The Boulton Blog: Life is a Highway

Life has been happening rather quickly in our little corner of the world.

David: He started crawling 2 weeks ago, and hasn't stopped. He fell down the first flight of stairs to the basement one day trying to get to whomever was down there, but fortunately he wasn't hurt and the baby gate has become a rather permanent fixture in our home.

He has 3 teeth now, also new within the last 3 weeks. His bottom 2 teeth came in within days of each other and his right top tooth quickly followed suit. The 4th one looks like it's close behind and he's started wearing bibs since he's been drooling so much. It's not nearly as bad as Caleb was, but bibs are still nicer than wanting to change his clothes halfway through the day.

He loves to clap, wave, and play peek-a-boo. He'll eat anything we put in front of him (except lettuce...he just plays with it hahaha) and today we started teaching him how to sign "more".

Caleb: He seems to be learning new things faster than we can teach him. We've added reciting an article of faith to our nightly routine of reading scriptures and saying a family prayer and he seems to enjoy it.

He loves playing with friends, and even asks for 2 of them by name, which seems rather impressive since he only sees them 2 or 3 times a month outside of nursery, but also exciting and cute.

He can get a little cheeky, and sometimes I don't handle it well when says something like "get out of my kitchen", but other times I find it hilarious and it takes everything I have not to bust out laughing. When he's not being a booger, he's very polite and I'm so grateful that he says please, thank you, and you're welcome so naturally.

He enjoys looking and playing with cats and dogs (kittens are his favorite, he is his father's child) but half of my family is allergic to cats so adopting one is out of the question and dogs are more work than I'm willing to put into a pet at this point in our life.

His favorite place to be is playing in the pool, so we're making good use of the season passes we bought for Adventure Reef and David is learning how to love the water while crawling around after his big brother.

Byron: I don't know that I have much to report on my loving husband. I fear that he was rather neglected this Father's Day. I took the easy way out and got him the iPod cable for the iPod nano he's going to use for his podcasts and a new charger for his phone and a google play card he asked for so he could renew the subscription for the app he uses to text me from his desktop while he's at work.

Thursday evening he went to scout camp for his 24 hour shift. Only 3 boys from his troop went this year, so they combined with Centerville ward and they just requested that Miamisburg supply an adult to be there every day. He took the last day of the week and enjoyed spending most of his time at the archery range. When he couldn't get in on Friday morning though, he went to the rifle range and got quite good at aiming in the short time that he was there. :). I missed him while he was gone, but I'm really glad he had a good time and I'm strongly encouraging him to plan the canoe trip he had talked about for next month.

Arielle: I'm just enjoying the incredible life I've been given. I'm spending more time at home playing with my boys, got to read a couple new books, and finally getting some semblance of a tan... This weekend I'm driving down to spend a couple of days in Paducah to visit my sister in law and I'm looking forward to the change of scenery even if I'm nervous about driving 6 hours to and from with Caleb and David by myself.

In General: On Friday we celebrated my Grandpa Charlie's 70th birthday with a suprise party at the YMCA by his house. All of the Ohio relatives met there to play in the pool for about an hour and a half before stuffing ourselves on pizza my parents ordered in and going to get soft serve ice cream at UDF. Caleb had a great time and I always love spending time with family.

Caleb's favorite part of this past week was when we went to see the model train exhibits at the Carillon Historical Park. It's a museum about Dayton's history and has some really neat things, but this specific weekend they had some hobbyists there with their ornate model trains and Caleb had a blast. They were giving free train rides in their courtyard on one of those little engines you can find in malls, and they had model trains of all shapes and sizes set up in free spaces around the museum and park behind it. I'd like to go back with Byron on a date so he can enjoy more of the museum, but I've been saying that for about a year now, so we'll see how long it takes for us to make that happen.

We're looking forward to going to the temple on Tuesday and hope you're all doing well. We would love to hear from each of you!