breaking our technology barrier (in which we buy a tablet!?)

a week and a half ago, tommy won a $50 amazon gift card from our utilities company. how amazing is that?! they were doing some sort of giveaway on their facebook page and tommy actually entered it and actually won. true, it wasn't the ipad or other much cooler and more expensive prizes, but we've never really won anything before. so this was really awesome.

so we were talking about what we should buy with this $50. we mentioned diapers or some other real necessity, but it feels like a crime to spend a free gift card on something so mundane and not exciting. and that's what we usually do with gifts of money anyways--we save it or use it for something necessary and boring, because we're poor like that. but this time, we decided to buy something frivolous and fun.

we thought about buying Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Cataan--two board games we like but have never bought because they're around $50--but then i saw that a regular plain old kindle was only $69.

now, i am kind of anti-e-readers. i'm all about reading a real live BOOK and i love, love, love having bookshelves overflowing with them. but i have always kind of longed for a kindle while traveling, when i pack four books and have to lug them around in my backpack for a month even if i never read them or even after i finish them all. it seems kind of silly to buy one just for the one or two months a year we're out of town (yeah, we're out of town a lot) but if we have a gift card, that's not too bad, right?

so anyway, as we discussed buying a kindle, we started talking about the kindle fire as well, which was about $90 more, and how it would be really useful to have that while traveling (especially with dane, as he gets older--i'm really nervous about flying with him FIVE different times this summer) . . . and one thing led to another, and--

we bought one! last night! a kindle fire HD, no less. (yeah, we totally fell into the amazon gift card trap and spent way more than the gift card was for. i know, i know. but we felt like it was going to be a worthwhile purchase.)

this is a big deal. we have always fought the inevitability of getting smart phones (still stuck with our cheap plain old phones, and happy with it), we bring our plain old heavy scriptures to church, and we only have a TV because someone in our ward gave us their old one for free. but we just bought ourselves a tablet, and i'm getting really excited about it. we'll get it before we leave on our trip in a few weeks, and will have it all set up and ready to go for our month and a half of traveling. just think about all the books i'll be able to read this summer without having to cart them around! my back is already thanking me.

our not-very-brave boy

lately, dane has been very sensitive--and not in the manly, i-understand-your-needs-and-will-anticipate-them kind of way. particularly, he's been sensitive about noises freaking him out. a non-comprehensive list of sounds that have made him wail in the last few weeks might include:

• the blender or food processor
• the vacuum
• tommy and i reading him "all the hippos go berserk!" from a sandra boynton book--this line now terrifies him and we can't even pick up the book any more without him starting to cry (and i mean, in his defense, berserk hippos ARE kind of scary)
• tommy making munching noises pretending to bite him
• bacon sizzling in the pan
• me making a loud yawning noise in the car
• me singing along to stevie wonder in the car
• shutting the microwave door (this one just happened)
• a missionary sitting in the backseat of the car with him (okay, not a sound, but tommy went to pick up the missionaries for dinner with dane and dane cried the whole way home after the elder sat next to him)

when something startles him, he starts out with this big crescendo-ing wail with big, sad crocodile tears leaking out of his eyes, and it takes a while to calm him down. poor guy is still figuring out that these are perfectly reasonable sounds.

and you can call me a mean mom, but it's a little bit hilarious. mostly sad, but also pretty funny.

memorial day weekend

folks, i'm kind of a terrible, horrible person. i feel like every single blog i read had a blog post this weekend starting off like this:

"Most people only think of BBQs, swimming, and summer on Memorial Day weekend. But I don't. I always remember the REAL reason why we have Memorial Day." [insert picture of a military graveyard here]

if you believed my facebook feed, you'd think that every person i am friends with feels this way--that they're the only people who TRULY focus on the real meaning of memorial day.

(side note: i am an cynical grump and i am always bugged by things that trend on facebook. i always think people are just posting things because everyone else is. when every single person on my newsfeed has to chime in with how sad/happy they are about every major event, like when everyone has to say "so sad about boston" and i see people sharing snooki's "pray for boston" pictures, i just lose my mind. REALLY, snooki? are you REALLY PRAYING FOR BOSTON????)

well, i'll just say it like it is. i love memorial day weekend because the weather is awesome, tommy stayed home, and we played and had fun together all weekend. i am that person who just thinks of BBQs, swimming, and summer on memorial day weekend. sorry if this is blasphemous. i'll get a good attitude someday.

but we still had a great weekend! on saturday, we went strawberry picking! and we made four batches of strawberry jam. we'll probably have to give some away when we move next year, i'm guessing. but we're all stocked up and our freezer is full!

we also went swimming on saturday afternoon. it was dane's second time. he's only mildly interested in the water. he is much more excited about his swim shirt and hanging out with his parents. but i think it's going to be a favorite pastime for this summer when it gets to be really hot.

and then today, the actual memorial day, we decided kind of last minute to have a barbecue. we spent most of the day chopping veggies and meat, made three different types of skewers (orange beef, italian chicken, and teriyaki bacon-wrapper chicken (SO GOOD!)), and had some friends over for a beautiful may evening. (every lovely day we have makes me kind of sad because i wonder, "is this the last nice day we'll have until summer?" PLEASE SAY NO!)

evan was cheesing it up for the camera, and loving on dane.

tommy is the BBQ master. he grilled that food good.

dane is very patriotic, even if his lame-o mother isn't.

our friend miranda, who is some five or six months younger than dane and totally going to pass him up in size any day now. she is beautiful.

babies everywhere!

our good friends from our ward, the sheffields, are moving away from durham, so we had a farewell party for them a few weeks ago. and at the party, we managed to snap a picture of all the babies who were there. if you can believe it, this is only about half of the babies who were born over a two or three month period in our ward. something was in the water--so many people had babies at around the same time. (and it wasn't even just in our ward either--lots of our old roommates also had babies around the same time too. so great!)

dane and three of his girlfriends.

also, we are SUPER excited because the busbys are moving back into town! they are coming back for devin to finish his fourth year of medical school here at duke after being gone for two years. it's going to be really fun to have some family-friends here in town again, even though they're moving back into their old ward and will be about fifteen minutes away from us. they drove into town a few weeks ago and stayed with us for a day or two while moving into their new place.

see? they also had a baby! preston is just about two months younger than dane. but is basically the same size, haha.

 preston, kylie, dane, and emmy.

they'll have to have lots of male bonding time with the four of them over the next year!

a few things

-our house is infested with flies. the small kind, that don't make any noise, but once they appear, they always seem to exist in your kitchen, no matter how clean you make it or how many you kill. they aren't that annoying, except that they ARE. they must fly in through the door every time we come in, because they are not going away. first world problems, right?

-tommy and i are giving ourselves a no-dessert rule for the next month. i don't know if i've ever gone even a week without having dessert (okay, pretty sure i haven't), but we are feeling the need to take some drastic measures to whip ourselves back into shape, and just exercising every day isn't cutting it. GOOD LUCK, US.

-mother's day. mother's day was great! we of course didn't take any pictures (ugh!) but tommy made me this cute video/slideshow as a gift. it was adorable. tommy ALSO made me breakfast and let me sleep in, and made dinner.

-dane has also started wearing his 9-month clothes. i finally pulled them out because his arms were starting to get stuck in some of the 6-month outfits, haha. poor baby!

-dane is a magical, miracle boy, except when he's not, and then he's a magically never-ending whining machine. he has gotten the baby whine DOWN--it was very prevalent for a few days of sadness last week. on wednesday last week, we were already outside hanging out by 2:00 in the afternoon, and that's usually my last-resort activity for the last half hour before tommy gets home. i took some pictures, and got some amazing shots of some of dane's recent expressions that just crack. me. up.

this. this. this. 

his not-so-serious whining face.

hahahahaha--this one is hilarious. caught in the middle of bringing his fists to his mouth, i think, and it looks awesome. 

hello, boyfriend. sometimes he just sits outside the bathroom door while i get ready, and he looks excited and ready for action the whole time. (no, still no signs of crawling yet!)

he has totally figured out how to avoid getting baby food that he doesn't want in his mouth. he makes the world's tightest liplock and turns his head violently from side to side.

this face. it just kills me.

even though there are some long days, this boy and i are buddies. i forgive him for being naughty sometimes, and he forgives me for not being as patient as i should sometimes. we love each other.

he's related to us

on monday we went to a restaurant with some free soft-serve ice cream (like jason's deli!). it was almost dane's bedtime and he was really getting tired and fussy, and did NOT want to be there. i was holding him while trying to eat my ice cream cone, and he was trying so hard to grab it. we've never given him ice cream or really any sugar at all, but i thought i'd reward his earnest efforts because he was trying so hard--and i had a suspicion it was going to be awesome.

it was.

he got one lick and then attached his mouth to the ice cream, sucking like a madman. then he grabbed it with both hands, digging his fingers into the soft serve, not even minding that it was freezing. he destroyed that ice cream cone--literally, it crumbled into pieces in his vicelike grasp--so we tried to wrench it out of his fingertips. and he completely melted down (pun intended)--total sadness and despair after we took away his treat. . . . so we decided that was the time to leave.

it was all really cute. even the crying.

so glad when daddy comes home

dane is SO funny these days. it's so cute to see how much he's learning and what he's aware of now. he definitely differentiates between tommy and i now--he loves us both, but tommy is hands down the fun one. whenever tommy walks in from school, dane literally starts wriggling and shaking with excitement, and starts panting and giggling and begging for tommy to pick him up. he KNOWS that tommy is the one who always plays with him and does whatever he wants. (on the other hand, whenever i'm holding him, he is always wrapping his arms around my neck and grabbing my hair and pulling me close to suck on my face--and he doesn't do that as much with tommy. so funny.) tommy always comes home and basically plays with dane for the next hour and a half until he goes to bed, and it's definitely dane's favorite part of the day. 

one of their favorite games is to play peekaboo around the door frames and surprise me:

he sure thinks it is the funniest. other games include chasing after me and bouncing up and down, tommy dangling a blanket in front of dane's face (he LOVES it), and "if you're happy and you know it"."

we took this video of him laughing yesterday (warning: it's long, but i didn't know how to upload just a part of the video--but the first 30 seconds or so are the BEST) when we were playing with him and then wanted to share it because it was so cute. and then tommy was watching it with dane and dane was totally smiling at himself laughing. he's a charmer.