Skimboarding

At our reunion the beach house had a few skimboards and Chris helped show people how to do it, at least all he knows. This was his third time skimboarding... I think he's pretty good. Alec's favorite thing to do at the beach was stomp in all the shallow water. He is just the cutest thing ever.

Betteridge Blast 08

We had a marvelous Betteridge Reunion this past week. It was combined with my mom's extended Hardy family reunion on the Oregon coast. My parents rented two adjoining duplexes just a block or so from the beach. It was so fun to be all together, even though sicknesses seemed to hit just about every family. We had some nice meals, roasted hotdogs and smores on the beach, watched everyone else break the law and light fireworks off on the beach, went on bike rides, climbed the local, HUMONGOUS sand dune, watched movies and played games. Here are some pictures from our camera, and hopefully we'll soon get copies of pictures other people took, and I'll put a few more up later. Its good to be back home for a little bit, although I'm missing the cool Oregon weather now that its 99ish degrees here!

(this next one was at the top of the sand dune...and by the way, moments earlier in mid-climb I got my first bee sting ever... I didn't handle it very well)

Me and my sisters (plus my niece mary)

18 months old

Yesterday was Alec's 18 month birthday! To celebrate I'll share some recent alecisms with pictures and videos! So settle down and enjoy this tribute to the cutest boy ever (I need to say that as much as I can now, because in a few months there'll be a tie for that title.) This video shows Alec blowing his candle and a half out on his first try!

Physical Skills - Alec seems to have advanced climbing skills for his age. He can climb up rope ladders on playground with ease and stability. Within a few tries he learned to climb up and down the huge wooden rocking horse his uncle Edward made him. His physical abilities are constantly surprising us from his far/hard throws, golf swings, powerful kicks, to somersaults!


Food-Related Skills - Alec takes his food very seriously. He's already very good at feeding himself, whether with a spoon, fork or regular cup. He has a BIG appetite; sometimes eating 3 bowls of cereal in the morning and then drinks up his milk from his bowl, usually spill-less. He also hates to part with unfinished food (that he likes) even if he's practically asleep. Observe:

Affection - Alec LOVES to give kisses, especially to babies. He very gently gets as close as possible to their head without touching other parts of them and says "mmmmmmah!" right on the head. He loves to cuddle when we put him to bed, and can give hugs when he ask him. (Ok, so he actually just sort of sticks out his head and expects the receiver to do the hugging).

We love our little boy so much and enjoy all the ups and downs. At Thom's wedding he wore the cutest little tuxedo. We'll have to beg someone for pictures so we can show you him in all his tuxedo glory.

Utah

We drove out to Utah last week and have enjoyed lots of family time.  The drive was one of the best, Alec-wise, so far... a big thanks to his new quiet book.  I'll have to do a separate post about that book a little later.  Grandma and Grandpa Archibald watched Alec while Chris and I had a "night away" at a local bed and breakfast.  It was SO nice, and we are so grateful for their help.  Besides some fun Betteridge time with Jared/Ashley, Tiff/Todd, Jordan and families doing Chuck-e-cheese, swimming, dinner and a soccer game most of our time has been getting ready for Chris' brother's wedding.  Its fun to have something to work toward and get excited about. I love weddings. Chris' sister and her husband and 1 yr old daughter just arrived tonight and we're looking forward to playing with them.  We'll post some pictures soon, I'm sure we'll have lots after the wedding on Friday!

Gopher Wars

When we were assigned a garden plot that looked like it had already been lined with chicken wire we knew it was risky to trust it had been done properly. Gopher holes were found in our plot a month or so ago, and we realized it was just a matter of time. After a few attempts to prevent from further "above ground attacks" we realized the problem went deeper. Re-lining our plot was the only option and we felt pressed for time as we wanted to keep as many of our plants as possible. Last Saturday we reserved the ENTIRE day to digging out our plot to re-line it. Thanks to our good friend, Peter's help, we got it all done in 1 day, although it literally took the whole day.

Chris was in charge of this project and did an exceptional job: finding the best prices for the wire, deciding on the best way to sew it together and thinking through each step. After all has been said and done, between the gophers and the transplanting here is the unhappy death toll: over half our broccoli plants, our 2 cucumber plants, all our pea plants, 1 bean plant, our 1 squash plant, and our watermelon. Which leaves us our tomato plants (which are starting to look yellow...), 2 strawberry plants, and 1 bean plant. Peter set up his camera to take pictures every 2 minutes so we could put together a little time warp slide show thing of the whole garden process. Once we get it we'll put it on here. This is the only picture we took with our camera, it's of Chris getting the dimensions right on our wire lining.

But until then, enjoy this cute video we took of Alec yesterday. He is getting so much older! We were trying to capture both his after dinner look, and his incessant babbling but he stopped babbling when the camera turned on. Everything after (and including) "computer" we've never asked him to say before it was just fun to see him try.

Baby #2

Many of you know, we're expecting another baby! What many of you do NOT know is that our baby is going to be a boy! Alec will certainly LOVE to have a brother to play with. He's already super interested in babies and other children... always frantically waving and sitting as close as possible to (or on) them. We're very excited and can hardly wait to add this newest addition to our family sometime around October 21st.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to my sweet Christopher. It was his birthday, almost a whole week ago. Alec and I tried hard to make it a special day and had a LOT of fun doing just that. It started off great, with Alec letting us sleep in an extra 45 min for some reason. Then when Chris was at a research meeting, Alec and I surprised him with cookies! He came home early and we opened presents: a bike pant holder, 2 shirts, a pair of shorts, sandals and some socks and.... a Bocce Set! Then some good friends watched Alec and fed him dinner while Chris and I went out to dinner. We tried this local mexican restaurant where the prices were average and the food was great. Afterwards we came home to have a party with some good friends and had cupcakes and a surprise, home-made strawberry cream cheese vanilla ice cream cake. Chris deserved every bit of fun since he is so wonderful. He works hard at school, but makes time for us, and helps me out all the time. He's the best father and the best husband. I'm so lucky, and so in love. Enjoy the pictures!

Alec helping me make the cake!
Opening presents...
Family birthday picture
The cake.