Week in review

Obviously from the lack of posts, this week has been a mix of crazy busy and super slow.
Here's the run down:
- Chris got his bike all cleaned and tuned up. He also went to a bike maintenance class to learn how to do everything. This Houston humidity has been a killer on the bike.
- Nathan is closer to walking, he took a couple of steps today, but still doesn't really want to yet which is ok by me.
- We've received some huge financial blessings- I don't know if this is really the place to talk about it because of everyone's personal feelings on the subject, but I will anyways :) (that's the beauty of having your own blog right?) We found out last Friday that we were approved for food stamps. This is an amazing blessing as we have been watching our school loans increase exponentially. On top of Nathan being on Medicaid and WIC, we feel so grateful for the assistance (and we are excited for the day when we will no longer need it because we'll have a real job!...only 2 more years!) Getting the food stamps has taken a lot of work and patience, but after months of filling out forms, waiting, filling out more forms, filling out forms that have been lost, and spending hours on the phone with caseworkers, district supervisors, and regional office staff, we've finally got in- now we get to reapply in 3 months :) We really feel so blessed- we've been praying and worrying about our finances and we now feel as though we are better in control of how much money we are taking out in loans- this has been such a relief to us to have a little less debt.
- Nathan and I went to a fun Valentines day party with the mother's group. Nathan had a blast running all over the gym with his walker thingie chasing the bigger kids. I had fun talking to the moms.
- I made, frosted, and packaged dozens of cookies for a bake sale at school...all of my cookies sold...go me :)
- Chris went gone to choir and is almost done with his home teaching (this time the home teaching appointment was under an hour- much less than the last time which was about 2 hours!)
- I made dinner for two families in our ward- one of the guys was hit by a car and the other family just had someone try to break into their house (crazy story...the wife was holding the door and lock while yelling at the guy breaking in to go away...gotta love Houston)
- We tried to get to the children's museum, but we decided to celebrate the long weekend we're going as a family tomorrow.
- We took a quick lunch break with Chris to the zoo- I love that the Zoo/Park is right across the street from Baylor. (and since we have free admission I don't feel the need to go for hours at a time making it much more enjoyable!)
-It rained almost all week- so no walks :(
-I keep practicing my practically nonexistent photography skills. I am learning to use the manual mode with greater confidence, and someday I will get photoshop :)
- Chris totally rocked his last patient write-up (he goes and visits a patient and writes a big long paper about everything)...97%! (best grade in the class)
- I worked out...once :( At least that's more than last week :)
-We set the date for Nathan's FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!! I can't believe he's almost a year old! His friend Caitlin is only 5 days older so we're going to celebrate together with her. Any ideas for a boy/girl first birthday? Hmm...I'll have to keep thinking.

And that's it- I can't think of anything else. Here's some recent pictures of Nathan :)

"walking" with dad

story time- he loves to read books now- it's fun to sit and read together

we were rolling the tennis ball back and forth- who knew it was such a fun game?

just being cute )

after cleaning up breakfast I came out into the family room to see him turning on the tv :)