Landon had his 2nd Birthday on November 21st. I just can't believe how much he's grown in the last two years. It has been such a crazy experience as a mother watching him go from his first steps and the first smiles to being a toddler. He suprises me daily with the new things he picks up, the good and the bad. His birthday party was a lot of fun.
My parents graciously opened their home to us for the night. Karina was there with her camera so of course she was the designated photographer. She tooks some great pictures. I often wonder if sometimes she would rather put down the camera and just be able to hang out like the rest of us. I don't know though, she seems pretty dang happy behind her camera.
I made my first real cakes! i can't even tell you the last time i really baked. I was so proud of myself. i made three cakes into sports balls. I thought they turned out pretty good. They even tasted somewhat decent. For the baseball cake i used red velvet with a cherry pie filling in the middle, the football was chocolate with a chocolate cream cheese filling (nick made the filling, it was to die for), the tennis ball was lemon cake with lemon pie filling. I had a lot of fun trying to make them look the way i wanted. I even go the tennis ball to look a little fuzzy. Okay, that's enough bragging, i don't usually have a lot to brag about when it comes to my cooking skills so i had to take this opportunity while i could!
He had a lot of fun opening his presents. It was hard to get him to go on to the next because he'd want to play whatever he'd just opened. The funniest moment which luckily Karina got on camera was when he opened his hot wheels. It was like he'd never seen one before, he was so excited, you'll just have to see the pic down below. Another good moment was when he opened the train set we got him and he decided it was better suited as skate board, also down below. I also thought it was pretty funny that his cousins and friends enjoyed helping him open his presents, especially Denton. I acutaully don't know that i've ever been to a kids birthday party where the birthday boy or girl was the only one opening their own presents... It's like a team sport to see how fast they can get it opened and passed around to be played with. kids crack me up!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LANDON!!

Is Nick actually going to be a Border Patrol Agent... We'll just have to wait and see...

I haven' t posted about the border patrol yet. I wanted to wait until Nick had passed pretty much everything... Let me tell you , this has been quite the long process. The application was a fat stack of papers and it seemed to take forever to be processed. If there's one thing i've learned in all this it's that with the Border Patrol there is a lot of WAITING. We had a few set backs here and there... The physical fitness test wasn't as easy as Nick thought so we had to go through the whole application again. Also, when he took the medical exam he struggled with his vision and hearing so he had 30 days to retake that and by some miracle he passed both of those the second time around. Other than that things have just been moving along SLOWLY... he took a written test which had three parts to it: knowledge, language, and character. Luckily, he spoke spanish on his mission so he was able to be tested for his spanish. Now if he gets into the academy he doesn't have to stay as long while the other people learn spanish. That makes me happy! He also had an oral interview with a panel of 3 border patrol agents. It was a little nerve racking... They asked the wives to come for an orientation before the interview... Waiting for him to come out of that room was not an easy thing to do... so once that's passed you wait... and wait some more... They also do an extremely extensive background check going back like 10 years... They send this guy to your house to flash his badge at you and ask a bunch of questions then he goes to everyone you've ever known and asks them a bunch of questions... So, now that we're at this point we just get to... (you guessed it) WAIT!! Once all your stuff is done you just wait for them to send you a job offer and they tell you when you need to report to the Academy which is in New Mexico. I guess they typically only give you like 2 weeks notice to get down there. When they send the job offer they also tell you where you will be stationed after the academy. We put our 1st preference as Arizona and the 2nd as California. I really don't want to live in California because it's too expensive... other than that i have no beef with the state. We think our chances are pretty high for going to Arizona but we'll just have to wait and see...

IT'S A BOY!!

We had our ultrasound two weeks ago. He was a little shy at first, he just didn't want to show us anything. When the technician first got a peek she thought he was a girl and than he decided he was proud to be a boy... ;) I'm really excited! i have to say i was suprised. i really thought we were going to have girl. so when we new for sure i think there was a little part of me that wished for the frilly pink clothes and hair things... but i've wanted a boy all along and it didn't take long to get really excited! Landon will have a playmate, well, eventually... the other day he was sharing one of his trucks with the baby by driving it around on my stomache. than he took it away and said, "mine!" i thought, "oh dear..." but we decided he could go get the baby another toy to play with and that satisfied him... So there i am driving on my stomache with the car landon had gotten for baby when nick walked into the room... i have to say the look on his face was priceless... he came and sat next to me and said, "i think you've lost it..." it was pretty funny... We're all really excited for baby, no name yet just baby or brother... we'll have to post later a list of what we come up with... it won't be long... we don't agree on much in way of boy names...