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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

A happy, happy milestone for baby Will (and Daddy!)

Will hit the ripe-old age of 18 months on Saturday, which means he gets to go to nursery for the last two hours of church every Sunday instead of tagging along (often very loudly and requiring removal) with Chuck to his classes. Will was happy as a clam as he entered the room (he even randomly hugged a little girl) and stayed that way until I had to drop something off to the teacher and he saw me - then came the tears. Oops! Next week I'll definitely send someone else in with the snack :)
Here we are before church - notice the grip Will has on my necklace. I love wearing necklaces, but I swear that one of these days he's going to decapitate me when he pulls it for a closer look.

Will's such a funny, happy guy; he's changed and grown up so much since his birthday. He's very much a 'wanderer' - he requires close supervision in the front yard or else he nearly makes it around the corner, and he prefers to do laps during sacrament meeting. Will is also very chatty, but has yet to find someone who speaks the same language - his catch phrases are "Gully, gully, gully" and "Tika, tika, tika". He loves to stand right in front of the TV, which drives Clyde crazy; he's forever (gently) leading Will away from that spot only to have Will return to it before Clyde can climb back on the couch.

Here are some other recent pictures of little Wilbur:
Here he is, wandering away - Grandma Pam is the designated 'follower' in this case.
Running around with Clyde
Is it horrible that sometimes we turn on the water like this (just a teensy bit, I promise) and let Will climb up on his stool to brush his teeth . . . for a half hour at a time?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Well, we went ice blocking.

On Labor Day (that was pretty recent, right?) we found ourselves in Boise at Simplot Hill to do some ice blocking with friends. Mostly the guys ice blocked while the ladies sat and visited and marvelled at the guys' sweet grass stains. I spent most of the afternoon trying to keep Will out of the street :)
One side of the hill - that's Clyde on the left and Chuck and the other hardcore 'blockers on the right.
Here's what made me laugh: the guys would trek all the way up to a super high point on the hill, but they only lasted until halfway down before they crashed and fell off their ice. Wouldn't it make more sense to just start at that point and save yourself half a hike? Maybe I'm just lazy. Heading back up again. Chuck took a couple pretty awesome spills, including one where as I watched I was pretty sure he broke his leg. But he didn't - lucky! Yep, Troy pulled that wagon up part of the hill and then let go - and I let my child participate. Don't worry, Tawny was there to catch them at the bottom. Will, of course, had a blast.
Proof I was there. Although somewhere there are pictures of me actually ice blocking right before we called it a day - and I resisted the urge to drag my feet and go super slow the whole way!

Now for the good stuff: videos. McKay brought Kenzie's trike but she was hesitant to ride it down the hill - so Clyde commandeered it :). Once again, I'm reminded that my child has no fear, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Sports, illustrated (with lots of pictures!)

It was a very sporty few days at our house recently, starting with the beginning of the NFL season - which means the 4th Annual I.I.F.F.F.L. - Izatt Invitational Family Fantasy Football League.
As always, I was in charge of the pre-draft set-up. We condensed to one team per owner, mixing AFC and NFC players. Participants this year: Chuck, Jana, Sam (once again drafted for, very ethically, by Chuck), Pam, Leslie & Keyan, and Matt & Niina. Niina is a foreign exhange student from Finland living with Leslie and Matt and their family, so we figured fantasy football was a pretty good American culture experience! The kids stayed busy during the draft - Keyan went back and forth between helping his mom pick players and going down the slide :) Here's Keyan announcing their team's final pick, which wrapped up this year's draft.
The final draft board.
The guys, analyzing all the teams.
My living room was spared this year; instead we hung the draft board in the bonus room along with Chuck's Boise State posters. I'm resigning myself to the fact that our (eventual) next child's nursery will be football-themed.

The next athletic event came the next morning with a church paintball activity. Chuck helped organize it and Pops and Mallory were able to go as well.

All the 'ballers, minus Pops who was taking the picture.
Cute Mallory waiting for the game to start.

The following Monday morning I left my house at 5:45 a.m., drove to Boise State and got in line (at about 6:15) for tickets to the BSU-Oregon game.

This was the line directly in front of me, it began at the ticket windows and wrapped all around the indoor practice facility back to where I was, almost to the river.
This was the line behind me, including the people around me with whom I became fast friends, especially this awesome girl named Tessa. Funny story: we spent about five hours together, but didn't think to actually 'introduce' ourselves with names until about four and a half hours in. We were seriously freaked out to find that three of the four guys in our little group were named John. Seriously, I looked at their ID's. Weird.
All the folks at the front of the line. This was about an hour before the ticket windows actually opened. When I arrived that morning, most of these people were still asleep - on air mattresses. Legally, they weren't allowed to sleep out all night so most of them stayed in their cars until about one a.m. when the cops let them come out and get in line.
There's the guy from channel 7. He walked by us at one point and I asked if they had an estimate of how many people were in line (on the six o'clock news they reported 150-200 so I wanted to know if they had an update) and he said, "Oh, about fifteen!" and kept walking. Hilarious.

So as I walked the l-o-n-g ways back to my spot in line, I counted by fives to estimate how many people were ahead of us - about 640. Plus there were two other ticket locations. Plus each person in line could use up to three student ID's to get tickets, meaning up to six actual tickets (the policy has now been changed slightly to allow more actual students to get tickets, instead of people buying guest tickets only to resell them). So it wasn't a huge shock when tickets sold out an hour after the ticket windows opened, with me still WAY back in line. Seriously disappointing, but not hugely shocking.

So, we ended watching the game at home, which was a lot of fun. We got all dressed up in blue and orange, invited some friends over, ate lots of good food and watched the Broncos win :)

I believe this was the first actual tackle of the night.
Will outside earlier destroying my flowers. Good thing he's cute!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

All the birthday festivities


Last year Clyde turned two and ended up having two birthday celebrations. This year he turned three and managed to have three. Something has got to change :).
The weekend before Clyde's birthday we were delighted to have Grandma and Grandpa Izatt, aka Pops, come for a visit - and they brought Mallory and Courtney too!
Courtney, Mallory, and Clyde before church on Sunday - aren't they all so adorable?

So on Saturday evening, after a busy day of paintball for Pops, Chuck, and Mallory, homework for me, and running errands and playing in Boise for Grandma, Clyde, Will, and Courtney, we whipped up some cupcakes for our soon-to-be three-year-old.
Yep, I made Clyde mix his own cake. I don't believe in coddling. I do believe in rewarding hard work, however. If you look closely you can also see the bump on Clyde's left eye - he and Courtney were playing 'throw the ball up in the air and both try to catch it', which rarely ends well :). They enjoyed themselves, though, Clyde still wanted to play after taking Court's chin to his eye!
Ah, the 'Happy Birthday' cupcakes in all their glory. Clyde picked the letter 'B' to hold the three candles.
This may have been Will's first encounter with a frosted cupcake; he nibbled a little off the bottom and gave the rest to me :)

Grandma and Pops' gift for Clyde came a few days later: a really neat butterfly-hatching kit! It comes with five little caterpillars that you're able to watch become cocoons and then butterflies, at which point you release them into the 'wild', aka the backyard!
Chuck and Clyde got it all set up in the boys' room, right now we're waiting for the last caterpillar to cocoon-ize and then we (meaning Chuck) will remove the smaller container and let them continue to develop until they're ready to emerge as beautiful butterflies!
Clyde doesn't understand exactly what's going on, but he's pretty excited!

The second celebration came on Clyde's actual birthday. We had pancakes for breakfast, and I made a small departure from the 'C' pancakes I usually make for Clyde and added a '3' to the mix as well. I know, practically gourmet :)
Later in the day, Clyde found himself again mixing his own cake:
After the cake was put in the oven, we took a brief break to allow Chuck to go help with some church business. The little boys and I enjoyed the beautiful evening in the front yard.
My three-year-old and me!
Ring around the rosie . . .
They all fell down!
Then Chuck came home and it was back to business. Clyde wanted a 'blue Lightning' (McQueen) cake, so Chuck free-handed a pretty decent car and used blue sprinkles to finish the job.
Will helped out, too :)
Clyde and Will were both mesmerized by the candles!
That last one was tricky!

Finally, the next day we met Uncle Cody and Grandma Pam for lunch at my mom's new classroom, after which we went to the zoo (see last post!).
First Clyde opened his present from Uncle Cody . . .
a CARS book and a Toy Story painting book!
Will was excited too.
Then he opened Grandma Pam's gift; she made him a CARS blanket!
Which he now drags all over the house :)

Whew! Add to that the special birthday blog that Sam and Terri wrote, as well as many phone calls and other birthday wishes, and Clyde is a pretty loved little birthday boy.
(But there's no way he's getting four parties next year. I'm serious.)

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

At the zoo - times two

Well, as it turns out, school starting again = sporadic blogging. Every exciting event/occurrence (as well as the unexciting ones) WILL get blogged, just . . . sporadically. Starting with two recent trips to the zoo.

Right before school started, Chuck found himself with almost a week off, thanks to a daytime use-of-force training that he helped teach. That meant he was all ours from a Friday afternoon to the next Friday afternoon, with the exception of the aforementioned training on Tuesday from 9 to 3:30. So, we decided to send summer out in style with all sorts of fun activities: helping my mom move schools (a venture with necessitates a post of its own), watching movies at home, seeing UP! at the dollar theater, bike rides, one last afternoon of swimming, a date night to the temple, and a visit to the zoo:
I love how Will's a bit hunched over to check out the giraffes :)
Chuck got talked into going first on the slide. . . but Clyde wasn't far behind. Then Will went down and had fun, despite Clyde following quickly after and almost squashing him.
Will's second time, however, something went terribly wrong. Can you see it? He dragged his foot too much and went face first into the side, poor little boy!
Luckily he recovered quickly and I trapped him inside an egg to keep him safe and sound.
Then Daddy took him down another slide to reaffirm their . . . um, enjoyability. Is that a word?
Clyde and Daddy stopped to do a bit o' learning, or spinning as the case may be.
Oh, and we also saw a few animals.

Last week we made another trip to the zoo with Uncle Cody in tow to celebrate Clyde's birthday.
This time Clyde tried out the new technique that Chuck taught him; Clyde also uses it when going over speedbumps or downhill while in the car - SO cute :)
We wisely sent Will down with Cody, which led to a much safer landing.
Will's first time in the gopher tunnel; he was a big fan.

The boys checking out the 'stick bugs' (possibly not their scientific name).
Cody and Clyde examining some sort of poop display. Gross.
We wanted a picture with the giraffe. Somewhere I have a picture of Cody and I striking very similar poses while looking at some Church history statue in the midwest. What can I say, we often feel the need to stop and ponder.
One of our favorite attractions, the elephants. No need to get actual elephants, Zoo Boise - the water-spraying variety suffice!
This one just made me laugh.
All four boys went on an African safari . . .
until Clyde took over as driver, which left only three . . .
then at some point Cody realized he was cruising around with a three-year-old at the wheel and bailed, leaving just two little boys . . .
then someone thought to get Will the heck outta there - and then there was one! Seriously, Clyde could have sat there pretending to drive all day. Yay for the zoo!