Yay for Caleb!

Today we found out that Caleb passed the second part of the CPA exam, REG. 2 down, 2 to go. He takes the next section on January 18th. Caleb felt REG was the most difficult portion of the CPA so far, he said he just barely passed.

Happy Holidays

This year we spent Christmas with the Miller's down in Cedar City. On Christmas Eve we enjoyed a Mary and Joseph dinner, where we dined on traditional biblical food with candlelight. Then we enjoyed reading the Christmas story together and sang Christmas songs. Here is Corbin helping Celeste to play the Christmas hymns. (He got a little restless by the end and so we stuck a bow on his head to distract him.)

Being in love with any and all balls, he was very excited to find an orange (edible ball :) in the bottom on his stocking, which he proceeded to tote around all morning.

We finally got him to let go of the orange when he realized that he was now allowed, even encouraged, to tear open all of the presents he had been warned not to touch for the past week. Here he is pretending to talk into his new telephone--he doesn't really get that only half goes up to your ear, and that you are suppose to talk into the other part yet. We'll work on that.

As you can see in the background, he got quite a few presents, thanks to everyone that was so generous and bought him such wonderful gifts, I think he got excited with each and every one of them. It seems like we constantly had to take open presents away and hide them in order to get him to focus on opening the next one.

The day after Christmas we drove back up to Salt Lake City to go to Jake and Ashley's wedding. During the wedding breakfast we kept Corbin strapped down in his chair, giving him a constant supply of cheerios and bananas to keep him quiet. But once the party was over we let him run around and he instantly headed straight for Ashley, in the bright, pretty dress. She was kind enough to pick him up and let him poke at her sequins for a minute.

Real men wear pink

Today I spent all day up at my mom's house, and Corbin managed to ruin all THREE outfits that I brought for him, so he ended up having to borrow some clothes from his cousin Rachel while Grandma Lloyd washed all of his.

So here is our little boy...


And his cousin Rachel...

Like Father, Like Son

Today I was working on the computer and Corbin REALLY wanted to help, so finally I caved in and taught him how to use the computer. I found this website that has games for little guys his age, where they randomly pound on keys and it makes music, colors, animals, numbers, letters, etc. appear on the screen.

(http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2601&e=gamesByAge&mcat=game_infant&site=us)

He got sooo excited every time he pushed a key and something happened on the screen, it was pretty cute.

However, now he always tries to push the keys every time he walks past the computer, so maybe that wasn't such a great idea I had. Oh well, with Caleb, the computer genius, as his father I guess he was bound to learn sometime.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

On Monday we decorated our Christmas tree. Here is Corbin helping put the decorations on the tree. He did pretty well helping with the candy canes because they were easy to hook on. But every time he tried to put the balls on he would set them on the branches and they would just roll right off, but he kept on trying, it was pretty cute.

And now here he is eating the decorations.

And now here he is taking off the decorations. :)

Needless to say, I think he enjoys having a gigantic tree in the living room to poke at.

Thanksgiving Break

Well we just returned from our great holiday vacation.

This year we drove down to Hatch and spent Thanksgiving with the Nash family. We ate massive amounts of delicious food, played games, watched movies, and of course played BINGO!

Our family tradition includes playing Bingo as a family, and every time you get a bingo you get to pick a prize. Then once the prizes in the middle run out, it really gets interesting and you start stealing from each other until someone gets blackout and ends the game. This year Corbin ended up with a new toy, Caleb got a BYU tee shirt, which he wore for the game today -Go BYU!!- and we got a new dominoes game. I also ended up the coveted mystery prize which ended up being a cute stuffed moose full of Jelly Bellies.

We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed getting to see everyone--Corbin even let Chad hold him for 2 whole minutes before crying the last day we were up there, a new record!

Here we are getting ready to eat.

Here is Corbin, getting ready to eat.

And here is Corbin eating. How fun.

Apparently we did not feed the boy enough, because as soon as Grandma turned her back he crawled over into the fridge and started rooting around. Big Trouble Bean!

The day after Thanksgiving we drove down to good old Cedar City and stayed with Caleb's family. We played Clue, the DVD version, which was pretty fun once you figured it out, watched The Bee Movie and got to see Aunt Mel and Uncle Ron from California. It was so relaxing and we all had a great time. And of course we all watched the big BYU verses Utah football game (although some definitely payed more attention to the game than others of us :) it was cool to see BYU pull it off under pressure at the last minutes, go Cougars.

Packers...Boo

Matt gave Corbin a Greenbay Packers outfit for his birthday, which Corbin wore today.

I actually took him out in public with the thing on... but I made sure to keep my distance from him, so that no one would know that we were together. I wouldn't want to be associated with supporting that horrible team.

However, Corbin unfortunately seems to like it, he is smiling in the picture... we will have to work on that.

Birthday Boy

After family dinner at the Lloyds’ today, we decided to celebrate Corbin's upcoming birthday. I made him his very own soccer ball cake with a bowl of ice cream on the side and we all watched him dig into it.

He also got a lot of really fun presents, he was pretty cute opening them. I would have to start tearing the paper, but then he seemed to get the idea and helped to rip it the rest of the way off.

The only problem was when he opened the little water soccer balls from his Grandma Lloyd first and only wanted to play with them, losing all interest in opening the remaining presents.

Oh well, overall it was a really fun night, thanks to everyone! We will post more pictures of the whole shindig later.

Learning the Fun Way

Today I decided to let Corbin try to feed himself with a spoon. He had peach yogurt for breakfast, with some cereal added in to make it thicker, so that it would stick to the spoon better.

He actually did surprisingly well. Of course food ended up EVERYWHERE, but he did get most of the food into his mouth and most surprisingly he used the spoon the whole time.

Overall I was quite impressed.

Haircut

Today I gave Corbin his first haircut. It was getting a little long in the back and starting to curl up at his neck, so I trimmed it up for him.

It was also my first time giving someone a haircut, so here is his "After" shot.

No, it actually turned out pretty good, and he looks like a little stud. Although it is hard to really see the difference in this picture.

Halloween

Last night for Halloween our family got all dressed up as farm people. Then, since Corbin can't really eat any candy, we drove him around the valley visiting family and friends, showing him off in his costume.

Here are pics:

Mom the Pig, Corbin the Cow and Dad the Farmer, we look a little ridiculous, but that’s okay.

Here is Corbin with his cousins, luckily Brynn (the Octopus) was well behaved the whole time and we distracted Corbin by letting him hold a pack of smarties, still in the wrapper, long enough to quit crying and take a picture, but Colton (Yoda) and Trey (a Jedi Knight) were having a hard time. We probably should have taken this picture at the beginning of the night instead of the end, because by this time all of the kids were coming down off of sugar highs, were getting tired and were upset that their parents wouldn't let them eat any more candy (which is hard for a little kid with a huge basket of goodies sitting in front of him to understand). Oh well, they still look cute.

The bean with his uncle Matt, as a blind ref.

The Zoo!

Today we decided to go and visit the zoo. Corbin absolutely loved all of the animals. I think that his favorites were the monkeys and the llamas. I understand him liking the monkeys, because they were really active and swung all over the place, but for some reason he was also oddly intrigued by the llamas. As soon as we got to their pen he started pointing and saying all kinds of crazy stuff. So those were the ones he liked the best, but even at the other cages he was always grinning from ear to ear, he really likes looking at animals. Overall we all had a good time.

Here is a picture of Caleb and Corbin in front of the Ghost of the Bayou (white alligator).

Corbin with his mom and the monkeys.

Corbin playing in this really dirty, completely unsanitary, would never let him actually drink out of it, but fun to play in, drinking fountain.

Good times, sitting on the tiger statue.

Jack-O-Lantern

Last night for Family Home Evening we carved a pumpkin. Corbin's favorite part, by far, was digging the gunk out of the inside. We will no doubt be scrapping pumpkin guts off of our walls and floor for the next long time to come. But he had fun, and I guess that is what matters.

We had a hard time deciding what to carve in the pumpkin, but in the end we decided to make a barn scene, since our family will be dressing up as farm animals this year.

Thanks to Caleb's hidden carving skill, it actually turned out looking pretty cool. (However, thanks to Melinda's lack of carving skill, if you look at it closely in person you will notice that the door is stuck on with a toothpick.)

Halloween Carnival

This weekend we went with the Lloyds to the Clearfield Halloween Carnival. It was a lot of fun to get out and play. Corbin absolutely loves ducks, so we made sure to let him pick a duck from the pond.

Daddy helped him pick a winning duck so he got a little prize pumpkin, which he immediately stuck in his mouth.

He did not really understand what was going on most of the time, but he was in awe staring at all of the kids in their different fun costumes.

And although he did not really get any of the games we played, he did really liked the inflatable haunted house that Daddy walked him through. Spiders and streamers were hanging from the ceiling and he would laugh and try to grab them as they tickled his face.

School Vouchers

We found this really good news clip video about referendum 1. Thought we would share it.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=343&sid=1993736

Don't forget to vote November 6th!

Pictures

Here are some fun pictures of Corbin from the past few weeks:

Here he "driving" Grandma Nash's 4-wheeler, all by himself (sort-of :)

This is Corbin with Grandpa Nash, and his hat. I tried to get a cute picture of him wearing the hat, but he would have none of that. None the less he did enjoy playing with the hat.

Here's the Bean playing with Daisy the bunny at Aunt Jan's house. I think it is safe to say that he liked the bunny much more than the bunny liked him.

This picture really doesn't quite do justice to the situation. Cousin Chad decided to buzz his hair into a mohawk on one of his last nights in Texas before coming home, from which we discovered that Corbin is afraid of mohawks. He was okay staring at Chad, but the second he would try to hold Corbin, Bean would start crying and trying to get away from him. It was pretty funny; we've never seen him react like that to anything before.

On Saturday we babysat Cousin Rachel and she brought her ball popper with her. Corbin liked playing with the balls, but didn't really see the point in letting them cycle through the machine.

And here they are playing the piano together. They looked really cute, but are going to need quite a bit more practice before they will become famous.

Miller Time

Caleb had Friday and Monday off from work this week, so we had an extended weekend.

On Friday we invited Caleb's brothers and their families up for a BBQ. Caleb cooked up all kinds of meat and we had a good time visiting with everyone.

Then on Saturday morning we drove up to Layton to watch Matt play soccer. He did really well and scored most of his team's goals until they put him on defense to give the other team a chance. It was fun right up until the last 15 minutes when it started raining and we quickly got cold and wet.

After that game we went down to Kaysville and watched our nephew, Trey, play in his soccer game. His team won too, and although they weren't quite as skilled it was fun to watch the little kids run around playing "bunch ball."

After the game we went over to Benson and Sam's house to watch the BYU football game. They finished the game with a solid win against the Air force Academy, who I think beat the University of Utah, so that was good for all of the BYU fans, especially after last week's game.

The rest of the weekend was pretty routine; we went to the Lloyd's for family dinner on Sunday and played Cameron’s new Wii.

Then we just sort of relaxed around the house most of the day Monday. Until that night when Ashley and Jake came up from Salt Lake to watch the season premier of Hero's with us. It is a good show, but I am starting to get more confused as the show goes on and things get more intricate. I think my mind needs simpler TV shows in order to completely follow everything that is going on.

Well I think that's about everything we have been up to lately. Now it is back to the same old, same old for the rest of the week.

CPA Exam

Today, I got the results of the first portion of the CPA Exam I took. I passed!

The section I took, Financial Accounting and Reporting (FAR) is usually the hardest one of the four, so I am very relieved!But there are still three more to go!

I will be moving onto the Regulation exam which consists mostly of Business Law and Tax material, and I will be sitting for that exam on November 21st. Study, Study Study!

REAL

Yesterday Aunt Tori and Cousin Rachel came over to play with Corbin. He loved having a little friend around to get into trouble with. The cutest thing of the day was when Rachel started sharing her cheerios with Corbin. She kept putting them into his mouth for him, and sharing her toys too. And he kept taking them... even after she stopped sharing. We will have to work on that.

After they left we packed a bag of stuff to occupy Corbin through the night and took the bus down to Salt Lake to meet Caleb. Corbin loved playing with the dirt in the flower beds by the bus stop and then thoroughly enjoyed staring at all of the interesting people on the bus ride down, and there were a lot of them to see.

Then we went to the REAL soccer game, where we watched them pull off yet another tie. Oh well it was still fun. We got free tee shirts, Caleb saw "the coolest free kick in all of Real's history" and Corbin got to stare at more people.

Well...

Well it's been awhile since we posted a blog, and people started complaining so we decided to finally sit down and write something. The problem is we went on our little trip and when we got back we were all excited to post all of our vacation photos, but then realized that we left our camera on our vacation, so you won't be getting any pictures, but here's what we've been up to:

The last week in August Caleb took the first portion of the CPA exam! He did a lot of studying, and we think it paid off because he feels like he passed, however he doesn't actually find out for about a month. In the mean time he has moved on with confidence and started studying for the next section.

The day after he took his test we decided he could use a break, so he took a couple weeks off and we went down to Cedar City. It was weird to be back during the first week of school and not be involved in everything, but we're grateful to be done and moved on with our lives.

The first day we went up to the good old town of Hatch and visited Grandma and Grandpa Nash at their new summer home. We rode four wheelers, played with the horses, played hand and foot, went on a tour of the town (that lasted for about 3 minutes), and ate tons of fresh fruit. All in all it was a great little trip.

The next day we went and hiked Angel's Landing with Jake and Ashley. I have always wanted to do this hike for the last 4 years I was at SUU, but we never made it, so Caleb decided to take me, and it was worth the wait! It took us three hours to go approximately 2.5 miles straight up a mountain. (Since we don't have our pictures, here are some from the internet so you can see what we did.)

Here are the switchbacks that you go up until you reach the finally leg of the hike, where you hang onto chains and climb over rocks.

Here is the top of the Angel's Landing that you climb up. Since someone seems to die at least once a summer, we left Corbin at home with Grandma Miller.

As you can see, once you reach it, the view from the top is pretty amazing.

The rest of the trip we spent relaxing with the Millers. We took a trip out to Cross Hallows to see Grandpa Miller one day. Corbin loved playing with Molly, however I don't think Molly loved playing with Corbin. And Caleb finally won a game of Settlers and got to write his name on the box!

We also took some time to drive out and see Harmony's house that was in the parade of homes. For a cool half a million dollars we could have owned it, but decided against it at the last minute.

Overall it was good to get away for awhile and enjoy some time off.

Now we are back to regular life, Caleb is finally done working on his job down in Provo, where they have had him for the last 2 months, so he is excited to move on to a new challenge and to not have drive so far everyday.

Bees Game

On Friday night we took Corbin to his first baseball game. The partners at Caleb's firm got everyone tickets for their summer get-together, so we watched the Salt Lake City Bees play the Tucson Sidewinders. Although he clearly had no idea what was going on, Corbin really enjoyed getting out of the house and looking around at everything around him. All of Caleb's co-workers thought he was so cute, and he got his picture taken to use at their recruiting open house. He is already a little star.