It’s been a little quiet on the blog front but believe me, It has been crazy here. First, and probably the best news: my brother Josh and his family moved here from Louisiana!

The series of events that fell into place to get them here is nothing short of incredible. They already had their house up for sale, and were questioning whether they wanted to stay in LA or move to another place entirely. They talked to us a little and decided they really wanted to move here in order to be close to family. But that couldn’t happen unless my brother could get a job out here. He looked online and found one job opening for his company in the entire state. And the city for this one job position? The same one where we live. Now the next obstacle was to get accepted for this position. This had to be done within a short time frame because their house in Louisiana was closing in a few days. Josh got on the phone interview with the AZ guys and a few days later got back on with them again to find out he got the job! A few days later, they traversed 1,300 miles across the southern US and arrived on our doorstep. Finding a house was the easy part, and three days later, they found a beautiful new house. Things couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. Now Caleb has two cousins to hang out with. He loves following his older cousin Krynn around and playing with her. The second she walks in the door, the two of them go off into the family room and we never see them again. They love playing together. All of us get along so well and have so much in common. I’m so thankful to have some of my own family here (even though my in-law family is awesome enough).

The two cuties, Krynn and Cassie, reading in our family room.

Second: Andy no longer needs glasses! He had LASIK done this morning. It was such an intense experience. I know because I got to watch! Yes, I’m one of those wierdos who love watching surgery programs on The Discovery Channel. When the assistant asked me if I wanted to come back and view the surgery got giddy I was so excited. From where I was sitting, this is what I could see:

Andy is in there somewhere behind the two doctors. That big silver TV screen is where my husband’s eye was displayed, magnified 100 times it’s original size and being poked and prodded will all sorts of scary surgical tools. I could actually see his cornea being lifted off his eye and folded back. It was awesome! 10 minutes after entering that room, he walked out with perfect vision. He’s going to have to take it easy for a few days and let his eyes heal, but he will (hopefully) never have to wear glasses again. It’s a good thing I’m okay with wearing my contacts because I could never go through that procedure without having some sort of embarrassing nervous breakdown halfway through. I’m so proud that he did it and am excited to see him wake up tomorrow and see perfectly without any aid.

Anyways, those are some of the most recent happenings going on in our house. Caleb is doing great; he actually cut his first two year old molar this past week (unbeknownst to myself…). He has a new fascination with letters and will actively search for them and sound them out (not always correctly). His favorite letter is “O”. Point to any letter, and he’ll most likely label it as an “ooooowwwweeee” He’s got a good start though, and he can say E, A, T, D, C, and N among others, even if he’s not always correct. I can no longer just read him a story, I have to trail my finger across the word and spell it out followed by a correct pronunciation of the word. If I fail to do this, he will grab my finger and make it drag across the word until I correct my wrongdoing. I often catch him reading whatever material he can get ahold of and start spelling out the words himself: “aye, eee, ah, ooo, oh, eye, oooh….” Yes, they’re mostly vowels; that’s his thing.

And because I can’t leave this post without a pic of the little man, here’s one from a few weeks back when our lawn turned into a prairie:

Being a photographer’s child can result in two ways. 1) they hate the camera and run away screaming every time it appears, or 2) they are fascinated by it and want to take their own pictures. Fortunately, Caleb turns out to be the latter. He loves taking the lens cap off my “work camera” but that’s as far as my trust goes. I passed down to him my old point and shoot, but he quickly jammed the lens. Now he has his eyes on my new little camera and loves sneaking into my purse to find it. I let him have a little supervised play time with it at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Everyone in the room was astounded by how much he knew about cameras until I let him have full reign with it. I think I might have a future assistant in a few years. For the record, I never tell people to “say cheese” so I have no idea where he got that from.

And here are some examples of his fine artistry:

This was when he started taking pictures of himself. Narcissism at its finest….