Love the Weather, Not the TIcks

It's been so beautiful and sunny here laterly. We've had a great time out hiking, biking, and playing at the park. It was over 70 the past weekend so we headed down for our first camping trip at City of Rocks. It's a unique place a little less than 2 hour from here. It's renowned for rock climbing but Erich, Jake and I just hiked around. There are massive granite boulders everywhere, randomly conglomerated in central Idaho. Everything was fabulous until we were falling asleep and Erich found a tick on him. Pesky little buggers ruin all the fun.

Anyhow you might notice something different with Jake, like how you can see his smile! Erich got brave (and I went along) we took Jake's binky away cold turkey. I've been dreading this task for 20 months now but it actually went relatively well. I'm so glad we just took away it completely, out of sight out of mind.

He Speaks!

Jake was feeling pretty talkative tonight. We were outside and it's hard to hear the video with all the wind and it's blurry, but it's fun nonetheless.

Easter

Holidays are definitely much more fun with a little one around...And a whole lot more interesting. We tried dying eggs but Jake was clearly more interested in drinking the cool looking water than dipping the eggs. We finally had to put Jake to bed and finish the eggs for him :)
We took Jake to the City Park easter egg hunt and he did great. He got a whole basket full of eggs and had fun opening them up, although the City of Twin Falls must have been on a tight budget this year because half the eggs didn't have candy in them--fun nonetheless. I'm glad we did the that egg hunt because Easter morning Jake was so excited about his new toys he didn't care much about the eggs. The highlight was his new ATV. When we visited cousin Rhone Jake fell in love with Rhone's ATV so the Easter bunny thought a little ATV would be the perfect gift.

Other than that life has been good. We squeezed in another cross-country skiing trip. Sadly there was only a few inches of snow so it looks like the ski season is wrapping up for the year. On the bright side we're back to hiking. Last Sunday we went for a pretty mild hike. Jake didn't want to get in the backpack so we thought we would let him walk for a bit. A mile and half later the kid was still going and showing no signs of tiring. We were such proud parents. It was a blast until we found a tick on Jake. Once I saw a tick I was done. We packed Jake up and hightailed it out of there.