alex's friend

R. Dee (alex's friend who moved away from us) had a birthday and these are some pictures from it.



"I have to get the frosting off my shirt too."


"Don't let your son take Lighting or Mater."


All of alex's little friends.

Watch out, I'm coming.



See-Saw "fun". This activity would have been fun if the kids were old enough to push themselves up and down and I didn't feel like I had to go and lay down for the rest of my life afterwards.

The Cowboy Game

Alex got tickets to the first pre-season Cowboys game and all of us went. We had so much fun. We were three rows back on a corner of the opposing teams end zone, which meant we had a great view of Peyton Manning. If you click on the side show, you should be able to go and see all the videos that we took, too....Sorry, I really can't think of anything else to say about it except the we had an amazing time-and alex fell and skinned his knees.

Our Tradition

It's hard to think of new traditions that you want to start with your family, but sometimes they just pop out at you. This is one of ours and it was started by my sister-in-law Cathy; she just didn't know it at the time. On our wedding day she gave us her camera and told us to take a self portrait. It turnned out to be our most favorite wedding picture and since that time we have taken pictures of ourselves on all of our big adventures (sometimes this can be hard because people see us trying to take a decent picture and offer to take one for us).

We have this frame on our wall and every time we take a new picture we decide which picture gets taken out and put into our album and which ones get to stay on the wall. The new picture always gets a little bit of time in the frame and the wedding picture will probably always be there. We want to have a pretty big family, so we are hoping that alex will have really long arms as he gets older so that we will all be able to fit in.

Last night we went on one of my most favorite adventures yet...but I'm having trouble loading all of the pictures and movies so this post is to hold you over until I can get the other one up-don't forget to check back. Can you guess what we did? And which picture do you think should be picked to go up in our frame of tradition?

little alex

Have you been wondering what alex has been doing? Mostly reading the car advertisement magazine that Alex picked up on the way out of the supermarket, he can truly look at it for hours and stay fascinated with it. Also, yesterday he was trying to catch the spider that I haven't killed (so that it will continue to catch all the mosquitoes), and it bit him-then I killed it-sorry spider. After I killed it using the toy golf club alex took the club and went over to make sure that it was dead, then he took it to the trash. What an eventful life. Hope you are doing well, we are thinking about you.

Uncle Vallen

We are the luckiest people ever!! Vallen came to Dallas on business and he pushed back his flight so that we could see him...thanks so much for doing that Vallen, we loved seeing you; you are so much fun to be around. Alex decided that we would go to his favorite BBQ place so these are the pictures that we took while we were there.
alex put his arms around Alex and Vallen. He wasn't very happy that we were making him stay at the table after he had finished eating though.

If you look close you can see alex eating a rib I didn't notice he had stolen from Vallen until it was to late.
Here he is again still working on it.
After BBQ we went and walked around a Hotel just because, and here is what alex decided that he would do to impress his uncle. They spent the drive over to the BBQ place bonding...who doesn't love being driven all over, having cars thrown at them and being smacked in the face (sorry about that Vallen)?

And just because we are who we are, here is a picture that my husband took of our son when he wasn't watching, I wonder who he learned this from.

Nap Time

To all of you who have never locked your child in his or her bedroom, please don't read the following, disregard the picture above and I'll just pretend I am as good a parent as you are- when in fact I'm not. The transition of alex going from his crib to his bed was actually amazingly smooth. We would go in, do his normal bedtime routine, ask him if he wanted to sleep in his crib or his bed and he would always pick his bed; we would lay him down, sing him a song, kiss him goodnight and then leave and he would go right to bed. Then he started asking for us to stay with him for a little bit, we love being with him so we would say okay and then lay down or sit in the chair and he would go right to sleep again. Then he started staying awake to make sure that we didn't leave. One night I laid in his bedroom for two hors and finally decided that this had gone far enough. I got up and left he cried for 30 seconds and then he was asleep.

Now we say good night, leave, shut the door and he goes to the door and cries for -it feels like forever but has never gone above 8 minuets, I know because Alex makes me wait for at least 15 minuets before I can go in there and I have never had to go back in- and then he falls asleep with various extremities poking out from under the door (see above). Because he's blocking the door we can't go in to: make sure that his covers are on, he's breathing okay, etc. So we have to wait until he wakes up again (after about an hour) and knocks on the door; then we can come in pick him up and put him in his bed for real and he will then go right to sleep. I can't witl until I'm putting two to sleep, I'm sure that it'll be so much fun!

Note for the blog below

The shoes that we have on in the picture below are called Crocs. I got mine about three years ago (wow maybe it's time to get some new shoes), then we got Alex a pair because they are super comfortable and he would always steal mine-that was on our anniversary of this year. This past week we finally got a pair for our son so now we all match-there's not really a point to the blog just how I think that it's funny that we now all have a pair of these funny looking shoes.

Crocs

Don't we look so cute. We finally bought some for our son, they are his sandals for this summer. My new favorite thing to do with them is to wear them in the pool when I run from one side to the other; it makes your feet bounce up and you don't get all the little cuts on your feet form the bottom of the pool.

Some more movies form the Nields

We have had a nice couple of days here at the Nield household...the only thing that would make it better is if you were here. Yesterday we went shopping, which isn't really fun except for the fact that we got grapes, then we came home and went swimming where alex amazed us all with his skills and then had dinner, where alex ate about a pound of broccoli. Before bed we played some baseball and as always happens we didn't get him hitting it as well as he was before I got the camera (he hit is across the room about ten times in a row and each time I thought "oh, that was just chance he won't be able to do it again" and then he did...again and again) maybe next time I'll go and get the camera before he gets tired of it and moves on.

Then today we stayed in and relaxed with plans for going swimming latter on. The best part of today has been the food. For breakfast we had pancakes which alex poured about three times the called for amount of sugar in so they were extra sweet and made with extra love. But the best part we lunch. Alex made us Ruben sandwichs which were to die for and we had Claussen pickles which are our favorite and some diet 7 up (we got for when alex had his cold and we ended up thinking that it was one of the best sodas ever). Hopefully dinner will fit right in with the rest of the day.

And just for the heck of it here is video of alex jumping off the bed ...and one of him dancing around in his underwear.

King of the Daddy

We think that this is why alex has such good balance because he loves to climb on his daddy; Alex usually doesn't catch him (if they are on the bed) he just lets him fall...which is where most of the fun comes in.

A Beautiful Place

I have talked about the Dallas Arboretum before, and shown pictures, but this time when we went I was excited because I could take all the pictures that I wanted and just put them on a slideshow so it would be kind of like a tour I was taking you on through the garden, with us....but then my camera died. So for all of you who didn't get Harry Potter on the first day here are some pictures of the Arboretum but not even a forth of the way through; I wish you were here so we could take you in person!

My Genius Sister...

My sister truly is a genius. She is attending UNM and is in the program to get her degree in Nuclear Engineering way faster than I thought possible (I, who probably won't get my degree in the next decade). She is always doing a TON of stuff I'm amazed she doesn't have a melt down.... I'm always impressed with her and could take up all the memory on this computer talking about how great she is but she would get mad at me; I'm probably already in the red as it is. Currently, she is in Washington working as an intern at a national lab. However, she took enough time off to come to Arizona with us for the family reunion and that is where my story takes place...

alex got sick at the reunion (still is actually) and one morning I enlisted my sisters help in administering the medicine; why would I do it myself when I have so many helpers around? So while I was holding alex and getting him dressed I asked my genius sister to measure out the proper amount of medicine. It was taking her a while so I looked over to see what was going on, she was holding the syringe up at eye level and then she squirted it all out and then pulled some more in and did it all over again, and then again. Finally I asked what she was doing, while holding it up again at eye level she answered distractedly, "I can't tell exactly where the meniscus is..." I MISS you Teda!!!!

Love you a ton!

Lily Humphrey's 3rd Birthday Party

So, I tried to get more pictures of the Humphreys' so that you could see them, but at a pool part my attention can't be spent too much on taking pictures and off of the edge of the pool... so sorry. I put up the whole album, so you only have to look at all of the pictures if you want to (there are a lot) however there are some really cute ones. We had a great time and can't wait to meet their next child...should be any day now!

All Aboard

These are stickers that you can put on your wall (or where ever you want) that my mother sells. We put them on the toy box and alex really liked them. After he figured out that his little animals were indeed not going to be able to ride on the train (he tried to put them in the window a couple of times) he dumped everything out and got on him self. Thanks, mom, these are so cool!

Playing at the park

This picture was susposed to be at the end of the movie and it didn't turn out; rather than fixing the movie I'll just post it here so that you'll still get to see it and I don't have to go back and fix the movie.

Here is a video of us playing at the park.

Family Reunion

For about a year my Dad's Family has been planning a family reunion and it finally happened and it was great! We rented a cabin right off a lake (about 3 feet away) and everyone piled in. His only sibling that wasn't able to be there was his brother Mike, but we still were able to have his kids there....We missed you a ton!!! Here are some pictures of the time there with more posts to follow.

Bad to the Bone

We are in a Flood.....for the last month

I have been wanting get across how much rain we have been having but have been forgetting to take pictures; I finally remembered. These are taken after five minuets of pretty light rain. The weather warning people are pretty much telling us that if it starts to rain it's best to just stay in, but if you are out to pull over until it stops and then NEVER go through any kind of water because it is swifter and deeper then you think.

We used to walk across this field to get to a park in a near by neighborhood, now it's out of the question; you sink every time that you take a step, and it's so saturated that by just walking slowly you uproot the grass and slip in the mud... we tried it exactly one time and it has only gotten worse since then.

You can kind of see the river but I took a video of this guy driving in it so you can see how deep it is. Again, today we didn't get much about 10 minuets total and I took there right after it started so that I wouldn't forget, it has been raining so much lately that this is what happens when it starts, but when we get a lot of rain it is worse. I watched a man going to get his mail when it had rained a lot and just the watter running through our parking lot knocked him over...we only splash in puddles when they are actually puddles...How on earth can you stand to live in Washington?

Babbling

Why am I doing another post you ask...many reasons.

1. I have an unexplainable urge to scrapbook my pictures but I don't want to deal with the mess of actually getting out all my stuff to do it; more specifically I don't want to deal with putting it all away. I'm hopping that this will help me not want to do it.
2. I'm pretty sure that my friend is moving, it wasn't going to be until the beginning of next year but it is starting to look like the next couple of weeks and I'm felling super lonely even though she hasn't left yet. I'm hopping that this will help me feel connected.
3. alex is taking his second nap today. Usually he only takes one but I woke him up with a coughing fit for his first nap; he is so tired that he feel asleep right in the middle of his cars so I'm going to let him sleep some more. He also hasn't recovered from our firework adventure. I'm hopping that this will take up time.
   
4. I'm trying to escape from potty training for a little while. alex has now discovered the amazing talent he has of aiming. He sits on the toilet and leans back so that it makes a "fountain" right onto the floor; what was I thinking listening to all those books telling me to let them watch their dad. Maybe I am excited for a girl. I'm hoping that this will help me forget about Clorx wipes.

Now for the pictures. These are all of the pictures that were taken when we went to see the fire works and unfortunately I think that these are all that you are going to see of our Forth because unless Alex is extremely convincing I'm not doing that again this year.
Here's Kiley and alex hanging out.
alex waiting for the show. Everyone was amazed that he just sat there and waited for them to start.
The Humphreys.
Alex and Gail with Lily.
Kiley again.

Sunday Clothes

This was the outfit that I dressed him in on Sunday. It stayed on for about 5 seconds, you can see how happy he was about it-he had to go pick out his clothes after this and I had to just deal with him not matching in his blue shorts and purple tie. This pretty much describes how church was that day and why I don't want to go and see fire works for at least another year.

alex Being Thrown on the Bed Here is another movie of alex and my husband playing (no one was injured seriously in the making of this film).

I think that I hear him stirring so I hope that you are all well and I wish I could see you.

Karate Chopping the Door

alex just doing his thing. I hope that nobody is getting offended that he is always in his underwear. When we have people come over or we go out I actually do dress my child.