Another update

Jude:

7 months old. 16.4 lbs. 25% for height and weight and 85% for head circumference.

Jude is doing much better lately. He's pretty much done taking his prevacid and only has an occasional barf (usually on other people's couches and more than you can imagine...) His impetigo is pretty much under control with the occasional use of an antibiotic cream and his rash is under control with the use of zyrtec. He is still the happiest baby on the block and is so funny. He is starting to learn to sit up and scooting around getting ready to crawl. He is in the process of transitioning out of the swaddler for sleeping. He is starting to get more RED hair and his favorite food is sweet potatoes.

Carter:

3 years 3 months old. 28 lbs. 37.5 inches tall. On the chart for weight and that's all that matters.

Carter is so stinking funny lately. After our trip to California last week he seems to have really come out of his shell. Now he will play on a playground if he knows we can see him and actually wander a little. He tells jokes and makes up lyrics to songs (my favorite is "Hey Carter" which he thinks is a Beatles song.) He loves He-man, his cousins, waffles, taking baths, writing words and reading. The biggest and best Carter news is that he is POTTY TRAINING!!! We've had 2 days without any accidents!! Yahoo! He enjoyed seeing all his family in California but the highlight of the trip for his was Charlie Brown. Any time we had an hour to spend we pulled out our Peanuts map and found as many as we could. He loved it and we enjoyed looking like tourists.

Dave:

31 years old on Tuesday. 215 lbs (that's 35 less than the beginning of the year!)

Dave has made some big changes to his future plans. He is now pursuing a bachelors degree in City Planning and then will enter the accelerated masters program in Architecture. It should take him about 4 years to finish school but this will make him more marketable and actually speed up the process considerably. We recently took a financial greatness class offered through my work and are now feeling much better about our future. The picture of Dave up above was the first step we took towards getting out of debt. We are both very excited to make this happen and control our money rather than the other way around. Dave has also been called to teach Elder's Quorum at church and he loves it. He also enjoys the challenge of being a stay at home Dad and has been great with the first days of potty training. He has recently been doing most of the cooking and is realizing how good he is at it and how much he enjoys it.

Brook:

27 years old next Saturday. 129.5 lbs (UNDER 130 BABY!!! 35.5 lbs down!)

I've obviously been doing stuff since our blog has pretty much been abandoned. I spend a lot of my time doing our food blog and planning our meals. I know I do more than that these days but I just can't remember. Ok, let's see... I work. I exercise. I blog about food. I spend time with my boys. I watch the Bachelorette. Oh, here's something. I have recently decided to change my educational goals as well. I usually come up with one crazy future career after another and most of the time I end up returning to my goal to be a special ed teacher but I think I may have actually found one that will stick. I want to go to school to become a Nutritionist. It's something I am really interested in, have some basic knowledge in and could still be helping people. Sadly I have to wait until Dave is done and both boys are in school to even start but I am determined to complete more than just "some college" for those times when my children are asked about their mother's level of education.

That's us right now. It seems like in the previous months we had a bit of a dark cloud looming over our house but now things seem to be looking up. Everyone is mostly in a good place and we are all hoping to stay healthy for at least a little while. All in all things are good and happy over here in the Mann house.