Milestones

Well, the last day of school has arrived. Here’s the bus stop crew getting on for the last day this school year.

The last day of school for the year. Bring on Summer!

We go to Shepherd of the Mountains church in Park City. Our Pastor (Pastor Steve) believes that first communion should come when ever the kids feel they’re ready. So after a quick class with Pastor Steve and a communion bread bake session, we decided to have the kids first communion come on Easter Sunday. The […]

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the kids except for the fact that Kari and I had a couple days alone, sans kids. We hiked Mt. Timpanogos to celebrate our 12th anniversary. We went during the Republican Shutdown of the government. The campgrounds were closed but we got lucky. The trailhead was open […]

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Thank goodness!

Here’s a few pics of getting ready for the first day of school. Tegan is back at Keystone Montessori and Tory is now in Kindergarten!

While we thought it took a long time to get to Tory’s first haircut, it was over three years until Tegan’s. But she’s a girl so it’s different, and she’s got her mom’s awesome thickness too. Not much was taken off so you can hardly tell, but apparently doing this makes hair healthy. Tory got […]

Tory has been asking all season if he could snowboard. We finally caved and rented one for the afternoon. I was hoping that he wouldn’t like it*, but turns out he really did. Even though he just rode heel edge all day, I was still amazed at how quickly he picked up the balance. Here’s […]

Very excited to post this about Tegan skiing on her own for the first time. Top to bottom on High Meadow all by herself. She’ll turn three in a week, but technically, she’s skiing on her own at two. My little girl.

I picked Tory up on Wednesday and his teacher, Miss Sylvie, asked him to tell me what he did today. Typical kid, he’s says something like, ‘What? I don’t know.’ Turns out he read his first two books. They’re Bob Books, Mat and Sam. Pretty simple of course, but Miss Sylvie was pretty excited, saying […]

Potty training is one of the milestones I’ve been looking forward to the most. With Tory we experienced a long, drawn out process that required much bribery in the form of ‘potty prizes’. It was never meant to be this way… we’d started him sitting on a mini potty from about 5 months and were […]

Big Milestones this week – one for Tegan that I’ll write more about later, and the big T rides his bike without training wheels! I’ve been bugging him for the last few weeks to let me take them off and he’d been reluctant. Then one day he asked me to take them off, so we […]

For Tory’s 4th birthday party (and Tegan’s by default – bad parent, bad parent), we decided to do a drop-off soiree at our house, with games and prizes and screaming uncontrolled kid frenzy. Luckily Brad decided to stick around and help control the chaos. Actually it turned out really well and the games all got […]

Perhaps we’re jumping the gun here, but Tegan is getting out of the crib and into a big girl bed. We switched out of a crib a bit early with Tory too, and it worked out fine. Last night was her first night and it went great. She slept through the night and I didn’t […]

My mom used to take a picture of us kids on the front steps of our house on the first day of school each year – so it’s only right that we get one of Tory on his first day of preschool. He’s been so excited to go, it’s fun to see the day finally […]

We should have done this at the beginning of the summer, but Tory finally has a big boys bike. Bought it brand new after failing to find a used one. You’d really think there would be more of these around. He’s been riding it every day since. He falls off quite often but gets right […]

I’ve been a little slack at keeping up with Tegan’s updates… perhaps it’s the second child syndrome? Anyway, Tegan has really come alive these last few months. She seemed to turn some corner right after her first birthday. She’s now walking and navigating stairs. And even though she hasn’t officially said her first word yet, […]

We started out by skiing with Tory between our legs, then graduated to using a harness with tethers, and now he’s moved beyond the tethers and is skiing solo. It’s been fun watching the progressions, and we can hardly wait until the day he can keep up with us. Ok, Tegan, you’re next!

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since pregnancy, hypno-birthing, and extreme infantude. But here we are, and Tegan is starting to show signs of becoming a little girl! Sure she’s always been a ‘girl,’ but I’ve come to calling her ‘little girl’ now instead of ‘baby.’ These are big steps. And speaking of […]

If there was one milestone I was looking forward to, this was it. It’s been over a month now, but Tory is now diaper free. Notice the ‘potty prize’ in his hand – A Matchbox garbage truck. I found it fitting.

We’ve been feeding her for about a month now, so here finally, are a few shots of the mess. Beware of the last one though, it may not be suitable for the weak stomached.

I’ve been giving Tory a gummy bear (organic of course) for sitting on the potty lately, and telling him he can have a pop if he poops. Well, I’m glad to say the boy got a pop today! I was going to take a picture of this historic event, but decided against it. Even if […]

Not 10 seconds before this image was taken, Tegan was on her back, arching and kicking, and then – boink! She rolled over. Keep up the good work girlie!

I’ve always heard that it’s best to keep your kids in a crib for as long as possible, until they can climb out on their own. This makes sense really, since once they’re in there, they can’t do much damage, except perhaps on your ear drums. So what would possess us to convert Tory’s crib […]

  On January 25 Tegan was baptized at Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church in Park City. Kari’s folks were in town so we thought it would be a good time to do it.

Happy birthday kid! This is a little late, but last week we celebrated Tory’s second birthday. Hard to believe. Especially with Tegan being here now, and so small and… infant like. It’s hard to believe that Tory was there once too. And now here he is, two years into his life, acting like a little […]

Here’s the initial public offering of Tegan… Avery! Hoffman. Pardon the pause and the exclamation point there, but it’s been up in the air for a while what her middle name was going to be. (Yes yes, daddy wins again). Mommy and baby are doing very well and the whole process went as perfectly as […]

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not at all. This was the way we most wanted to avoid. I sit holding the hand of my best friend, lying by my side, surrounded by a sea of blue. I stand up and watch as the surgeons, chatting about sumsuch, cut into a place I know […]