3 Down, Eternity to go...

Yesterday Caleb and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary. It has been a fun three years. At the beginning of our marriage we decided to try and give each other the traditional marriage gifts each year. Paper, cotton, and this year was leather. Caleb got me a really nice new wallet-coin holder thing (I think that anyone who has seen the old one that I have had since early high school is probably celebrating that fact). And I got him a banana gaming chair. I think that he likes it, but he really hasn't gotten a chance to sit in it much since Corbin has been playing on it non-stop ever since it came out of the box. He thinks it is his own little seat since it is so low to the ground.


Also, the past few weeks Corbin has started to get really attached to DVD and CD cases. We keep them on the bottom shelf, and he has always pulled them off and made a mess pretty much every day since we moved in. But lately he picks out one or two of the cases and totes them around with him all day long. Yesterday at his Grandma's house he apparently started crying when she wouldn't let him take it into the bathtub with him, and today he slept with one clutched in his hand. I even tried to sneak in and take it out so that he wouldn't roll over onto it in his sleep and get uncomfortable, but he had a death grip on the thing. I don't know, that kid...

Our Busy Week

Caleb's 26th birthday was this past week. On Wednesday we went to see Iron Man, which was a really cool movie, we strongly recommend, especially to Tyler. Then we stopped by the Lloyd's to pick up Corbin and enjoyed some no bake cheesecake (thanks to Ashley's great recipe suggestion). People were really generous and gave Caleb some nice stuff. He got a good dress shirt, a new video game, some ear buds (up until now we have only owned one pair and we always end up fighting over it :), a really good electric shaver (he still uses the one from his mission which requires a Korean to American electricity adaptor, which is really annoying), some new sandals, a Winger's gift card and some money. He used the money to go buy a new mattress this weekend, since he has always hated the one I picked out when we first moved up here. We met this elderly woman who spent $1,000 on a brand new custom mattress less than two months ago and then fell trying to get into bed, (it really is a high mattress), so now she is afraid of it and wanted it out of her house, so we got it for dirty cheap, and it is way nice even though it is slightly used.

Then on Friday we were able to attend Adam's law school graduation and afterwards got to go out to lunch with Caleb's family and Aunt Mel and Aunt Mimi and two of her boys. We had such a good time visiting with everyone. Then of course the boys had to hang out Friday night and watch the Jazz game.

Today we drove up the Lloyd's after church to celebrate Mother's Day. We all made homemade personal pizzas and played games. We also got to go and see Tyler's new garden space. We are little jealous, growing a garden two years ago was so much fun, we are thinking about doing some potted tomatoes, but I don't know how well those would work out, so we'll see.

Big Bird

Last night we attended Cameron's Eagle Court of Honor. (Congratulations to Cameron.)

While Corbin did enjoy the giant bald eagle that was brought in, he still got a little (or a lot) restless during the ceremony. So my cousin Tanner tried to entertain him for us. Here is a picture he took with his phone of Corbin wearing his sunglasses.


As you can see, he is one styling little kid!

Corbin-Borbin

Here are some fun random pictures of Corbin.

I made Corbin his own special vegan corn muffins. At first he loved them, and was gobbling them up. But then he got full and discovered how fun they could be to play in if you crumble them up...


Busy season has been winding down for Caleb and last weekend he got home by 6:30 so we went to the park for a family barbeque. It started to get cold right as we were leaving and the sun was going down, but it was fun to get out of the house and do something as a family.


So our church is at 1:00 o'clock, which is a nightmare with a toddler, as that is when he normally naps. I try to put him down before church, but he just isn't tired at 11:00, so he plays in his crib for an hour until I get him up to get dressed and ready to go. And then he gets ornery about 30 minutes into sacrament meeting, and we struggle through the next two and half hours. Only five more weeks until he is old enough to go to nursery! Anyway, last week we brought him home and put him in his chair to eat lunch and he fell asleep sitting up eating within about five minutes. No joke, he must have been exhausted.


On Thursday Caleb's company sent him down to Cedar City to help with some recruiting events at SUU, so Corbin and I tagged along and we made a vacation out of it. Corbin had tons of fun seeing his Grandma and Grandpa Miller and his aunts. He especially loved seeing Molly and playing in the backyard. I have decided that as soon as we can afford it, I want a nice, fenced-in backyard. Corbin loves playing outside, he probably asks to out about 10 times a day, so it was good to be able to just send him out and not have to go out and watch him the whole time.


He also discovered this fun little car that Caleb used to play in when he was little. He had fun playing in it, but he could only figure out how to go backwards, so he got himself stuck a lot!

Books

I've been tagged..... this is a very strange thing, and I don't know why you all would really care, but here ya go! - Ditto!

This is what you do:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).

2. Turn to page 123.

3. Find the 5th sentence

4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.

5. Tag 5 people.

My book is "PHP and MySQL for Dummies" by Janet Valade.

"For instance, suppose your file has the following statements:"

I tag whoever is willing!

I am also reading some slightly more interesting books, but since I am sitting at the work computer and I was trying to create the code for my rating system earlier today, this was the book sitting closest to me. So there ya go!

But I just wanted to say that I am glad that Harmony has become a book worm lately, because she got me hooked too. I borrowed her Women of Genesis series by Orson Scott Card, and they were good books. Even though they are largely fictionalized they really got me thinking. For church my book group is reading "Before the Dawn" by Dean Hughes, which I am going to start next. Let me know if anyone stumbles across any other good books..., or knows how to create an action form in PHP that will connect to a MySQL database on a remote server :)

Hi!

It has been awhile since we have posted a new blog, so Corbin just wanted to take a moment and say "hi".

Our FUN Weekend!

This past week our good old trusty computer died. Well technically our motherboard died, but that meant that everything else had to be replaced since they were old parts that were incompatible with the new motherboards. So Caleb spent all day Saturday rebuilding our computer for us.


He tried to teach me how things worked in the process, but I got bored relatively quickly. So all I know how to do is take it apart, I left before learning how to put it back together. But if anyone ever needs their computer taken apart, I can totally help you out!

Easter

This year for Easter we went to a community Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning with the Lloyds. Corbin had fun picking things up and putting them in his basket, and he especially loved seeing the Easter bunny. A lot of kids seem to be afraid and slightly hesitant about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and such, but Corbin got down and ran to him with his arms outstretched.


After the hunt we went over to Corbin's Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd's house for lunch. They had set up a little egg hunt for him as well, only they had found soccer ball shaped eggs. He started picking them up and playing with them the second he walked in the door and saw one sitting on the stairs. I think that he liked them even more once he discovered they had gummies inside of them.


On Easter morning Corbin woke up earlier than usual and in a bad mood. But once he got a drink and settled down he was pretty excited about his Easter basket. He got some pinwheels, bubbles, books, a Jamba Juice and a pail to scoop pebbles into at the park. Here is the before picture:


And the after:


Even though he only got a smoothie and some gummies he was all hopped up on sugar and would not sit still during church, or after church, or at the Lloyd's family dinner, or after dinner... he basically didn't stop moving until we stuck him in the car and he finally fell asleep on the way home. But it was a good day.

Super Hero in Training

Lately Corbin likes to pull his hooded towel off the hook in the bathroom and have you put it on his head.


He then proceeds to run around the house wearing it like a cape for the remainder of the day.

Children's Museum

Today I took Corbin to the Ogden Children's Museum with Tori and Rachel and Rachel's cousins. He had a really good time, and it was fun to get out of the house and have him play with, or should I say play around, other kids. For the most part he hung out by himself. So far he doesn't seem to like other kids his age, but he will play really well with adults and older kids.


He loved picking up vegetables out of the garden, if only he would eat real vegetables at home.


Here is our little firefighter, he liked wearing the hat most of all, after we took it off he kept patting his head and pointing back towards it.


Corbin has been really into animals lately, so he liked the fish exhibit, here he is showing us what a fish says.


He is already better than me at using chop sticks :(


Here he is enjoying some fine Asian cuisine with his cousin. They were pretty cute "pretending" to eat together. I think that part of the pretending was merely attempting to really eat, only failing since it was plastic.


And finally, forget McCain, Vote Corbin for President!

Ogden City Half Marathon

I have decided to run a half marathon with my sister-in-law and her sister. We have been training for about a month now and things are going well. It is fun getting back in shape again. Ever since Corbin was born I have just worked out here and there when I could find time, but recently Sam and Benson let us borrow their treadmill so now I run 3-5 miles during the weekdays while Corbin naps and Tori and I go for a long run together on Saturdays, while Caleb watches Corbin for me.

Tori's sister went to school with a girl whose boys both have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and we have decided to run for them. We set a website to accept donations and when we finish the race, all of the money we raised will go to helping fund research to find a treatment.

www.ogdenmarathon.blogspot.com

We will also track our training and progress on there, so you may want to check back and make sure we are keeping up and we don't quit. And you can come cheer for us when we run on May 17th!

Trip to Cedar City

This weekend Caleb was able to get away from work and we drove down to Cedar City for a visit. Corbin had a lot of fun seeing his Grandma and Grandpa Miller and his aunts. We played Settlers of Catan (the funnest game ever) and watched The Game Plan, which was pretty cute.

As you can see, Corbin LOVED playing outside with Molly. Overall we had a good trip, right up until the car ride home, when Corbin decided to cry most of the way. And as a bonus we were driving with Harm and Derek, who I am pretty sure will never want to have kids now, sorry guys :)

New Website

My latest undertaking has been creating a website dedicated to helping people pass the CPA Exam.

We noticed that there really was not a lot of discussion out there about what order to take the sections in, what study materials were the best to use, etc., so this new website provides a forum for people to talk about all of that stuff.

There are ethical limits on how much information you can openly discuss about the exam so we have to monitor the comments, but otherwise it is now avaliable for people to rate products and comment on.

Please check it out at www.cpaexamhelp.com, and if you know anything about the exam, help me generate some initial content by leaving a comment on one of the topics. Thanks!

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

Corbin has had the flu for the past few days. The first couple of days he had such a high fever that he didn't even get out of bed, he just watched movies and read books all day. But now he is on the mend and starting to feel better, but he is still contagious so we haven't let him out of the house and he is starting to get a little stir crazy bored. So we are doing our best to entertain him.


He has learned about putting things up to his ears to hear music.


And how to be cool like his parents by wearing glasses.

Harlem Globetrotters

For Family Home Evening on Monday we went with the Lloyds to see the Harlem Globetrotters. It was a lot of fun, they can do some pretty cool stuff.


Corbin had a blast getting out of the house, he couldn't stop pointing at stuff for the first 40 minutes, there was so much to see!


As you can see we had some pretty sweet court side seats!

Poor Corbin

Today Aunt Jan and Chad stopped by and brought Corbin a Jamba Juice. Because of his diet there are not too many treats that he can eat, so he absolutely LOVES all fruit smoothies. The only problem is eventually he drinks the whole thing and there is none left. And then this happens:


Poor little guy got so upset when his drink was gone, I could not even take the cup away he sat there clutching it and crying for like 10 minutes before I finally pried it out of his hands and got him to calm down. He seriously drank most of it himself too; you would think that he would get full or something.

Wow!

I have been working with a company called Jungle Roses (www.jungleroses.com) for my new pr business and today she sent me some flowers as a thank you for helping her out. Now working so closely with her I had seen pictures, and I knew that the flowers cost $200 so I imagined that they were pretty nice, but actually getting them really is something. They are from South America and came via overnight shipping in a three foot long full color box with a giant Bengal tiger on the outside. It seriously took up our whole coffee table. And they really were absolutely gorgeous flowers; our whole house smells so nice now. We took a picture of Bean looking at them so that you could see just how huge they are:

Fort Corbin

Lately Corbin and I have been building a lot of forts.


One day we were playing peek-a-boo with a blanket and Corbin got so excited being underneath the blanket that I made him a little fort and he spent all day sitting in it with his stuffed animals. For some reason he thinks that it is the coolest thing ever.

Update!

Alright, I suppose it is time for an update.

Here's what we have been up to lately:

Caleb, took the third portion of the CPA exam on January 18th, he thinks it went well, and feels like he probably passed. After his test we went out to eat at the Olive Garden to celebrate his being done and my birthday! Other than that he has been working hard, busy season is starting to hit, so I image he will continue to be working hard for the next few months.

I have been trying to get my little public relations project up and running. I have one whole client so far, but things are going well. Benson helped me to get official registered as an LLC and I have my own website, www.ameliorateconsulting.com, so if anyone knows anyone who needs me to write press releases for them... :)

Corbin had a lot of fun with his cousin Rachel last week. Her mom went back to Aruba to visit her old mission, so she came to play with us some of the days that her dad was at work. For Christmas Grandma Miller got Corbin some color discovery boxes, they are way cute little boxes that he can open and find objects inside that are all the same colors. Rather than using them to learn his colors however, at one point I guess they learned how to put the boxes on their heads as hats.

Here is a candid photo of them, and I tried to record him, but lately everytime you try to film Corbin he drops everything the second he sees you and focuses all of his attention on trying to steal the video camera, so it didn't work out quite like I was planning it to.

Happy? New Year!

To celebrate the New Year we went up to the Lloyd's house and hung out with everyone. We played games, ate yummy food and watched movies. Corbin went to sleep at his normal bedtime, but later got up at about 11:50 to ring in the New Year with us.

I don't think he enjoyed it much.