Isaac's Birthday, Mother's Day, and Learning how to sneeze

So my little Isaac is officially 3 years old!! I can't believe it.  He is growing up too fast.  On Friday we took him to the mall to get his 3 year old pictures taken.  We got him a new shirt to wear for the pictures, and while I was helping him try it on in the dressing room, he looked in the mirror and said, "I have brown eyes, just like mommy!"  It's so fun to watch your kids grow and learn and make realizations about themselves.    Here are a few pictures from his big day:

Isaac got some new sidewalk chalk!!  

Also some markers, and coloring books.  I especially liked this one, as we've had a few marker incidences lately, and these ones only draw on the special paper  :)  

New shirt #2!   Had we opened the package earlier, we probably wouldn't have bothered buying him a new shirt the day before.  But it's probably for the best, this kid's grown out of most of his other shirts, so another shirt is exactly what he needed.  And dang, it looks good on him too!

                               

Spiderman Isaac!!!!  He absolutely loves this costume.  The kid's been a bit obsessive about Spiderman lately.  Isaac spent the day dancing and singing "Spiderman Isaac Spiderman Isaac, does whatever a Spiderman Isaac can...."  He's not so fond of the mask though, a bit to claustrophobic for him I guess

So we tried it on Luke!  Luke didn't like it either.  I had approximately 1 second to take this picture, before he tore it off.  You can see the blur of his hand yanking it off.  I guess I don't blame him.  I almost got a cute picture though  :)

Isaac trying to play with his new golf set.  He's got a bit of practicing to do

And of course a ball.  Sorry mom, we didn't get a good picture of him with your present.  we took a video, but it cuts off too early.    He also got an airplane that can be taken apart and put together with that tool you see sitting on the table in this picture.  And I have to say, he absolutely LOVES it.  He just sits around trying to unscrew and screw that plane all day.    He got a few more knick knacks from brad and I, and those books. Overall, this kid made quite the haul.  He had a pretty awesome birthday.

It's tiring being Spiderman, taking a little rest.  Spiderman glasses were also a new birthday present.  (sorry the pic is upside down)

We wanted to get Isaac a Spiderman cake, but they said they didn't have one over the phone.  So we ordered a Thomas cake.  When Brad went to pick it up, they had a Spiderman cake on display.  Oh well... Thomas is cool too.  

And you can't go wrong with chocolate.  Isaac told me he wanted a "brown" cake.  That must be my child.

Luke enjoyed his birthday pizza and cake as well.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was amazing as well.  My boy's took care of me!  :)   Next year I get to share the day with Isaac for his birthday. 

Here are a few pictures of Isaac a Luke making some masterpieces to mail off to Grandma Larson and Udell.

Luke was a little more interested in trying to eat the paint then paint with it.  So handprints was mostly what he contributed.


And finally, what you've all been waiting for...... The cutest video you'll see in a while.  Luke thought it was HILARIOUS when Isaac would pretend to sneeze.  Of course it was better before I pulled out the camera.  Isaac sneezed a little better, and Luke had a heartier laugh. That's how it always it, by the time the camera comes out, the performance is over. But then Luke started sneezing himself.  SO CUTE You just have to watch..

2012

2012 is attempting to be the most exciting and eventful year ever.  Thinking back on your life, what year do you consider to be the greatest ever?  For the old people in my family, it was probably 1984 I'm guessing.  For the old people in Amy's family It was definitely 1987.  However for me, I'm thinking that I like 2012 the most for the following reasons:

Curtis and Marcie were married and sealed in the temple

Brittany and Bagie will have their baby and make me an Uncle

My brain grew 2 sizes larger during the hardest semester of my life

Isaac turned 3 (yay no more terrible 2's) Luke turned 1 (yay no more babies)

Quynn and Chelsea are having their baby and giving our kids a cousin

Camber and Allison had their baby, giving our kids their first 2nd cousin on the Larson side

Went to 6 Flags! Our FIRST EVER family vacation

Tegucigalpa, Honduras Temple will finally be finished after 6 years of "construction"

and the most important thing of them all (no offense)

The Hobbit-An Unexpected Journey will debut

I've no doubt that other big events will be added to this list that have yet to happen.  Did I forget anything?

Now here's some photos that I wanted to add that are related to our last blog.

At six flags their water park just had opened that day and so there were lots of half naked people walking around the park. Luke decided he wanted to get a little scandalous too.

It was HOT... well not too bad, but hot enough to make you sweat like crazy.  Isaac, who HATES drinking water  (he usually demands milk or juice during a meal)

 found it for the first time in his life to be rather refreshing. He wanted MORE so I took this pic.

This one is for Grandma Udell. It's a giant statue of a naked guy in the middle of the San Antonio. I'm sure Grandpa Bob would've taken a better picture, but I thought I'd make an attempt

Now this is something.  This is the greatest gas station... a glorified version of a gas station... how can I best describe it?  If Haiti is a 3rd world country, the USA is a 1st world country, then this would represent the gas station of a 1/3 country, one that is so great it doesn't yet exist.

Plus it has the greatest public restroom I've ever used.  They even provided cleansing foam in each stall to sanitize the seat with.

Caught them reading books together. No, they're not just making a mess, they really are looking at pictures in the books they have selected.

Luke is SO BIG. Not only is he standing up and showing off, but do you recognize those clothes?  They both used to be worn by Isaac. (Actually the shirt was worn by Isaac last week and I just decided it was too small for him) Do you recognize the shirt yet? Scroll up and check out Isaac drinking that water... :-)  

Isaac is 3 years old this Saturday!! We'll see all you Utahn's in a couple weeks too as we come to celebrate Ada's 0 birthday and Luke's 1st.

San Antonio

This is Amy, With Brad out of school, we decided we should celebrate by going to San Antonio, and Six Flags.  We also went for Isaac's birthday.    We started the trip off on Friday, arriving in San Antonio around 3.  After checking in to our hotel, we decided to go check out the River Walk.  I can now say that the mall connected to the River Walk is my new all time favorite mall!  The River Walk was beautiful, and it was fun seeing downtown San Antonio.  Afterwards we decided to drive up to the temple.  It was fun driving towards the temple, and finally seeing hills and valleys again.  Houston is so flat, you almost forget how much more you can see when there are hills involved.  The temple is placed at the top of a huge hill, with a beautiful view of the land below.  It was such a fun night!  That night Luke was overtired (we didn't try and get him to sleep until 10:30) and had a hard time going to sleep.  It's hard anyways staying in a hotel all in one room, in a weird bed.  After a couple hours, Luke finally got to sleep.  In order to get the cheapest hotel, we were left with a room with only a King size bed.  So Isaac went to sleep with me and Brad.  It was too bad.  I just got kicked and punched a few times throughout the night.  Over all I didn't get the best night's sleep.  At least Luke STAYED asleep til about 6:30.  When Saturday came, it was Six Flags day!!!!  It was so fun seeing Isaac ride a bunch of rides for the first time.  His first ride was a teacup spinny ride.  He loved it.  His second ride was an Airplane ride.  It went around in circles, and if you pushed the button, you'd go up high.  I was with him, and it was fun going up high, until after a couple minutes, Isaac decided it was too scary to be up high.  He made me go back down, and he got SO made at me for pushing the button for a second after that.  From that point on, there was no way of getting that kid on a ride that went up in the air.  After that Brad went on the Kiddie roller coaster with him.  That was a bit too scary for Isaac's tastes as well.  He was a good sport, but he sure didn't want to ride it again.  After a few more calm kiddie rides, I took him on a "rattlesnake rapids" type ride, called the "gully washer" at Six Flags.  He was barely tall enough to ride it.  There were actually quite a few rides he was barely tall enough to ride, but if he couldn't handle the kiddie coaster, there's no way he'd enjoy the bigger rides.  So I took him on the "Gully Washer" prepared with the idea that he may get mad at me for it.  I told him it was a boat ride, and that he'll probably get wet on it.  (This kid can't handle it when he gets water in his eyes in the bathtub).  We got on, and I gave him my sunglasses so that water wouldn't get in them as easily.  By the end of the ride, Isaac had ended up crying a couple times, but I think he was still glad he rode it.  Of course he didn't want to ride that one again either though  :)  I did protect him from most of the water so I ended up really soaked.    Brad and I rode a couple of the big roller coasters.  Luckily they have a parent swap rule there, so we only had to stand in line once for the both of us.   One of the last rides we rode was the Scooby Doo ride.  By this point both kids were grumpy and done.  But they both ended up LOVING the ride.  We were lucky they let Luke on, because technically he's supposed to be able to walk.  Luke enjoyed holding the gun (one of those rides that you shoot stuff).  That ended up being one of my favorite, simply because our whole family got to ride it together.  It'll be so fun when our whole family is big enough to ride all the rides together.  By about 6 o clock our kids had had enough, so we decided to go home.  That evening we went swimming in the hotel pool.  Isaac didn't have any interest in swimming so he just watched us.  By the time we were almost done, he decided he wanted to swim after all, but the water wasn't very warm, and it was cooling down outside too, so I knew he'd hate it.   Maybe next time he'll be more willing to swim with us since he didn't get his chance.  That night, Luke went to sleep much easier.  But then around 2 am, he decided he didn't want to sleep anymore.  I put him in bed with us, and he rolled all around trying to get comfy for a long time.  a couple times he seemed to be asleep, but then he'd start rolling again.  Isaac was a champ, and slept through all his whining, and rolling (even though Luke was basically rolling all over him, as he was in the middle.  All this time, I couldn't really sleep, or else Luke would roll off the bed.  It also didn't help that one of our neighboring hotel residents was just getting home and slamming their door open and shut, shouting at each other, then blasting their TV for a couple hours  Luke slept off and on until around 6, then he was done trying to sleep.  So not the most restful night.  I have no idea how some parents can co-sleep with their children on a regular basis.  It sure doesn't work for us!

Brad here: It's actually really hilarious to discover how crazy our two boys sleep. They practically require a wall to prop up their arms and legs. Luke is especially crazy because for no reason he'll sit up suddenly and then tip over backwards where his legs used to be, he'll do these 180's 5 times or more a night.  Isaac really does flail his arms around, I woke up with him slapping my pillow and then later my face. Finally just pushed him out of reach (sorry amy).  Oh and we can't forget the occasional Rhino Head Butt that Isaac would surprise us with as we'd hear this BANG as he rammed into the bed head board.  Are all babies this crazy? Judging that Luke and Isaac are similar I'm guessing Isaac's slept this crazy all his life. Thank goodness we have him away in his own room so we can sleep in peace. . . Well at least so Amy can sleep in peace.  You see, I actually slept pretty good last night. Why? because I'm used to it. We all know where Luke and Isaac get their midnight kicking and whacking tendencies.  Maybe now Amy will believe me about how crazy she is :-)

Amy again:  Hey, Brad, you slept just fine because I was the one taking care of the baby. Your welcome for keeping the baby quiet so you could sleep.  :)  For the record, I am a very calm sleeper.  Brad's lying about the the kicking and whacking.

Anyways, last but not least, we decided to stop by at The Alamo before we drove home.  You can't go to San Antonio and not go right?  Especially if you've never been there.  Brad summed it up nicely by saying it was "San Antonio's Temple Square"  A few historical things to look at surrounded by beautiful gardens and pathways.  

This video is hilarious, as mentioned earlier Isaac got really mad at me for pushing the "up" button in the airplane.  Brad caught it on camera  :)

At the River Walk

Here Isaac gazes off at the Ferry boat/gondolas whatever they are that tour down the river walk past all the yummy smelling restaurants.

More River Walk

Look here! A temple with a big golden Moroni! Also there's 3 Incandescent street lights illuminating long-red wavelengths and the beautiful white moon which reflects the equally distributed broadband white wavelengths of the sun. (A Brad description)  :)

  The San Antonio temple had beautiful stained glass windows all over.

I love this little boy!

Our hotel had a Texas waffle maker!

Luke at Breakfast

And cute little Isaac

Six Flags!!!

I think Isaac's official favorite ride was the "choo choo" train

Merry Go Round

Our family in front of The Alamo

Oh yeah, and Luke likes to practice his standing up skills now!  If only he could have walked by the trip, they would have let him on a bunch more rides. 

School's OUT

WELCOME SUMMERTIME!

I, Brad have officially finished the Spring Semester of school for this year. It was officially the toughest semester of my life.  My brain has grown two sizes bigger.  It was such a scary/hard semester I was beginning to worry that the world would come to an end a little early this year.  I think that there were at least 8-10 weeks where I would leave for school at 5:45am and not get home till 9:30pm, not seeing our little boys one bit every single day except for Wednesdays and Sundays.  I grew to miss my family and my family sure missed me.  Isaac even started to treat me like a grandparent he loved and missed me so much!  Amy has definitely been sharing the burden, although I've been tortured with brain killers Amy's been tortured with being a single mother at home with 2 and sometimes 3 crazy little boys.  We're all so glad this semester is now only a dark memory in our past.

And so now it's summer time and we can party! Right?  Well... we partied friday and saturday, but on Sunday morning Brad picked up Isaac and tossed him into the air for fun.  He regretted it the moment Isaac came back down, as he felt his back stabbing with pain.  He fell to the ground and found out that moving was no longer part of his free agency.  They all went to church anyways, Brad hoping that he'd  start to feel better after half an hour. But now it's Monday night and he's still unable to sit up straight without being in pain.  So part of me wants to say, "oh drat! how unlucky we are to have our only free time ruined." but another wiser part of me says, "oh goodness we are so lucky to have this debilitating injury during the only time of the year where it won't affect school."

But anyways we're sure hoping that my back pain will heal by Saturday cause that's when we have our hotels booked for San Antonio and Six Flags!  Either way we're totally going even if it means Amy has to push all three of us boys around in strollers.

Besides this little mishap where Brad gets to learn about the joint pain that he's already studied in school, life is pretty great!  We've been in Houston for about 2 years now can you believe it? That's a whole mission long! We only have one more mission left to serve before we can once again move forward in life.  We can't wait to graduate, set up a practice and start paying back our student loans and start paying taxes! Whahoo!  But even though it's been a tuff two years I think that deep down we're loving it. We love our ward, we actually feel sad that we missed church kinda like we walked out of a good movie. Yes our ward is that cool.  And we love our cheap little house and we love our two boys and we love the suspense of the incoming hurricane season where 4 out of 5 Houstonians predict that we'll get a hurricane this year. Oh for FUN!

The moral of the story is that even though life is tuff and hard, life is beautiful and even though it's full of thorns and stress and health problems, well hey at least it's suspenseful, and slightly interesting. You can't complain much as long as you live in America that's for sure.  We feel just so blessed with every day. It's wonderful to be able to see my family again. I hope I don't have to spend any more semesters away from them as much as this past semester. The boys are growing up so fast. By this time next month Luke will certainly be walking. Oh and guess what? We finally have a tooth!  One has finally erupted out of the bottom of his mouth. Actually more like one and a half! You can totally see the one next to it is breaking through! 

The last month or so...

Since we haven't posted many pictures lately, I found just a couple to stick up. I guess I've been filming videos more then taking pictures, so I compiled some the the recent videos together for your viewing pleasure.

Luke is still toothless and all gums, maybe he'll make it to his 1st birthday with no teeth? Guess we'll see!

I like to take pictures of my kids sleeping- they are just so peaceful and beautiful.

Although Luke had obviously been drooling.... :)
And here is a sample of my everyday life.

Easter Egg Hunt

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, so there you have it: :) Sorry it's a little long, but I figured the fam back in Utah would enjoy the unedited version. -edited to add- I guess the reason the movie is so long is actually because I totally messed it up. You see a few parts twice. Just fast forward a bit :)-

Busy Brad

Easter Saturday: Brad and Amy went to Choir practice and the choir director had transposed some music especially for Brad to sing. It was a solo. She had lowered it by 3 full steps so that the high notes were only C's above the Bass Clef. Although Brad may talk like a tenor, he sings bass best. This solo turned out to be pretty much the most challenging and scariest thing he's ever done in his life. The last time he'd done something this scary was back in March of 2004 when his trainer told him to convince this strange man he'd never met to let them teach the gospel to his wife... and do it all in spanish without any help. Well that was 8 years ago so hopefully this stresses the amount of stress Brad went through in singing.

And then last Sunday Brad gave a 35 minute sacrament meeting talk. He loved the topic (super powers) aka Spiritual Gifts, and the congregation loved the talk too. Like for serious, Brad made sure that nobody fell asleep the WHOLE TIME. After sacrament meeting he taught the teenagers in Sunday school which he also feels like it was a success and then in Priesthood Brad was challenged to play chubby bunnies. After only shoving 5 Peeps into his mouth he started to gag and quickly spit them out and lost the contest before he puked. So through and through it was quite the busy Sunday (not to mention an hour of after church choir practice and 2 hours of Home Teaching.)

And then on Monday Final Exams begin.

I (Brad) have often complained about how difficult school is to you. Well. 1st year 1st semester was very very difficult. It was the first time that I had ever taken 21 credit hours. I barely made it out of that alive. The 1st year 2nd semester was the same difficulty, and so naturally that means that I felt like it was easier! I had become accustomed to the difficulty. Then I hit 2nd year 1st semester and became acquainted with Pharmacology. For those of you who may consider Optometry school to being inferior to Medical school, I'll have you know that in our curriculum at the University of Houston, we attack Pharmacology so heavily that we're able to cover 2 semesters of medical school pharmacology in this single semester. It's so intense that I studied just this class for an average of 3 hours a day... neglecting my other classes and I barely made a C in the class.

Now we're finishing up 2nd year 2nd semester. The half way point. The semester that finally attacks pathology of the eye now that I've got a strong base of physiology and pathology and pharmacology of the whole body. And this semester has kicked my butt. Namely 3 reasons. 1 Ocular Pharm is a class equally as hard as last years Pharmacology. Add to that Ocular Pathology where I learn to Dx Tx and Rx. (diagnose, treat and prescribe) This class is equal in difficulty to pharm so that makes this semester a double whammy. And then on top of it all I'm working in clinic pretending I'm a doctor once a week with an attending (supervising doctor) who picks at my mistakes and freaks out on me whenever she OD's on coffee.

Needless to say I'm excited for this semester of heck to be finished. Curtis and Marcies wedding was beautiful and wonderful and worth every second but it kinda affected a test I took right after getting home... got a bad grade and I'm currently failing by 1% my Ocular Pathology class. Now to be very humble, I actually know more about ocular pathology than the majority of my class mates but I tested worse then most all of them.

So here we are with Finals week just beginning today. And I know I've complained before... trying to recruit a little pity my way... but if there was ever a time for you all to add me to one of your prayers, now might be the best time to do so. If I don't improve my grade in Ocular Path, and if I don't pass my Ocular Pharm finals then there's no doubt about it, We'll be living in Houston for and entire Extra year, putting us back until 2015. We really really do NOT like the sound of that and so please pass along some of your little miracles our way and we'd really appreciate it.

And yes, if I pass this semester, it's all down hill (besides the dreaded National Board Exam) but at least that exam won't hold me back a year!! And if I pass these classes then we are gonna Celebrate like crazy!!

Love yall

-Brad