9 months

Here's my beautiful girl! She is still such a good baby and is just growing up way too fast.

9 month stats:

height 28.5 in. (75%) weight 17.8 lbs. (25%) head 44.5 cm. (50-75%)

baby dane

Mason and Jessica had their baby... his name is Dane Allan Duff. He is so cute and such a good baby. Congratulations to Mason, Jessica, and Cooper and welcome home, Dane! Trey and Tally are so excited to have a new cousin!

note to jordan...

Do not toss, throw, or "chuck" the full Diaper Genie bag down the stairs, EVER AGAIN! Our noses just can't handle the explosion of stink again.

the cloves

A couple of weeks ago Liesel and her kids came to visit. It was so much fun to have them here. Trey thought he was in heaven because he had constant buddies to play with. We did a few fun and free activities in town, like Ethel M. Chocolate Factory, and viewing the fish tank at Bass Pro. I love that even though Liesel and I don't get to see each other often, we get along so well and act as though we just hung out the other day. Thanks for being such a good friend (and cousin) Liesel! Come back again soon... Trey misses "the kids"!

jordan

Just have to give a quick shout-out to my Jordan. He ran a 5K at the Springs Preserve Saturday morning and said it was his best time for a 5K ever! Way to go!! You're getting so good at this running thing!

(Thanks to Jessica/Heather for this picture I stole!)

finally.

Raise your hand if you have stopped checking our blog because we just don't post anything anymore!! Me too! Sorry, I've been busy (okay, just the average amount) and a little bit lazy. Events and such to blog about have just piled up, so it's a little overwhelming now to think where to start. I'll just recap a few bits here and there from the past two months.

January

We went bowling with my family on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Most of the little boys had never done that, so it was really fun. We all had a great time on our day off!

Alison's friend, Jodi, my mom, and I threw a baby shower for Alison. Everything was pink and blue because of the twins she was expecting. It turned out really cute and it was fun to put together. "Baby Cakes" was the theme. We had a cheesecake bar for dessert.

And at the end of the month, Jordan and I went to a Phoenix Suns game in Arizona. (See previous post by Jordan)

February

Jessica and I took our kids to Bass Pro to see the fish being fed. The boys LOVED it, and it was a great FREE activity. We're so glad the Duffs live here in Vegas now so we can do fun cousin stuff!

Talya turned 7 months old!!

For Valentine's Day Trey and I made candy necklaces for cousins and grandparents. In the center we put a heart shaped homemade Oreo with pink frosting. Yum!

For President's Day weekend, we went with Warren and Heather to the beach house. An interesting trip!! Really, we all had a lot of fun, but.... on our way down there, it was snowing like crazy in Barstow (Yes, Barstow!!) We stopped for gas and there were like 2 inches of snow all over everything. We got video footage, but no pictures. We made some of our usual stops at Sprinkles and Ruby's on the Balboa Pier. We rode our bikes along the boardwalk where Tally and Trey both fell asleep in the bike trailer. On Monday, we went to Disneyland, where it rained most of the day. NOT fun, but the park was pretty empty. We never had to wait long for anything. The kids were pretty much locked inside a bubble the whole day, but Trey did get to go on the Matterhorn for the first time, and he LOVED it!!

The rest of the week after Disneyland, Trey and Tally were sick with awful colds while Jordan had Bronchitis. (Maybe it was being outside in the cold and windy rain????) However, I didn't contract a thing... someone needed to take care of all of them!

The last weekend of the month, Jordan ran in another Ragnar race. This one was in Arizona and was a lot of fun. Check out the Chasqui blog for all the details and pictures. (Oh, and he's doing ANOTHER one in April!)

March

I got a new calling at church. I was teaching R.S. (only taught a total of 3 times) but now I am the Beehive advisor in the Young Womens. Different, but fun. It's VERY involved, but a good experience and like I said, fun.

Talya turned 8 months old!

Alison had her babies!!! They were a day early; her water broke. I took some pictures of the twiners in the hospital. I couldn't believe how small they were/are! Alison' s blog has more details, well, a few more, but not many. She's recovering from the c-section, so don't expect to see much blogging on her part anytime soon, and she's "going private" soon too.

So that pretty much catches us up!! Not that we're that exciting, but that's what we've been up to. Let's all cross our fingers that I stay with it a little better!

The Suns

So I have a theory - That on giftbearing holidays (ie Christmas, birthday, Valentine's Day) Janel always manages to get me something that she can use equally as much as, if not more than, I would use it.

Please consider the following exhibits that support my theory:

• The black Pottery Barn desk and desk accessories that she got me for one of first Christmases together. I enjoyed using it in our old house, but now that we have moved, it has made its way to her upstairs office, where she uses it to full capacity. Somewhere along the line, another desk to match it appeared up there as well, so as to give her more workspace.

• A clothing steamer. Not gonna lie - one of the best gifts ever. Makes my shirts ready to wear and wrinkle-free in a mater of a few short minutes. She also benefits from having this handy-dandy appliance in our bedroom.


• My dress clothes. Shirts and ties mainly. You may be asking yourself, "But Jordan, Janel doesn't wear your clothes! You're just being a silly goose." It is true that my wife does not wear my clothes. However not only does she get to see me wearing said clothes, but she gets to be seen with me whilst I wear said clothes. And if you've ever seen me, you know that that alone is worth its weight in gold.

So needless to say, this past Christmas I was expecting perhaps a rolling pin or some pearl earrings, which I would have been extremely grateful for, because I love my wife more than anything, and anything she could ever get me would be absolutely awesome.

But boy oh boy did she out-do herself this time. As I opened up this gift, she was obviously anticipating a priceless reaction from me, since she made sure to video tape the whole thing. And she was dead on. Her gift rendered me speechless! Upon opening the beautifully decorated small, red box I found two tickets to see a Phoenix Suns basketball game!

I was amped. The Suns have been my favorite basketball team since the early to mid 90's when they had Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle and Kevin Johnson. They are now home to even more of my favorite players: Steve Nash, Shaquille O'Neil, Amaré Stoudamire, Leandro Barbosa and Lou Amundsun.

So, the weekend finally arrived when we were supposed to go to the game. We were going to just drive to Phoenix on a Saturday, watch the game that night and then come home on Sunday. Janel's wonderful parents volunteered to watch Trey overnight, so it was just me and my babes in Phoenix. The drive down was lame, as is pretty much any drive, but it was all new scenery for me, so I made the most out of it.

We got there around 3:30 pm, checked into our hotel and just vegged for a few minutes. About two or so hours before the game was to begin, we decided we should probably go and get some grub before the game, since we had no idea how crazy downtown Phoenix would be before the game. So we made a few laps around the U.S. Airways Center, trying to find a parking garage that would rip us off the least. We finally found one that would only charge only $12 to park. our. freaking. car. We parked and then went across the street to eat at Stoudamire's, a cool sports grill owned by the Suns' very own Amaré Stoudamire. I had a decent quesadilla and some awesome fish.

Then it was back across the street to the game and we had ab absolute blast! It was so fun seeing the Phoenix Suns intros and the fun they have on the court. Shaq is just hilarious. The entertainment during the time outs was jsut as good as the time outs themselves! It was just a blast being there with my two babes.

The next morning, we took a drive to the Sprinkles in Scottsdale and drive by the Mesa Temple. I guess we shouldn't have purchased our Sprinkles on a Sunday, because our punishment was our GPS leading us back home through Flagstaff!! That tacked on an extra few hours. Yuck.

Anyway, a great trip.

Thanks, Janel!!