Two Tortoises and a Microphone

(Disclaimer: There's actually no microphone in this post; I just really like the play on the awesome title of that song.)

 While we were in Utah a few weeks ago, our friends Jason and Sarra watched our kids for us while we went to Scott's cousin's wedding luncheon. As natural born biologists, they both work for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, wherein Jason has been assigned the privilege and dubious honor of ... fostering desert tortoises. 

At the present time they are housing two lovely specimens, who luckily enough woke up from hibernation the day we showed up. What gracious hosts, those tortoises. 

Henry quickly claimed the male tortoise, Jabo (yaw-bo) as his own.

The second tortoise, the female which Ruby naturally claimed, was still nameless. Ruby, however, was determined to fix that. By the end of their three hour visit, she had come up with a fantastic name: Jabo #2.

 Seriously, they were FASCINATING to watch.

Ruby became so accustomed to them she eventually just sat herself down and let them crawl all around her as she busied herself with something equally as exciting ... a dead plant.

The herpetologist himself ... double-fistin' his foster tortoises

Thanks Jason and Sarra for babysitting and for giving your tortoises a stern talking to about waking up from hibernation to put on a sweet show for the kiddies!

"Spring" Break

So Montana's got the right idea with "Spring" Break -- it's a week long. But my question is: How many kindergartners actually need a whole week off from school? The stress of coloring within the lines just gettin' to those little guys?

Montana's only problem, and the reason I put "Spring" in quotations, is that March IS NOT Spring in Montana. Try May. Or early June.

Whatever. Point is, we took advantage (even though none of us are actually "school age") and headed to Utah while Scott went to D.C. for the week.

Here's what went down:

Abram worked on his belated, but celebrated nonetheless, skill of crawling:

 Abram "drunkenly" cuddled with his Aunt Kate ... a lot.

He also proved that it is not only acceptable but downright imperative to eat breakfast while wearing a M-I-C-K-E-Y hat.

We were able to go to Scott's cousin's wedding in the Salt Lake Temple. The weather was gorgeous, the grass was green, and flowers were out. I think if I were a day, I would be that day ... all sunny and warm-like.

Scott only has four cousins on his dad's side so we were so happy we could be there. The happy couple and the other Christensen clan:

So between the Mickey breakfast attire, cuddling, and a wedding -- our nine days passed too quickly. 

A Boy's First Birthday

I can NOT believe it. Seriously. My baby is one.

And if one is to believe my husband, he's my last one. (sigh)

All I can say is that if that's true, we're going out on a very high note.

Here are a few of the highlights from his big day today and a few of the things that I love about my boy.

(Pre-game warm-up with cake batter)

Abram thinks every person is his best friend -- he'll smile for anyone and everyone and will oftentimes dive into other people's arms to be held.

(The official cake)

(His own cake; designed purely for destructive purposes)

Abram is the best baby food eater I've had. In fact, it's getting expensive. How do I get this kid to eat more table food?!?!

(At first he went for the candle. Um ... that's a negative, little man. I've never had a baby really get into their first birthday cake. Will he actually do it?)

Abram's middle name should have been "content." He's quite possibly the happiest, most relaxed baby on the planet (just don't try and slip him a bite of carrots whilst finishing off a jar of Baby Mango Smoothie).

(Testing the waters. Will he go for it?)

Abram is a ham. If anyone so much as looks at him, he starts cracking up and making faces at them. (This can lead to somewhat irreverent behavior at church.)

(I think we might have a winner ...)

(And he's off!)

(And he meant business!)

We are truly grateful for what a blessing Abram has been to our family. He has brought so much joy and happiness to us in one short year that I look forward to a lifetime of happy memories and millions more of his dimpled smiles.

We love our little Baberam!

HELP!

Dear blog homies,

Why am I suddenly getting so many comments from random people around the world? Most of the time it's just a bunch of Chinese characters left on 5, 6, or 7 of my posts. I'm pretty sure these aren't real people with real blogs so I'm slightly worried about "security" issues on my blog. I don't want to go private so I was just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and could offer any suggestions.

Thanks blogging peeps!

Celia

Going Back in Time

In early December we were in the middle of switching from one cable company to another and the strangest thing happened ... we never actually switched. We turned off our service and couldn't decide on a new provider. So we're now rapidly approaching two months without any tv. No rabbit ears. No nothin'.

My hilarious sister-in-law called a few days into it and said, "So ... I heard you guys are playing pioneer. How's that going?" Funny ... yet it feels like a strangely appropriate assessment.

It was hard at first. I felt lonely and isolated. Even though we still had the internet, I felt disconnected from the world somehow.

The first couple of evenings were interesting. We seriously sat around staring at each other. Ruby just kept asking when Family Home Evening was going to start, since apparently that's the only time we'd all just sit around staring at each other.

I'd have to say the family togetherness has been the biggest benefactor of "playing pioneer." We engage so much more than we used to. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I'd kill to just flop on my bed, turn on the tv, and zone out. And now that American Idol has started up again, what's a recovering tv addict to do? (Don't even talk to me about trying to watch it online -- they've got that thing under serious lock and key.)

I mean, how much family time does one family need? We still have very productive, informative, spiritual FHEs. Isn't that enough? For instance, last week at FHE we were talking about how Jesus and Heavenly Father love us and Ruby looked over at the picture we have of Jesus and said, "Yeah, I wuuuuuv Santa."

Santa? Oh, man ... we've ruined our kids.

Or maybe the tv did. Yeah ... let's say it was the tv.

Good riddance.