A Happy Birthday & A Couple Feet of Snow

Happy Birthday Marshall! This week Marshall turned one-year old. When we put the cake in front of him, he grabbed it even before the candle was out. He didn't understand that he was supposed to blow out the candle, but he was very interested it. What a pyro. When he started eating the cake, he really liked the frosting at first but didn't really enjoy the cake part. Maybe he will be one of those kids who only eats frosting...gross.















Here are all of the Marshall's presents. He scored big time!!! Thanks for all of the gifts everybody.















Marshall wouldn't wear his birthday hat unless he was doing something else at the same time. So this is the only decent picture of our more than 10 attempts. Ha! Anyway, it's cute. Marshall has recently learned how to hold and drink out of cup completely independently.















This shows the first wave of snow that we have received in the last week. Last weekend we got a foot of snow, and this Wednesday and Thursday we got about 15 inches. We have had lots of opportunities to shovel the sidewalks and...














dig out our car. Anybody have a free hand?

Rock and Roll

Marshall really enjoys the flashing lights at the carousel. At first, he was pretty unsure of the whole thing but he warmed up to the zebra and everything was peachy from then on.
Marshall is learning how to walk. One of his early birthday presents was this little walker that converts into a little push car. He loves to push it around the house, but he gets a little frustrated when the walker runs into a wall. He struggles with turning the walker around. Then he will find something else to push around like the laundry basket, trash can, chairs, and old cereal boxes.
No this is not our freezer, but it is inside our house. In fact, it's our living room window. Minnesota is cold. You know what they say: many are cold, but few are frozen.
Marshall is very affectionate with many of his friends from church. Here he is kissing his friend, Will Mortensen. Will likes the kisses as long as they don't turn into bites.
This is right after Marshall's first haircut. You might think that he is crying because of the haircut, but he is actually upset because Mom didn't let him have the camera. He really did well with getting his haircut. Chrissy did a great job helping him feel comfortable with the buzzer.
This is the before hair style. We are fans of his new look!

Christmas time

Marshall enjoyed his 1st Christmas. He enjoyed pulling on Uncle Cameron's leg hair (something Marshall's Dad lacks).


Marshall also greatly enjoyed his train that Santa brought. It is proving to be a wonderful distraction!
We celebrated Chrissy's birthday a couple of days after her birthday on Christmas day. Extended family came over, we had cake and ice cream, and Chrissy got some great presents. Happy 24th Chrissy!

Marshall's new faces

We can't explain where these new facial expressions came from, but they are undoubtably some funny faces. Marshall is an expressive young man! Here are a couple of shots.

Ginger came to visit us a few weeks ago for a nice weekend trip. We had a lot of fun in a quick weekend.

A couple of funny ones

For our Family Home Evening, we learned about Nephi and how he built boats to get to the promised land so Chrissy thought we should let Marshall splash with his boats in little tubs! Marshall, his diaper, and the entire floor was soaked after just a few minutes. He understood how to maximize his splashing and quite enjoyed getting wet.











This is Marshall's friend, Will, attacking Marshall's face. Luckily Rachel saved the day. It's fun to watch kids play and explore together.











The last picture here is Marshall with Santa Claus. I didn't know Santa started working before Thanksgiving, but great! Marshall is posing here for Mom after he told Santa what we wanted for Christmas: a motorcycle, a new snowboard, beef jerky, and an extra cell phone.

Halloween & a visit from Grammy

We enjoyed a terrific five day visit from Grammy. A few weeks ago we sent her a few pictures of her Grandson, and she couldn't help but buy "emergency" plane tickets to come see her only grandson. We didn't know this until Grammy arrived but apparently they have discount prices on plane tickets for emergency visits for Grandparents. The website is www.gulliblegrandparent.com. Not really. Anyway, we had a great time touring Minneapolis taking advantage of the pleasant weather and blue skies. Behind Marshall in the above picture is the famous cherry & spoon sculpture. This big hunk of steel is at least 50 feet long and took three years to build! Wow.

We also went to the Children's Museum in St. Paul, the Twin City of Minneapolis. Marshall enjoyed crawling around, listening to new noises, and crawling all around. We had a great time hosting Grammy - you are welcome anytime Grammy!








Halloween...what an anticlimactic holiday unless you are young enough to go trick-or-treating. Nonetheless, we still dressed up ourselves and Marshall! Here is a picture of our little devil - we couldn't resist dressing him up in this. We opted out of trick-or-treating because we figured people would know that we would just eat all of the candy that they gave Marshall.

A Beautiful Fall

Everything is falling in Minnesota. The leaves, Marshall's socks, our schedules, but not our lives. We are keeping very busy with school, work, applying for jobs, and keeping up with Marshall. Marshall is learning to crawl, one crawl at a time. He will only crawl for the things that he really wants and only when he has sufficient energy. We are working hard to "stretch" his crawling abilities by putting the cell phone a few feet away and then watch him work at it. Almost all the time he gets the cell phone and places mysterious phone calls mostly to one of his Grandmas! It's a lot of fun.

This is a featured picture from our visit to Lake Superior - just 3 hours away from our house! It's a beautiful area. The lake looks like it is an ocean because it is so big.

Marshall is also enjoying sitting on my shoulders. He mostly pulls on my hair when he loses his balance, maybe I shouldn't have grown it out...then he wouldn't be able to hold on to it! Marshall is incredibly talented at pulling off his left sock - that's right his left sock, but not his right sock. This picture captures his ability to sit on my shoulders and pull of his left sock.

I thought it was terrible 2 - not terrible 7 and 1/2 months.

If you look close, you can see two or Marshall's three teeth. The other one is falling down on his uppers.