Dear Jesus

Thank you for tator tots.
Thank you for hotdish.
Thank you for tator tot hotdish.
Amen.

~Caleb

Dear Jesus

Thank you for chips.

Thank you for cheese.

Thank you for chili.

Amen.

Prayed by Caleb after he had joined in Daddy's superbowl tradition: chili cheese dip with fritos.

Update

So I've definitely been neglecting this blog lately. I absolutely love reading other people's blogs, but I just don't feel confident in my writing capabilities! That said, I'll try to give an update on life around the Hogberg household.

Our boys are such a joy! Sure, there are plenty of struggles (often every day!), but the joy far outweighs the challenges!

Micah took his first significant steps last Thursday. He is slowly working on improving his skills, just taking a few at a time right now. He is an expert crawler, so he much prefers that mode of getting around. With each passing month, more of his personality becomes evident. He is much different than Caleb was at this age. He is very determined and focused. When he is fixated on playing with something, nothing will distract him! He knows what he wants and he goes for it with every muscle in his strong little body! He is such a snuggler! Caleb never was at this age, but he is more now. I just love cuddling up to my precious boys! Micah is also very vocal - beginning to jabber more and more. This morning as we watched Daddy drive away to school he was trying to mimic "bu-bye Daddy". I can tell he sometimes has to compete for attention as he is often very loud! He is learning how to wave. He will put anything in his mouth, and is very quick to find the smallest things on the floor! I have learned to keep our floors more clean (or as clean as can be expected with a 3-year-old and 10-month-old)! Since he is crawling so well, he follows us from room to room - he's always keeping tabs on who is going where! He loves to play with his big brother, and they are interacting more and more every day. I find myself hanging on to every bit of babyhood much more than I did with Caleb. I am dreading weaning him from the bottle soon; those snuggly moments rocking in the morning and at night are just precious!

Caleb is growing up so fast. I feel like he just turned two, and yet we already celebrated his third birthday last month! We dove into potty-training right after Christmas with lots of determination, and it has paid off. He is doing pretty well, but we still have a little work to do. I guess I won't go into more detail about that here! It amazes me every day how well Caleb communicates now. His vocabulary is increasing, and so is the length of his sentences. He is so eager to learn, and has an amazing memory. He is very outgoing with kids, and just loves his friends. Every day when we pick him up from daycare, he has to hug every person before he's ready to leave. He's beginning to understand more Bible stories and is working on memorizing his second verse. Here are a few of his favorite activities right now: watching football with Daddy, playing football, listening to Go Fish, playing in his Thomas tent, singing, and coloring.

Joel and I are enjoying our family life. In many ways, this is one of the hardest years we have faced together, but God is faithfully bringing us closer and making us stronger in Him. What a mighty and loving God we serve.

John 3:16

I hope you can understand him! We're pretty proud of our little guy!

ShutterFly

I have been using Shutter Fly to order prints for the past year after my mom recommended it. I love all the discount codes I get in emails - and you can enter as many as you want for each order! I have also enjoyed creating photobooks. I created one that showcased all of our mini-trips last summer, and Caleb just loves paging through and reliving those memories.

This year Shutter Fly has a special deal going for bloggers. They are offering 50 free Holiday cards to bloggers. I am so excited for this opportunity! I always struggle to find a nice photo card to send out without spending an arm and a leg. Shutter Fly has some amazing and classy cards, and I am pumped to start creating out Christmas photo card!

So check out Shutter Fly for great deals on Christmas cards or Christmas gifts!

So my brother-in-law reminded me today that it's been a month since I last blogged! Oops! Life has been pretty crazy around here lately. Joel just finished teaching his fall Driver's Ed course, which means very late evenings. We have also had a solid two weeks (at least) of sickness in our house. It started when Caleb and I both got ear infections at the same time. Then Caleb and Micah got the flu from daycare. One day was spent puking, and thankfully it was a Friday, so my mom was able to be here with them. The following Monday Joel and I both stayed home with the flu. Again, mom was a lifesaver - taking care of the kids and bringing us Sprite and crackers. Then on Wednesday Caleb had diarrhea all day, Micah had it Thursday, and mom caught it from all of us. Goodness...that was probably more than you probably wanted to know. Anyway, keeping up with school and youth group and worship team and teaching Sunday school has been a challenge with everything else going on!

The boys are ever growing and changing. Caleb's speaking is getting clearer and he's stringing more words together into sentences. Of course he comes out with random funny things often! I just love to sit and listen to him talk, especially when he's playing on his own with some people or animals and having a conversation with them. His prayers are also precious, and he's getting very good at reciting John 3:16! Which reminds me, I need to work on getting that on video! But he did say it to Uncle Josh today! His current favorites are football (playing and watching), Veggie Tales, looking at pictures, Hi Ho Cherry-O, and pumpkin bars (taking after Daddy!). He idolizes Joel. He loves to talk about Dad, pretend to be Dad, wrestle with Dad, call Dad, etc. But anytime he talks about Dad, it's not just Dad, it's MY Dad. Every time. Adorable.

Micah is growing quickly also. In the past couple weeks he has really become very mobile. He has gone from army crawling to all-out crawling in a hurry. Today we quickly realized we needed to put up the babygate by the stairs! He pulls himself up to standing next to everything now too. He's babbling and experimenting with finger foods. He has delighted me by babbling "ma ma ma" quite a bit lately! I don't think Caleb said the "M" sound until he was around 18 months! Micah loves to chase after his brother, and Caleb has been very cute about playing with him (most of the time!).

So that's the update on us. I'll leave you with a couple of videos. The first one was a quiet night while daddy was working, and I just loved how Micah was catching on to how to use the toy microphone! The second one is actually a very short video that Caleb took. He loves to grab the camera and snap pictures of us, but this time it was on video mode, but he did a pretty good job showing everyone the snow we got last weekend! Check out my facebook for a couple other new videos.

Autumn

This fall has been crazy busy around this house! Here is a bullet list of what we've been up to:

• Lots of Behind-the-Wheel hours for Joel, as well as time spent planning Homecoming
• Higher expectations at school as we're a "Transformation" school
• We're soaking up this nice sunshine while we have it!
• The boys and I have all had pretty nasty colds that have lasted way too long, we're looking into mold testing for our house. If you have any ideas, let me know!
• The boys are starting to interact more - their first bath together was so cute, and they continue to love splashing each other.
• Husky football games are Caleb's favorite - he and his little buddies play their own game off to the side of the big field.
• We went bike-riding when the leaves were beautiful, the boys were adorable in the bike trailer - Micah fell asleep on Caleb's shoulder!
• Our firehouse had an open house on a beautiful Friday afternoon. Caleb loved sitting in the driver's seat of the fire trucks and spraying the big hose!
• Youth group has kept us very busy as well - last weekend was our fall retreat to Trout Lake Camp. It was a blast, but I also felt a big sigh of relief when it was over.
• My favorite fall activity so far: Dunsmore Family Farm! We went on a hay ride, corn maze, pet the animals, pumpkin bowling, and picked out our pumpkins to bring home! And the weather was perfect!
  
• Caleb is getting closer to being potty trained, but is boycotting the potty at home. Apparently he does really well at daycare!
• Micah is very close to all-out crawling. Currently he scoots around pretty well.

So I guess that sums it up. Check out my facebook page for pictures of all of these!