Happy Halloween!

Happy haunting y'all!

Random Bits...

Last weekend, we had a fun time at Teya's spooky Halloween birthday party. Here are Max & Andrew winding up for a pinata whack: The kids going for the loot: And the kids digging for more loot in a cauldron:Other random thoughts:

I am bummed that this will be the first election I won't vote in. I really have no excuse, but I let the deadline slip by me for registering in Utah.

I also can't believe that Reese Witherspoon & her hubby split! Theirs was a little more surprising than say, J. Lo & fill-in-the-blank or Nick & Jessica.

Well, we'll hit a few houses trick-or-treating tonight. Ben is wearing a hand-me-down pumpkin costume (I figure I'll take advantage of that until he's old enough to care), and Max is a racecar driver (see above photos). I'll get a pic of them later.

Also, New This Week

First, an extreme baby close-up:Ben's version of peekaboo:Max has entered an exciting new world called Pees While Standing. (Sorry, no pics of that!)

I Stand Corrected

This is going to be a long post...bear with me! So I thought it was a heckuva week when Andrew had the stomach flu. I had no idea what was in store for us. As most of you know, the virus that he had was a particularly nasty little creature that decided that simply making my hubby sick to his stomach wasn't enough; it wanted to attack some more of his body, namely his heart. Andrew spent a weekend in the ICU with myocarditis (don't look it up on the internet, it will scare the pants off you). He then was off work for a week. On Monday, he saw the cardiologist, who is pleased with the progress. The virus weakened Andrew's heart a little, so he has a little less energy & he still has some minor muscle pain from the ordeal, but is otherwise OK - thankfully!! Hopefully he'll eventually have a full recovery. He's on heart medications & will continue to follow up with the cardiologist. The good news is his back doesn't hurt anymore. Thank you all for your calls, e-mails, thoughts & prayers. They mean a lot to us!

The contractors continue to make awesome progress in our basement. Yesterday Ben napped through jackhammering & a smoke alarm being set off by their soldering. Amazing.

The boys & I have been on our own this week because Andrew flew to Dallas Monday night for the second (and final) part of his training for his job here. He returns tonight.

Here are some pics from Tuesday, when I took the boys to Red Butte Garden (SLC's botanic gardens). They currently have a dinosaur exhibition going on, so Max enjoyed finding the dinos peeking out of the plants. Ben just rode along in the wagon (I don't mean to be a bad Mom & not have any pics of Ben at the gardens). I'll include a picture of Ben on his 11-month b-day so you can see him too. We enjoyed gorgeous weather at the botanic gardens, yesterday it snowed, and now it's warming up again.

And one of my thoughts for the week: Rush Limbaugh is just a rotten excuse for a human being.

What a week...

...and it's only Thursday. I can't believe I last blogged Monday - it seems like much longer ago than that. Tuesday night about 11:00, Andrew got sick. Unmentionables violently shot out of all openings in his body until Wednesday afternoon. Today he started easing back into food and life. When someone in the family gets sick, it seems like the world just halts and the days drag by. Max also had a pretty good cough Wednesday & Ben was still fighting a runny nose (translation, everyone was sick except Mom). We all seem to be getting back to normal today & I am crawling out from under the mountain of "sick laundry". Thank goodness!! And the boys & I seem to have dodged whatever Andrew had, whether it was a bug or something he ate. Double yeah for that. You take good health for granted until it goes on hiatus for a few days.

I took the boys to the pumpkin patch today. What a fun afternoon! We'll probably carve them tomorrow.

We also decided this week that we're going to finish the basement. I know, I know, I've preached it myself: you lose money when you finish a basement. However, Utah has its own set of rules. After talking to our realtor and some of Andrew's co-workers, it seems that having a 5 bed, 4 bath house in Utah actually is more valuable than a 4 bed, 3 bath house, so a basement finish here is not such a loser. Plus, we'd love love love the extra space for a toy room & guest suite. So we have a contractor all lined up. Should be done around Dec 1 (so hopefully by next summer in contractor-time :) ).

That's it for now.

Colorado Trip

All the Shiers are back in Utah after our trip to Colorado. The two-legged ones arrived yesterday afternoon and the four-legged one made her return from the doggie hotel this morning. We had a really great trip, despite the fact the both boys got colds & had very runny noses. We had a fun time just hanging out with the family. Max and Ben entertained everyone with the new tricks they've learned since they last saw them.

Whenever we are at Grandma Jill's & Grandpa Jim's Max likes to sit on the farm equipment several times a day:

Uncle Jody and Aunt Whitney came down on Saturday to see us: On another note, our builder is supposed to plant trees in our yard, lining the streets. While we were gone, the builder planted the trees along one side of our yard, so we were so excited to see the trees when we got home! (We are on a corner, so the other street hasn't been planted yet.) That's it in a nutshell...

Oktoberfest

I went to my first Oktoberfest celebration this weekend. And it was in Utah. Oktoberfest? In Utah? Yep, you read that right. Pretty funny, huh? We had a really great time, enjoying the gorgeous fall colors and hanging out with Tom, Krissa & Teya. There were lots of kids activities, overpriced (but yummy) German food, polka, lederhosen, and, oh yeah, lots of beer. ("Danke bitte," anyone?) A very fun afternoon. And the truly awesome part was that Oktoberfest was at a ski area called Snowbird. When we pulled into our driveway, our trip-meter read 40 miles. That's ROUNDTRIP.

Out & About

Here are some pics from our afternoon today. The weather has been absolutely perfect this week, so we've been trying to spend as much time as possible outside. This park is about 5 blocks away, by the neighborhood splash pool. The equipment here is toddler-size, so we like this one:
This park is only 1 block away. The equipment is full-size, so Max can only really use the slide, but he is a big fan of this one too. I'm sure he'll be scaling the climbing wall sooner than we think!
I think the Wasatch Front mountains (these are the mountains on the east side of the Salt Lake valley) are pretty drop-dead gorgeous. The view from the park:

Chompers

Here's the best I could do of Benjamin's new chompers:

Multi-tasking

I am sitting here listening to Jordan's webcast & thought I'd multi-task a little and do a blog post. Here's Ben's 10-month picture, taken this week:Very exciting development this week - Ben has teeth coming in! He's been remarkably good-natured about the whole thing too. I'll try and get a photo of the little chompers, but that may prove to be a challenge :). The top right is the furthest in, the top left is not far behind. And sometimes it looks like the bottom two teeth are coming in too, but it's hard to tell. Benjamin climbed a whole flight of steps this week too. I don't know who authorized that, but oh well.

We had some neighbors over for dinner tonight & had a really fun time. They have two kids, a daughter 7 months older than Max, and a son 5 months older than Ben. Very nice to get to know some of our neighbors!

Look Ma!

Look at the little big man! Ben's been working hard on standing at every opportunity. Every so often, I hear a panicked cry and he's gotten himself into a situation that he doesn't know how to get out of - just learning what his little body is capable of, and his repertoire expands every week.

This morning we went to a Presbyterian church. The boys did great in nursery (no potty accidents!). Their nursery has a blue boat just like the one at our old church's nursery that was Max's very favorite toy. However, the church did not have doughnuts, so Max was kind of disappointed about that. Priorities, I know. It was a very nice church, but it was kind of a long drive. Beginning in November though, there's going to be a new Presbyterian church meeting in a movie theater right by our house, with the goal being to eventually have a building in Daybreak. Having one that close would be awesome, but dealing with a brand new parish will probably have its pluses and minuses. There's also a Methodist church that's kind of close that we'll probably check out. It's not as far as the one we went to this morning, but definitely not as close as the new Presbyterian church will be. Anyways, it was really nice to go to church, even as we continue to look for a new church home.

Picture

Just a picture of Max supervising Andrew this morning, working hard outside despite the colder weather that arrived yesterday. We had a few more shrubs to plant. Good work fellas!

Let This Be a Lesson, Kiddos!!!

This was the scene from our front porch this afternoon. The reason for the medivac helicopter: a guy riding in a car with his arm hanging out the window, probably just enjoying the nice day, had his arm almost completely ripped off. Did you feel that same chill run from head to toe as I did? Since the guy was in the passenger seat, my guess is his arm hit a parked truck. My neighbor, who is much braver than I, ran up to see what was going on before the emergency crews arrived, and she said the arm wasn't completely severed, but pretty close. So our excitement was having a helicopter basically land in our front yard. In all seriousness though, I just pray first of all that the guy lives, and, secondly that he keeps his arm. YEECHHHHHHHH! And keep those limbs in the car!

Weekend Update

Another exciting weekend at the Shiers...we laid another 6 yards of mulch (3 truckloads), which finished all of the front & side yards & just over half of the backyard. Yeah!!
Sunday night we had a fun evening at Tom, Krissa & Teya's house. Krissa & Tom (proof that we do have friends in Utah :) ):

Teya & Max taking the pink Jeep out for a spin:

At first, Max looked kind of surprised when he pushed the gas pedal and the Jeep moved. Then there were some nervous giggles, then there was outright belly-laughing.

And Max is now on day five in big-boy undies - day two with no accidents! So we have been spending a lot of time oohing and aahing over his creations and bidding them bye-bye as they swirl down the toilet. I'm sure Tom & Krissa appreciated being the First Place We Have Visited For An Extended Length of Time Since Putting Max in Big Boy Undies, but, having recently gone through it themselves, they seemed to take it in stride. Max has even graduated from plain ol' big boy undies to cool Thomas the Train undies that he got to pick out. Nothing better than having three train engines choo-chooing across your little hiney!

Labor Day, etc

I know Labor Day already seems like a long time ago, but it was just last weekend...

Over Labor Day, Andrew's parents flew in for a visit. Yeah, we love visitors!! We had a fun couple of days with them: we hit the Downtown Salt Lake Farmer's Market, saw the Bingham Copper Mine, did a little shopping, trekked to the Great Salt Lake, etc. We also had a BBQ with the Vanderwalt family, formerly known as The Only Souls We Know in Utah. They used to live in Silver City and were friends of Sue and Maurice. They got transferred to SLC a couple years ago, and when we were here over Memorial Day looking for a house, they were kind enough to have us over to eat and fill us in on life in SLC. So we were glad to see them again, and I think Sue and Maurice had fun catching up with them too.

Here are some pics of Grandma Sue & Grandpa Mo and the boys:

Ben really wanted a nap & Max refused to join in this pic...oh well, that's real life...

Also over Labor Day, Benjamin George figured out crawling!! Awfully nice of him to perform that little trick while his Grandma and Grandpa were here! Here he comes:

And there he goes!

So proud!

I'm going to brag a little because both of my brothers have accomplished big things recently. Jody became a Captain in the Air Force on Monday. We're bummed that we couldn't have been there to share the day, but Mom & Dad, newly minted masters of their digital camera, sent along a photo:
Congrats Jody!!

And Jordan took a huge step towards realizing his dream-job by landing his first play-by-play job. He and Becca are picking up stakes and heading to Helena, MT next Tuesday. Jordan's doing play-by-play for the Helena Bighorns Hockey team, a developmental team for up-and- comers. There's a press release on their web-site about Jordan and a link to listen to games live once their season starts: www.bighornshockey.com. Big sky country sounds like as good a place as any to start realizing your dream, little bro. Congrats!!

Boots

First thing this morning, Max went to his closet and got all his boots out. Even before eating breakfast today, he had me put his worker-man boots on. Unfortunately for him, he only has 2 feet, so he had to carry around his Spider-man snowboots that he just inherited from his cousins. He was perfectly happy to just trudge around the house in his summer jammies, boots and awesome bed-head carrying his snowboots from place to place with him...so I just had to get a picture. (You can see also see that Ben was not so happy this morning.)

One of the great things about Utah...

We've discovered that one of the great things about living in Utah is shopping on Sundays. See, Mormons don't believe in doing anything on Sundays that would require anyone else to work. This includes shopping. So the places that used to be a total headache on the weekends, Lowes, Costco, etc, are awesome here. It's like being a junior in high school and at the end of the year the seniors leave school a few days before the other grades. The halls feel mysteriously empty and you realize "we rule the school!" On Sundays, the stores are about half-full and you know that your fellow shoppers are also non-LDSers in LDS-land, and for one day a week, we rule the school. Yeah!!

Yet Another Yard Entry

Sorry if you're sick to death of yard pictures, but I know some people want to see our progress. The landscapers are essentially done - they just have one gate left to cut because it didn't fit the fence right, so the rest is just Andrew & I doing weed-barrier and spreading mulch. This weekend we spread 10 yards of mulch, which covered the front yard. Whew!! Just the side and back yards left. Lookin' good!
This picture is more to show the fence & the mountains in the background.

This week...

Last night our friends Tom & Krissa & their daughter, Teya, came over for dinner. Tom and Andrew were room-mates in college. Crazy thing, but a week or so ago, our realtor (another frat brother) called to say he thought Tom & Krissa were in Salt Lake now too. I can't tell you how excited we were to hear this news! So we dug out an old phone number we had for them & sure enough, they moved here from Santa Barbara in May because Krissa is going to U. of Utah to get her Physician Assistant master's degree. They live over by the university, so it's about a half-hour away, but who cares? Their daughter is almost exactly Max's age, so it made for an entertaining evening - the two of them alternated between playing tug-of-war with toys and playing nicely together.

Max usually runs into our bed and snuggles after he wakes up in the morning. So this morning we were laying in bed, talking about playing with Teya and said that next time we would probably go play at her house. Max says, "OK, after we get dressed?" Well, probably not quite that soon. I don't know about showing up on their doorstep less than 12 hours after they left our house, but I think it's safe to say that we are soooo stinkin' glad they're in SLC too & look forward to seeing them on a more regular basis.

*Random Utah fact that I learned last night*: the slumber-party-staple Footloose (and yes, I bought it as soon as it came out on DVD) was filmed in Lehi, UT, about 30 minutes from here.

Other stuff: our yard looks great. We laid a lot of weed barrier and spread 4 yards of mulch yesterday. Andrew is currently out getting another load.

And per Becca & Jordan's request, more pics of the boys. Ask and ye shall receive :) . These are from NJ:

And one taken last week of Ben at home: