Where the Wild Things Are

Not a whole lot going on since my last post, but since I've got some time I thought I'd go ahead and post some pictures from this week. Last Sunday Drew was dedicated at church. All the pictures look pretty much the same, so I'll only post one. He was a perfect gentleman, but his brother had a meltdown moments before we went up. He saw Nana and Pop in the choir and became quite distressed that they would leave the stage without coming down to see him. He had to be rushed out to the hallway to see them and wasn't composed enough to come up on stage with us. He's become more and more attached to his Grandparents since we've moved over here.
Of course, Drew continues to ooze cuteness...

He's gotten to where he can pretty much roll over at will...


He's starting to scoot too, and should be crawling around within the next few weeks. His mother pointed out an interesting fact today. Drew is wearing an old pair of Nate's pj's that Nate was photographed standing in. They may have shrunk a little, but Drew is about as big as Nathan was when he started standing up. Wow.

We had an interesting visitor this Saturday. I was watching cartoons with Nate and just happened to look out the back window. There was this giant raccoon nosing around our little shed behind the house. I wasn't able to run outside guns-a-blazing as Drew and his mother were still sleeping, but I managed to capture things on camera. The little critter circled the shed a few times.
He thought about crawling underneath the floor.

But then decided to climb the front door.

He got his paws over the top edge of the door and managed to shimmy across to the middle.

...and squish himself up and over the top.

I was rather impressed by the little guy's acrobatics. There's nothing in that shed, so I don't really care what kind of critters snoop around in there. Not 30 minutes after all this, I looked out again and saw this little fellow...

It's hard to see, but it's a pretty good sized red fox.

When I spotted him he was standing right in front of the shed, but by the time I got the camera out he had trotted over into the neighbor's horse pasture. I shouldn't be surprised to see wildlife out here, I'm just still getting used to it again after having lived in suburbia for the last 8 years. I can't wait until spring when we can finally get out and start enjoying our little piece of the rock some more.

The Holidays

Once again, it's been far too long since my last post. We're finally all settled into our new "house". It's far from a house, but it's a temporary exile. We had to list the old house with a realtor this week since it wasn't getting any traffic through it. Breaking even now should be a real challenge. Anyway, things haven't been all bad. We had a rough week or so where I was the only one in the house that wasn't on antibiotics. I hope that doesn't mean I'm the problem. Luckily everyone was mostly healed for the holidays. Drew is growing like crazy. Maybe it's because we let him be responsible for metering his own consumption...

He started eating cereal last week too.

He has taken to it much quicker than Nate did. What a moose. The holidays were good as usual. Aunt Shauna and Uncle Tom were home plus there was lots of unhealthy food. What more could you ask for. This was Nate's second Christmas, but he was able to appreciate this one a lot more than he did last year. He got a butt load of cool stuff at Nana's Christmas morning...

He seemed quite pleased. And now, some random Drew pics...

Sunday was Nate and Nana's birthday, so we had a joint birthday party for them over at Great-Grandma Dudley's. Nate had a wonderful time again, of course. He got to practice his billiards...

He got another butt load of cool stuff...

And of course he got to break all the rules, smashing cake while sitting on the countertops.

Drew had a good time too because he got to shuck his pants and show off his bratwurst legs...

Speaking of bratwurst legs, his mom got a couple good bath time pics of him the other day. It's a good thing legendary old west law-man Wyatt Earp was available to make them decent.

You can tell from the pics that he's getting quite strong. He's rolling himself over pretty regularly these days. He's scooting a little now and I'm sure he'll be crawling in no time.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Here's a video of a Trans-Siberian Orchestra song we did at church this weekend that I did the light show for. The video/audio of this recording don't do it justice. You had to be there. It was awsome. Thank God I didn't screw it up!

Fun With Cardboard Boxes

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted pictures of the boys. With harvest and trying to sell a house and move, my free time seems to have vanished recently. So, I'm taking one for the team tonight and staying up late to get some new pics out before Aunt Shauna goes into withdrawal. Both boys are doing well and Drew just keeps growing up.
I think he was watching C-Span. He had his 2 month Dr. appointment a while back and he was 2 pounds heavier and an inch taller than Nate was at that age. Keep in mind that he was both shorter and lighter than Nathan at birth. He's just over 3 months now and he's over 16 pounds. That puts him almost 2.5 pounds past Nate at that age. I find myself wishing that Drew was twins just so I would have a counterweight for my other side while I lug him around in his pumpkin seat. It's quite a workout. Here's Nana spending some quality time with the boys in Drew's jungle gym.

Drew expresses his wishes to grow up and be a dirt farmer like Pop...

A few weeks back, Nana and Liv took Nate to some deal they had in Petersburg with people dressed up like Sesame Street characters. When I saw the pictures, I was surprised that Nate wasn't creeped out by old people in bad muppet costumes. Heck, I was pretty creeped out by it...

Here's some nice pics our friend Nicole took of the boys. She always does a great job snapping pictures of them...

For some reason, Liv relishes the chance to take pictures of the boys while they're sleeping.

Yeah it's cute, but there's like 50 shots like this on the camera. I hope she tones it down by the time they're teenagers. Nathan got hold of one of Pop's tractor publications. Here he is trying to select which combine he would like to purchase...

"How do you like my quasi-futuristic clothes, Mr. Powers?"

As I said earlier, we're in the process of moving to the new place. So that means all kinds of moving boxes laying around the house. What do not-quite-2-year-old boys and 32 year old boys both like to do with empty boxes? Why, build forts of course. Here was our first attempt...

The huggies boxes really say "Don't mess with this fortification if you know what's good for you."
We built this one to ambush Aunt Megan one day when she was coming over. There's a video to go with it that I will have to post soon, along with some good Drew videos that need editing. Anyway, here's fort #2...

While he was in there, I just stuck the camera under the door and snapped away. I got lucky and came away with a few gems...

I guess fort #2 was a pants-optional fort. That brings us to tonight and fort #3 which is really more of an L-shaped tunnel.

I swear, I'm never going to buy this kid any more toys. He has more fun with the boxes and packaging than anything! Here he is with a random piece of foam that was laying around.

You all know what's on Nate's Christmas list now!

I Think She Has Something Against Mormons

I heard about this on the radio today so I looked up the video and it didn't disappoint. Enjoy!