Catching Up....

So this post is going to be a bit long....It's just me catching up on the rest of the fun we had in 2012 so here it goes....

In October, Rex and I got to travel with my parents and sister Meilin to San Diego to hang out with our grandparents and some cousins on the Smith side. Andrew wasn't able to get off work cuz I sort of decided last minute to go but Rex and I had fun! I was so pleased with how well Rex did in the car. I think I over prepared for it and he did A LOT better than I could have ever hoped. He rarely fussed and we just put movies on a portable TV for him, gave him plenty of snacks and got out to walk around for a bit when we needed to eat or change his diaper. We got to stay at an awesome beach house and had lots of fun. Rex wasn't to thrilled with the ocean or the wet sand, but he had fun playing in the dry sand and picking up sea shells and putting them in buckets. I don't have pictures of him playing on the beach cuz my mom has them on her camera so if I get them I will try to post them.

 This is the view of the beach from the deck of the house. We were right on the beach it was awesome!!! The pier was just a short distance away and had a cute little fish and chips restaurant at the end. My dad and I went there to eat one day and got to try swordfish, with halibut and salmon! yum!

 This was taken from the pier. The house we stayed in is the cute pink one. It was called the Pink Dolphin.

 Another view from the pier. That hill in the distance is Mexico. We were only 2 miles away from the border! Crazy!

 Rex had fun chasing the pigeons with grandpa. He was laughing so hard!

 Pointing at the pigeons

 (The pigeon is under the bench)

 The beach was amazing. It had so many sea shells and they were huge too! My little cousins had lots of fun combing the beach for shells. We found all sorts of cool shells from sand dollars to the cool spiral shells to super large clams. This is the big clam shell that my cousin Emerson found. I found a spiral shell about as large as Rex's head! I have never been on a beach with so many shells! usually the shells are tiny but there were so many good sized shells!

 Can't visit the beach without taking a picture like this!

 Rex and I at sunset

 While we were there we also visited the Mormon Battalion visitor's center in Old Town San Diego. It was pretty cool and they had an awesome program I highly recommend it. Afterward the program, they had computers that you could look up and see pictures of the men who were in the battalion. On of our Great great(not sure how many greats) grandpas on our smith side was in it so we got to see his picture. It was pretty cool. they also had a little thing where the kids could learn how to pan for gold. This is Meilin with her gold she found. 

 On the car ride home-I had my jacket hanging in the window to block the sun and Rex was playing with the strings hehehe

Being a goof

 HALLOWEEN:

 So we didn't take Rex Trick-or-Treating..We thought he was too young and we didn't really want any candy lying around our house. My Grandma Smith did a Mystery dinner though so we dressed up for that. Andrew was a secret agent, I was a Nurse and Rex was a Rexasaurus! (that is actually one of our nick names for him so we thought the costume was perfect!) The costume he is wearing is actually my very first Halloween costume when I was a baby that my mom made for me! On the actual day of Halloween, Andrew and I totally forgot it was Halloween and so we didn't have any candy! Our Doorbell rang and we just pretended not to hear. We ended up going to visit his parents and show off Rex in his costume and then came home for the rest of the night and pretended not to be home...but by that time most trick-or-treaters were done!

 Our first snow storm we tried taking Rex in the snow but he didn't enjoy it. He thought it was funny to watch our dog Sasha play in the snow but he wanted nothing to do with it....oh well we will keep trying. The snow was in early November and our trees hadn't lost their leaves yet and one of our trees had a bunch of branches break off. As you can see it is right next to the powerlines so thankfully it didn't take those down with it!

 Rex loves cars!

Rex is a bit obsessed with cars. It also seems that he inherited his father's OCD for organization...he likes to neatly line up his cars in little rows all over the house. He will line them up on the piano bench, window sill, couch, hallway, our bed, his room...EVERYWHERE! it is cute :) He also is obsessed with the movie Cars and asks for it at least once a day and gets quite upset when we turn it off. We have tried other movies with him (cuz we're a bit sick of cars) but he just doesn't care for them and they don't hold his attention. I actually don't mind since I can let him watch the movie and I can get stuff cleaned and he won't move an inch hehehe.

  For Christmas, we just bought him clothes since I was getting to the end of stuff I got from showers and he desperately needed some. We did however get him lots of...you guessed it...CARS! Andrew had about 30 of the little Chevron cars from when he was younger that he had kept so we wrapped them all up and gave them to him. He loves them!

 For New Year's Eve, we had some of Andrew's friends and their wives come over. One of the, (Travis and Heather) have a little boy (Falan) who is 7 months older than Rex and is also very obsessed with cars. They had fun lining up the cars together and then we put of the Cars movie for them and they were both thoroughly engrossed with it!

 L-R: Breezy, Travis, and Heather

Andrew and Eli (sorry no pic of me!)

So I think that about wraps up the rest of our year! If you lasted until the end, thanks! If not, it's ok...I really just wanted to get the memories down :)

My Awesome Husband!

So this post is a little late but I wanted to recognize my wonderful hubby for his recent accomplishment of doing a triathlon! At the beginning of this year Andrew and his cousin Jason made it their goal to do a triathlon. They have been working so hard since January and their work paid off in September when they both successfully finished the Kokopelli Triathlon. They did the sprint distance which was a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike ride and a 5k. The swim was in Sand Hollow Reservoir with tons of other people swimming with them which is a lot harder than swimming in a pool like they practiced. The bike course had a 6% grade hill that was about a mile long but they both did it! Also the temperature was 92 degrees that day! It was HOT for us just standing and watching! Their goal was to do it in around 2 hours and Andrew did it in 2 hours and 15 seconds! His cousin finished close behind in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 15 seconds.

Andrew was obviously really nervous to do it since this was his first one. I knew he would do just fine since I saw how hard he worked all year. However when we got to the lake and I saw how far they had to swim I got really nervous for him too! It is one thing to swim in a pool where you can stop at each end but at the lake the distance looked so far I got really scared and anxious for him. I still knew he could do it but I was still scared. While he was in the lake the rescue crew had to rescue someone. It was scary but Andrew finished just fine (and so did Jason)

 Andrew and Jason getting ready to leave

 Andrew getting ready for his swim

 Andrew's group getting ready to go. They were the orange swim caps

Andrew finishing his swim

 Finishing his Bike race

 Starting his run. His brother Anthony waited by the gate to wish him luck.

 Coming through the finish line!

Don't they look like they could go and run it again?!?

Way to go babe! I love you!

Rex's 1st Birthday!

It was Rex's 1st birthday on August 15th. We had a pool party in Andrew's parents new pool and all had fun. Rex got to try cake for the first time and boy did he love it! He had fun unwrapping the presents but when he got one finished, he didn't quite understand why we would take it away because he wanted to play with it! He didn't stay sad for long when we put a new present in front of him! (Thanks to my mom for the cute scrapbook layouts!)

I made these cute little Elmo cupcakes:

 

A few things about Rex:

• He was 19 lbs 5 oz at his appointment.
• He is such a talker! He is constantly babbling! His favorite word is Dada but still no Mama :( but he can now go "Roo roo roo!" which is his sound for dogs/Sasha and say "ticka ticka" for tickles
• He loves the water..It doesn't matter if it is the tub, the pool, sprinklers, the dog's water bowl, he will play in it! He is a daredevil in it too! He will put his face in the water, splash and "jump" into the water from the side. If he wakes up grumpy, we just put him in the tub and we have an instant happy baby!
• He loves fruits and yogurt and anything sweet...He isn't a fan of much else...I can get him to eat other things but I have to give it to him before the fruit other wise he wont eat it! or mix it with the fruit although he is getting good at picking the "good stuff" out.
• He is still always smiling! I have such a happy boy! 
• We got him some giant legos and he loves putting them together.
• He is getting better at letting us know what he wants by pointing at things 
• He loves books! although he is too much of a busy body to let me get through a whole book. But if he finds one by himself he will stop to "read" it
• His Favorite person is my sister Meilin. He will refuse kisses to everyone in the room except her which makes her extremely happy.
• He has 6 teeth! 2 on the bottom and 4 on the top (all 4 of which came at practically the same time! not fun!)
• He makes car sounds when he plays with is cars-Andrew is so proud :)
• He isn't one for cuddling, but just recently he has this new attachment to his blankets and will cuddle for a short while if you have one of his blankets.
• He thinks going on walks with Sasha our dog is funny...well He thinks lots of things Sasha does is funny!
• He isn't walking yet but is getting so close! He crawls super fast though so I don't think he really cares to walk that much yet since it seems so slow to him right now. But he does cruise all over the furniture and can climb over everything! 

So that is basically our boy right now! We love him so much! I can't believe how fast this year has flown by! The 20 days he was in the hospital were the longest days of my life but after that I think time was trying to catch up and they just sped on by. I was realizing as I made this post that I don't have many pictures of me or Andrew with our Rexy...so we will work on changing that cuz I want memories with my baby!

Baby Games

The past week or so, Rex has had a fascination with the doors. He loves opening and shutting them. If we play peek-a-boo while he does it, it makes it a super fun game for him! But most of the time he doesn't care if we are there or not. He will spend 5 minutes or so just opening and shutting a door silly boy! I got a video of him yesterday playing with Andrew. Sorry the lighting is bad :(

Rex is learning a bunch of new things! He can say Dada, Sasha (our dog) however his "s" comes out a bit slobbery, and wave hi/by. Still no mama yet :( He LOVES Sasha! He repeats her name a few times when Sasha comes into the same room and loves to watch her and try and touch her. He is starting to pull himself up to things by himself and loves to walk everywhere (with help still). He has the motions down where if you are holding him, he arches his back to wiggle out of our arms then grabs your hands on the way down so he can walk. I can't believe he is 10 months now! This year is flying by! Here are a few more pics of him lately

 With Aunt Meilin

 Playing the piano with his feet

 Not really a pic of him at his best but I wanted a pic of him "lounging" he often lays on his side and plays. We think it's pretty cute.

 Getting ready to hike with dad

At the waterfall :)

Camping!

Rex and I had the opportunity to go with my family to the Annual Smith trip to Boulder! We just decided to go overnight since that was all I was able to go (and handle) by myself with Rex. Andrew wasn't able to make it:( but we still had fun! He loves being outside so he had a blast! He wanted to see everything and go everywhere. He slept great too which was nice. Thankfully there were lots of people around to help out with him!

Making Noise

As I've mentioned before, Rex is a loud happy baby! He is really social and LOVES to be around people. Church is kind of difficult since he wants to talk and see EVERYONE and if we don't let him, he gets mad. So we usually end up sitting in the back or the foyer where there are less distractions. If he is sitting and playing nicely with his toys and someone new comes near him, he will immediately stop to babble at them and try to touch or reach them. There are a few other families in our ward with young kids/babies who frequently sit in the foyer with us and he loves the little kids! He gets the biggest smile on his face if some other baby or little kid seems to be paying attention to him.

As he gets older, I'm sure he will push Andrew and Me out of our comfort zones since we are both quiet and shy people....sigh. He reminds me A LOT of my brother Jourdan. He even kind of looks like him too. I remember going to the grocery store with my mom when we were really little and Jourdan would talk to every random person he met. I would be so horrified and appalled that Jourdan would talk to strangers! (gasp!)  I'm mean he didn't even know them! lol

Anyway, Rex loves to make noise. Anything that makes noise he loves. From shaking toys to banging his feet on the wall, dishwasher, oven, crib, hitting toys together, "playing" the piano and of course screaming :) Now it's not a angry scream (most of the time) it is a happy scream. And it is pretty funny to watch since he is just exploding with excitement. His hands and feet get into it too, he twirls them around while he screams-it is so cute. I got this video this morning while we were eating. When he gets tired, it does start to turn into an angry scream which you can see at the end of the video.

And then, of course, with his new found freedom of crawling, comes getting into more mischief. Here is some of the fun Rex has done lately (sorry the quality is bad, they are from my iPod)

 

Making a mess with the videos

 

trying to get into Sasha's Kennel

Getting Around

Rex is learning to get around! For the past month or so he has been rolling everywhere! He learned to pivot and would roll in one direction till he couldn't go any further then would pivot and move somewhere else. It has been pretty effective in helping him get where he wants to go. It's not a fast process since he gets distracted on the way and ends up playing with whatever he finds. I have a short clip of him rolling around the kitchen.

This past week he has started crawling! (sort of) It's more like an army crawl but it still works! It's pretty funny to watch since he looks like an inch worm when he sticks his bum in the air and pushes himself forward. It is also a slow process but he still gets around! He keeps trying to climb into Sasha's Kennel. Yesterday he "crawled" from the living room to the middle of the kitchen and back! Here is a clip of his army/inchworm crawl:

Rex now has his 2 bottom teeth! The first tooth came in about 2 weeks ago and the second one came in yesterday. I haven't been able to get a picture of them since when I put my finger in his mouth he sticks his tongue out. Plus they are barely sticking out so you can barely see them anyway.