1000 Words

Thanks to a great holiday deal at Whipper Snappers Photography, we finally got our act together and snagged some family photos. Since only one could make the Christmas card, here are a few of the others:

Where We Were

1 Year Ago: Sitting at the Blacksmith Restaurant, contemplating what it would be like to have 2 boys in our family.

2 Years Ago: Finally feeling "in the groove" as parents and so appreciative of the wonderful community of friends we enjoy in Bend.

3 Years Ago: Just home from the hospital with tiny, baby Owen (and I think take-out pizza). We had no idea how the energy in our home would forever be changed.

4 Years Ago: Recently returned from a much anticipated trip to Belize; talking about starting a family.

5 Years Ago: Just moved to Bend and then promptly returning to Washington. I spent the evening at Carole's Wedding Rehersal and Scott was at Brian's Bachelor Party.

6 Years Ago: Really settled and enjoying our house, friends, and community in Seattle. Thrilled that Scott had recently escaped a very draining job and exploring if we could work for the same company (ultimately not a sweet idea, but the commute was much more enjoyable!)

7 Years Ago: "Enjoying" one very lame celebratory dinner that still brings us laughs today. Quickly getting over it because we were in Hawaii for a week for Sheri's wedding. Preparing to scour the pet shelters when we got home for our first dog - Hudson!

8 Years Ago: New homeowners. Just brought home the tiniest kitten (Cisco), who was small enough to walk under our couch. Occassionally feeling overwhelmed by the responsiblity of caring for that little creature. (Overwhelmed by a cat - seriously? I guess times have changed.) Within a month, recruiting a friend for that fast growing kitty - Pippin.

9 Years Ago: Taking advantage of the long 4th of July weekend to spend some time in... Canada. Summer vacation on the cheap in Whistler.

10 Years Ago: Bundles of nerves, mountains of excitement, oodles of optimism, and the stunned look of two "kids" seeing each other on either end of a chruch aisle. We stood before more family and friends than will ever be gathered in one place and committed to tackle the adventure of life together.

Life is not easy. Marriage is not easy. Parenting is not easy. But the victories are sweeter when you have someone to share them with. Whether we're celebrating major milestones, wrestling with major decisions, struggling to find our footing, laughing at the absurdity of it all, or collapsing in exhaustion at the end of the day... there's nobody I'd rather be facing life's challenges with. I love you babe!

Let's give this marriage thing a shot for another 10 years.


P.S. Today: Preparing for lovely dinner out, contemplaing what's next for each of us and our family, and looking forward to a kid-free week in Mexico come September.

This and That and a Haircut

The past few weeks have flown by. We're days away from a 8 months old post for Josh - how can that be? Current events around the Maxwell House:

My parents were here for a weekend, and we seized the opportunity for an afternoon mountain biking date. That would be my first mountain bike ride ever and the first time I've been on a bike since college - yikes! I thought it was fun but could really use some more time in the seat to gain more confidence handling a bike - and better fitness would help, too.

I ran my first 5K since high school. The Heaven Can Wait event (for breast cancer) is by far the biggest run/walk in Bend - 4,000 participants. It was inspiring to see all those people walking for the cause. Amazing energy. I was most inspired by my 3-man cheering section at the finish line. I think Owen liked seeing his mom do a race, but he was complaining afterward, "But I Wanted you to be the winner!!" and has declared that he's going to do a race himself and be the winner.

Summer is here! We officially skipped spring, with last week's temperatures steadily in the 50s. To much relief, the summer solitice brought with it sun and temperatures above 80 degrees - bring out the sunscreen, swimsuits, and bare feet!

Scott's parents were the first ones to complete the Maxwell Family Fitness Challenge for 2010. After training all winter and spring, they walked a half marathon in Alaska over the weekend. So awesome! Maybe we'll get them to come walk another one in Bend in October when I (hopefully) run mine...

We're loving the World Cup these days. Owen is old enough to sit and watch a few minutes of the games. He is already a big fan of Tim Howard (thanks to that bright orange jersey!). What a fantastic 3rd game finish for the US today. Bring on Ghana!

Scott's been taking advantage of our long daylight hours to get in weekly mountain bike rides and a few more on the weekends. Mountain biking has really become his activity of choice, and it's great to have trails just minutes from the office. Yea Bend!

After months of letting his hair grow, we decided to give Owen a short cut for summer. I was really enjoying the long hair, but the short will be better for the pool.

A few before shots:





And the drastically different after:

Moab (aka Why my Husband is the Toughest Guy I Know)

(I'll add pictures to this one later if we can get them off Scott's phone)

Lest you think the only thing we have going on around here is managing two kids (though that would be enough), I thought I'd give you a little peak at what Scott's been doing lately. Top of the list would be WORK, followed by Work, Work, and more Work. He is one of the lucky guys that still has a job in the construction industry of Bend. While we are grateful for his employment, the lack of jobs also means that those few employed people are taking on a LOT more responsibility than when there is more money to hire more people and spread the work around. So, Scott works his 55 hour weeks and usually has to go into the office at least one afternoon on the weekends. In the midst of it all, I am grateful that he is diligent about getting home by 6:30 for some brief toddler wrestling before helping put the kids to bed. I've only had to tackle the double bedtime routine a handful of times.

Scott's most recent project is a new Technology Center for Bend High School. It's a pretty awesome building that replaces the old wood shop with a modern building that will house a wider variety of technical skills classrooms - automotive, sound studios, video production, wood shop, computer lab, etc, etc, etc. You can see a picture of the finished building here. As cool as the project is, we are VERY excited that construction is coming to a close. Scott's next project will be the Deschutes Recovery Center - a residential mental health treatment facility near the County jail.

In the midst of all this work, our friend Kevin schemed up a Guys Trip to Moab for some amazing mountain biking at the end of April. I say schemed because he got Dave - father of a toddler and newborn twins - on board first, so none of us other wives could object to anybody else going on the trip. In reality, I'm glad Scott was able to go. That trip gave him something to look forward to, motivation to get to the gym and on a bike, and a reason to take some solid days off work. Plus, we all need to get our adrenaline pumping once in a while, and chasing much better riders over some of the best mountain biking terrain in the country?? That'll do it! We had Grandma Ethel come stay to help me with the kids and the guys did 3 days of amazing mountain biking sandwiched between two 880 mile road trips. Do you think anybody was sore after that one?

We decided that with 10 guys doing that much riding, there was probably a required number of injuries to be sustained. Scott was generous to take them all for the team. Final tally - two cracked ribs*, one broken nose**, one semi-sprained ankle, and one re-energize husband/father who looks ready to tackle the world again.

*Cracked ribs - sustained 100 yards into the first ride on the first day. Scott realized they might be cracked 2 days after getting HOME from the trip. The doctor told him the most important thing to do with craked ribs is to breathe deeply. Um, 2 days of mountain biking will keep you breathing deeply.

**Broken nose - sustained early on day 2. Supposedly caught on camera, but I've yet to see. Scott realized in might be broken a WEEK AND A HALF after it happened. Not until the swelling went down did we notice that it was a little crooked. Even the urgent care doctor that diagnosed the ribs didn't identify the nose issue. Scott's Dr sent him right to the ENT, who told him he could let it heal and decide later if he wanted general surgery -OR- come back in a couple hours and he would try and get it back in place (aka rebreak your nose while you sit there and watch). Scott chose Option B. Took local anesthetic, held still while watching/listening to the doctor reposition his nose, and then headed back to work. An evening on the couch and he's good to go with a very stylish nose split for the next week.

I told Scott it's a good thing he's tough or his injuries would have really put a damper on the trip. He pointed out that if he wasn't so tough, he wouldn't have kept riding after a fall that cracked two ribs - thus saving himself from the broken nose and sprained ankle. Good point.

Boys!... and I have two of them who are clearly taking after their father.

Building Blocks

I am always impressed with Scott's craftsmanship and ability around a project. Sunday afternoon, he said, "I've been thinking about making a set of wood blocks for the boys." One trip with Owen to Home Depot, Seven Dollars, and a couple hours in the garage later, we have a full set of solid wood building blocks.

When Boys Play House

With a pile of boxes, I saw the potential for tunnels. Owen thought that was cool... for about 5 minutes.
Scott, on the other hand, broke out Owen's tool kit and some duct tape, and the two of them went to work - playing house as only an engineer and his son could.
Owen kept dashing in and out of the kitchen for more tools and supplies, muttering under his breath, "Need fix my problem. Need fix my problem."
The finished product was pretty awesome.
On a semi-related note, I'm proud to say that my son is also getting exposure to some more traditional home making skills. We watched one episode of "Worst Cook in America" (on the Food Network) the other night. I won't be watching again. It's simply appalling that these grown adults have so little ability in the kitchen. How do they feed themselves? In the episode we watched, the guy they sent home didn't know to peel garlic before putting it in the saute pan. Seriously? Just from standing on our kitchen stool, I think Owen already knows his way around a garlic press. I fully expect my boys to be able to fend for themselves (and do it well) when they set out on their own many, many years from now.

You Know You Married an Engineer

My friend, Cailean, runs an occasional series on her blog where she lovingly documents the ways her Engineer Husband shows his true colors. I, of course, find these snippets hilarious and so close to home. So...with acknowledgments to Cailean and full admission that we have TWO trained engineers in our family, I bring you the Maxwell Family version of

You know you Married and Engineer When...
Someone has calculated (accurately and without a calculator) that, "Owen is me at 1/8 scale and Josh is me at 1/20 scale."

Father's Day

We had a wonderfully low key Father's Day. Scott requested some "guy time" to get out Mountain Biking on Saturday and then we had a family day on Sunday. I got up with Owen and we made the made the coffee, started the breakfast scramble, and decorated cards for Scott. All the while, I was telling Owen we were being sneaky, which makes him scrunch is face up, wiggle his hands, and squeal "sneee-keee!" It's kind of evil genius, but so cute on a 2 year old.


Scott got to sleep in a bed and then be ambushed with the early morning picture (though he looks pretty good for just out of bed) while Owen helped him open cards and mountain biking gifts.

We puttered around our morning and then hit the Summer Sunday Concert in the park for some wonderful funk/soul music and wrestling on the lawn. We can't wait for the weather to be warmer, so we can bask in the sun (instead of bundling up against the wind) on these free family outings.

It was a great Family Father's Day and hard to imagine that this is only the second year for this holiday around our house. Owen is blessed to have such an involved, attentive Dad. The two of them light up when they are around each other. I'm blessed to have a partner that actively shares the parenting role every step of the way, from inventing the "super swaddle" for our colicky baby and absorbing gallons of spit-up in those early months to wrestling, working in the garage, and doing all things BOY with our active toddler. I love you, babe!

This picture is from our recent visit to Bend Airport Day, which deserves a post to itself, but I wanted to show off my two favorite guys..

Winners!

Scott's company won their job yesterday! Hooray! Like Scott said, one job isn't going to keep them alive forever, but after all the bids they've put in over the last couple weeks, it's really nice to finally win one. And, of all the projects they've been going after, this was the one that Scott was most excited about from the beginning - a new technology center for the high school. Sounds pretty interesting. The amazing part: They were the low bidder by only $3K on a $4M+ project - that's less than 0.1%. It doesn't get any closer than that. Hopefully this project goes well and it will lead to more work for the school district in the future. For now, it gives everybody a little bit of breathing room and a reason to celebrate.

Things that Make Grandmas Nervous

Owen doesn't know the word for Monkey, but he does like to make his own little monkey noise when we see them in books. Now that he's growing taller, he's starting to really develop his own set of monkey skills. We're doing our best to keep those daredevil attempts in a controlled environment, but the kid has no fear! On the plus side, it's pretty fun to watch his little brain planning out his next stunt (if only he could think through the consequences...). Another plus is that we know exactly who he gets this from and we're hoping he also got Scott's tough bones and resilient body to go along with the monkey skills.

I don't have pictures of the most impressive stunts: climbing INTO the crib, jumping off short stools, scaling the rock wall at the park, but I did catch some recent father-son circus tricks. These are just your standard walk up the legs back flip, which Owen could do over and over and over and over and, well, you get the picture:


This, on the other hand, might be the one that makes the grandma's cringe:


On the one hand, it probably should make me nervous, but it's hard to be uneasy when Owen is laughing HYSTERICALLY and saying "more, more, more." It only took a few tries for him to get the balance figured out. I think if he wasn't shrieking and laughing so hard, Owen would probably balance on that hand for minutes at a time.

Valentine's Day in Pictures

Scott had to go into work on Saturday, so I spent the bulk of my day with my littlest Valentine. We got a small dumping of snow in the morning. After shoveling the driveway, we built a little "snow castle"...
Which Owen promptly destroyed...
We chased the neighbor cat all over the cul-de-sac...
We explored the rock pile in the backyard...
Scott came home with beautiful flowers and cupcakes from Le Cakery - so, so, so yummy. This was the "kid-cake" size for Owen. Scott and I had the real deal (in red velvet with butter cream and chocolate-chocolate) after Owen went to bed.
My two Valentines...
Owen came running down the hall to deliver my cards...
I got one card with Tomas the Train (and one with a much more romantic theme).
Owen finished his night by opening this card from Grandma.
Scott and I finished our night with a lovely home dinner, a bottle of wine, those awesome cupcakes, and a personal guitar concert in our living room. A fantastic evening...especially since I spent most of the afternoon expecting to write a blog post about our "romantic valentines day with the stomach flu." Glad to dodge that bullet!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Scott Turned 30!

Scott finally caught up to to me and we celebrated his 30th birthday. Since it was a Thursday, we had a little family outing to Munch and Music - a weekly free concert in the park downtown with lots of yummy food vendors. Owen seems to love these community events. So many people to watch and places to explore. It was a fun treat for us to have a family evening "out" during the week.

Happy Birthday Scott! Last year we celebrated his birthday with a take out pizza, a couple brave friends, and a tiny, tiny baby. What a year it's been! Here's hoping to another decade filled with new adventures.

This year, we celebrated with a legitimate party on the deck. We had yummy food, great company, brownies and ice cream, and even a Keg. You can imagine what was Owen's favorite part - shiny, just his height, and sitting in a bucket of ice and water. You can't pose these pictures...