The Beach

Last Saturday we decided our family outing was going to be to the beach. We've been in Chicago for over three years now and not once have we been. I've often heard people talking about their day at the beach thought it sounded fun. We knew Carter would love it. What little boy doesn't love dirt and water as far as the eye can see. I wasn't quite sure how things were going to go with Austin. He's not content to just sit and watch anymore and he's a taster. This kid will put anything in his mouth! By 11 o'clock we were out the door. We went to the beach on 31st Street. When we got there there was just a small handful of people around so we found a nice clean patch of sand and set our stuff out. Carter and Zach went straight for the water with the toys we'd brought and started to build and dig. I fed Austin his lunch while he sat in his stroller but as soon as I was finished he wanted out. I set him down on the towels we'd spread out and of course he immediately started to move toward Zach and Carter. As soon as his hands hit the sand he stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't move for 15 seconds (that's a long time for him). Then he started to push his hands farther into the sand. He sat up and let the sand run through his fingers and there he was for a few minutes just sifting sand through his little fingers. Then it seemed he decided he wasn't ready to venture too far into this strange new ground cover and we played on the towels for a while. When I took him down to the waters edge by Zach and Carter we think he liked it. It was kind of hard to tell because he just kept grunting and we weren't sure if it was a happy grunt or an, "I'm about to cry" grunt. He liked to stand on the wet sand and wiggle his toes so the sand covered his feet. Carter ended up soaking wet and covered in sand. He had a blast. I think Carter's favorite part was when he dropped his bowl and a wave of water caught it pulling it away from him and then bringing it back in to him. He played that game for at least 15 minutes. Eventually Austin decided he was sick of being confined to the small square of towels that he was on and just took off across the beach. It was pretty funny. We all had a lot of fun and may find ourselves back there again this weekend. We only have so many warm days left.

Believe it or not, I remembered to take the camera with us on our outing and even took pictures. I'll put them on as soon as I figure out how.

Brooke Fraser Concert

On Friday September 12th I woke up after a night of very little sleep. Austin had come down with a cold during the night and had been up with a stuffy nose at least once every hour. Yeah, it was a long night of he and I sleeping on the living room floor. Both of the boys had been grumpy Wednesday and Thursday so after Thursday evening I was definitely not a ray of sunshine Friday morning as i made breakfast. Zach came up behind me and gave me a hug asking what was wrong. I told him and he said, "I have a surprise for you. Would that help?" I grumpily responded, "It depends on the surprise." He proceeded to place two tickets for the Brooke Fraser concert at the House of Blues in front of me. Big surprise!! And yes it helped.

Now, I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "Who's Brooke Fraser?". She's a musician who's CD I bought 4 years ago when I was on a trip to Tonga, Australia, and New Zealand. I bought it as a souvenir for Zach (we were dating). We really liked the CD and her song Arithmetic is "our song". We weren't sure we'd ever hear more of her songs until recently we found her on iTunes. That's how Zach found out she was coming to do a tour in the states. He'd had the tickets for over a month without me even knowing. The concert was Wednesday the 17th and we had a blast. Huge thanks to Shaun and Dianna for watching the boys for us. All of the songs she did were from her newest CD so when the whole band walked off the stage I told Zach that I had hoped she would sing our song. Neither of us thought that would happen but when she came back out for an encore that's the first song she did. That just topped it all off. Thanks Zach for the wonderful surprise!!

Google her guys, she's great!

Joining the Blogging community

Well, I've finally done it. I started a blog. I hope no one is expecting too much because I'm not promising a lot. I have no idea how often I'll get updates posted and lets face it words are not my forte. That being said, here we go...

We are the Holmsteads.

ZACH just graduated from University of Chicago Law School, took the Utah Bar this summer, and is currently clerking for Judge Frank Easterbrook here in Chicago. His Clerkship will last a year and then we're not exactly sure what we're going to do. We may go straight back to Salt Lake and work for Jones Waldo or we may stay and work somewhere here in Chicago for a few years. We don't know. He really enjoys his job and I'm loving the 9-5 hours he's working. Way better then the crazy law school hours we've had the last three years.

MELISSA I'm a stay at home mom to our two boys, Carter (almost 3) and Austin (7 months). My days are filled with keeping Carter entertained, Austin out of trouble, and the housework somewhat caught up. I also try to squeeze in some time to work on one of my many projects. Right now I'm trying to finish sewing my Christmas stockings and learning to tat. There's always a lot going on and never a dull minute.

CARTER loves cars, trucks, firetrucks, cement trucks, anything with wheels basically and to "play" games. Here's how Carter plays a game.
Step 1: pick a game out of the game closet
Step 2: empty out all of the pieces, move them around a bit and tell everyone else playing how to move them around
Step 3: tell whoever is playing with him (usually mom or dad) to pick it up while he goes to pick out the next game he wants to play
Carter learns quickly and is doing really well with Russian. (Zach only speaks in Russian with the kids so that they'll know two languages.) It's really cool to be at a point where he can speak it back and his pronunciation is getting better too.

AUSTIN does not hold still. He is quite the little mover and shaker. He now stands himself up on or against everything and anything. He is such a happy kid. He squawks when he's got himself stuck somewhere(under the stroller, for example), or when he's hungry/tired. Most other times he's totally content. His love for moving has made nap time and bed time a bit of a challenge. He'll be exhausted but as soon as I lay him in his bed he's up crawling and then standing before I've left the room. I end up repeatedly going in to lay him back down until he's too tired to get up.

Well, that's the Holmsteads in a nut shell.