Birthday Boy

Riley turned one on Sunday.   We were in Utah so he was lucky enough to spend it with a lot of family.

He got some good presents.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Hatch, this is his new favorite toy!

We had cake kind of late, it was a little traumatizing when he found out it was ice cream cake and it was really cold.

But he got feeling better by the end of singing "Happy Birthday"

He got a second cake all to himself.  The photo shoot was quite a production. Thanks to Grandma Briscoe for letting us make a big mess in her kitchen.

Early Birthday Present

You would think he got something really good by the look on his face, but he got a new car seat for his early birthday present.  The box it came in was pretty fun too.

Being Appreciated

Andrew has been very thankful for me lately.

Last week he was working on a project with his partner and they went to the partner's house (which happens to be a fraternity) to work on it.  He came home and said, "Thank you so much for marrying me.  If it wasn't for you I would probably be living in that frat house.  You think a frat house is cool, but it's the grossest thing I have ever seen.  You can't even imagine how gross it is.  And there are a lot of dumb people running around doing dumb things late at night".  

A few days later he came home and said, "Thanks for marrying me so I don't have to fill out more paperwork for work."  Apparently you have to fill out stuff for girlfriends.

And today, "Thanks for feeding me,  I would be dead without you."   Probably malnourished, not dead, but it's good to be appreciated.

His last final is on Thursday, then he is done with school.  YAY!  We are moving right after he gets done with his final.

Thanksgiving

We went to Cameron and Lisa's in Indiana again this year for Thanksgiving.  We left  bright dark and early on Wednesday morning.  Riley as usual was great in the car.  Instead of going straight to Bloomington we met Cameron and Lisa at Churchill Down's in Kentucky and watched a few horse races.  They were really fun and exciting.

They look like they've got a lot of money riding on this race

We headed up to Indiana when the little boys got tired.  That was the first time for either us to visit five states in one day (Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana).   

 We didn't take any pictures of the tasty food, but Lisa made us a delicious meal on Thanksgiving.  We had a fun time.  Riley especially liked following Benjamin around and playing with his toys.

Random Thoughts

Here are some of the random thoughts I've had recently:

I have heard a lot of people (back in Utah of course) say, "I would walk a mile before I parallel park."  Well I would rather walk a mile AND parallel park before I pay for parking.

A few days ago I ordered a sandwich from Whole Foods.  I got someone elses, I didn't realize it until I got home.  It was weird, but delicious.  It had baked apples, turkey, gouda, and apricot spread.  I'm happy I got the wrong sandwich.

People here say samich instead of sandwich.

I had a professor in one of my classes once tell us that we were not allowed to pray before any of his tests.  He said asking for divine intervention was cheating.

One of my talents is that I am really really good at jump starting cars.  One winter my car had an electrical short and I had to jump it before I went anywhere. This lasted about a month.  I also got really good at getting guys to help me.  They thought they were helping some poor silly girl, I could get it all hooked up before they even got out of their car.  Usually I would let them help though.

I really like Church Christmas music, but regular Christmas music is not my favorite.  There's just a couple different songs and different people just keep redoing over and over.  I also have a problem with "My Favorite Things" and "Last Christmas".  I don't even really know why they get put in as Christmas songs, except that "Last Christmas" has the word Christmas in it.  I think my annoyance with Christmas music came from when I worked at the Celebration Centre at Christmas time and I just kept hearing the same 12 songs over and over with different people singing them.  I don't mind the occasional Christmas song, but I'm not going to choose to put on Christmas music.  Except for the church ones, which I really do like.

Riley loves brooms and the vacuum attachments so much.  Last week during Sunday School he snuck into the kitchen and found the broom and played with it.  By watching him you would think that I love cleaning so much, but I don't.

Daylight Savings Time in the fall used to be in my top 3 favorite holidays.  That was back when I had to wake up in the dark for school.  Who wouldn't want to sleep in an hour for 5 months? Also before they changed it a few years ago, my birthday would sometimes be 25 hours long instead of 24.  But sadly I don't like it anymore.  It messes with Riley's sleep schedule and it's dark by 6:00.

We walked to church today.  It's a mile and a half.  It was 70 degrees, a perfect day.

I have mixed feelings about moving.  I'm sad to leave Pittsburgh.  It is so pretty here and I know my way around (finally).  I have a lot of friends and fun things to do here that I will miss.  It will be nice though, that strangers will stop asking where Riley's shoes and hat are.  Babies don't need shoes! He won't keep a hat on either. And when he needs them I put them on.

I'm not terribly excited for strangers to tell me to put sunscreen on Riley (I obviously don't like strangers telling me what to do), but I am excited for Andrew to be done with school.  We have some friends in Albuquerque that we are excited to hang out with again.  I'm excited to have a dishwasher, a washer and dryer in our apartment and not live on the third floor anymore.  Also to be somewhere more permanent.  Since we've been married we haven't lived anywhere longer than 9 months.  That means I've moved 7 times in less than four years, with another move in just over a month.    Andrew's work is paying for a company to move us, so there isn't really much I need to do to prepare to move, except for thinking up creative meals to eat all of our food.   

There are probably more random things I could think up, but I think I will just leave it at this.

Giraffe

Halloween is way more fun when you have a baby to dress up.  Thanks to http://sweetkiwicrochet.com/ for making the awesome hat, and my mom for buying it.  I put spots on Riley's shirt.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Palmyra, New York

On Friday we went to Palmyra, New York.  The drive was so pretty.  Every twenty minutes I would tell Andrew how pretty I thought it was.  He studied a lot of the time when I drove.  The drive was five hours both ways but it didn't seem that long.  Riley was great in the car, as usual.

We went to the Sacred Grove, Smith Family Farm, and Hill Cumorah.  I always feel so popular when we go to church history sites.  When we were in Kirkland we had a tour with the dad of someone who graduated high school with Andrew.  In Palmyra there was a senior missionary who had all sorts of good things to say about my parents.  The world is small in the church.

The Sacred Grove was so pretty and there was a special spirit there. We spent about three hours in Palmyra and then drove the five hours back home.  

Traffic Court

I feel like it would be pretty intimidating to be at court against an entire Commonwealth, but Andrew was up for the challenge.

Last Wednesday Andrew went to traffic court to fight our ticket we got a few weeks ago.  It was not what he was expecting.  He and everyone else fighting tickets that day went into a court room like you see on TV and a judge sat in front of them all.  People were called up one by one, by the severity of their crime and pled their case to the judge.  Andrew had to wait for over an hour (while I was driving around trying not to get another parking ticket).

He pled his case and was declared not guilty and was free from the $96 dollar ticket.  YAY!  Someone ahead of him had a similar situation.  He brought pictures and his receipt from the impound lot and was refunded the money.  Maybe if we would have been a little more prepared we could have gotten some money back, but that's okay with me.  I'm happy to not have to pay the ticket!

Pirates Game

Last night we went to a Pirates baseball game against the Atlanta Braves. We had a good time. Riley was really good, but he decided it was time to go during the 7th inning stretch.  

Walking across the bridge

Andrew let me keep the computer today.  Thus the three new blogs.

Pittsburgh Zoo

On Saturday we went to the zoo.  Riley was kind of interested in the animals, but I think most of them were too far away and blended in with the grass for Riley to see them.

He did like the flamingos though.  They were loud, close, moving around, and bright pink.  There isn't a lot of pink at our house so I think it's a novelty to him.  He sometimes steals pink things from little girls.

Andrew shared some of his sandwich with Riley.

He liked the bubbles in the aquarium. 

Alligator

Petting a goat

Riley fell asleep as we were leaving the zoo.