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Life's a Beach!

By Wednesday, Thomas was mostly recovered - just in time for his Aunt Heather to show up for a long weekend. Her birthday was on Friday and she decided that she would rather spend it with "the cutest nephew ever" than anyone else. (Can't say I blame her!) Mom and Dad came in Friday night and we all packed up Saturday morning and headed to the beach at Galveston. Technically Thomas has been to the Galveston beach before, but I think he was only 4 months and not terribly sure what was going on...

 
 

This time he was ready for fun! Mom and I failed to communicate prior to the trip and both ended up buying a bunch of beach toys, so I think we had the most prepared beach toy arsenal of anyone on the beach. Since we went to Stewart (the beach we went to *all* the time as kids), I even paid for us to have beach umbrella and chairs. I was more worried about Thomas getting sunburned than the rest of us. (And it showed - I got sunburned and he was fine!)

Not surprisingly, it wasn't actually Thomas who did all the sand castle building: 

 
 

I even helped - look at the awesome sand mold I found when I went a little crazy buying him beach toys!  How could I resist that??

After a snack break, we finally coaxed him down to the water.  As long as he was with me, he didn't care about the size of the waves, but once I handed him off to mom - he had a different opinion about even the small ones!

After splashing around in the ocean for awhile, we went back to the shade and Thomas found something even more exciting that a big ocean...! A plastic bucket filled with water!! 

You take the boy to see a ocean and he crawls into the plastic bucket of water. Yup - he's obviously has my genetics... crazy kid! 

And Again...

Things were looking so well. We had our happy healthy kid back again:

 
 

Then Sunday night Matt woke me up to tell me that Thomas felt warm. Another fever?? The next morning when he woke up I could tell as soon as I picked him up that he was burning up again. So Matt got to stay home with him and take him to the pediatrician's office.  

As an aside to this, we finally gave in and took him to an ENT since a lot of these fevers have been caused by ear infections. He has had more than the recommended 4 in 6 months, so we went to get a consultation on his ear situation. The verdict  - his left ear is completely full of fluid and the right one is "slow" to respond to a pressure test, but it responds. The left is blocked to the equivalent of having an ear plug in it. We decide that ear tubes are the way to go and they book us for surgery on July 25th... July 25th?!? He'll have 3 more infections by then! Argh!

So we're on the cancellation wait list.  And of course they call Monday. I get all excited that we will finally have this taken care of. We just will get the all-clear from our pediatrician that this ear infection won't interfere. Yay!

 
 

Except it's not *just* an ear infection. It's an ear infection and a bronchial infection. No way we are getting a surgery on Wednesday. Matt texted me a photo of Thomas sitting in his lap at the doctor's office with Thomas in the nebulizer mask. Is he trying to make me cry in a work meeting? Luckily Thomas didn't seem to mind the mask and it had a huge impact in only a few days.

On the follow up appointment today, our pediatrician said this is the best his ears have ever looked - they are actually fluid free! So who knows if it was the right antibiotics or the nebulizer somehow helped. I'm just glad my little guy is back to his usual self. Sleeping like a champ!  

It Was A Rough Week

Warning - Not for the faint of stomach or those who are eating...!

My parents stayed a half day on Monday because Thomas had developed a case of diarrhea Sunday. It was bad enough to deal with that, but it was super smelly too! At one particularly bad diaper change, I just opened the window in his room and threw everything out on the driveway instead of carrying it through the house to the laundry room. Very nasty stuff.

Obviously he couldn't go to daycare and potentially get them all sick! 

Nope, it was much easier to keep him home where he could get us all sick. That's right, my son, whom we all love and care for sooooo much - got all four of us really, really sick. Everyone got varying degrees of it - I think Mom and Matt tied for who was worse off. I think the last stomach bug that he gave me helped keep me out of the worst category, but all of us had varying degrees of nausea to outright throwing up. Can I just say that throwing up seems way worse as an adult? Really could do without that for the rest of my years. I'm just saying.

 

My son, the harbinger of nasty stomach bugs. ..

 

I think this morning was the first time all week that I felt like myself again. Of course, Matt had to work until 2am that morning, so Thomas and I hung out and tried our best to be quiet so he could sleep in. How could you stay mad at such a cute little germ factory?

 

He's attacking me with the chair in this photo in case it's unclear. ; )

 

Thanks to the bug, I missed out on making Brittney her awesome birthday dinner the day she flew into town. It killed me to cancel it, but I figured she would prefer to spend her time in Houston without getting sick. So considerate, I know!  

After I missed seeing her, it sounded like there was a small chance she might be able to come by another night that week. So I did what any good friend would do - I sanitized the heck out of everything I could. All of the soft toys went in the wash. All of the hard toys got sanitized. And I sprayed or wiped down everything else I could. It seemed to work - she didn't get sick when she stopped by.

So Casa de Hoyt is back to normal for now. Given our recent history it may not be our last battle with a bug, but hopefully he'll stop picking so many up or we'll start to be more immune. (One can only hope!) 

Happy Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day!

Last weekend, we had great plans of working on the yard since it was mostly destroyed / neglected during the house reconstruction. It quickly became obvious that it would be impossible for both of us to work on it unless Thomas was asleep. The little guy has gotten very mobile and is very curious - meaning someone must have eyes on him at all times. So this weekend, I got smart and called in the cavalry (aka my parents!).  

 

Thomas was super excited to see them, especially since they brought him such colorful toys to play with!

 
 

He showed off his mad balance skills for them. He's had that skateboard since he was about a week old. First time to stand on it and he was super excited. It's only a matter of time before he has it in motion...

 
 

Awesome bed head - he comes by it honestly. Most of my baby photos look like this. (My parents would like to add that he should be screaming to look exactly like me... Har har...)

 

Sodding the Yard

 

This part is more of a patch job. There used to be a tree here & now there is a hole. We have to fill in the hole and then sod over it. This part got delayed because Matt found another huge root he had to pull out.

 
 

Mom & Thomas in the back yard - this was by far the biggest impact. It went from bare dirt to a beautiful carpet of green grass in no time! That's the best part about sod - instant gratification!

 
 

More sod in the side yard. It was between plants & mulch and sod. So we went with sod and potted plants we can scatter in the grass if we so desire. I love my Black Eyed Susan's - they were getting upset last week, but seem pretty happy in their new pot.

 
 

Ok, so you can't really see the front beds & their new plants all that well, but... How cute in my mom in this photo?? Thinks she likes her grandson much? ; )

 

And Finally Pie...!

Best part of having extra people around to watch Thomas? I can bake! Both of my parents can be bribed with baked goods, so they were more than happy to support the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day celebration efforts!

Pie!! You might notice the pie is a little flat looking - certain individuals refused to wait the proper cooling time before sampling, so a lot of the filling ran out. I had to wait for it to cool and try to do some tidying up to get a good photo. But it was as delicious as it looks.

What's that you say? You see something off to the left? Oh, that's just Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, NBD. ; )

 

Busted! I had to fight dad off long enough to get a good photo of the pie, but as soon as I was done, he swooped in to claim the spoils. He more than approved of both baked goods. :)

 

Flare It Up!

Theresa got me into photography (again!) by getting an awesome camera last year - which then led to Matt getting me the same awesome camera!   So the two of us are learning as we go on the tips and tricks to making better photos. We certainly have different styles, she is an "Aperture Always Wide Open" kind of shooter and I'm a more "Change Up Everything and See What Happens". Both styles have their advantages and disadvantages. Add on to that we have one lens in common and one different, well we're bound to notice some differences.

Thus the Flare. Theresa has been trying to get Lens / Sun Flar in her photos. I'm not that into it, so I figured she would figure it out and let me know. Apparently, she's decided to toss that ball in my court...

So I googled it some today and made an attempt at it:

 

Ok, I can kinda see the draw to the flare when it's highlighting my cute little guy...!

 

There are a few tricks from the article I read that I found to be super helpful! 

First - line your subject up so there is a line between camera, subject and sun. Easier said than done with a crawling baby and a yard I can't use because it just got doused the previous day in fertilizer. So the porch was our only option!

Second- the better the lens, the harder it will be. My Prime lens really struggled to flare, but my zoom lens had no problem - the extra glass in the zoom might have helped as well.

Third - close the aperture! I was on the high end of the f-stop. That first picture was f-20. So, I can see why Theresa might have had so problems with it.

Fourth - take the lens hood off. My zoom doesn't have a hood, so it didn't really matter. But the article said to do it, so I did take it off for the Prime. 

Lastly - you have to move around to line the light up with the right spot in your lens to catch a flare. I was laying on the porch shooting up toward the sun. If you can't see the flare, the camera won't see it either. I may have almost blinded myself a few times getting it right...

I think these photos are more flare than I would usually try to get in a photo, but it was more about the "can I?" than the "make it perfect!" 

 
 

And obviously, it's much easier to do when your subject isn't moving all over. I had to manually focus the camera on Thomas because the sun kept throwing the sensor off. Was much easier when he didn't move too much...

All that to say, Theresa it isn't really your fault. The next photo was the best I could do with the Prime lens. Maybe you can get some flare next time I show up on your doorstep if I simply hand over my zoom lens! ; )

 
 

Not the Only One With New Hobbies...

Thomas has new hobbies too. The most prevalent of which is removing things from shelves and drawers. Basically the opposite of cleaning... 

 
 
 
 

At least he seems to be a little bit interested in helping clean the house as well - though those events are much fewer and further between... ; )  

 
 

Memorial Day Weekend

Since this weekend was memorial day, it was a three day weekend - that kind of awesome only happens a few times a year, so we definitely took advantage of it! It really wasn't that adventurous, but we managed to pack a lot of fun into it. The only downside to the weekend, was that Thomas had a fever when I picked him up from daycare on Friday… Apparently that ear infection is not going away. We have a follow-up appointment on Friday, I would not be surprised if he ends up having to get ear tubes. :(

But back to the fun stuff of the weekend!

​First order of the weekend was Springfest! Which meant getting up early, shopping for BBQ supplies, hanging out in the heat and letting people critique my beer. It was awesome! Mostly because everyone liked my Hef!

​First order of the weekend was Springfest! Which meant getting up early, shopping for BBQ supplies, hanging out in the heat and letting people critique my beer. It was awesome! Mostly because everyone liked my Hef!

 
 

​Thomas liked having a huge open space to run around in. Of course, he generally went for the picnic table or concrete fire pits that could hurt him, but overall is was a pretty low danger area and there were two of us to keep an eye on him...

​Thomas made a ton of friends mostly because they all wanted to ride in his sweet wagon. Any new or future parents take note - this wagon is awesome!

​And passed out in the wagon. The heat finally lulled him to sleep for a little while until he was back in action. Seriously, *best* *wagon* *ever*.

​When we got home, we decided to break in the "swimming" pool, he had a grand time splashing around. Even if it doesn't look like it here - Matt took the photo when he first got in and I wasn't pulling my camera back out once he started going crazy with the splashing! ; )

​Sunday we decided to tackle the back yard. Thomas tried to help by feeding Natalie... Natalie actually tried to eat what he was giving her, but dirt isn't really her thing.

So I recently discovered that adding spaghetti sauce to Thomas' food will make him chow down like nothing else. Unless of course, he's overly tired and then nothing makes him happy. This is quite possibly the best mad face I have gotten of him to date. Is it bad the mad face makes me giggle? ​

​Steak Time!


And a perfect end to the weekend was our new steak cooking method we (of course) learned from an Alton Brown episode. So we bought a new/bigger charcoal chimney from Home Depot and the proper hard lump charocal. Then I went and got a fabulous looking 24 oz Porterhouse from Whole Foods. Then after a 1 hour warm up for the steak and 15 minute light for the charcoal - it was grilling time!

But it's an AB method, so it can't be something ordinary like cooking the steak on the grill! Nope, the steak goes under the chimney for 1.5 minutes on each side. See it getting all seared and lovely under there??​

Oh baby... Come to momma! ​

I know this one is blurry, but you get the drift. After the 3 minutes under the chimney, you move the grate up top and cook it for an additional minute per side under an upside down metal bowl.​ (Forgot the bowl, had to improvise - will be buying a bowl!)

Seriously, this was the best steak we have made to date. I think most of it was paying for a good piece of meat and then just not messing it up. Next time we're going to try dry aging it - possibly the only way to improve on it! :)

Never a Dull Moment...

Having a toddler in the house means that there is something entertaining that happens at least once a day. Most of the time it revolves around something Thomas did and wondering what is going through his mind:

 

​It was empty, but he obviously has been watching where his milk is stored...

 

Then he realized there were all kinds of fun things stored in the cabinets and he just had to play with all of them - mostly by banging them together.​ The one night he was particularly going crazy with the pots, Matt decided to move him to the living room where he couldn't hurt the wood floor. :)

Matt is good at so many things - including being a cymbal stand!

Goldfish for breakfast? Yum!​

​It was only a snack to tide him over until he got to daycare. But he was still pretty excited about it. And I just *love* his expressions. All of them. But especially this one today. :)

Hico - The Kiddos

I thought it might be good to split Hico into two posts because I took a ton of photos of the kids and didn't want to overwhelm the actual reason we were there post. And I have a dear friend who admits to skimming if I use too much text. I don't think that applies to too many photos, but I didn't want to risk it! ​

All of the kids there were super well behaved considering how long we were there and how warm it was outside. Luckily we got a spot that was in the shade for a good part of the day and away from the asphalt - black top can radiate some heat!​

 
 

​Thomas fell asleep in the car on the way over to the competition. Mom somehow managed to get him to the spot and sit down without waking him up! I guess it helps he's a pretty good sleeper...

​I actually remembered to hand off my camera to get a photo of Thomas and I. Those have been sorely lacking over the past year. And I tried playing with the B&W option in my camera software. I'm not sure I love it - I think photo editing software might do a better job. And apparently there are a million versions of B&W, while my software has two... "/

 
 

​Guess who is walking now? He's still a little hesitant, but he certainly has the ability. So he gets really excited about it, but also likes to stay close to walls in case he loses his balance.

 
 

"​Look mom - no hands!"

​I never get tired of seeing dads hold their kids and Anna looked super worn out (and adorable) in this one. Not surprisingly, she was out in about 2 minutes.

​Wallace followed shortly behind. And look at Thomas' awesome wagon - you can fold down the seats and it's a perfect sleeping bench for little kids. We were all wishing there was an adult version...

 
 

​Another one of Thomas and I. He's looking a little worn out, huh? Shortly after this photo, we found a church on the square that had created an indoor area for kids with toys and air conditioning! So awesome of them!

​Wallace 4-wheeling under some stranger's chair. They all thought he was too adorable. :)

 
 

​Wallace in the kids area heading for the toys and the loving attention of about 10 young girls. Smart boy!

 
 

​Momma dancing around to the music with Thomas. That boy sure loves his Nonni. He has started flipping out when I leave the room, but not if she has him!

​Theresa ​got an awesome camera for her Christmas present from Josh. Matt and I were seriously impressed at the awesome photos she was taking with it. And for my birthday Matt got me the same camera. So now we get to geek out about the camera a lot and plan on taking classes for it together. It's good to have friends who share your hobbies. :)

​Thomas had several admirers there and this little girl in particular kept flirting with him. He thought she was fun too. (Though not as much as trying to eat things off the ground... *sigh*)

​Anna obviously has a thing for him too. She can even say his name, which is still super impressive to me every time I hear it. :)

So I asked him, what is it about you that all the girls love so much??

 
 

"​Beats me, Mom...!"

Hico - The Competition Photos

Theresa's hubby, Josh, is big in to cook-offs these days. I've only made it to one cook-off so far (in Shiner!), so I was ready to go to another one. This one was geared more toward backyard chefs - our crew was by far the biggest rig out there. I have no idea what size the trailer is, but they keep adding more things to it every time I see it - this time it had satellite TV!

I even managed to talk my mom into coming - easier since it was only an hour from where she lives versus the 4 for me. It was almost all my favorite people in one spot - if only Matt hadn't been on call*...!

​Thomas is ready for action in his super fancy red wagon. I love that the wagon has a shaded cover - especially since it's really getting hot outside. We had a super mild spring, but summer is coming with a vengeance!

​Thomas is ready for action in his super fancy red wagon. I love that the wagon has a shaded cover - especially since it's really getting hot outside. We had a super mild spring, but summer is coming with a vengeance!

​Trisha and Kevin busy prepping the garnishes for the pulled pork slider entry in the appetizers round. Trisha makes cutting up peppers look fun!

​Trisha and Kevin busy prepping the garnishes for the pulled pork slider entry in the appetizers round. Trisha makes cutting up peppers look fun!

​See what a good job they did? And if you think the pork looks awesome because it was awesome. I'm pretty sure I ate it at least three times during the day. :)

​See what a good job they did? And if you think the pork looks awesome because it was awesome. I'm pretty sure I ate it at least three times during the day. :)

​Kipper & Alex smiling for all of the eager Hico attendees. Wrist bands to try all the appetizers were only $10! I'm pretty sure I ate more than my fair share roaming around the booths.

​Kipper & Alex smiling for all of the eager Hico attendees. Wrist bands to try all the appetizers were only $10! I'm pretty sure I ate more than my fair share roaming around the booths.

​Oh, what's that you say? Time for the steak round? Fire in the hole!!

​Oh, what's that you say? Time for the steak round? Fire in the hole!!

​So at some point I accidentally bumped my ISO knob up way too high and over exposed some of the photos. I tried to salvage this one in editing, because Kevin was awesome with the propane torch and he used it several times just for me to get photos.…

​So at some point I accidentally bumped my ISO knob up way too high and over exposed some of the photos. I tried to salvage this one in editing, because Kevin was awesome with the propane torch and he used it several times just for me to get photos. I would hate for all the effort to be wasted!

 
​Now that is yummy looking pile of meat!

​Now that is yummy looking pile of meat!

 
​Josh making sure the presentation for the judges is "Just So" - aka cleaning up the errant meat juice.

​Josh making sure the presentation for the judges is "Just So" - aka cleaning up the errant meat juice.

​And what was the result? Old Army BBQ got Best in Show! While not a reward strictly based on food, we were all still pretty excited about it. Everyone stopped by the trailer to talk to us and wherever I roamed with my Old Army BBQ shirt on, people wanted to chat. So I'd call it a success - I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out with such fun people:

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​I couldn't really get a good photo of the trailer with all the smoke out there - but I just wanted you to appreciate the level of awesomeness this rig has achieved.

​I couldn't really get a good photo of the trailer with all the smoke out there - but I just wanted you to appreciate the level of awesomeness this rig has achieved.

(*And if someone hadn't moved to Alaska!!)​