Surprises, surprises!

All right, so there are really only two surprises. The first is that I'm posting again without waiting the usual 2 months + and I'm not going to start out with an apology. On to the good stuff! First, a couple of shots of the boys at Fogarty Creek, our favorite beach.

On my short vacation, we took the boys to California to see Grandma and Papa Phillips. This is somewhere near Whiskeytown Lake. It was great to see family, and we can't wait to see Suzanne's side ASAP!
McKay tried to dress himself one night. Look carefully: that's a sweatshirt - one leg through the sleeve, one leg through the neck, one arm through another sleeve, and I'm not sure if he's crying because he can't figure out how to wear it or because it's uncomfortable. Poor little guy!

While in California, the boys got hooked on bubble baths.

Pony ride - Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, that's all I know (Ow, McKay, let go of my hair!)
The boys got a combined birthday in California, too, with WAY too many presents.The got seperate parties at home too. I don't know where the pictures of Carter's party are.
This is a shot of the boys on Thanksgiving. We went to the church because our apartment is so small and invited a few couples to come along for dinner. The other couples both have little kids too, so there were plenty of toys and all the kids had a blast. When we got home, Suzanne and I were ready to fall into a Turkey coma, but Carter looked up and said, "I'm hungry, Dada." They had so much fun they forgot to eat!Here's the real surprise: We got a much better digital camera, and we should be able to do video now. This is the first test. Don't expect one every time, only when we happen to get something super cute, like this one of the boys on Thanksgiving Day.

We hope this worked on all of your computers. We love you all!

Post from California

Though this excuse will sound really feeble, I lost the cord to our camera. I couldn't hook it up to the computer to download pictures. Then I was covering for the other guy's vacation for a whole month, blah, blah,blah. I hope this extra long set of photos will make up for it. First off, anyone who wants to come up and visit, please do! We'll take you to the aquarium. They put you in a tank so the sea creatures can come and see what people look like. Yes, that crab really is the size of my head. But you should see the big ones - Japanese Spider Crabs!The rest of these will be in chronological order, more or less. To begin, before we moved again, McKay discovered pudding. Enough said.Then while we were in the middle of moving, the boys decided they were going to sleep in some of the cardboard boxes. We put a stop to it, of course, but thought it was a kodak moment anyway.McKay sleeps just fine in our new home, but how he does it in that position I'll never know. He's practically vertical.Carter is getting big.

He had his fourth birthday just a few days ago and Suzanne took cupcakes for snacktime to his preschool class. He caught on quickly to the fact that we were more willing to give him things and tried it every chance he could afterwards. We ended up skipping the free birthday sundae he was offered in order to get him home before he got any more spoiled.We took the boys on a whale-watching tour. You won't see any photos of whales because I was holding on too tightly to the boat to risk any more pictures. The ocean was very choppy that day and we rolled and rocked this way and that for a very unpleasant 60 minutes. Carter was violently sick all over that nice blue bench and all over me. We were all feeling sick before the end but Carter definitely had it worse. Poor little guy. Suzanne no longer wants to buy a sailboat.
The highlight of the trip was actually before it began - seeing seals swimming around the dock while we waited to get onto the boat!Halloween saw McKay as a monkey and Carter as an alligator (he said he was a green duck, but he still pretended to eat people). They were very well-behaved when they went out and as you can see they were the cutest trick-or-treaters in Newport.Sorry for the black corners - the lens cover sometimes sticks. The boys like to ride on my feet down the hallway sometimes, but their favorite is when I climb the stairs. It really gets them laughing and I get a great workout. Feel the burn!
And finally, something totally unrelated: My pinewood derby car for the Elders' Quorom activity. I don't have any power tools or even hand tools except for my old Boy Scout knives, and I forgot to work on my car until the morning of the race, so I started whittling as fast as I knew how when the boys went down for their naps. After 30 minutes, it was clear I wouldn't get my block to look like a car, so I made it look like what it most resembled - a thumb. Out of 20+ cars, I got 3rd. Weird, huh? (Getting third with such a poorly-made car is weird, not my car.)

I found a solution to the missing cord problem, so I hope to update more often. Call me on it if I don't, ok?

Remember when I said you could subscribe to the blog way back when? Well, here's how - leave a comment under this post and be sure to put your email address in the box where it asks for it. I'll put you on a mailing list and email you when I update. I promise the only thing I'll send to that mailing list is announcements when I update this blog. Any questions email me at gphill79@hotmail.com but don't expect an overnight response. I only get to a computer every couple of weeks.

To Emily P. who wrote to Suzanne through the blog last month: She tried writing back but we didn't have your email address! If you leave a comment or email me (see last paragraph) I'll make sure you get the email she tried to send.

I hope you all like the pictures. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Phillips for letting me use their computer in California and for the cool crab picture up top. We love you all!

Family picture

This is the photo that will be displayed at the family reunion. We wish we could be there, but there was a schedule mix up and plans were not made in time!

News from Newport:

All right, I know that I start off all of my posts this way anymore, but I'M SORRY! If it explains things at all, since I last posted I finished school and graduated, moved from Boise to Newport, started a new job, studied for and took and passed two terrifying tests within a week, and I finally don't have anything big hanging over my head waiting for my attention. I hope that these ten pictures will help make up for my lack of updates in the last 3 months.

McKay was really hungry and tried to take the plate of french toast that Suzanne made for everyone. He climbed up and dug right in!This creek is on a little beach a little ways north from Newport. It is on the path about 100 yards away from the ocean waves. But when we take the boys here, it's always a struggle to get them any further than this point. They could spend all day here, and they have several times already!This just in: Although we've known for a while now that Carter prefers to identify himself not as a little boy, but as a cookie monster, yesterday he proclaimed that McKay is also a cookie monster, and that Daddy is the only little boy in the house. Here are our two little cookie monsters, laughing at me. Carter outgrew his tricycle. It was passed on to McKay, so here's Carter's big boy bicycle (to which Carter would say, "Not big boy bicycle, cookie monster bicycle!" And he means it.) Carter is getting potty-trained right now, and it seems to be going ok. McKay is the enthusiastic one though. He always wants to sit on the potty and watch the "Elmo's Potty Time" video. Suzanne and I end up whistling the tune to "Accidents happen" for the rest of the day.
We take the boys to the beach all the time. This is Nye beach, and the boys like this rock because it juts out into the waves but it has little tide pools on top. It was kind of a windy day, but that's pretty typical for a sunny day. Go to the beach in the morning!

The boys waiting for the cookies to bake. Look familiar to anyone?When we take McKay to the beach he spends the whole time looking for beach junk. It takes forever to get him down to the water, and we have to check all of his pockets when we get home or we end up with a washer full of rocks and shells. Speaking of picking things up off the beach, this next picture is specifically for my family. There is a beach up here that is COVERED with agates - it puts Agate Beach to shame (there's an "Agate Beach" up here, too, but it is horribly mis-named.) I won't tell you where it is, but I'll take you there when you come to visit. Suzanne brought me to this beach and I couldn't believe my eyes. The picture below shows the handful that I found within about 10 minutes hunting. I just walked along the waves and picked them up - no searching, no digging. Eat your heart out!
We love you all. Hope you are all doing well and anytime you want to visit, just give us a call.

Easter pictures!

Hello, family and friends! Before we move to Newport, we're happy to present one more very overdue set of photos of the littlest members of our little family. We realized on Sunday that we didn't have baskets for Easter so we sat down and made some out of cereal boxes. Carter had a lot of fun (notice that the eggs on his basket are in a perfect row - same on the back) but Suzanne got to decorate McKay's because he was sleeping. They had a lot of fun at a neighborhood egg hunt and at a family hunt at the park later. They both ate a lot of candy, but Carter stopped after a little while. Not McKay! That kid has a hollow leg. He just kept shoving jelly beans and M&M's into his mouth. McKay at the park later that day...
And modeling for ebay... (The hat is a frog)
And in the best seat in the house.
Carter's hair got so long and I just couldn't resist one evening while washing his hair.

Carter at the park after hunting eggs (saying "Daddy down!")
Carter riding a man-eating tiger at the zoo during Grandma and Papa Phillips' visit...
And trying out a turtle's home...
Don't shoot us! Carter was always sweating because his hair was so thick and long. Getting it cut was a traumatic experience for him. He was afraid of the clippers at first and I lied and said, "I'm just going to comb your hair, Carter." He let me, but when the first long blonde locks fell, he picked them up and started crying, "Uh-oh, broken!" Then he cried into the wads of hair, and got hair in his mouth and tried to wipe it out with a hair-covered hand... It wasn't until it was all washed away and he'd rinsed his mouth that he was ok again, but now he likes it and we think he looks really cute!
Hope you enjoy the pictures. The next ones will come from Newport!

Sorry, sorry, sorry...

Hello, everyone! Sorry it's been such a long time - I'm in a new rotation (Pediatrics) and I barely have time to get all my homework done, let alone do this. Anyway, here we go.
Here are our two little nudists. After baths we have a hard time getting them to stay still long enough to put their PJ's on, so most of the time Suzanne tries to make a deal with me, "I bathe, you dress?" She thinks I haven't caught on, but I humor her. For once they're not fighting over who gets to sit in the good seat!

Sometimes they do get along - lately they like to ride this thing together.

McKay resists getting up from naps lately. He tries to look cute and snuggle with Tigger so we think he's still tired. Maybe he is.

The mess that was our living room on Fake-Christmas morning (Dec 21st?). But the boys had fun.

Suzanne considered using McKay as a model for some of her Gymboree auctions. I thought he looked great, but he didn't make the final cut!

I just love this picture. They did it all themselves. They even cleaned out the cupboard first!

"Stop! You must not hop on pop!" I hope you all like the pictures. Sorry the comments are not as clever as I like to think they usually are. What with my most stressful rotation so far, and this nasty cold we've all got, just be grateful I found some time to post this. We hope you're all doing well!