Friday - good luck - so we didn't leave until about 4:45p for a 2 to 2 & 1/2 hour trip up to the Gila (pronounced Hee-la) National Forest. We stayed at Cherry Creek campground which is about 20 min. north of Silver City, where my grandpa use to live. We got to the campsite about 7:15p so it was still fairly light out. Owen did pretty good on the ride but he did get antsy. He does not like to be confined for long periods of time.

So we set up camp and of course Owen is ready to venture off and explore new territory so we took turns keeping him close by. It didn't take very long to set up so that was nice. We then decide to build a campfire so we could have s'mores (yummy). We thought this would keep Owen still and mesmorized - the pretty, flickering light from the fire. What were we thinking. He didn't just want to sit there after being stuck in a car for over 2 hours. So we walked around for a little bit, justs around our camp area and decided it was time for bed. By this time it was about 9 - 9:30p. We thought he might go down easy since he only took half his nap earlier in the day. Yeah right. Not with all the new things going on around him. New noises, people talking, kids yelling. I think he finally fell asleep about 10p and he was out.

We had 2 mats, 2 sleeping bags, and 2 heavy blankets since the temps were supposed to be in the 40's at night. The first night was really cold. We opened the sleeping bags up instead of keeping them closed and zipped up around us. But the second night we made sure to keep the sleeping bags closed and we just put Owen in one of ours. That was much better; although, mister wiggle worm didn't stay in them very long. Much warmer and we slept a lot better.

Saturday Shaun got up about 6:45a and he got me up about 7:15a. Owen didn't wake up until about 8a so Shaun and I got to actually have a sit down conversation instead of running after Owen. We cooked breakfast (eggs, bacon, and toast) and then headed off to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Fun but Owen was not happy he had to stay in the hiking pack. We had lunch by the Gila river so Owen and daddy decided to dip their feet in and throw rocks. Headed back to camp and took a hike. Then we headed to Wally World. What's a camping trip if you don't go to Walmart. Since it was freezing the night before Shaun wanted to get a sweatshirt (he forgot to bring one). Owen watched a little Ratatouille, had hot dogs for dinner, s'mores for dessert and off to bed we went. Much better night sleeping.

Headed back home in the morning since we were dirty and out of water. Once we got home it was nothing but couch.