Catch-Up

I hate playing catch-up on here.  My normal posts are long enough, I can't imagine how this is going to turn out.

Last news, we bought a house.  After closing, we rented it back to the previous owners for 2 months while they waited for their new house to be built.  It was nice having two months to start building back up our savings and have our mortgage covered.  I thought it was going to be nice to have time to really prepare and get things ready for the move....but I decided to go to Colorado instead!  Go figure.  My first summer in MD and I spent 2 months in CO.  Totally worth it.  And can I just say how much I LOVE finally having our own house?  It has its quirks and things that we hate about it, but we can actually do something about those things!  It's amazing.

Our trip was good!  We happened to be there when the Waldo Canyon fire started, which entirely consumed almost 2 weeks of our trip.  We had the news on 24/7, a few sleepless nights, and a lot of staying indoors.  I was afraid to let Mace outside too much because of the smoke and ash in the air.  It was CRAZY.

Other than the fire, it was a fairly uneventful trip.  We had visits from Katie and Ryan, celebrated Ryan and my birthday's, and watched Mace learn new things each day.  He went swimming many times, which he LOVED, and I had a lovely time having other people change diapers and chase after him.

Mace is now 17 months old.  Holy smokes, I know.  The only unbelievably fantastic part of that statement is that it means 1 month until......nursery!  4 more Sundays.  We can do it!  While we were in CO he went to nursery (at only 16 months, gasp!) and did fantastic.  Sat down for the lesson, passed the scriptures in the circle, folded arms for prayer, sat calmly waiting for his snack, and was completely exhausted by the end of church.  Never once wondered where I was.  It was really nice, but now I'm a little bitter that our ward won't let him go in a little early.  I think ours is the first ward I've known to not let kids in until exactly 18 months.  Heck, I have a friend in Utah who's little boy goes and he's only 15 months!  I'm just nervous that he will suddenly become attached in these next few weeks.  Somebody better watch out if that is the case....

He goes up and down stairs, is getting a pretty good verbal vocabulary, and has an even larger signing vocab.  Our neighbors have a little boy just older than him and they got to play outside together for the first time.  It was fun!  I'm excited for Mace to finally have other kids to play with.  He has been seriously lacking in that dept.  And it forces us to spend more time outside.  Another good thing, because that boy is PALE.  I've never noticed before just how pale...but it's bad.  More vitamin D for him.  He's still sleeping like a champ.  Bedtime between 8 and 8:30, wakes up between 8:30 and 9.  I am SO spoiled.

Anyways....things are going fantastic for our little family.  Brandon is really enjoying his job, and has been told by a few people that he is doing everything he should be, taking on responsibility, etc. to get promoted first shot!  I've started doing some accounting work at home which is awesome!  It's an amazing blessing to be able to do something I love, something I worked hard to be able to do, and still stay at home with Mace.

Yes, it was long.  Good for you if you read the whole thing!