A nice day of fishing.

Hi all, I'm not sure if anyone even looks at this anymore, but Mom and Dad always like to see pictures, so here you go! We went fishing today down on the Boise river just outside of town. It's a really neat area that I always love going to. In the fall it's especially nice because the river isn't flowing as fast and it's close to home. It's a pretty popular place, but you can always find a good spot to cast in. I hadn't taken Silas fishing in a while, so Colleen suggested we all go down today and have some fun. It was a beautiful day here, around 50 degrees and nice and sunny; a perfect day for fishing.

Silas was pretty excited, running all over the place. 

He had been practicing his casting at home for the past few days, and he was doing a pretty good job. 

 I bought these waders a few years ago and never used them until just a couple weeks ago when my friend Adam and I came to this spot.

 Silas got bored with fishing after 15 minutes, so he and Colleen went and walked around for a bit.

 He kept asking if he could walk in the water like I was, and since it was too cold to do it without waders on, I told him I'd carry out a ways.

He wanted to see how cold the water was, so I let him touch it. Then he said I should drop him in. I pretended to and he started screaming.

We were walking back to shore and there were some little fish swimming that I was trying to point out to him.

Craters of the Moon and other musings...

Hey all, 

Last weekend Colleen and Silas and myself drove to Craters of the Moon and met dad for the day. Our friends Mike and Lindsey met us there, too. Silas has been obsessed with caves ever since I let him watch the Planet Earth episode about them. He had been wanting to go to Craters of the Moon for a long time, so we decided we should go before it got too hot. We all had so much fun. We were in one of the caves and Silas says, "Wow dad, this cave is awesome!" It was pretty funny. Went in all the caves that we could, then stopped and had lunch and drove around to a couple other spots and got out and walked. After lunch the wind really picked up and by the time we were ready to go, it was really starting to get intense. 

Things are going pretty good here, I just finished up my summer class, so I have a couple months off before I have to go back towards the end of August. We got a new car, a Subaru Forester, we bought it from our friends Ben and Christy. They have a boy that's just two weeks younger than Silas and they get along really well. It's my car, and I love it. Now we have a rig that's big enough to take us all camping so Silas and I are going to head out in a couple weeks and give it a shot. We'll see how he does. Tim came over a couple weeks ago for memorial weekend and we had a good time. Went fishing for a little bit with Silas, which went pretty much as I expected; but we still had a lot of fun. Silas just adores Tim. 

I only have 3 semesters left in school and then I'll be all done-with my undergrad, at least. I do want to go to grad school but I can't decide what for yet. I still have time to decide though. My (sort of) new job is still going good. I love working days. It's an amazing thing not having to sleep all day anymore. I love waking up early and getting a fresh start to the day. Colleen and I have definitely seen a big change in all of our attitudes since I've started. I go to work early in the morning so then I am able tog et off work around 4 each day. Some days I pick Silas up early from daycare and some days I just come home and start making dinner. I love to cook, and when I was working nights I didn't cook very much cause I was never really that hungry when Colleen and Silas were ready for dinner. 

We got Silas in a new daycare, which is 1000 times better than his other one. He loves it. They play outside every day unless there's lightning. It could be rain or snow and they play outside regardless. Every Friday is water day so they spend most of the day outside playing in the water. Then every wednesday the Magic Tumble Bus comes and they do gymnastics for a couple hours. It's a bus that some people bought and put in pads and a trampoline and they drive around to all the day-cares in the area and do gymnastics lessons. They work on a new skill each week then send home a piece of paper saying what they practiced so we can do it at home as well. It's been a lot of fun. Well, this has turned longer than I expected, and the season finale of Game of Thrones is calling my name. Hope everyone's doing well. Enjoy the photos!

Silas turns 3!

The above pictures are from the birthday party we had for Silas on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. This is going to be pretty quick, I've got to get to bed soon so I can get up bright and early and go to my new job in the morning. Wait, Matt got a new Job?! Why yes, I did get a new job. I started working in the payables department at Simplot on Monday. My last day at the hotel was last Wednesday night and let me tell you, I am so happy to not be working nights anymore. Sorry you'll all lose out on those sweet hotel discounts, but, oh well. My new job is pretty awesome. It's 8-5 monday thru friday, they'll work around my school schedule, and I get pretty awesome benefits, too. Anyways, it's off to bed I go. Enjoy the pics, hope everyone's doing great!

It's about time!

 So I figured since Melanie has posted two things over the few days I should probably catch up. Maybe it will prompt Ben and Jeremy to post some new stuff, too. Also, Mom really wanted to see pictures from Christmas, which I discovered we only took a couple. Anyways, we haven't been up to much. Once School starts I don't have a lot of free time to do things like this, but I had a few minutes tonight before work so I figured I'd post some pictures. School's going good so far, just a lot of work that's very time consuming. It's getting harder to balance all my time out. Colleen's doing well, her job is moving her from the VA to the Vets home next month, so she has a lot of work to do to make that transition. Silas is good, he's full of spunk and energy and general craziness, exactly how an almost 3 year old boy should be. We went to the zoo last weekend, which is something he always loves to do. We typically do two rounds of the zoo since he can't seem to look at each animal for more than 5 seconds at a time. We break after the first round and get ice cream or something then walk around the entire zoo again. He loves it. Well, that's about it, hope everyone is doing well.

This is our friend Julie's son Orion. They had a dance party one night at our house.

Wow it's been a long time!

So it's been a while. Summer went by way too fast and now that school's started, my free time has been very limited. But, the plus side of having two tests this past week has limited my homework for the weekend so I though I should post some pictures. We haven't been up to much. Colleen's searching for new work, her company has pending litigation in California so she's slowly losing her privileges at the VA Hospital which means that sooner or later, she most likely won't have a job. That's been a little stressful, but we'll see how things work out.

School's been going good, I have classes Monday-Friday but I don't go until 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I get home at 6pm on Wednesdays, so that allows me to have a little more time at home during the week, which has been really nice.

Silas is doing good, we're working on potty training but not much luck so far. He's completely potty trained at day care, but he just won't do it at home. It's kinda nice since we're not going through as many diapers. They have kid-size toilets at day care, so I think it's easier for him to do it there than it is at home with the seat on the normal sized one. I was joking with Colleen that we should just get a kid sized toilet installed in our bathroom at home and maybe that will help. He can also now reach the light switch in his room so getting him to bed has been a bit of a struggle lately, as he's always getting out of bed and turning his light and either playing with toys or reading books. He loves to help us cook, as you can tell from the photo below. Today we made cookies and he was so excited about them. When I asked him what he wanted for lunch he said, "Um...cookies?" We had dinner at our friend's Adam and Kelli's house tonight and brought some cookies with us and he just couldn't wait to eat some after dinner. He's quite the showoff, too, which I know Tim can attest to. He'll say "Watch this Unka Tim", then do some strange acrobat move then fall down. You would think he's starved for attention. We were playing in his room the other day and he was standing up on his bed then jumping down to the floor and he would say "Watch this, daddy, super jump!" It was pretty funny. Melanie gave us their trampoline, which has been awesome and allows him to do all sorts of fun tricks. Anyways, here are a few photos.

Here he is helping me make pizza one night for dinner.

The above photo was taken about 5 seconds before he attempted attack Colleen with the stick he has in his hands.

I got home from school Friday night and he and Colleen had made this cool track for his cars. He was so excited to show me that he wouldn't go to bed until I got home and saw it.

Hope everyone is doing well. If anyone's planning on coming for Thanksgiving and needs a hotel room, let me know. I've got the sweet connection. 

Silas is Two!

Hey all! We had a birthday party today for Silas' 2cd birthday. I made 7 pizzas, we bought a cake, and had a lot of Silas' friends (and some of ours, too) over. We had great time, and the weather was absolutely perfect. Silas had a lot of fun, especially after he got to eat some cake. There were three of his friends that came over that are right around his age, and they played and played and played. He got some cool presents, although he only really opened one of them before he was off running around again. That's the problem with having cake before presents. 

Everything with the house is going good. We're still trying to get unpacked, but a majority of the house is coming together. The garage is a disaster, but most of it is stuff that we'll sell when we have a garage sale in a few weeks. School's going well, only 3 weeks left now until summer break. I was hoping to take a couple of summer classes, but the only classes I need are only offered during the day so I'm unable to take any of them. Kind of sucks, but I also really want to have the summer free.

Anyways, I hope everyone's doing well, here are some pictures!

He had already grabbed the cake once, so while we sang "Happy Birthday" to him I had to hold his arms down, hence the dis-satisfied look on his face.

From left to right is Jack, Silas, and Uly. That's the box our lawnmower came in. They loved playing in it.

New House!

Hi all,

No pictures yet, but we closed on our house yesterday, and got the keys today. It's finally over...almost. We're moving tomorrow, so we still have a bit of stress that comes with that; but at least we don't have to worry about whether we're actually getting it anymore. Our total mortgage payments are lower than what we've been paying for rent, which is really awesome.

I'll post some pictures once we get all set up, but it might not be until next week before I get a chance to. Too much homework that I've got to focus on this week. Now that we've got the house, if people come for Thanksgiving at Mel's house we'll have a little bit of extra room to put some people up.

Hope everyone is doing good!