Blendtec

I want this blender!!!

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So much to be thankful for

On this Thanksgiving I have so many things to be thankful for.

1. My wonderful husband. He works so hard at school and still helps me so much at home. And he does it without complaining at all.

2. My sweet Owen. He brings so much joy and laughter to our home. It is so exciting to see him learn and grow into his own person.

3. Medical technology. Without it we wouldn't have Owen. Exactly two years ago today I had my third IVF egg retrieval and Owen was conceived in a petri dish. Just amazing!

4. My home. I have a comfortable apartment to live in with ample space filled with many nice things, and it serves our needs wonderfully.

5. My family. Even though I don't get to spend a lot of time with them, I love the times when we are together.

6. My friends, both old and new. I love my Chicago "family" and being able to do fun things together, and I love that our kids can play together. I love being able to meet new people each year and love keeping in touch with friends who live elsewhere around the country.

7. Modern conveniences. Like all my nice kitchen supplies and appliances, washing machines, dryers, cars, computers, digital cameras, air conditioning, huge stores and shopping centers, a maintained highway system. Much of the world is not as fortunate to live in such luxury.

8. Good health. I've never been the sickly kind, one who gets sick easily or frequently. I don't have physical limitations and I am able to stay active and fit.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

A Thanksgiving Message

Owen's Got Talent

He may be small and might not say much, but he's strong and can rip out a tune on the harmonica!

Questions

I have two questions for my readers.

1) For those of you with young children, where do you buy your diapers? And what brand? Now that I'm somewhat settled in one location I'd like to start buying in bulk if that will be cheaper. I like good quality diapers, but don't neccessarily need to have Huggies or Pampers. Is diapers.com a good way to get them?

2) I recently started using Blogger's updated editor option for creating posts. (If you're not familiar with it, just go to your 'Settings' tab, then in the 'Basic' link scroll down to the bottom. Under the heading 'Global Settings' it asks you to select your post editor, choose 'Updated editor.') I like the updated editor because it's easier to upload and arrange photos- the pictures start to upload immediately after you select one, you can upload more than five at a time, the picture will be inserted right where you want it in the text rather than always at the very top, and you can resize the picture after it's been uploaded (though I admit it was a little confusing to use at first). But for some reason I can't figure out how to upload videos. Can anyone help me out? Maybe I'm just behind the times.

Thanks!

Home Sweet Home

It feels so good to finally be home again! After spending a total of 13 months away from our home, I am happy to finally have my own things and my own bed and not have to worry about packing and unpacking to go somewhere (well, at least until we go to Arizona for Christmas), which is basically all we've done this year. It's been a fun year, but I'm ready for a break.

(this is where we live, picture obviously taken in the summer)

Last week we spent 6 days in the car with going to El Paso and back to Albuquerque, then to Temple, TX and on to Chicago. Owen got quite used to hotel rooms and fast food restaurants! Whenever we arrived to a new hotel he got super excited and knew all the things to check out (bathroom, drawers, AC/heater unit, TV remote, and he made sure to jump on the bed).

We ended up not visiting Memphis like we had planned because it took us longer to get there than we thought and we would've had to spend an extra night and day driving. By that time we were so done with being in the car and we just wanted to get home! Owen did REALLY well in the car and rarely fussed, way better than us! We didn't even have a DVD player to entertain him, just toys and books. He just resigned to the fact that he was stuck there, I guess.

Now that we're back in Chicago I look forward to giving him more stability and routine. Right now his sleep schedule is still a bit thrown off and he's fighting his afternoon nap at this very moment.

It felt really strange driving into Chicago this time. It felt different and almost new all over again, I don't know why. Perhaps spending a couple months in spread out, urban-sprawl cities then driving through the wide open spaces of the midwest made Chicago seem overly big and crowded. But I was quickly reminded that this is home and I like it here, even though it's been gray and cloudy and rainy.

This is the view from my living room window. Now that the leaves have fallen we can see a lot more of downtown! Before, we could only see the tip of the Sears Tower (oops, I mean Willis Tower), the Trump Tower, and maybe one other building.

Oh ya, I celebrated my 28th birthday as well. This year it felt more like an afterthought rather than a big day. I guess that's what happens when you get older. Plus, mother nature decided to give me the gift of a mean cold this year. It's no fun to wake up to aches and pains the morning of your birthday! So Josh's plans to take me out to dinner were put on hold til a future date, hopefully sooner than later. He did manage to give me a rose and nice card. And Owen surprised me with two good naps! Yay! Too bad he doesn't seem to want to do the same today...

Lots of Sunshine

The weather has been really nice in Albuquerque, so we've tried to spend a lot of time outside. Besides our normal park outings, we've gone to the zoo and hiking. The zoo here is nice and I was impressed with the wide variety of different animals. We were excited to see the new baby elephant Daizy born just two months ago!! I don't think I had ever seen a baby elephant before, and she was just too cute. Owen kept trying to climb down in there to play with them. We did find a nice pond full of ducks and Owen had a blast feeding the ducks bread. They were some of the bravest ducks I've seen, with some coming right up to us!

A few days ago we went with a few of Josh's classmates to some trails on the west side of the Sandia Mountains. There are a tone of desert trails, and we would have loved to have spent more time exploring them. We love desert hiking.

Even though Albuquerque is in a desert, it has a lot more trees than the Phoenix desert that I'm used to. I think it's mostly due to the fact that there's an actual river with water that runs right through it. Big Cottonwood trees line both sides of the Rio Grande. All the leaves have been golden yellow the whole time we've been here, and I just love it! There's something about the way the yellow trees look against the desert mountains that makes me happy.

Today we went to Petroglyph National Monument on the west side of the city. The petroglyphs were left behind by early American Indians.

There were lots of volcanic rocks, and Owen was in playtime heaven. He even put on his serious playtime face.

Owen is our little climber and he wanted to climb all the rocks all by himself.

Hmmm, wonder where he gets that from.....

Airplanes

Josh had a few rotations with Life Guard, an air medical service. UNM Medical Center is the only hospital in the whole state that has a trauma center, so a lot of patients get flown in. Owen and I went with him one morning so Owen could see the airplanes up close. He gets SO excited whenever he sees or even hears an airplane flying overhead (which seems to be all the time since we're pretty close to the airport) and he always waves "bye-bye" and watches them until he can't see them anymore.

At first he wasn't quite sure what to think being so close to them. I think he was a little confused as to why they weren't up in the sky. He did get to sit in the cockpit and play pilot.

His favorite part of the morning was when we walked outside of the hangar just in time to see a jumbo jet taking off. That was exciting!! If only he knew how very many flights he's already been on...

Sleepy Boy

This is the first time Owen has fallen asleep on his own when I didn't put him down for a nap. I put him in here to play while I showered, and I came out to see this. He must have been REALLY tired because he doesn't usually take morning naps any more! We had just been on a two day trip to El Paso for one of Josh's residency interviews, and with all the excitement of traveling and the hotel he must not have gotten enough sleep. We're leaving Albuquerque in the morning and we'll spend four days in the car making our way back to Chicago, with stops in Temple, TX for another interview and Memphis for some sight-seeing. I sure hope Owen sleeps a lot in the car!

Just Too Darn Cute!

I finally found Owen a white dress shirt so he could wear a tie to church.

(easy tutorial on how to make one here, thanks Darby!)

He is such a cute little man!!!

I love the way he shows off his big teeth when he smiles.

And the tie also serves as a drool catcher. He's cutting four molars right now.