Happy 27th Birthday

So it was my birthday on Saturday April 25th. I share my birthday with one of my best friends that I have known since I was 13, April. We decided to go away for a girls weekend with some girls we grew up with. My parents have a condo in St. George they let us use. Thanks so much Mom and Dad!

So we left friday afternoon. Four of us live pretty close to each other (April, Brittany, Alyson and me)so we all drove down together. Katie lives in St. George so she just came over. Rachel lives in L.A., she flew to Vegas and rented a car. Thanks everyone for making time in your busy schedules for some fun girl time. We had a blast. We went to dinner, went shopping, stayed up all night (really until 5 am) talking and laughing. Saturday we woke up and some of us exercised while Aly made breakfast for us. Thanks Aly, it was delicious. Then we all went to see Grafton Ghost Town about 40 minutes outside of St. George. Apparently it was where some of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed. It was really pretty. We had a good time. After that we stopped at a little souvenir shop on the way home and looked around for a while. We stopped on our way into St. George and did a little shopping at the outlet mall. Then it was time for dinner. We went to Benja Thai and Sushi. It was delicious. We all enjoyed it thoroughly, even Britt who didn't like Sushi until then. She had just never had good sushi. They even brought us out a birthday dessert of sticky rice with fresh mango's and a sweet sauce over the top. It was really yummy. Then of course it was back to the condo to play games, talk, laugh and stay up all night (only until 3am). We drove home sunday. It was a blast. Thanks for a great Birthday weekend getaway girls. Thanks for the many years of friendship and here's to many more!

While the weekend was great, I was also very excited to come home. Nate had been in Chicago the week before. He came home friday at 11:30am and I left around 1pm. So we didn't get a whole lot of time together. I got home sunday around 5:30pm and he left for Chicago again monday morning at 9:30am. That was really hard. I felt bad just sitting on the couch crying as he walked out the door but it was all I could do. So he is home now and he doesn't have to leave again until June so HOORAY! He is so great for letting me get a way for the weekend, even when it cut into our time together. It was a much needed break. Thank you so much Nate. I love you!
All of us Girls
Lounging on the couch bed after a long day of travel
Aly, April and baby boy
Katie and Rachel haven't seen each other in 5 years
Friends
Grafton Ghost town church
reading the sign
this lady was born and died on the same day, it also happens to be Katie's birthday
he and his wife were killed by Indians
random tractor
Its a good thing these two didn't live back then
Walking
April sat on a cactus, YIKES!
She met a new guy while we were there
He was hitting on us too
Watching a movie
Eating popcorn
Trying to ride in a car that is WAY to small. After I got in I discovered it was broken. I was pretty disappointed.
This guy got a lot of action from us, a kiss from April
a nose pick from Britt
All of us after dinner, it was really delicious! And it converted Britt to Sushi, yeah!

Weekend fun

We have had a very busy April so far and it looks like it is going to stay that way. These pictures are all from Conference Weekend, the first weekend in April. I know it was a while ago and it was probably going to be even longer before I posted anything but Thanks to Juli here it is.

Unfortunately Nate's Grandma passed away on March 30th in the Seattle area. We love you Grandma Bowser! Nate flew up on April 1st and spent a great 5 days with his family. I really wanted to go but just couldn't work it out. Max and I stayed home and missed him a lot.

We were able to have some fun while he was gone so that was good. My brother and his family drove in from South Dakota that weekend and we spent a lot of time with them. Saturday my brother, different brother, blessed his cute little girl. It was very nice. She is so adorable. So we spent the majority of the day with them, doing the blessing, then lunch. My sister in law's mom did an easter egg hunt for all the kids that were there. It was a lot of fun. The kids had a blast. Max didn't get it at first. When he got the concept of finding an egg and putting it in his basket he did great. It took him until the end to figure out that there was candy inside the eggs. He REALLY liked that. After all the eggs were found she brought out a big basket full of toys and let all the kids pick one. There were guns, trucks, coloring books, lots of good stuff and Max picked the glittery baton. Of course, he uses it as a stick and loves it! Oh well, He wouldn't be persuaded to play with anything else.
Saturday night, while all the boys went off to the Priesthood session, all the girls and the kids went to Kangaroo Zoo. Its this great indoor playground made of blow-up toys and slides. The kids LOVED it! We ended up staying for 2.5 hours and Max threw a big fit when we left. He had a blast. He thinks he is a big kid, he just gets in there and makes his way up the stairs and down the slide no matter how many big kids are jumping around and climbing over him. I was a nervous wreck for a while but he does just fine. He is determined but pretty layed back about it, he'll wait his turn. He is such a good kid. Actually this last friday when Nate got home from the airport Max begged us to take him there again. He asked all day long and we ended up taking him again on friday, spoiled little boy! Anyway, it was fun. Enjoy the pics! Hope you all had a great weekend as well.

Random pictures

Happy Daylight Savings! I thought I would celebrate by staying up late and adding some very random pictures to our blog. These are a few of the things we have been doing the last 2 weeks. It was been very busy and very exciting around the Peck house. My youngest brother got his mission call to Columbus, Ohio spanish speaking. He leaves May 2oth. We are very excited for him. Congratulations Rob! My mom took her nursing boards and PASSED!!! We are all very excited and proud of her and all her hard work. Way to keep it up. You are an great nurse and an amazing person. We love you mom! I took Max hiking on the 27th of February, just up Adam's Canyon. He walked all the way up by himself. We only made it to the top of the switch backs, but he had a blast and it was great to get out. The only way I could get him to leave was to tell him we would come back tomorrow with daddy. So we did. Saturday afternoon we went for a family hike. Again, Max walked all the way up (and got carried down) and loved it. We saw lots of animals on saturday. 12 deer ran by about 50 feet from us, some birds, dogs, horses. Max really liked all the animals and wanted to go get the deer. Nate and I had a hard time explaining to him that there was no way we were going to catch up with them. I'm really excited for some warmer weather so we can go hiking more. We also got much needed book shelves. I am so excited. They don't have any books on them yet but I'm working on it. The rest is just some random pictures of Max being his normal adorable self. We have been very busy and having lots of fun. Its been GREAT!

Max Sayings

A few of my favorite sayings from Max. He is getting so funny. His sense of humor is constantly cracking me up. I don't know where he comes up with some of this stuff but I love it.

The other day we needed to go somewhere and we were kind of in a hurry. I was trying to get Max to come upstairs with to say goodbye to Nate before we left. I was standing at the bottom of the stairs asking him to come with me. I asked him a couple of times and he was just ignoring me completely. Then he looked over at me, cocked his head to the side a little and asked; "Can I help you mom?"

This afternoon Nate came downstairs for lunch. He had just gotten off a phone call and he was telling me about it. Max was sitting there eating and as Nate was talking Max was mimicking him. When I pointed it out to Nate and he looked over at Max, Max started laughing really hard. He was totally making fun of Nate.

My mom had watched Max for me the other day and when I got there to pick him up he had some sticky stuff on his hands. I was looking at it, trying to figure out what it was when I asked; "Jam?" Max started laughing as hard as he can. He fell over and laughed and laughed. When he finally slowed down a little bit he just looked up at me and said; "Jam?" and starting laughing again. He laughed for a good 20 minutes.

The other day Nate was talking to Max and said in passing that Max has his mom's taste in candy (i.e. fruity stuff instead of chocolate). Max immediately got up and ran over to me looking for something. When I asked him what he was looking for he said; "Mom's taste in candy."

I was asking Max what he wanted for breakfast. I gave him a whole list of options. I went through every breakfast food we had and even some that aren't breakfast foods. He said no to everything I offered so I asked him what he wanted to eat. He looked up at me and said; "Want candy!" ( he didn't get any )

Max's Favorite Things:

- Candy (starburst, skittles, sour patch kids, anything fruity)
- Reading stories
- Singing (he sings songs all day long, not exactly on key, or with any sort of tune at all but he is singing with his whole heart)
- Toast with butter and honey on it
- Milk (pretty much his only source of calories right now, minus the candy and toast)
- Clifford the Big Red Dog ride at Walmart
- Going to Grandma's house
- Doing his puzzles
- Helping (with anything and everything, he's a good helper)
- Playing outside
- Sticks (anything long and thin that he can hit stuff with)
- Playing the "drums" (with a variety of drum sticks)
- Running around the church after sacrament meeting while everyone cleans up.
- Playing with his cousin Riley
- Being home after being gone all day
- Being tickled
- Being thrown on any soft surface
- Toys that play music
- Animusic 1 and 2
- Taking really long baths in our jetted tube with the light off and the lamp on
- "Sneaking" up on people, especially mom and dad, He laughs the whole time
- Having Mom and Dad both home and playing with him
- Building with blocks and Lego's
- Throwing his Lego's on the floor so they break and then saying; "Oh Man!"
- Listening to Nate's Pirate music, he has a few songs specifically, #2,8,10,13 over and over.

He is so much fun right now. I LOVE being home with him.

First Hair Cut

Well it is sad but true. Max had his first hair cut this month. Yeah, I'm a little behind. Honestly I cut his hair one night in the tub. It was getting really bad knots in it so I just cut out the gnarly bits. It wasn't great and definately not even. On January 7th we took him in to the girl that does my hair. (She is amazing.) He was so good. I just had her cut it shorter, not shaved or anything. He got to wear a "Nemo blanket" and got a sucker. He sat on my lap and looked around and didn't hold his head still at all. But he was good. He didn't cry or try to stop her. He just put up with it and ate his sucker. Luckily she was good at chasing his head all over the place and his hair cut turned out pretty cute, I mean handsome. He looks like a little boy now, I think. He is such a good little boy too. I am so blessed to have him.
Checking himself out
being so good
playing with Scuba Steve
The after shot. not a great picture of his hair I know, but the kid won't hold still.

I just want to thank Nate for taking so many pictures. He didn't feel it was necessary to take more than one, I felt differently, and so we have several pictures of Max's first hair cut. Thank you Babe. I love you!