Mark's 30th Birthday

Sunday was Mark's 30th Birthday!  As I said in an earlier post we did the bulk of our celebrating on Saturday but we did do a little on Sunday as well.

The morning wasn't too exciting and we went to church in the afternoon like normal.  After church though, my cousin Alicia invited us over to her apartment to have dinner with her and her roommate, Rachel, their friend Brandon, and the missionaries from their ward.  It was great to see Alicia's new place and spend some time with her.  She even was so nice to make a cake for Mark and Rachel's birthday as well.  Everything was so yummy!  We had a great time and are so grateful to have some family close now.

We got home and Jacob was having a little rough time.  This weekend was hard on him because it was definitely not his normal routine.  At night we have a pretty definite routine and when it gets interrupted he is not a fan.  Makes it SO nice the majority of the time but was hard when it got disrupted this weekend.  All part of the learning experience for all of us I guess.

But when we got home we had another round of cake and opened presents.  I have decided that cake making is just not my thing.  I wish it were but it is definitely not coming naturally at all.  So I just made a cookies and cream cake this year and it turned out yummy so that is all that really matters, right? :)
 

The funny story is about Jacob's card that he made for Mark.  His first art project.  I had planned in my head this cute card with his hand prints with this little saying and such and well...something quite different emerged.  I actually think it was cuter this way anyway - and I could say it was 100% Jacob.  Though I did have a hard time explaining why Jacob and I came out of his bedroom Saturday morning covered in paint!

As you can tell - Jacob was not really wanting to participate in the festivities :)

I decided to put one of the pictures I took of Jacob after the card making experience was over on the front.  He was covered.  Pretty funny though.  Here is the close up. 

Jacob gave Dad a new movie and I got him tickets to go to a Colorado Rapids game.  This is probably just as exciting for me as it is to Mark - if not more so - because it also means a date night for us.  Alicia is going to watch Jacob for us (we love you Alicia - his first babysitter!) and Mark and I will go to the game.  This is the professional soccer team here and neither one of us have ever gone to a pro soccer game before so hopefully it will be fun.  I am excited regardless.

Happy Birthday Mark!  We love you!

Can you tell how HAPPY Jacob is?!  Oh boy...

The Wild Animal Sanctuary

Mark's birthday landed on a Sunday this year and so we had to do our celebrating mostly on Saturday.  He decided for his "activity" to go to The Wild Animal Sanctuary.  We didn't really know what to expect when we got there but it was so neat.

Apparently this is the oldest sanctuary of its kind and it specializes in rescuing large carnivore animals.  They had: leopards, mountain lions, tigers, African lions, bobcats, lynxes, wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, foxes and a camel.  I can't remember the exact number - but they had something like 250 animals all together - CRAZY!

The rescue stories were incredibly sad.  I just really can't imagine the circumstances that these huge animals were in prior to coming here.  Sad that a place like this has to exist but grateful that it does at the same time.  Their most recent major rescue was for 25 Bolivian lions from the circus.  We watched a little documentary while we were feeding Jacob and it was just so sad.  But they now have a beautiful place to live now and will remain here for the rest of their lives.  

Anyway, we went at the perfect time at the end of the day.  The weather was perfect!  How it is set up is they just have a mile long pathway that is probably like thirty feet in the air (totally guessing on that) and you just walk right above the animals.  They have so much land and they just let each species wander around their individual areas.  They do have areas for newly rescued animals to get used to the area privately before they move them with the rest of their kind as well.  Overall - SO COOL!

The best part had to be at the end when the sun was starting to go down because all of a sudden all of the wolves started howling and the lions started roaring.  Pretty incredible.  You can see some farm houses and such on the outside of the sanctuary and we just kept thinking how crazy it would be to fall asleep to the howls and roars of wolves and lions every night while you are going to sleep - and live in Denver.  CRAZY!

Clearly they are being fed well - holy smokes - look at the size of the right one!  This was one of the adjustment areas where they are in a smaller space with just one another tiger to get used to one another before going into the large areas. 

This is the walkway that you walk on above them - pretty neat idea actually!

How would you like to live in that house?!

They have so much land!

Again one of the adjustment areas for the lions - the right one is very comfortable :)

I know they don't look very lively but when the sun was still out they were all pretty much resting in the shade.  We didn't really get any pictures once they got hopping :)

Jacob was not enjoying our time there as much.  Mark had dressed him in his tiger outfit and so we wanted to get his picture taken with one of the big stuffed animals or something that they had in the gift shop.  However, he wasn't going to work well with that plan so we just did our best to get him with a tiger in the background - oh well!

 
We had planned on going out to a nice dinner afterwards but Jacob was not feeling the day - poor little muffin.  Just another learning thing for us as parents - little Jacob NEEDS his nighttime routine.  So we ended up getting Sonic to go and eating at home while watching the Discovery Channel.  Oh well - it was still a really fun afternoon!

Two Months Old

WOW!  I cannot believe Jacob is two months old now.  I seriously LOVE that little munchkin of mine.  There is truly nothing more I would rather be doing with my life right now then being home with him.  I feel so incredibly blessed.  

We pretty much take at least one picture a day of Jacob and I think he is adorable in all of them.  So here are some of my favorite pictures of Jacob during his second month.  Love him.  

First - we had to celebrate his two month birthday of course!

Now just for the random goodness!

This picture just cracks me up!  I know it is dark but this is how I found Jacob during one of his naps - completely out of his swaddle and his tummy just out there for all to see.  I laughed.  And then I resolved to always put a white onesie under all of his regular clothes.  Haha

This is pretty much the look he gives me at least twice a day when I have to put him in his carseat to drop off and pick up Dad from school

HAPPY TWO MONTHS!

First Shots

Jacob got his first set of shots today and it was so sad.  He had three shots in his legs and then one that he drank.  Uggg...it broke my heart to have to watch.  Wish I could give him some ice cream or something - I guess we will just have to have more snuggle time.  He was such a trooper though.  Love him. 

Poor little man.  I did let him go without his little shorts the rest of the day though (he LOVES not wearing pants!) - that seemed to ease the pain :)

Also, Jacob is definitely our cute little chunky monkey.  He is eight weeks now and a whopping 14 pounds!  Holy smokes!  He is in the 95th percentile for weight - WOW.  Apparently he is at the average weight of a four month old.  Wow.  He is also 24 inches tall -  90th percentile - average height of a three and a half month old.  Geez.  I half joking half seriously asked the doctor if we needed to scale back his eating or something and she just laughed.  She said, "Don't worry, I don't think he is doomed to be a tall, obese man."  Let's hope not!  We're going to have to get that kid doing some crunches or something!  Haha, just kidding, but WOW!

Loving my little BIG boy!

Special and Unique

I really don't know if I can express how incredibly GRATEFUL I am for the special and unique time our family has been able to have the last two months.

Ever since Jacob was born (almost two months now - can you believe it?!) Mark and I have BOTH been able to be home and spend every moment together as a family.  And I have been very aware of what a special time this is - and that the likelihood of it happening again is extremely slim.

But it has been absolutely wonderful and quite possibly the happiest time of my life.  I love these two boys WAY too much!  I can't get enough of them and am so grateful to have them in my life.

Mark started school today and even though we are so grateful for the opportunity he has to continue his education and know what a blessing it will be in the future - our family was a little sad today.  It is sad to see this time end for us but we know we can always look back and remember how wonderful it was.

This picture just cracks me up - he is loving his velvet suit!

Barr Lake State Park

AUGUST FAMILY FUN DAY!

It's the first time we have been able to do a family fun day since I got pregnant so we were pretty excited, even though it was really low-key. 

And today was a great day because it actually ended up not being so hot - it was actually in the low 80's (which was so nice compared to the normal highs) which made our little adventure much nicer.  There are so many state parks really close to us that we decided we would just go on a little hike. 

We decided to go up to Barr Lake State Park which is just about twenty minutes away from us.  There wasn't too many hiking options at this park but we just decided to walk around the lake aways.  We walked down to the gazebo boardwalk which was about a three and a half mile jaunt round trip. 

This park is supposedly internationally known for its birdwatching but we were a little disappointed.  We didn't see ANY birds until halfway through our hike and even then they were really far away.  Oh well.  It was still wonderful to just get out of the house and do something together as a family.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love my little family? 

Mark starts school back up on Monday - which honestly makes me so so sad, next week is going to be rough for me - so it was just wonderful to soak in another day we can spend together as a little family.

WOOT WOOT for family fun!

Our trail - nothing too fancy here

The boardwalk heading down to the lake

The views from the gazebo at the end of the boardwalk - we are guessing the lake is way down this year

Mark trying to find some birds

Can't you tell how much Jacob loved our hike?!  This was pretty much how he was our whole trip. 

 

BYU Time

It's official - I guess I could call myself a BYU Cougar! 

I have been looking into getting my Colorado Teaching License pretty much ever since we moved here.  But when I looked into it I learned I needed to take a test here in order to switch it.  I signed up but then the pregnancy happened which equaled months and months of sickness which resulted in me not taking the test. 

Now that I am feeling MUCH better I thought I would look into all of that again.  Mark and I decided LONG ago that no matter what happened in our lives that I would keep my license current, because after all, you never know what is going to happen in life. 

ANYWAY, so I started the whole application process once again and then although they had changed it so that I no longer needed to take another test, the process was more complicated in other ways.  So I looked into what it takes to renew your license in Utah - just to compare.  And I learned that you can keep renewing it there even if you live out of the state.  SO...I figured I would just keep it current in Utah and if down the road I need to switch it over we will do it then. 

You have to renew your license every three years and seeing as I have an inactive status since I am not teaching, the easiest way to earn points to keep it current is to take college courses.  Pretty much I need to take six credits over that three year period.  Since I am already past my halfway point I figured I better start soon so that I can space it out as much as I can (especially since I have a little guy here that is my top priority!)

So anyway, I went on to BYU's website and they have so many online courses that you can take and they make it incredibly easy.  So I signed up for this class:

Strengthening Marriage and Family:  Proclamation Principles and Scholarship

This is the course description:

This course is an opportunity to study in-depth a proclamation made by prophets and apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding the family and to reflect on its application to our lives, to our families, and to the benefit of families worldwide. 

Does that not sound awesome?!  I am SO excited.  As weird as this may sound, I have actually really missed school.  I have always loved learning and am really excited to have this little extra learning ahead of me.  PLUS, I am really excited that I can take classes that I always wanted to take but didn't because I was so focused on getting through my major.  PLUS, I get to take classes that combine both interesting "worldly" knowledge combined with "spiritual" knowledge (something I didn't have in my classes at Utah State). 

Pretty much I am pumped.  GO LEARNING! :)

My favorite BYU fan!