For the Grandparents

The Birthday Boy

Talmage turned 3 yesterday! Surprise, surprise, he wanted a cars cake. So he helped me bake the cake and after I frosted it, I asked him for some race cars to put on top. He said, "OH! I have race cars! This will be perfect!"
Back of the cake.

We sang 'Happy Birthday' to him all day. And after every rendition he practiced blowing out his candles. This was a big year because, despite the increased number of candles, he is no longer afraid of them. After all that practice it took 3 puffs to blow out the candles. Side note: this morning, my dad asked him if we should sing 'happy birthday' again. He ran back over to the cake and said "Yeah! With the candles?"

When it came time to finally eat the cake, Talmage was so distracted by the presents he didn't eat a bite. Logan, however, thoroughly enjoyed his cake.

This is the first year we've bought Talmage gifts...haha, I know. We are super lame. After a gift from us and both grandparents, it was a pretty awesome birthday.

Thomas is a Rock Star

It's funny to me that an ipod is the coolest thing ever to an 8-year old. So you can only imagine what happened when he helped himself to mine.

Hard at Work

I love how 'play' is really 'work'. Logan is hard at work-play.

Random Catch-up

Talmage is a silly guy. His ESL english is so funny to me.
For example:

These guys have skateboards!” –Talmage, admiring Thomas’ plastic army men

· I asked him the other day, “Do you want to go potty?” He answers, “No, I’ll just wait for it to get in my diaper.” (As you can see, we might be lacking motivation.)

· I was walking around the house yelling, “Mom, Mom” and Talmage asks me, “Hey Mom, where is that other Mom?”

· We brought my mom’s van to playgroup because I wanted to bring a couple of extra kids with us, when I buckled Talmage in, he told me, “Ah, mom! This van is TOO cool for me.” Yes, it is a very cool van. Just like when he calls our Subaru, ‘the white race car’.

HHe also thinks he can do big things. He follows me around all day wanting to 'help'. He loves to help, from stirring a bowl to vacuuming the floor to getting all the games out so we can play one of them. The other day while he was supposed to be napping, I found him on our bed with our candy stash. "Hey mom, I got a lot of candy!" He was very proud of himself. Truston had the first week in October off. We enjoyed a little stacation. We spent a lot of time outside, the weather was SOOO beautiful (now we are back to hot and humid 90's).

We visited the Blue Bell Creamery. Talmage LOVED it. As we walked around the factory, he kept exclaiming, "OOOOKKAAAYYY! TIME FOR ICE CREAM!!" He wore their little paper hat the whole day. Logan didn't love the hat, but he loved the ice cream. Logan eats more food than most adults. Actually, whatever Talmage and I eat combined, Logan eats all by himself. He is voracious, and has a little belly to prove it.
We spent a day down at Galveston. We rented a family bike and biked along the sea wall. It was so awesome. I would replace my car with that awesome family bike. As you can see, Logan and Talmage were having trouble enjoying it as much as Truston and I. It was so fun to have Truston home for a whole week. He really enjoys school and his classes, but it's always nice to take a break.
In other news, we've found some awesome garage sale finds. Here, people have all their festivals and garage sales in the fall, it's way to hot in the summer. We got a bunch of cute clothes for Talmage (pictured) and a bike!! Talmage loves his little bike. At any mention of the word 'bike' he is outside in a flash, getting ready to ride. We also found a bike trailer. It is my new favorite thing! I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!! Cinco Ranch has tons of lakes and natural areas with side walks around them. We have gone on plenty of bike rides and I'm looking forward to a whole winter of exploring.

Logan turned 1

Logan turned one one September 1st. Here he is with his favorite family member (except for me, of course.) He really likes my dad--they wave to each other the whole dinner time.
The day of his birthday was probably the craziest day of our lives. My parents movers came and moved all of their stuff in. It was so wild. So we delayed our birthday celebration for a couple of days and used waffles as a birthday cake substitute. Logan did not want the whipped cream.
This guy is moving! He started walking around his birthday and it has kind of mellowed him out (thank goodness). He loves to walk with sticks. You can find him day or night, carrying something long and stick-like. For a while, he wanted to push them along the floor, like a vacuum. His favorite was the dog's chuck-it. Now he prefers a duplo crain, the broom or vacuum attachments.

When we finally got around to celebrating, we did it BIG! I made this rice krispy cake...it was so delicious. My favorite was the chocolate layer, although the caramel and fruity layer were also popular.

Talmage is swimming!!

Yes, the buoyancy of his floties might equal more than the weight of his body. But we are counting it!

Recent Texas Adventures

Since we've been here, we've done lots of fun stuff, despite the heat. It was really nice to have 2 weeks together with out little family. no school. no work. Just family vacation time in our new home. It's fun to be in a new spot, too. I feel like there are so many things to do and see. Truston's program is downtown at the Medical Center; a huge complex of hospitals, schools, research facilities, etc.Herman Park is next to the Medical Center, a big downtown park. While Truston was at orientation, the boys and I came downtown with him and took advantage of Herman Park.
One day we went to the zoo. The highlight for everybody was watching Baby Baylor get a bath. Baby Baylor was born earlier this summer, it was super cute to watch him and his mommy with the zookeepers. --sorry for the fuzzy picture. It was so humid and wet that was the best we got.
One day we played at the parks and rode the train around Herman Park. Do we look hot? I was totally ready to spend the morning outside playing, but after 1 hour at the parks, I gave up and determined we would just ride the train until Truston was done. too hot.
We spent a Saturday at Brazos Bend State Park. This place is AWESOME. I'm telling you all right now- to anybody who comes and visits, this is one place we will bring you. Brazos Bend is a huge plot of land that has been left for the alligators, a reserve. We have a favorite lake we like to walk around and look for alligators. It's also a very popular birding spot and we saw a ton of interesting birds, but alas, we don't know anything about birds. We walked around the lake and saw 10 alligators (which is a pretty small number, my family was disappointed in us) and then visited the nature center to see some baby alligators. oh yeah, no fences.
The volunteer working there let us all pet one of the baby alligators. Logan, obviously not attuned to fear, reached out and grabbed this little guys foot, almost ripping it off. haha, sorry baby alligator. This little guy is almost 1 year, same age as Logan.
Here are some pictures we took at Brazos Bend. This little guy was about 2 feet long, which means he is about 2 years old. Pretty cute.
Just in case you are ever enticed to enter alligator-infested waters, you would have to cross the webs of death, as we like to call them. In addition to alligators, we saw plenty of HUGE spiders. One of them was eating a moth before our eyes...gives me the shivers. I took this picture because in between two trees there were at least 10 webs with HUGE spiders sitting in the middle of them. If you have sharp eyes, maybe you will see a spider or two.
This guy was staring right at us, kind of creepy. The people walking around before us, said this guy started coming out of water towards their little rat dog. Scary. Seriously, who would bring a rat dog to an alligator preserve? You are just asking for it to be eaten.
We watched this guy swim up the side of the lake and turn around. Apparently, he crossed into another alligators territory because he and another alligator jumped out of the water at each other with their mouths wide open, ready to fight. It was like watching national geographic, I was waiting for the slow motion replay, it all happened so fast.
We've spent PLENTY of time at the pool. This is our favorite pool, the beach club. It has a sandy, shallow entry that turns into a pool. Logan and Talmage have a blast in the sand. There are lots of pools around here and every one has a separate kiddie splash pad. We've visited most of them and ranked our favorites. Nothing beats a good pool!

SLC/H-town Differences

1. All of the billboards/aggressive campaigning for body perfecting procedures in SLC have transformed to lingerie/porn shops in H-town. (funny commentary on both the world and mormon culture)

2. The Toyota Camry has replaced the Subaru as the most common car on the road. We’ve only seen 3 other Subaru’s in the past 3 week, there are only 3 dealers in ALL of Houston. Also, it seemed like there were a bazillion Toyota Corollas in SLC, none to be found here.

3. Lawn Mowing is a booming business here. Every once in a while I catch myself thinking, ‘How can they pay to water all this grass? What a waste of water.’ And then I remember we don’t live in a desert anymore, water is abundant.

4. Speaking of water, it doesn’t taste as good as SLC. But both cities have nothing on Alaska’s water. Best tap water we’ve ever tasted, and the coldest.

5. Also water related- people drive slowly through puddles. Like they’re worried about hydroplaning or something. What a bunch of wussies, if they drove Subaru Outback’s’ they wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

6. In more water related news, it rains a lot here. A LOT. It’s a real rain storm too; no sprinkle sprinkle for a couple of minutes, but a real downpour. Out of the first 10 days we were here, it rained 8. One day the pool almost overflowed and another day it hailed. I thought we were going to be impaled to death for sure. Luckily, our Subaru Outback is built to withstand killer hail.

7. People here are gaga over small kids/babies. I think Utah must be inundated with children; people here act like they’ve never seen a baby.

8. Frogs and black slugs abound, especially after rain.

9. The trash can got really stinky, really fast. There must be some chemical reaction between trash cans and stinky diapers that is super catalyzed by heat.

10. Back to lawn mowing, we’ve only seen 2 neighbors mow their own lawn. There doesn’t seem to be a child task force here. Maybe that is why people are so excited about babies? They see future lawn mowers?

11. The biggest difference is the heat. SLC is hot. H-town is HOT. In SLC, people don’t carry hand towels to mop up their faces. They don’t publicly pour water over their heads. They don’t wear bathing suits like it’s going out of style. SLC has hot days, Houston has hot months (April –October). Also, SLC is a dry, dusty desert. Houston is a wet, swampy forest. Good for alligators, frogs and rapid grass growth.

Well, that’s it. Love, Truston, Brittney and FLMA (Future Lawn Mowers of America)