The Lieslands

I finally got around to posting some photos from 2008.

2008 Photos

Elliot turned 1 today. Pretty amazing. He still seems like such a baby to me. Maybe that is because he sleeps like one, or at least like all of ours have slept.

We had a nice little party, which he fussed his way through. I will try to get some pics and maybe a video up soon.

What did we do on Valentine’s Day, you ask?

Well, this year, we broke with tradition (Panera), and went to my parent’s. It was a nice dinner, followed by a nice evening of putting the kids to bed and sitting on the couch.

Since we didn’t make it to Panera last night, we decided to go tonight. Last year things were a little crazy. Andrew was 3 and Mari was 1 1/2 last year. Things got a little chaotic, especially with Mari. This year was very peaceful. We even sat around for about 5 minutes after we were finished (Andrew was not actually finished, as he eats on his own schedule). It was a nice time.

Ever wonder what it is like to try to get a four year old, a two year old and an almost one year old to smile at the same time? Click Here to find out!

We thought he was passed it. We thought he had moved on. But, alas, Andrew has an ear infection. The cool thing is that he is old enough to tell us. Our Dr looked in her records, and he had not had an ear infection (that we knew of) for almost two years. He has been sick since Tues, with a fever, and cold symptoms.

Elliot is crazy. He really likes Susan (can you blame him?), and is not sleeping very well. Susan has had a hard time getting him to sleep during the day, so most weekdays he only has one nap, which probably contributes to his craziness. He loves to go outside and to look out the window.

Mari is Mari. She is doing well. As usual, it is a lot of highs and lows with Mari, where she is either laughing our crying – there is no in-between.

Susan is managing to stay sane through all this, somehow. She gives and gives-up a lot, so I hope that over the next few months, or year, Elliot will start to give her a break.

Later.

It’s been busy lately, too busy. This is mostly due to the fact that we all had the flu last week, dragging into this week, Susan still has the occasional fever, and there is still a lot of coughing and snot. Susan went to the Dr today, who said that she must still have the flu, because everything else checks out OK.

Maybe next year we will get some shots.

The final photos from 2007 have been posted here.

Here is a gallery with some of the projects I was working on for Christmas.

We just got back from a week-long trip to Des Moines. We headed out the day after Christmas and got home this evening. There was snow on the ground in Des Moines, which was fun. On the drive home I asked Susan how long she thought the snow would last and I can’t remember what we decided, but there was actually snow on the ground the whole drive home. Luckily the roads were fine.

We had a really fun trip, visiting Nick in St. Louis for an hour, and then spending a couple days with the Connors (Susan’s sister Mary, and family) in Kansas City, and then we headed up to Des Moines for a few days.

Now we are back, and need to get back into the daily grind.

We had a great Christmas. It seems like it gets better every year. Andrew and Mari had a great time.

Mari started potty-training on Sunday. She went the whole day without an accident. On Monday, she went the whole day without using the potty. The final straw was when she peed on me during dinner. We decided she wasn’t quite ready. This morning I had her in a diaper, and she said to me ‘I have to go poop.’ OK. So I guess she is potty-training. She made it all day today without an accident. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.