Hello Fall!

So its October, and I'm still waiting to see the fall leaves here in town. It seems we always have a long summer and winter, but the other two seasons are almost nonexistent! Last Tuesday the weather was cool in the morning, and the leaves were threatening to start changing, though they were still pretty green:




Unfortunately, while its grown much cooler the last few days and even snowed for a few minutes, the leaves are still fairly green. I hate it when the leaves fall of the trees before they even change. Lucky for us, we were driving down to SLC for UEA conference last weekend (and a quick stay at my relative's home) and we were graced with a beautiful drive through the canyon- where it actually looks like fall.
Excuse the blurry ones...these were obviously taken from my car. Enjoy!




We also went to Joseph's mission reunion Friday night; it was held in a home with a great view of the sunset! I was just sad my camera kept recording it as yellow and orange, when really it was more pink and blue. Oh well:

(this one was the closest to reality in color)

Jonah at two months, and an amendment

First, the amendment. I recently wrote about places I wanted to visit, and I had a nagging feeling I'd forgotten somewhere. When I was watching Monk this weekend, I suddenly remembered: San Fransisco! How could I forget?
Monk, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sliders, Full House, So I Married an Axe Murderer, The Princess Diaries...all these shows are based in this city, and all made me want to visit it. (Is anyone else thinking it's lame that my places to visit are based on tv shows and movies? Really, I don't spend my whole life in front of the tv, I promise!)
Someday I have to travel over the Golden Gate Bridge. I want to see that place with the row of houses that they always showed on Full House,

go to the park where they always meet together in Sliders, ride a street car (named Desire), etc. I will also be singing the song, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair!" So yeah, I want to go there too, just so you know.

Now on to Jonah!

Two month stats:
12lbs 4oz (from 7lbs 11oz at birth)
23 1/2 inches ( from 20 1/2 inches at birth)
He's been consistently in the 50th percentile, for weight, and 75th for height, just like Elora!



New developments:
Jonah finally smiled for real around 5 weeks, and laughed around 7 weeks. It sure took him long enough! He's lost some of his newborn hair, mostly on the top and the upper sides..at least he matches his daddy. Except he still has a big swirl of dark hair in the back, right where most babies get their bald spot.
His eyes are still gray-blue, and Joseph is hoping they will stay blue as he gets older- then we'd have all three eye colors with our kids! Both Joseph and I have a parent with blue eyes, so we at least have a 1 in 4 chance, from what I remember from high school Biology.



Personality: Jonah seems a bit more reserved than Elora and Joshua were at his age. He needs a lot of coaxing to make any happy noises, and is content to just lie on his stomach on the floor, which both of his siblings hated! He's still pretty fussy but mostly just in the evenings, and I still don't think he's as bad as Elora was. He sleeps for four hour stretches at night, and sometimes six or more hours at a time.


As for nicknames...I tried really hard to avoid it, I did. But I think I call him Jonie more than anything else! Jonie Baloney, Jonie G, Jonie boy, etc. Poor little guy. But cute, don't you agree?

Where in the world....

There are a lot of places most everyone wants to see: Rome, London, Paris, the Pyramids in Egypt. But sometimes we have our own ideas of what would be an awesome trip. For instance, these are some random places I really want to visit:

Astoria, Oregon- it's where they filmed Goonies, Short Circuit, Free Willy, and Kindergarten Cop. It looks beautiful: I have to visit here before I die. Or maybe even live here. I'm sure they need Elementary school teachers, right? They hired Arnold Schwartzeneger after all.




Cardiff, Wales- This is where some of my favorite British shows are filmed (hello, Dr. Who?) and I just know if I go here I'm going to run into someone cool like David Tennant , Freema Agyeman, or John Barrowman. Don't worry, Joseph would think it was cool too..... I think. While I was in the area I would of course go see Stonehenge and hop on over to the Emerald Isle; who wouldn't want to visit a town called Dingle?





Machu Picchu, Peru: lost city of the Incas- You know you 've seen it before, its in so many movies, commercials, and educational shows. This is one of the coolest ancient ruins sites I know of, and I would love to see it someday. Of course, I'd have to be in much better shape to be able to climb that high...I certainly couldn't do it today! Maybe I'd just visit Peru in general?


I know there are many more, but they kind of come and go like so many flights of fancy.

Of course I've already been to a lot of the coolest places:
Route 66
Victoria, Canada
Mexican Cruise to places like Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta
Redwood National Forest (where you drive through a tree and see a giant Paul Bunyan statue)
and I lived on Bainbridge Island so got to take the ferry regularly for a year and a half!

What are some cool places everyone else would like to visit someday?

Tidbits of Life

• Elora has started a one-day-a-week preschool type class which she loves. Her first day she was super excited to go, and was even more excited to do her homework: decorating a paper doll to look like herself. As we worked on it she exclaimed, "I never did art like this before, it's so fun!" She insisted it be holding a baby doll- after I told her it wasn't okay to draw the baby in the figure's tummy! I just wish the class was more than one day a week, she would love it so much.

• Josh was very sad she wasn't with us all that morning though. I took him and Jonah on a walk in the cemetery (which is very close to our home.) He likes to go around spinning the pinwheels that people leave there, and I find it a very pretty walk. I looked at all the baby tombstones (of which there are always an abundance) and wondered how many of them died of the things we routinely treat babies for today: high jaundice, low bloodsugar, hepatitis, infections from the doctor not washing his hands..... and I was grateful for all the annoying preventative stuff they do at birth now.

• This weekend we gave Jonah his baby blessing. I had totally forgotten we had Sunday clothes for boys this small until I went looking for them- he'd just been wearing his regular onesies to church. Isn't he so handsome? We had to have our traditional baby-looking-in-the-mirror shot.

• My mom, dad, and brother came Saturday for the baby's blessing and left Sunday afternoon. Josh still thinks Uncle Thain is is best friend, and he was thrilled to throw a ball back and forth with him outside all Saturday evening. Notice Elora's shoes not on her feet. Typical. Everyone looks great here...except me, I think I should have stood differently so I looked more feminine or something. Josh's cute face is distracting enough I guess.

• We didn't have any big plans for Labor Day, and ended up taking another drive up the canyon. Joseph bought "Drumsticks" icecream cones, which we thoroughly enjoyed..especially Elora, from the look of her!
  

• Of course we spent some time throwing things in the water when we were done. We had to make our way across a small offshoot of the creek to get over to the spot we wanted. I was slightly annoyed that as we were negotiating the mud with our stroller and the kids, another family with five kids merrily skipped across the water upstream from us and took the nice open spot we were headed for. We made due with this marginal piece of shore that was closest to us. It didn't afford much room for maneuvering, but the kids were fine with it.

• We let Jonah have a close up look at the scenery, but he wasn't very impressed. Maybe we'll try again when he is in a better mood? Or maybe he just didn't like the sun in his eyes.

• That's better! Speaking of Jonah, he is 7 weeks old today! He has smiled for us a bit, starting around five weeks. He's definitely more subdued in personality than his siblings at this age, only having about 30 minutes of happy time a day, combined with a lot of grumpy time, gassy screamy time, and quiet sucking time. But thats okay, he's still cute! Plus he has been rolling over since about 3 or 4 weeks- much better than Elora and Josh who never really rolled at all!
  

(Don't you love how my bullet-point writing format stops making sense about half-way through this post?)