Sick Boy

A few days before Valentines Day, Easton got sick with a stomach bug. Poor little guy was throwing up a lot and had diarrhea. We were doing our best to give him fluids but he was having a hard time keeping anything down. We were down to trying a teaspoon every 5 minutes, and he couldnt even
keep that down. I just felt like we needed to take him to the hospital. We went to Primary Children's and they started him on IV fluids. They wanted to keep an eye on him just to make sure he was doing OK before they sent us home. We ended up spending the night there. Kevin went home to be with Ryder and I stayed at the hospital. I didnt have a change of clothes. It really sucked because Easton  ended up having two blowouts and it definitely got on my pants, both times! The next morning he seemed to be doing so much better, but his face was so swollen from being hooked up to the IV fluids all night. His eyes are usually SO big, but because of the swelling, they looked much smaller than usual. As we were leaving the hospital, Ryder looked over at Easton and said, "Why are they leaving his face like that?!" It was pretty funny. We are happy to have our normal, healthy Easton back!

Christmas

Christmas was great this past year. It was Easton's first and Ryder was old enough to be really excited about everything. I love Christmas time with kids! Ryder was fun to talk to. He really understood more about why we celebrate Christmas and loved hearing the story of Jesus's birth. On The 23rd we had the Rino Christmas party. On Christmas Eve we went to the Nelson party at my parents' house. In the nativity, Ryder was Joseph and Leah was Mary. They were so darling! Easton was a sheep, and he was not at all happy about it!

 We kept things really simple this year as far as presents go. Santa ended up bringing Ryder a tool bench with some cool power tools! Easton got a push and play walker to help him learn to balance and walk. It was so fun on Christmas morning. We spent the morning with Kevin's family and the second half of the day with my family. We got a huge surprise from my parents. We never told them anything we wanted, so they decided to buy us a new tv! We had been using an old 150 pound block TV, so it was super exciting to finally have something newer. We were also able to get one of their old blue ray players, which we didn't have yet. They also bought us Chromecast, which lets you play movies from Netflix, hulu, etc. on the TV. It's been so nice to have these changes!

California Dreaming

Kevin had an internship at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, CA this summer. Working at a national lab doing research is pretty much his ideal job, so this was really exciting. We packed up our stuff and moved out to CA at the end of May. Our apartment was right next to downtown Livermore which was so fun. We loved going for walks around downtown in the evenings. We were so close to fun things like outdoor concerts that the city put on twice a week, and the farmer's market that we went to almost every Thursday evening. There was a fun fountain downtown that we went to all the time. Ryder loved to play in the water! Livermore had so many awesome parks! Every weekend we would take a picnic to a park and just relax. We definitely didn't hit every park while we were there. We were about 40 minutes away from San Francisco and it was fun to go there a few times. We also went to the Muir Woods Forest a couple times and it was so beautiful! We ended up loving our time in Livermore and it was hard to leave. We were very excited to come home and see our families though :)

Ryder playing at a splash pad on one of the parks a short drive away.

Playing with some homemade "flubber"

Enjoying one of the many parks

My smiley Eastieboo!

Hanging out at the farmers market. They would usually have live music and everyone would bring blankets and chairs to sit down, listen to music, and eat yummy food from the market. So much fun!

A huge box of strawberries at the farmers market was only 6 dollars! Some of the strawberries were the size of small apples. Very yummy!

Playing in the Fountain

This sweet boy loves playing at the fountain!

Rodeo Parade

Today was the rodeo in Livermore. It's a pretty big deal, like the Strawberry Days rodeo in Utah. It is also going on tomorrow. This morning was the parade that is part of the celebration. It was downtown so we walked (I love being so close to everything!) and we got there about half an hour before it started. It was packed!! We found a spot in the shade thank goodness because it was HOT. This was Ryder's first parade, and Easton's too of course. Before it started, they were handing out stickers and things to the kids. Ryder got a sheriff''s badge, some stickers, and a rubber bracelet. He thought that was pretty awesome. It was fun and we stayed for about half an hour of it, but it was so hot we ended up leaving before it was over. As we left we passed all the firemen in their gear walking in front of the fire engines. I bet they were ROASTING in their gear! Ryder loved seeing the fire trucks and hearing their horns as we left. Later today, we were driving to Costco and the car said it was 108 degrees outside! I believe it, it was miserable! Let's hope today was just an exception because I read that the average highs during the summer in Livermore are in the high 80's. We went to the library today since we wanted to do something indoors. The library here is huge and really nice! It even has a cafe/deli inside. We have gone there a lot since we've moved here.

Farmer's Market

Here in Livermore they have two farmer's markets a week. Once a month, they do a family night at the farmers market. The family night was last night and it's at a park downtown, which was about a 10 minutes walk from our apartment. It was so nice outside! We made one loop through the market to check out what they had and then we went back through and bought a few things. We bought some walnuts and almonds for a brownie recipe that I want to try. We also got three baskets of strawberries, a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a bag of kettle corn. There was a man playing music and lots of people were spreading out blankets and chairs on the grass listening to him. We sat down and ate our kettle corn while we listened to the music and let Ryder run around. It was a perfect evening! We would have stayed a lot longer, but Easton  loves moving/walking and gets really fussy when you sit down. We will definitely be going to the farmer's market a lot more this summer!

Three Months

Oh my sweet little Eastie Boo! I cannot get enough of this little guy! He is seriously the sweetest baby boy! He is so easy going (except if you put him in his car seat. I'm pretty sure he's scarred after the long drive out here to CA..) and so smiley! I could just kiss his cheeks all day long, which I do as much as possible! He is more of a cuddler than Ryder ever was, which is so fun. He has started laughing and I love it when we can get him going! He rolled over for the first time a couple weeks ago which surprised me because Ryder didn't roll over until about 5 months old. He is genuinely happy most of the time. He loves to stare intently at me and then as soon as I look at him, he'll bust out in a huge grin. It's really sweet. I can't imagine our little family without him! He's very patient with Ryder always hugging, kissing, smooshing him, and generally just being right in Easton's face all the time. You can tell though that as soon as he is able to start voicing his opinion more, he's definitely going to let Ryder know when he's annoyed. It's going to be interesting for sure! I love this little chunk more than I could ever say! Even just looking at this picture that I'm posting, my heart just wants to burst! I can't contain how much I love this kid! I'm so lucky to be his momma :)