5-in-1 and Livin’ Large

Landon and I were sitting up in bed talking the other night and as his eyes scanned the room he pointed out that we really have a pretty amazing set up. When we moved here we thought this was really just a "2 bedroom" apartment. But we've gradually turned our bedroom into a 5-in-1 multi-functional room. It is not only is a bedroom, but includes a nursery, an office, an entertainment center, and a kitchen pantry/food storage. All in our very own room!  (Our most recent addition, the desk, used to be in the front room, but we’ve turned that area into a play space.) Check it… (the pictures are going clockwise and you may think that you see the bed in every picture as if everything was really that close to it….well, you’re right.)

   

 

New Family Photos

          

I can’t say I love getting pictures taken, but I love having our family pictures up-to-date. These pictures were taken in mid-May, so Cody’s hair is now even longer, but they are the most recent family pictures we have. Our good friend and photographer took them for us and did a WONDERFUL job!! She’s good at taking posed ones and also great at catching fun moments. If you are in CA and want a great photographer, look her up-- angiewhitakerphotography.blogspot.com. I had a really hard time trying to narrow down which pictures to put in here so there may be a lot…

  

 

     

   

 

   

Introducing Cody Christopher Mauler!!!

We wanted to introduce our newest family member, Cody Christopher Mauler, who was born on March 25th at 12:24 AM.  He weighed 8 lbs. 7 oz. and was 20 1/4” long.  As you can see he has a lot of dark hair.  I know the most important thing is pictures so I’ll keep the narrative short.

Here is Melissa right before going into the hospital.

Here is the first picture of Cody!

He opened his eyes soon after..

 

Here are Cody’s proud parents..

Here’s Cody’s head of hair..

Austin got to meet Cody (he calls him “Deko”)

Melissa’s parents and brother Landon were in town and met him..

Then Steve got our first ever family picture with the four of us (with all eyes on our new baby)..

I’ll try to get more info up soon but mom and baby are doing well and we are so thrilled to have Cody join our family!!

Daddy and son, so much fun!

I love it when my handsome boys are all dressed up on Sundays. They look SO good!

And me and my other boy-on-the-way still try to dress up even though not much fits anymore...

You know how sometimes you wonder what your child will be like when they grow up? Well, I usually think about which sports or instruments or technology he might get into it. However, Landon thinks of important things, like, maybe he'll be a prophet or just really, really righteous. Which is why I shouldn't have been too surprised to come home and find Landon taking these pictures of Austin...then we can show that Austin was interested at an early age because it's not like we made him pose like that.  Mmhmm...       ;)    

(OK, so he got the piano too)

Landon is such a good dad. He goes out of his way to make things fun for Austin-

-even when Austin isn't interested for more than few seconds as you can see. Love it!

 But Austin absolutely loves Dad and asks for him every morning although he's usually already gone for school.  Austin wants Dad to get him out of his bed.  He really doesn't have a choice at that point and once he realizes that there's no other way, he eventually lets me get him out.

Austin in the Mornings

I love the way Austin wakes up in the morning. He will sit or lay there and make noises in different pitches or try to talk. And then when I walk in, he’ll sit up with a huge smile on his face and then crash into his mattress and lay down with his blanket or get into his stink bug position. He won’t let me take him out for a few minutes. Or like today, I can leave and he just likes to lay there for a long time, which is why I'm able to do this right now. Sometimes he’ll even stand up as if he wants me to get him and then he’ll run to the back of the crib or lay down so I can’t. When he's finally ready to get out, we like to just snuggle on the couch for another few minutes and make noises together, sing, or just look around. And then he’s ready for the day. And I am much more ready too because it’s such a great start to my mornings. Love it!

Little Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: So the other day I dumped our entire load of whites into the washer because it was much easier than bending over and pulling them out from the hamper to the washer. I even thought to myself that there were no pants so I didn’t need to check pockets for objects. However, I failed to check the hamper, forgetting how much Austin loves to put things in there. (And this load just happened to be the one with some recently purchased white clothing that we’ve been putting off buying like since we got married!) As I was about to unload the dryer I remembered that Landon had his white Sunday shirts in there and it had been sitting for a while, so I turned it on again to get it nice and hot so I could take them out and hang them up immediately afterwards. I forgot about it so it went through the entire dry cycle again…and when I opened the dryer I was surprised to see dried ink splattered all across the dryer door and on every piece of clothing I could see. Oh boy. As I pulled the clothes out, a pen and an orange wooden block fell to the floor. I tried to find a piece that didn’t have ink on it but almost every piece did, even down to Austin’s tiny little socks. Sad day. I discovered that hairspray really did work better than bleach to get the ink to start to bleed or run off…however, I wasn’t able to get the ink out completely or any of the shirts completely white again. (Maybe had I done it sooner rather than a week later that would have helped!)


Lesson learned—check the hamper/clothes as you do the laundry no matter what if they are child accessible, especially if it sits right next to your food pantry. I’ve since found a box of cornstarch, muffin mix, cars, taco seasoning packets, and many other things in our hamper. :)

Lesson #2: A while ago, a friend of Austin’s who had been here coloring decided to draw yellow waves horizontally across the wall upon her exit (with crayon).

Lesson Learned—I didn’t try many things but, after some research and experimentation, toothpaste followed by some soapy water worked the best to get crayon off the wall.

December Snow and Palm Trees

We had a great December.  Austin is having fun feeding himself and is always so much fun…

 

We went to the Mesa temple last month and randomly ran into my sweet Aunt Robin, got to see a bell choir perform at the visitor’s center, and enjoyed the fun palm tree Christmas lights!

We spent Christmas in Colorado. We got to go sledding, bowling, make gingerbread houses (some of which were very creative), play volleyball, play games, and all get each other sick with a nasty case of the stomach flu, except Austin, Landon, and my mother…they have tough immune systems I guess. We had to quarantine ourselves to prevent it from spreading (as we later found out that I got Annette sick when we visited her and Justin before I even knew I was sick! Sad)

 

 

Austin loved being out in the snow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still need to make a stocking for Austin! (This was a purchase years ago from the dollar store that I was going to use to wrap a present)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t know how visible it is, but Trent’s house in the middle has a water wheel/mill (?) thing in the river…pretty clever.

 

 

 

 

My mom and dad were ANGELS to have all 22 of us there in their comfy home and to put up with all the busy, crazy, fun days!!