Big Weekend!

So this last weekend was a big deal for our little family. First on Saturday Silas turned 6 months old! It's really weird how fast time is going by. Then the HUGE event on Saturday was Eric graduated!! Yay!!! I'm so very proud. Then Monday was our two year anniversary! That time went by way fast too. Now we're getting ready for Christmas with my entire family. It's crazy around here.

Green Screen Pictures

So earlier today I was thinking how I never take the time to blog and then tonight Silas has decided that he doesn't want to go to sleep so it's giving us time to blog. Today we went on campus to take some pictures with Eric. There's another group in Eric's IBC class that's doing green screen pictures and they had Santa there so we got a cute one of Silas. He refused to smile but he really liked looking at Santa so I think it turned out pretty cute.

Then this picture was Eric's idea. I LOVE Silas in this picture but it's not mine and Eric's best. After we took this we thought of the idea of having Silas really big and us in his fist trying to eat us. We might still do that one.

So Eric only has about two more weeks and he's done! We're excited/stressed. It's a little scary to leave Rexburg forever for the real world. No news on the job hunt. He's got a couple of leads and just hopefully we hear something really soon. We just got back from a stressful vacation for Thanksgiving break. We drove out to Washington for some fun with Eric's side of the family. It started out really well. The trip out there Silas was a perfect angel and the roads were completely clear. Then Monday came!!! It dumped snow. :( Eric and Mark did some extreme fishing in a blizzard but had a blast and brought back two giant fish. Mary, Melissa and her kids and I went to Seattle and then on our way home got stuck on Bainbridge Island for HOURS! and when we finally all got home Monday night the power had been knocked out. I guess that's the risk of living in all those beautiful trees. So The power continued to stay out until about 12 Thanksgiving day. So everything came together and we were able to celebrate! Then on Sunday we made our way back to Idaho. I will NEVER make that drive in the snow again! Between Twin Falls and Pocatello was horrible! There was no joke about 30 cars off the road! (just realized I'm using a lot of these !!!!!) And one of those cars ended up being Carrie's. So a drive that usually takes about 13 hours ended up taking about 18. It was the most stressful drive ever. So we ended up doing nothing Monday but sit around and try to relax and recover from our vacation. We're all really looking forward to next year when it'll be fun to look back on. :)

Busy busy busy!

It feels like I have so much going on! I keep meaning to post everything that's been happening but I just keep putting it off. I'm working on making Eric a Christmas Stocking and it's sucking up every free moment I have trying to get it done in time. Posts about our Thanksgiving adventures are coming soon!

Sweet Potatoes

We've started adding sweet potatoes to Silas's rice cereal.

Silas discovered a more effective way of eating, he eats for awhile and then sucks all the food that missed his mouth off of his bib.

Also this weekend Silas got to hang out with his first best friend, Deakon.

Happy Halloween

Here's some of the highlights of Silas's first Halloween.

Silas spent some time in Grammy and Papa's bucket of candy, where he tried to eat a sucker with the wrapper still on. (Notice Silas's AWESOME new shirt. It has Yoda on it)
On Friday we went to Michelle's for pizza before Boo at the Zoo. (He's a hot dog)

And then Saturday night Silas was a Pumpkin and we walked around with the cousins while they trick or treated. Silas didn't trick or treat at all because I think it's totally lame when people just use their kids to get candy.

Rice Cereal

Now that Silas is 4 months old we've been given the okay to start trying rice cereal. Very exciting. He seems to like it so far. Everyday he's getting better and able to keep a little more in his mouth.

Trip to Utah

This weekend we made a trip down to Utah for our friends Justin and Carrie Wood's baby shower. Part of the reason we drove all the way down there for just the baby shower was Eric wanted to go to Toucano's, his favorite place to eat because there's just TONS and TONS of meat. I'd never been there so I was pretty excited too. So we start heading down to Provo after the shower and call Toucano's to make a reservation and they tell us they can't fit us in for THREE HOURS. We were both really disappointed and ended up going to a wannabe Olive Garden that just wasn't that great. :( But we did get to see Carrie, Eric's sister. She went to dinner with us and got to see Silas for the first time in a few months. Kind of a disappointing trip because of stupid Toucano's but it's alright.

4 months!

(not his best picture, he's been in a bad mood) Today Silas had his 4 month check up today and his second set of shots. He did really well recovering from the shots in the doctors office but has been a pill the rest of the day. He is still a giant baby. When the doctor picked him up to hand him to me he said, "oh wow! he's a solid kid." So even though he's a very large kid he's doing great.

Here are the percentiles

weight: 18.1 lbs 95%

height: 26.5 inch 94%

head circ.: 17.5 inch 95%

Eric is very proud to have one monster of a baby. :)

So right now we are working on moving out of our apartment. The building is most likely being foreclosed on so we'd be kicked out in a couple of weeks anyways so we figured we'd just move out and save money on rent. So now we are going through the annoying process of packing up.

Eric's IBC group is getting ready to start selling their laptop skins tomorrow or the next day. Eric's still disappointed about what a lame idea it is and wants everyone to know it wasn't his idea and it wasn't his fault. But if by chance you are interested in a skin (a sticker for your laptop that protects it and makes you stylish) let us know. They're selling them for $10.

Eric's also playing softball still. They had their first close game ever last week. They didn't 10 run the team! But they still won.

I'm starting to craft. It's hard with Silas because he tends to want to be held whenever I'm working on something. When I finally finish one of my projects I'll be sure to post it so everyone can tell me how great it looks. :)

For Mark

Eric and Silas are constantly working on improving their circus tricks. Silas now LOVES it when Eric does this.

Straw Maze

(sorry it's sideways)
Last weekend we decided to go to one of the many straw mazes in the area. So we bundled up Silas and headed into the maze. What we didn't realize was it was a haunted straw maze! I am not a fan of being scared. I wont even watch previews for scary movies. So I ended up carrying a flashlight through the whole thing and it helped a TON! Over all it was a pretty fun half hour wandering around and a fun kick off to the Halloween season.

Big Baby!

So I was too lazy to rotate the picture but this is my very round baby. He's three months and some change now but he is quicklygrowing out of his 6 month clothes! This outfit he's wearing is a 9 month outfit! the worst part of this is i bought Silas his easter outfit before he was born. i had no idea he was going to be such a monster so it's only a 9 month outfit!

and here's a video of eric tickling silas. Enjoy :)

Silas's Circus Trick

So here's Silas's newest trick. This is a bit of a tradition in the Vail family. Eric's dad Mark did it with all his kids and now they do it with their's. Marks record was two minutes with Melissa. Eric wanted to try to beat that but with Silas being the chunky boy he is were not sure that will ever happen. (sorry about how dark the video is.)

This is just a video of Silas and his mobile. It's pretty long but I don't know how to shorten it. About half was through is when Silas starts yelling at it.

Our little pill

So Silas has been such a little pill for the past week. He's been going through his 3 month growth spurt and he started teething at the same time. I didn't realize that teething could start this early and i guess it can. His teeth aren't breaking through yet but his gums are causing him pain. It's been getting better but the end of last week he was crying every night and the only way to calm him down was to let him chew on my knuckles. But because it started to hurt we got teething tablets and that seemed to do the trick. For the most part he's been much better but still wants to chomp on my knuckles every once in a while.

Now that Silas is getting bigger dressing him is getting to be more fun. I love dressing him like a little man and not like a baby. I don't have pictures of it but Silas got his first pair of jeans this week and they are ADORABLE!

Silas also got a hand-me-down mobile from Emilee and he LOVES it. Today while we were all getting ready for the day I put Silas in his crib for just a bit while I got dressed and when I went back to get him ready he was just staring at the mobile and talking up a storm so I just let him stay in there until he fell asleep and took a nice long nap. It was very cute. I should've done a video of it but didn't think about it.

Eric is starting up another semester of softball and the bad thing about the softball in the fall is it's FREEZING up at the fields. So i bundled up Silas. He didn't actually wear this blue outfit because I was worried about him not being able to suck his thumb if he got upset, but he just looked so cute when I tried it on him that I had to take a picture.

So Silas and I bundled up and went to watch the game in the cold. Eric did GREAT! He had a couple of nice hits and a nice double play. His team won by I believe 11 runs. I'm not sure how many games Silas and I will be watching. I'd like to go to all of them but it's just SO cold and even though Silas was warm his cheeks were a little pink and the games are just going to get colder.
This semester Eric is doing Intergrated Business Core (IBC) which is when he is in a company of about 20 people and they start a business and they sell stuff on campus. They have to present their idea infront of a loan commity and they are given money to start up their business and part of their grade is on how well they do. He just got back from a camping trip where their company was supposed to do team building and bond. It started out like that but then after the team building they were supposed to pick what they were going to sell. In the business of 20-25 people they are in goups of about 5 and each group was supposed to bring a well researched idea with a report and everything. Eric's group was the only ones to actually have their idea researched. And then when the company voted Eric's group's idea of selling nuts, jerky, fruit leather and dried fruit was the most popular but for some reason another group that wanted to sell Love Sacks (giant expensive bean bags) insisted that their idea be the one they do. They had no research done and they didn't get the most votes but for some reason they are meeting again on Friday morning to decided which one they'll do. I'm very annoyed because I want homemade jerky!
Nothing's new with me because all I do is hang out with my boy. My most exciting stories are about Silas's giant blow out's he has in stores. :)

Silas the nudist

So every night for about a hour Silas freaks out and gets really grumpy. He doesn't want to eat or be cuddled or anything. But we discovered he does like to be naked. We figured it out while changing him while he was grumpy, once the clothes were off he was talking and playing then grumpy the moment they were back on. So he likes to hang out and watch football, drink rootbeer and eat chips in his diaper.

Then on our drive from Washington to Idaho he got really grumpy for the last couple of hours so we decided to see if he just wanted to be naked. it turns out he did. He was totally happy just riding in his diaper.

So to make his nudist-ness even better, Silas went to the doctor and we found out what a chubby kid he is.
Here are the stats:
16 lbs-95%
25 in-89%
17 in head circ-96%
He's our Big Baby. :)

Bacon Sushi

Last night we made sushi for dinner and Eric likes to mess with different ingredients. For example we've added cheese to the sushi before. I'm personally not a huge fan but it wasn't terrible. Anyways last night Eric wanted to try sushi with bacon in it. We tried bacon bits before but you couldn't taste the bacon so this time we just went for straight up bacon strips. We put the strips of bacon between the soy wraps and the rice and then just rolled them as usual. We both weren't sure how it would turn out so we only had the bacon in some of the pieces. But much to my surprise it was pretty good. The mixture of the smells was a little weird but it tasted pretty good. We'll defiantly do it again with more bacon.

Also last night Silas slept for 10 hours! I couldn't believe it. I kept waking up starting around 4:30 and wondering why he hadn't woken up yet. I even went to check on him just to make sure he was okay. But this morning I finally woke him up to eat but then as soon as he was done eating he went right back to sleep for another hour. He's getting another cold so i'm wondering if that's what's causing him to be so tired.

Lake Cushman

So Silas has a new best friend. The baby in the mirror. We were getting ready for bed the other night and I put him up in front of the mirror and at first he just looked at himself and then he started smiling and wiggling. He thinks he's pretty cute.

So last Saturday we went to Lake Cushman and here are some of the highlights.

Eric was sad to see that this tree had fallen over. The last time he was at this tree it was standing up and he could walk inside it. I can't wait to take him to Humblodt someday so he can see lots of huge trees.

Justin took Miles off the reef at Staircase.

This was the coolest part. Riley wanted to jump off of the big rock into Lake Cushman so Justin carried her up monkey style...

and then dropped her into the water. She was such a stud! We were all really proud of her for doing it and she was really brave. You can't see him but Eric's in the water to catch her.

Funny Eric story: We were talking about what house Silas would be in if he went to Hogwarts and we've decided he would be in Slytherin because his name just sounds like it belongs. Then Eric used his parsal tongue to show us how cool Silas's name sounds in parsal tongue. I didn't know when I married him that he could speak parsal tongue. It's pretty cool. :)

Thumb Sucker

A couple of days ago I woke up on my own without Silas waking me up to eat. I was a little concerned and found him sleeping in his bed going to town on his thumb. It was the cutest thing in the world. He is still having a hard time getting his thumb in his mouth but every once in a while I'll catch him napping with it in. Hopefully it's not too big of a battle to break the habit.

Silas's two month birthday

This is Silas on his two month birthday. He's wearing his new shirt that says 'Little Monster' which is quickly becoming his nickname because he's so chubby.

Silas is really good about letting the kids hold him. It was really cute he really liked Natalee holding him.

This is what Silas did while Eric and I worked on chopping and stacking wood.

And this is what Eric looked like while he was chopping wood. A little scary. :)

So Silas is two months old today and very chubby. He's getting to the point where Eric and I have to take turns holding him because our arms get so tired. He's getting over his cold and starting to sleep a little better at night. He's started sleeping from 11 to 3 in the morning and I love it! He has been starting to have a fussy time everyday. It starts around 8 pm and he is just impossible to calm down for about an hour. But besides that hour he's a very happy baby. He has started giggling and talking all the time. Eric is still working out here and is super bored at work. I haven't had much going on besides hanging out with Silas. We've been starting to do P90X. We haven't been super hard core about it. But doing it a few days a week is kicking our butts! We're sore all of the time.

Silas's First Cold

Silas has been enjoying sitting in his swing when he's not demanding to be cuddled.

So Silas is suffering through his first cold that just wont end. It started about two weeks ago and it just keeps changing and getting worse. I think it's just getting passed around the kids on the Vail side. It started out just with a stuffed up nose now he has a horrible cough. The first night every cough would wake him up but now he's starting to stay asleep while he coughs. The nice thing about all this is he's such a happy baby. Only sometimes does he fuss when he coughs and he hates laying on his back. But just as long as he's being held or sitting in his swing he's still VERY happy. It's really funny/sad when he starts talking to us he starts to lose his voice. It makes me laugh because he's just so happy but sounds so sick.

Lake Chelan (update part 3)

Every year Eric's side of the family goes to lake chelan. It's just a week of fun with the family. We stay in condos and go swimming and boating and we have a girl trip and the boys go golfing. So these pictures are in backwards order.

Silas HATES cold water. But we put him in the pool just to see how he'd do. He was not a fan!
This was before he even touched the water so he was still happy.

This was on the boat. He LOVED it. He spent the majority of the time sleeping in his car seat in the middle of the boat. But towards the end he got hungry so i took him out to give him a bottle and then i held him until we got to the dock. it was really funny how much he loved it. when we were going fast and the wind was in his face he was awake and smiling then when we stopped he started fussing.

I didn't get very good pictures of the action behind the boat but here's a picture of Eric on a tube.

Man Hike (update part 2)

Every year Eric likes to go on a man hike. This year he went with Justin and Chad to Lena and Uper Lena lake.

When they went to Uper Lena they found that the lake was mostly still covered with snow but that didn't stop them from getting in the water. CRAZY! There's pictures of the jumping in but loading pictures just takes too much effort.

Bon Fire (update part one)

So we've been very busy since getting to Washington. So I'm going to have to update our blog in parts because Silas doesn't allow me to spend too much time on the computer. So the first week we were back we went out to Melissa and Chads land and had a little bon fire and tin foil dinners.

The kids made giant smores and got them all over themselves.

Silas was really good the whole time and spent most the time in his carrier.

Miles was super messy. :)

The kids had lots of fun roasting the marshmellows

They also spent lots of time playing in the dirt.