A Very Happy Half Birthday!

Our sweet little Trevor is 1 1/2 years old! It seems like in the last few months he's suddenly become a real toddler and not much of a baby anymore, although everyone in the family still refers to him as "our baby". He is on the go and in to everything- constantly exploring anything that he can find. He has started to sleep better most nights, but there have been a few with me up 5 times or more just to rock him back to sleep. I credit these lovely evenings to the minefield of teeth he's got going on both the top and bottom of both sides of his mouth. His eight front-most teeth are all in, but all those sides and molars seem to be coming in (at various stages) all at the same time. Poor guy- its no wonder he's having a tough time sleeping. Trevor is definitely not the verbal prodigy that his sister was (he's a lot more like Asher, taking it very slowly) but he is coming out with a few more words a little at a time and he definitely understands a ton. He's pretty good at following directions, unless of course he gets distracted by something to explore :) His eczema is still terrible- I coat him in thick lotion at least twice a day and I have to keep him as much covered as possible to keep him from scratching himself too much. I don't want him to be too hot, but luckily it hasn't gotten all that hot here and I doubt it will get too hot for more than a few days this summer.  Trevor has mittens that he wears to bed (really long socks that come up to his elbows) to keep him from scratching in his sleep. I thought the older he got, the less likely he would be to wear them, but he really seems to like them as part of his going-to-bed routine and goes and grabs them and helps me put them on him before I read to him and rock him for a bit. Trevor is such a happy, delightful personality! Although his eczema is taxing and his sleeping habits aren't as ideal as some of his siblings, he sure is a delight to have around and we sure love him!
Here are the photos I got of him today. I realize they all look pretty much the same-he's just so cute I couldn't narrow it down any more :)

Palmyra Trip

We took a quick trip to upstate New York last weekend. It was exhausting, but fun. We stopped by Niagara falls on the way there, but didn't stay too long since we were just there a few months ago. We actually didn't even park to see the falls because it costs money and would have taken more time, but we did drive by them a few times and stopped at the souvenir place to eat lunch at see the giant moose.

I was so excited that evening to eat at Chili's! Canada doesn't have Chili's and we don't eat out very often anyway, so it was fun, even if the food wasn't quite as good as I remembered.

The next morning we went to see the sacred grove, the Joseph Smith farm, and visited the Hill Cumorah. The older boys were pretty interested, but Trevor got sick of his stroller really fast. Heidi was most interested in watching the squirrels jump around in the woods. We also stopped by the Palmyra temple just to walk around the outside a bit.  Austin got a little camera happy, so enjoy all the shots.

We also spend some time going to the mall where there are quite a few stores that aren't in Canada.

The highlight for the kids was the giant carousel $3 isn't bad for 10 minutes of sheer joy for four kids (and a dizzy mom)

The hotel room we had the first night had two queen beds and a sofa bed, plus a crib that Trevor refused to sleep in. The kids liked that room fine and kept jumping back and forth between the beds. I noticed a wet spot on the floor on the second day and Asher noticed a "spider" on the ceiling which was actually a place where water was leaking through the ceiling, so we got to change rooms the next night. They didn't have another room to accommodate our whole family, so we got two adjoining rooms instead both with king beds. The kids were thrilled to have their "own" room and I was so exhausted from the night before trying to get Trevor to stay in the crib instead of in our bed, that we just let them watch a movie on the iPad while Austin went to get a quick dinner. I think that was the highlight of the trip for them. I gave up on Trevor and just let him sleep between Austin and I in the bed and slept quite a bit better.

We found a cute little ice cream shop near our hotel. Here's an ice cream couch they had.

These were the smallest size cones they had

On the last morning we stopped at the Book of Mormon publication site and Asher and Leif got to see how a book is made (or used to be).

Then we found another ice cream shop before we headed back to Canada. The highlight here was slush puppies, which the kids thought were hilarious and delicious.