Beckett and Avalee and Carly

In December I went to Lawrence to turn in a paper and my friend Abby and I went to lunch together. When we got there she told me that she and Mark were pregnant, and to her surprise I responded by saying, "so are we." Abby was due two weeks before me, and remarkably both of our doctors were in the same office.

Abby and Mark had their baby a little bit late. She arrived on the 22nd. Beckett was one week early. So as we were going into the hospital I knew that Abby and Mark were still there. They, however, were absolutely astounded when they saw Nate in the hall. They came and brought Avalee to see me on Wednesday before Beckett was born. We took these pictures on Thursday before Abby and Mark took Avalee home.




Abby and Mark weren't the only couple at the hospital that we knew. On Thursday my nurse came in a said that I had some friends who were at the hospital getting ready to check out and they wanted to say hi before they left. I, course, thought that those friends must be Abby and Mark, and I was surprised when in walked Lindsey and Rich Sparks. Rich and Lindsey recently moved, but they used to go to church with us. Lindsey and I have the same doctor, and we would sometimes see each other at the office. So when they saw my facebook post they knew that we were in the hospital and came to find us. Lindsey and Rich had a baby girl named Carly. How fun to have friends at the hospital.

24 hours old

Beckett

This post is for the grandparents...

Beckett

Beckett was born on Wednesday 6/24/09 at 9:45 PM. He was 7 lb 1.9 oz and 19 inches long. His head was 13.5 inches round. Baby and mom are doing well.

Baby Shower

My awesome friends, Amanda and Jen, threw me a baby shower last weekend. Here we are looking blurry in front of all the wonderful food.

One of the reasons my baby shower was so much fun for me was because I had so many family members who were able to come. Nate's mom, Dorothy, had been planning to come out for a while. She's sitting on my right. My mom, seated on my left, decided to drive out from Colorado the Monday before the shower. And my grandmother, seated next to my mother, just happened to be in town visiting my aunt.

Below: My aunt Christine, my grandmother, and my mother.

I also had lots of great friends from my ward who were able to attend. I think I have a picture of almost everyone.

My friends know me well. Jen planned this great art history baby shower game. She printed paintings with babies in them from the internet and asked questions about them. I absolutely loved the game! Here's a small sample from the game so you test your own art historical baby knowledge.

1. Who are the babies?

2. Who is the artist?
And, in what country was this painted?

3. Who is the artist?
And, what is the style?

4. Who is the artist?
5. Who is the artist?
6. Who is the baby and what is he doing?

7. Who is the artist?
And, in what decade was this painted?

As you can see, just because this was a baby shower game it was not a very easy quiz. #5 and #6 are particularly difficult. How did you do?

Taggart and Brandon Tour the Country

For months my brother Taggart and his friend Brandon (who's like a brother to us) have been planning on taking a 15-leg train trip across the eastern portion of the country and into Canada. Their train ride began in Kansas City so they became our first official visitors.

Nate and I picked Taggart and Brandon up from the airport on Wednesday and brought them to our house. Unfortunately it was a pretty crazy day for us because I had a doctor's appointment mid-morning and then we went to meet our pediatrician in the afternoon. So we scooped the boys up from the airport and dumped them at our house, saying "Help yourselves to some peanut butter sandwiches and whatever else you want. We'll be back soon."

This is what we came home to:

Not surprisingly, Taggart and Brandon were exhausted from their overnight stay in the Denver airport. They slept until dinner time.

The next morning Taggart and I headed off to Walmart so that he could get some last minute items for his trip, like snacks and hair gel.

Then we spent the afternoon at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

As you can see, Brandon really loved the museum.

In the sculpture garden:

Shuttlecocks

Who is thinking harder?

Taggart's new coat.

Brandon's proposal. He's still waiting for an answer.

Checking out the set for the Shakespeare festival.

The next morning we got up early and drove to Union Station so they could board the train and head to Chicago, Washington D.C., Virginia, Philadelphia, New York, and Montreal (I think I got them all).

Read more about Taggart and Brandon's adventures at Transcontinentally Yours.

Boxes

Over Memorial Day weekend Nate and I moved from our apartment to our new house. It was, of course, a lot of work, but we had lots of help from friends.

Here's our apartment all boxed up and nearly ready to go:

The Living Room:

(Where's Zephyr in the above shot?)

The Study:

The Hall:
Zephyr had a bad day the day that we moved. She had to stay on the balcony while we moved the boxes from the apartment to the truck. Then she had to stay all alone in the empty apartment so that all the boxes could be moved into our house. (We didn't want her first moments at her new home to involve being locked in a room.) When Nate and I went back to the apartment an hour later to get her she was not happy. Here she is all alone and angry in the now empty living room. At the new house, Zephyr was very confused initially, but she's adjusted pretty quickly.


We went from an apartment full of boxes to a house full of boxes.

The Family Room:


The Kitchen:

The Living Room:


The Baby Room:


Our Bedroom:

We really like our new place, and we've spent the last couple weeks putting the house in order. Soon I'll post some pictures of the place a little more put together.

New Mexico - Day 5 Ghost Ranch and Georgia O'Keeffe

On our final day Nate and I decided to drive out to Ghost Ranch and see Georgia O'Keeffe's favorite part of New Mexico. We could see immediately why she was drawn to this landscape. O'Keeffe had a small summer house on the Ghost Ranch property and a year-round residence in the nearby town of Abiquiu. She got much of her artistic inspiration from the surrounding landscape.

Now Ghost Ranch is owned by The Presbyterian Church. It's a convention center and camp, and is open to visitors and tourists. We enjoyed the beautiful scenery on the way to the ranch, and when we got there we ate the lunch we had packed in one of the buildings pictured below.

The buildings at Ghost Ranch are nestled amidst fabulously colored plateaus.

Ghost Ranch was cold. We pulled out our coats and hats for the extremely short hike that we took. We were actually kind of glad we had an opportunity to use our coats since we had dragged them all the way to New Mexico. Below I'm bundled up and looking at Chimney Rock.
Ghost Ranch provides a view of the Pedernal, the tall, distant plateau in the pictures below.


Georgia O'Keeffe often painted the Pedernal. Here is one of the her many paintings of the mountain of which she said, "It's my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it."

Like good O'Keeffe fans we had to take a picture of the cow's skull that hangs at Ghost Ranch as well.

Bones were another of O'Keeffe's favorite subjects. Of them she said, "To me, they are strangely more living than the animals walking around — hair, eyes and all, with their tails switching."

Other sights from Ghost Ranch include this grazing burro.

And this old, weather-beaten log cabin.
Here's our rental car looking like its parked in the middle of nowhere.
And this is one of the desert valleys we passed on the way to and from Ghost Ranch.

When we got back to Santa Fe we rounded out our O'Keeffe day by going to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Their website has several really nice slide shows of the painting in their collection.

After a short trip through the museum it was time to head to Albuquerque and the airport. That day we had breakfast in Santa Fe, lunch at Ghost Ranch, dinner in Albuquerque, and we were home for bedtime.

And that concludes my report on New Mexico.