Spring?

February and March have been amazing. February had lows in the 40s/50s and highs in the 60s/70s and now at the end of March we see lows in the 60s and highs in the 80s nearly every day. I love the beautiful trees outside our apartment:

And so does Seth. He likes to go outside on the balcony everyday. Our balcony looks over a large undeveloped area. Seth loves the birds and stray cats and one night we even heard a group of coyotes!

We all enjoyed a spring break visit from Todd. Seth loves his Uncle and even walked around the apartment this morning saying his name and looking for him.

Stephen is very happy with his job. The guy in charge of budgeting took a new job so Stephen has taken on an expanded role and always has plenty to do. At home he's still enjoying post-school life with more free time (just finished the Leviathan series and loved it). At church he's doing lots with the young men, from teaching lessons to service projects to camp outs. 

Camp out #1:  It happened to be one of the only nights in February where the temperature dipped down to the 30s. Also it happened that Stephen's sleeping bag was accidentally used by someone else and at 1am he didn't know there were extras in someone's truck. This made for a very cold, mostly sleepless night by the fire. But all the boys thought he was awesome afterwards.

Camp out #2: Much warmer. Got a few cactus pricks and welts from paintballing. Had fun.

I am just being the Mom. Lately this has included wiping a sick nose, dealing with a little toddler separation anxiety (therefore lots of cuddles!), searching for a home to rent or buy since our short-term contract is almost up, working on a new system for organizing meals, reading, and transforming old pants into shorts.

Seth is 16 months and we love this age. He's a 100% walker now. The Haskin side of the family has noted the similarity between Seth's gait and Jack Sparrow's... which is pretty true, but he's a tall boy so I'm not surprised that he's still a little wobbly.

After repeated offenses to the computer keyboard, we decided to try a little time out. He doesn't exactly hate it, but we're consistent and it seems to be helping.

Seth owns 2 Elmo bibs, 2 Sesame Street books and has watched a few episodes of Sesame Street from the library, but it didn't take him long to LOVE "Elmos." We were excited when a guy in our ward asked if our son liked Elmo and wanted some old toys. YES!

Seth surprises us with words we didn't know he knew. He said "boos" when he saw a picture of a balloon in a book, "saaf" (soft) when he saw a pig in one of his books, and called a strawberry "apple."