Samuel's Explorations

Samuel is now crawling like an expert. He is having a lot of fun exploring the house. Here's a few pictures of things he has discovered.

First attempt at eating. This is the only time he was actually interested. Needless to say, learning to eat "real" food is going slowly.

Fun with mommy's thread basket.

Sneaking into the closet.

He loves to get into my shoes and spread them all over the floor.

Getting into the dishwasher.

Silly boy!

Craters, Canyons, and Salt flats

Standing on the stairs leading down to the salt flats. If you look carefully, you can spot the sign high on the cliff showing sea level.


Allison with the 'young salt.' As the pools dry up, the salt collects around the edges, and gets pushed out of the ground.

Beautiful reflection. I doubt the water was ever more than a couple inches deep, but I didn't want to get my shoes wet checking.


Hoary salt crystals.
Samuel enjoying a ride. Note the red cap we bought for him on the way.

Overlooking Death Valley.



More views of Death Valley.

Mosaic Canyon. About a two mile hike.

Mosaic Canyon, looking out.

Samuel looking chirpy.

The adventurers!

Overlooking a crater in Death Valley. Water hit hot magma at some point and blew up.

Allison looking beautiful, as always!

Snow capped mountains overlooking one of the hottest, driest places on earth.

Death Valley: getting there and Scotty's Castle

At the beginning of March we took a road trip to Death Valley.

Somewhere in the desert.

We saw a big pipe off the road and stopped to investigate. Funny how the road showed up on our GPS unit, even though it was nothing more than a graded trail.

Must not be a terrorist target. We kept expecting black helicopters to warn us off.

Overlooking Scotty's Castle. Very nice classic Spanish digs.

The main room of Scotty's Castle.

Views of the courtyard with yours truly.

Quilts

Disney is doing a special program this year that if you give a day of community service you get a free ticket for one day at Disneyland. We were able to participate in this and make some quilts for a program that distributes quilts and blankets to children in need. Here are the ones we made.

Quinton helped me snip the edges of these rag quilts.

I had a lot of fun making this one. I wanted to learn how to do applique so I designed this quilt around learning that skill.

I quilted lady bug shapes in the quilt. It turned out so cute!

Studying with daddy

Quinton is taking a continuing legal education class and has been studying at home some evenings. He often holds Samuel in the evenings for some good daddy/son time. Samuel can be so studious and look like he is reading right along with daddy. He's so cute I just had to get some pictures.

My two handsome men!

Fun Playing and Teething

Samuel is continuing to develop his skills and sometimes it feels like he does something new every day. He's gotten very good at rolling all over the floor to get to things he wants (toys, computer cords, daddy, mommy....). He is enjoying exploring and finding out about things like paper, which he is sure to suck on. Other things he is trying is sitting up (which lasts about twenty seconds) and getting his knees under himself, which he has done about three times. Our boy is on the move and eager to get going!

A couple of weeks ago I had him ready to go outside and set him down to go get my shoes. When I came back he was acting just like he was very seriously reading his book. It was so cute! (notice the book is upside down) :-)

Samuel has been teething for the last few weeks so keeping him happy has been more difficult. The box was one way I was able to keep him distracted from his teeth for a short time. His first tooth broke through last Sat., and I think the other one is poking up today. So hopefully we are over the worst at least until the next ones arrive.

My happy boy!


Chomp chomp