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.

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.