There's something in the air...

I forgot to write about something that happened on Carter's blessing day. I was in the kitchen doing something that morning and thought I saw something fly by the window in front of the sink. It was out of the corner of my eye, but I figured it was a bird. Then I thought 'That's weird. Most birds migrate and it's snowing like crazy outside'. So I didn't think much more of it until 20 seconds later I walked over to the table and saw this.......

A HAWK ON OUR PATIO CHAIR EATING ANOTHER BIRD! It was actually an American Kestrel (I looked it up) and it was awesome. It sat there for about 2 minutes pulling off feathers and eating. I was able to take a few pictures, but none of them were too great. I didn't want to scare it away, but then the kids got excited and ran up to the door and it took off with the little bird leaving behind a ton of feathers and some blood on our chair. The kids thought it was pretty cool. Austin kept saying 'Look dad, BLOOD!'. It was an exciting beginning to an exciting day.

Family

As you may have already seen, my parent's were able to fly our for Carter's blessing after Christmas. I just wanted to include a couple more pics from them being here. Also we were able to go up to Lewiston, Utah to see Great Grandma and Grandpa Rigby. They couldn't make it to the blessing because of grandpa's chemo keeping him down so we decided to make the trek up. We always love going up there to spend time with them and should do it more often.

Mom couldn't get enough of this while she was here.

Neither could dad.

We always love going up to the attic and seeing grandpa great's train set.

The kids always love going to Grandma and Grandpa Rigby's, even if grandpa great won't smile for pictures.

Comments

I just wanted my friends and family to know that even though you may not be a member of blogger, you can still leave me comments. Just click on the comments link at the bottom of any blog and you can leave me a message. I'd love to hear from all of you.

Carter's blessing day

Carter was blessed during church on Jan. 6th. We were so happy that so much of our family could be there. My parents were even able to fly out and spend some time with us beforehand and then had to leave the day after the blessing. Carter was great and happy almost the entire day. He's just a good kid. He let's you know when he's hungry or tired and the rest of the time he's pretty content.

It was a great day. I had meetings in the morning and wasn't able to come home before the rest of the family came to church, but everyone came on time and the blessing went great. Afterwards we all came back to our house for some pictures and a luncheon.

Carter before waking up on his big day.

All ready in his blessing outfit.

Our happy little family.

Our happy BIG family.

Back row (L-R): Amanda & Mike Swain (Jess' sis and husband), Allie (Jess' sis), Mark & Kim Robinson (Jess' parents), Janet & Doug Price (my parents), Jon & Nate Marrott (our bro-in-law and nephew-Jess' side).

Front row (L-R): Mike, Hallie & Jenny Robinson (Jess' bro and family), Us, Carrie, Madison & Riley Marrott (Jess' sis and girls).

My boy, Jon West. Thanks for coming man!

It was a really long day, but Carter was a trooper and still smiling at the end.

Surgery day

Well, we've been anxiously awaiting this day and a little scared of it. My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer this fall and had surgery today to hopefully remove all of it. My mom just called and said he is in recovery and everything went well. We hope you are doing great dad and recover quickly. We can't wait to see you again. Love you.

2008 Resolutions/Goals

Warning: before reading this blog you may want to take a seat. Well, that only goes for those of you who stand at your computers.

Here is a little secret I'm about to share with a lot of you that you have never known about me. Partly because it's only started happening the last 4 or 5 years and I don't usually share it with too many people. I'm a goal/resolution junky. I'm not just a junky, I'm an addict. I'm anal about it too. I'll break each one down into mini goals that help me to reach the main goal. I won't include all of that, but I will include what I think the main step for me is to achieve that goal. I don't share it with many people because when I have in the past most of them asked me why I would set myself up for so much failure. That usually bugs me and pushes me even harder to achieve my goals. So if any of you want to help me out, just post a comment telling me that there is no way I'll achieve all of my goals for 2008. This will also give me some accountability.

As you will soon see, I go a little overboard with goals. Sometimes there are just a lot and other times they are just a bit far fetched. This is what I like though. If they were easy then they wouldn't really be goals. It would be more of a to-do list. Goals are meant to push you and I like pushing myself and seeing my growth over a year. I set a lot of high goals for myself last year and some I achieved and others I didn't, but even with the ones I didn't reach I did better than if I had never set the goal in the first place. Does that make sense? For example: I made it a goal to lose 15 lbs. and get to 15% body fat. Well, I lost the 15 lbs. and it was hard to measure the body fat with our scale (which I don't know how accurate it is), but I lost around 4-5% body fat. Now if I had never set that goal I wouldn't have even tried. Some other goals I set last year that I was able to achieve were:
• Read 12 books
• Read the Book of Mormon
• Get Jess pregnant
• Don't be so self conscious
• Play less fantasy sports

I definitely didn't reach all of my goals, but most of them I at least got half way. That's why I don't see it as a disappointment. As one of my old mission companions once said "It's better to shoot for the stars and land on the moon than shoot for the moon and land in a pile of crap". In other words, shoot high and either hit it or land in the middle OR shoot low and don't achieve anything. So here are my goals/resolutions for 2008.

• Read a book each month (below are some that are on my list for this year already)
The Twilight Series (Stefenie Meyer)
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
(4th book comes out this fall)
Think Big and Kick A** (Donald Trump)
Faith of our Fathers Vol. 1 (Nancy Campbell Allen)
Chesapeake (James A. Michener)
Wooden on Leadership (John Wooden)
Some sort of book about Stonewall Jackson since I’m related
• Read The Book of Mormon
Use Readthecriptures.com to send me an email every morning with my reading for the day
• Run 5K
Continue playing bball twice a week and start running in the spring
• 50 push-ups in a row
Start out doing 50 push-ups/3 days a week (not consecutive). Then 75. Then 100.
• 20 pull-ups in a row
Get pull-up bar and do it opposite days of push-ups.
• Take Jess out at least once a month
Pick a night at the beginning of each month and stick to it.
• Be a better husband (dates, surprises, helping)
Remember what it was like in college
• Be a better father (read, play, play dates)
Remember all the things I wanted to do with the kids before ‘getting too busy’
• Learn a song on the piano
Pick a song and practice some each week
• Be more assertive
Just do it
• Don’t procrastinate
Act immediately
• Close a commercial real estate deal
Make calls and network
• Lose 5% body fat
Check starting body fat%
Eat better
Exercise
• Do sprint triathlon
Find out the distances and start training for each event
• Start drawing again
Draw the picture for my grandpa that he’s always wanted
• Build/design a website
Start with making new website for robinson-brothers.com
• Take the family camping
Get sleeping bags and go
• Read more to the kids
Make time and do it at least twice a week
• Be more clean
Don’t be as messy in the first place
• Be able to grab the basketball rim again
Add more jumping routines and leg exercises into my workouts
• Learn to waterski/wakeboard
Go out on the boat more this summer
• Go snowskiing again with Jess
Go before the snow melts!
• Take the family fishing
Maybe combine with camping or a Lake Powell trip
• Get Austin fully potty trained
We’re working on it
• Jess pregnant?
We’ll see (I think this is more her goal, but not until Dec.)

Well, there you have it. I'm sure a lot of my friends are asking who the heck this is and what did I do with their friend Seth. Yep, if only I had been this way in college. If anyone has any suggestions for books (or any of my goals) I'd love to hear them.

Sad

I'm so sad right now. I went to watch the Rob & Big video clip that I posted on Jan. 9th and it is no longer available. I did a quick search of the internet to find another link, but the only one that I found was of someone videotaping their television and the sound and quality is horrible. I'm so sad. Wait!! I still have it Tivo'd!! Yahoo!!!!! Okay, I gotta go watch it right now. I wish those of you that didn't get a chance to see it could have. I loved it. Hey! Maybe I'll go get our video camera and videotape our television! I'm such a genius.

Christmas!!!

Yes, I'm finally getting to the Christmas blog. It's only about 3 weeks late, but better late than never. Let's get straight to the pics.

I swear this age has been the hardest to get decent pics of Kaylee and Austin. I'm not kidding. We seriously took about 20 of these and this was the best one. Austin has this thing of doing a fake smile and also turning his eyes away from the camera. Oh well, they're still cute.

They finally did better after adding the baby into the picture. Go figure.

Had to add this one. Carter was just sitting on the couch, ready for church and smiling away.

This is at Jess' parent's house on Christmas Eve. We open all our gifts from each other and Kaylee got an American Girl doll along with her cousins. She didn't really know what it was besides a regular doll, but she loves it.

Austin's main gift was a chair from Pottery Barn that has a Batman logo on the bag. I thought this face was priceless. He was SOOO excited and had been asking for this for weeks.

The calm before the storm.

Austin ran straight to his bike and would continue to get on it between each gift.

What little girl doesn't love a kitchen set with tons of food. For some reason it seems like most of our friends got their little girls kitchens and food. The year of the kitchen?

Carter was just happy to be here and we were happy to have him.

I just like this pic of Jess and Carter.

This was later on Christmas Day. Austin was all ready to go to Jess' parents house for dinner and he wanted to sit in his chair and watch basketball. We came out a few minutes later and this is what we found. So cute.

Austin's (belated) Birthday Blog!!!

I guess this is as good a day as any since exactly one month ago was Austin's 3rd birthday. He had a wonderful birthday and was spoiled as always. Grandma and Grandpa Price sent some pj's, toys and a shirt that I personally enjoyed. It said "If you think I'm handsome you should see my daddy". Way to go mom! Grandma and Grandpa Robinson got him a toy chest, clothes and some tools. Don't ask me what we got him because I can't remember. I keep getting it confused with what he got for Christmas. Oh well, the joys of having his birthday 11 days before Christmas.

I went to the store early and got him his favorite breakfast....doughnuts. He definitely takes after his mother. Not that I don't like doughnuts, but I think Jess and Austin would eat them for every meal if they could. I also picked him up a set of cars. There you go, I remembered one thing we gave him.

Jess always goes all out and makes a special cake for the kids. Austin has been on a superheroes kick and since he was Batman for Halloween she thought this was appropriate. He loved it.

Excited much? I'm pretty sure he screamed like a little girl in this pic.



Here he is with his haul of Spiderman stuff.

G&G Robinson bringing in the toy box. If you look underneath the toy box you can see Austin is having his eyes covered as they brought it in. He just giggled the whole time because he was so excited.

Austin decked out with his new tools.

Baby steps

No, Carter is not walking yet. Come on people, he's only 11 weeks old! 11 weeks today actually and he's more than doubled his body weight! Yep, he's getting to be a chunk, which reminded me I haven't put any pics of him up for a while. So in my attempt to catch up in our blog I'm taking 'baby steps' and trying to do a bit each day or every other day. This one is just about some random pics we have taken over the last couple of months and the stories behind them.

So Austin has a habit of waking up in the middle of the night for no reason and doing random things. The night before Carter was born he woke up in the middle of the night and began to turn on the lights in the house. We woke up and asked what he was doing and he said 'I hungry again'. I reminded him it was the middle of the night and to get back in bed which he did very willingly. Well, a few weeks later there was another incident. This time it was when I got up at 5am to go play basketball. I walked out of our room and noticed his door open. I went and peeked inside and saw his bed empty, but all the lights were still off in the house. Hmmmmmm, this was confusing. So I walk into the family room and the picture below is what I saw. Who knows when he got up or how long he had been asleep, but there he was cuddled up on the couch dreaming of Transformers, race cars and treats galore. I thought it was funny and had to take a pic.


Here's one of me and the kids that Jess took. It was right before Christmas and the kids picked 'books' to read before bedtime. The 'books' they picked were the toy catalogs from Toys 'R' Us and they proceeded to point out that they wanted about 87% of the magazine.

Kaylee has really embraced the role of being a second mother to Carter. She loves being able to sit next to him in the back of the car and help when he gets a little fussy. One night he was whining a little before falling asleep and Kaylee grabbed the pacifier to calm him down. Next thing we know all is quiet and she had fallen asleep holding his pacifier in his mouth.

Kaylee has also liked that Jess has started exercising since Carter was born. I walked in one day to see this in our family room. Kaylee was trying her hardest to keep up and it was so dang cute.

Jess' sister gave Carter this outfit. I thought it was pretty funny.

The beginning of a lot of smiles. I'll get more up soon.

Rob & Big

This is why I love the TV show Rob & Big. It made me and the kids start laughing and for a while and I found myself wanting to get into my own car and start dancing.

Stay Tuned......

New blogs will be coming shortly. I promise. Austin's birthday, Christmas, Carter's Blessing, parents visiting, etc. etc.

Playing catch-up

It's been a pretty long time since I wrote an actual blog. Things have been hectic with the holidays, work, and a new baby. I have a little bit of time today so I figured I'd try to do a little catch-up on our lives for family and friends.

Before there was snow, there were some leaves. Here are a few pics of Kaylee and Austin helping with the clean up, playing and clean up again of the leaves.







Then came Thanksgiving, which meant hanging Christmas lights, decorating the tree and then a LOT of snow.





Kaylee and Austin couldn't wait to hang the ornaments so they did as far up the tree as possible. We thought it was pretty funny.

Yes, it's a very, very small snowman in front of us. The snow was too fluffy so it would hardly pack. This is as big as we could get it and it fell apart two minutes later.

We put up a few more lights this year and really liked how they looked with the snow. The snow was so light and fluffy that it would stack pretty high even on the tiniest branches.



Our front walk

12 Days of Christmas!!

My dad sent this to me and I had to share it. The group is called Straight No Chaser.

New songs!

I found the Relient K version of Sleigh Ride! I was stoked. I really like a lot of songs from this band and was happy to see them have Christmas songs. I also added a few other songs I came across and that I saw on other friends sites. Thanks friends!