Diamond in the rough

Apparently, one man's trash was my treasure. We found this little jewel at the ever wonderful D.I. and quickly snatched it up for a mere $15. Lance nonchalantly carried the chair, along with our murder mystery costume accessories, to the cash register at the front of the store, where he casually placed our new found treasure at the feet of a surprised cashier. It was at this point she decided to inform us that we, "could have just brought the tag". Yes thank you, but we don't often get attention, so we like to go to stores and carry large items around above our heads just to make sure we get noticed. I will admit, our decision making skills were questionable at this point since we were attempting to purchase some suspenders, a hat, a belt, and oh yes we'll take this armchair as well. However, there was method to our madness. We were planning on taking the chair with us right then and we were parked out front.

In summary, although thought to be insane, we were allowed to purchase the chair, which now resides in our living room with all of the other mismatched furniture. It matches our orange wall for now, but some day when we actually get nice furniture, we plan to recover it in plush leather or something equally nice, like crushed velvet. Who knows? Eat your heart out IKEA.

Bigger

You may remember this photo from a previous post demonstrating how small Alex was. Well, that view has changed a bit since then. I am still not quite sure when this happened.

Halloween/Valentines Day

One might argue that these two holidays could not be combined with any degree of success. How wrong you are. Admittedly, I used to be one of these people, an antiHallowtineite. I have since been convinced of the error of my ways. Consider the facts that on both days you receive treats, often from people whose identity may be somewhat questionable, and on neither holiday do we receive time off of work, although they are both widely considered to be among the more major holidays, and you'll see that they are not all that dissimilar. This point was proven further by the chosen festivities of this past Valentine's Day where my sister-in-law hosted a murder mystery dinner on the day of hearts. We all dressed up in accordance with our assigned parts to enjoy an evening of fine dining, wonderful company, and the occasional murder.


Aside from the murder victim, the rest of the party was not exempt from peril. Before the dinner even started we had a tiny incident with fingers and superglue. Ashley, ever willing to be helpful, was trying to help her dad, Brian, glue an earing to his ear to complete his bad boy ensemble. Unfortunately, the combination of a 12 year old girl, some superglue, and an unsuspecting earlobe was too much for Murphy's law to resist and hilarity ensued.


The two were eventually separated with a little help from Shelley, a cotton swab, and some finger nail polish remover.

The rest of the evening went without incident, you know except for the murder, and fun was had by all, again with exception of the victim. Poor man. So you see, Halloween and Valentine's Day can be mixed with delightful results. In case you were wondering, Lance was a German wine seller and I was a non-slutty(despite my pose hinting to the contrary) but equally bratty version of a Hollywood movie star.






Happy Valentine's Day!!

Milk mustache

Alex has graduated to a number 3 nipple, minds out of the gutter please, I am referring to a bottle nipple that has three holes instead of two. (Shame on you) The benefit is that the milk comes out much faster than it did before, which means she can finish an 8 oz bottle in half the time! Yes, that does deserve an exclamation point. This is very exciting, especially since she is coupling this achievement with another, that of holding her bottle by herself. She still needs supervision with this if you want the majority of her food to end up in her stomach rather than on and around it, but it is progress. Soon she will be totally independent in this area. And while I won't miss the wrestling matches we often have during this time, I will miss the precious time I get to hold her while she eats in between the pile drivers, suflexs, and body slams that had us in the running for the WWF. Just check out how happy she is about her new eating habits.

Precious moments

Alex has begun to recognize herself in mirrors.  It is delightful to watch the recognition spread across her face as she realizes that that it is her own lovely face looking and smiling back at, well, herself.  She is also obsessed with reaching for and grabbing things that she ought not touch. What do these two things have in common.  Well, the following video of course.  Lance's computer has a camera built in which shows you a picture of yourself, usually used for video chatting, etc.  It is also not necessarily a toy that you would want to let a 6 month old baby slobber all over.  Hence the following.

Alex's has also discovered the genius of physical comedy.  If you are willing to make a fool out of yourself and possibly do yourself bodily harm by jumping and throwing yourself around, she will reward you with a happy giggle.  But you have to work for it.  No sissy stuff.  However, it is well worth the shy, half scared, half delighted chirp of a laugh that melts my heart.  To give you an idea of what is going on off screen, Lance is twirling, jumping, falling to the ground, hiding behind doors and popping out, and flailing himself about in every possible manner.  Yes, I thought you would like a visual of that.  This has become our new exercise plan.  At first she is reluctant to look away from herself on the computer screen as we just got done playing the try to suck on daddy's computer game and she is still trying to figure out how to get that baby, but she is eventually distracted by daddy's antics.  I must also explain myself in this video.  There is a rather long awkward section where I am staring stupidly at the computer screen.  I was only trying to make sure that you could see her face in the camera since she was kind of turned to the side.  While in the moment it was beneficial in nature, it still ends up making me look like an idiot.  So enjoy two parents looking like idiots in order to make their darling child laugh.

Battle of the templates

Lance and I cannot seem to find a template for our blog that we agree upon. While I will admit, Lance is the more creative, artistic, and a much more qualified individual to be making this decision, I still think that I am right. So with that said, here is my latest pick for our blog template. I hope you find it visually stimulating and highly enjoyable, and do not be surprised if it changes on Monday when Lance gets to stay home.

Mr. Mom Mondays

This is Lance posting now. 

I love Mondays. I get to stay home and take care of Alex because Lindsay goes into work in Salt Lake on Mondays. Luckily she can work from home all the rest of the week. Anyway, I recorded Alex in her bouncer awhile back to try and send to mommy at work but she couldn't view it. So I am just going to post it on the blog to see if she can see it on here.

Also, is that me wearing Lindsay's bathrobe in the morning like a cute little housewife? Yes. Yes it is.

Some missed pictures

Here are some family photos from the Harris family reunion. These turned out amazingly well considering they were taken by ametuer photographers, in natural lighting, with limited direction of our positioning, and lots and lots of kids. Great call on the white and khaki whosever idea that was. They get a gold star for making us all look great.

The immediate Harris Family

The extended Harris Family in its entirety

Our little family

Precious.

4 kids on a couch and showing their individual personalities quite well. I am sure Alex was thinking to herself at this point why her loving parents had placed her in such a precarious circumstance and then just stood there smiling and cooing in her face while she slowly fell over. It was totally worth it though.

This is our little monster baby. We went to go see the lights in downtown Ogden (who knew?) and Lance had Alex bundled up in a snuggly on his chest. Everyone kept looking at us and laughing the entire night (well alright they were looking and laughing more than usual) and thought Lance was the "cutest daddy on the block" with a snuggly warm baby sticking out of his coat. Then like we always do, we decide to take it one step further and see if we could cut Lance entirely out of the picture. And what do you know, if he ducked down just right you end up with a 6'10" baby walking down the street.