First Tooth and Fun in the Sun

We've been having a lot of fun in the Lamas household lately! Sarah has let me watch her kids a couple of times in the past 2 weeks, and we've had a blast. Her kids are SO good, I actually look forward to babysitting them. Unfortunately, we were so busy having fun that I didn't get pictures of anything except this last time, when we went to the park.

Mason and Aidan were climbing all over everything like monkeys:

And Haley played in the "General Store" area with some new-found friends - I love how kids can be friends immediately just because they're in the same place at the same time. :)

Sam had fun hanging out with me and watching his cousins

Sam and his cousins get along so great, they love him and he loves them. They even break from their playing to come hang out

After the playground we hit the swings, which were a hit with everyone

Can you tell Sammy loves the swings?

We took a walk up the trail in the park. They have all these little exercise stopping points and everyone of course had to try each one. Here's Team Eddy at the push-ups stop:

We even get all of both families together every once in a while and have a little fun:

My favorite part is Sam looking at all of us going "hey! those are mine!" :)

This week Paul had a short 2-day break so we took advantage of the gorgeous 75-degree weather and went to Zuma Beach. It was SO much fun! I love, love, love the beach and we haven't been to one during the day in the whole time we've lived here! Freaking tragic. It was so nice to get out in the sand and the sunshine. However, the water was freezing, so Sammy did NOT like it. We let a couple waves crash over his feet and he just started bawling.

Paul and I each went out in the water for a while, and once our bodies were numb it was really nice. :) I got out there and all of a sudden there was a school of dolphins like 100 feet away from me! It was so cool! I thought to myself "how cool would it be if they came over here and I got to touch them?" At that moment, I felt something brush my leg and freaked out. It ended up being seaweed, and I decided that maybe I wasn't quite ready for up-close-and-personal dolphin touching. :)

One thing Sam did love, though, was sitting in the sand and the sun. I hate to say it, but a fistful of sand did find its way into his mouth - he's so quick! Notice the new Spiderman toy that daddy bought Sam, he loves it. Good thing, he might've been disowned if he didn't. :)

Haha, we don't have a beach umbrella yet so we improvised with my awesome pink Gerber daisy umbrella that moms got for me. :)

My boys are so cute.

In other Sammy news, he got his first tooth! I tried over and over again to get pictures earlier, but it's pretty impossible - you can see I had to get both hands in there to get this one. He's been mildly cranky during the day and having lots of trouble sleeping at night, but no significant fevers and on the whole not too bad. I think I see the tooth next to this one rearing its head; if it decides to come up I'll get another picture. He's not quite crawling; he's got everything working but always plants his head so he can't go forward, haha. He has figured out how to kind of reach-and-pull, like a little monkey, so he's officially mobile. Several times I've left him for a minute and come back to him 3 feet away from where I left him.

The house search continues to be long and frustrating. We found the perfect condo, that we dubbed "the golden condo" in a quiet little area of our complex. It's got a lot of cosmetic surgery to undergo, but the location is awesome. The condo was in escrow but the buyer wasn't coming up with the documentation the bank needed, so it was going to fall through. We went ahead and put in an offer before escrow closed so it would be on the table if escrow fell through. The buyer got her documentation in at the very last minute, but there was a problem with it, so they gave her 24 hours to fix it. She again got it in at the very last minute, so we thought it was done. Then we heard from our realtor today that there's another problem and it still may fall through, but we won't know more until Thursday.

Our other option was to buy the condo we're living in now, but we discovered that with the FHA loan that we have we can't buy a newly purchased home withing 90 days of it being purchased and the new owner isn't willing to wait the 90 days. We do have some other options open that are doable, but it really is a frustrating process. Pray for us. :)

Here are some more pictures of Sam to close, since he always makes a happy ending. :)

love,
mary