Gotcha!

These pesky little gophers have been terrorizing our lawn for quite some time now. We have tried several different tactics to get rid of them- flushing water through the tunnels, sticking juicy fruit (or another sweet chewing gum) in the holes, spreading human hair around those areas... no luck. It may have deterred the buggers for a bit but they always returned. Friends of ours tried some traps and nailed a few gophers within a few days - that was all we needed to hear. We got some of our own traps, set them, and voila! within a week we had skewered gopher!

The nasty thing had been dead on the trap for a few days and was starting to decompose - ew. By the time Matt got it off the trap I think it was in at least 3 pieces...ew ew ew.

Matt the Hunter looking terribly fierce with his kill

Trying to mimic the gopher's pitiful little face. Pretty good impression actually.

We still have a few more traps set throughout the yard so we may catch a few more. Hopefully this will teach them a lesson and they'll leave our lawn alone! Keeping our fingers crossed.

Footloose and Fancy Free

Luke's got some moves. He certainly keeps himself (and us) entertained.

Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Luke DeBoer

I have been trying to come up with some fun activities for Luke to do while outside. Last weekend I got out some crayons and Luke had a grand ol' time scribbling on some white paper - for about 2 minutes before he started chewing on the crayons. Later on I was either bold enough or stupid enough to let Luke experiment with painting (maybe it was a combination of both). I found some non-toxic, washable paint, an old canvas/board and paint brushes, laid a tarp out on the patio and let Luke go at it.

Don't worry, I didn't let Luke chew on the paint brushes- he tried (as you can tell) but I put the kabosh on that. He was successful at getting paint all over his face, hands, feet and clothes. It was washable paint but I'm still thankful for Oxy Clean and other stain lifters :)

The one of a kind, original piece of art (drum roll please...)
I think he favors abstract art.... or maybe it's just the fact that he's 13 months old. Either way, I think it's a masterpiece!

Forks

We've added forks to the growing list of utensils Luke is learning to use. The other day Luke was not interested in eating his dinner whatsoever. He was just pushing the food around on his plate but hadn't really eaten much. I wasn't ready to get him out of his seat, especially since he didn't really eat but just played with his food. So, I dug through the drawer where we keep his cups and things and found a fork- not just any fork, but a Broncos fork, and gave it to Luke. He was thrilled! He figured out how to push the pieces of food to the corner of his tray in order to pierce them with the fork and then bring them to his mouth! Smart little guy. He ended up eating everything on his tray and even more!

So proud of himself!

Pushing the food into the corner to make it easier to scoop/stab with his fork.

In other news, a few weeks ago was the Redlands Christian School Holland Festival. Part of the festivities involves an auction that raises quite a bit of money for the school. Every year a generous donor gives various amounts of money for teachers, whose names are drawn at random, to spend at the auction. This year Matt's name was drawn! We weren't even at the festival at the time (it was an extremely busy day- I had a seminar/class I had to be at in the morning at Azusa Pacific, Jung had SAT testing, Matt was working at the festival all morning, etc). Matt probably got 6 text messages from various people within 3 minutes saying 'get to the gym, your name was called for the $'- something like that. Turns out Matt was given $750 to spend!! Talk about generous! He put all the money toward a gas grill. (we "inherited" our old charcoal weber grill from the people who lived in our old apartment before us- it did the trick but was not the greatest) This new grill is so nice! It has four burners plus a side burner, a top rack and some other bells and whistles that I don't know anything about. I'll stick to cooking in the kitchen and let Matt handle the "manly art" of the barbecue. :)

Matt- posing with his new 'toy'.

Putting it to good use!

We (meaning Matt) have grilled a few times so far and have loved it! Can't wait for this summer and more backyard barbecues!!

A BIG 'Thank You' to the generous person donating $$ to teachers, whoever you are!

Yogurt

Did you know yogurt makes an excellent skin cream and hair conditioner?

Apparently Luke does!

yes, Luke put his cup up on his head and balanced it there all by himself.

Notice it is upside-down, allowing for maximum yogurt conditioning.

a yogurt facial leaves your skin baby soft and smooth

He is still learning to wield a spoon and is getting fairly good at it (for being 13 months old). But after a few minutes of using the spoon the novelty wears off and Luke decides smearing the food (yogurt in this case) all over his face and head is far more fun! We laugh though we probably shouldn't as it only encourages him to make a bigger mess but oh well. Life (particularly the baby phase) is far too short to worry about things like that.

Spoons

I know I've posted in the past about Luke's love of kitchen utensils. All kitchen-type items are really there just for his enjoyment- spatulas, tupperware, bowls... you name it. Until recently that was the sole purpose of such items, at least according to Luke. Oh, he still thinks that spoons and such are fun to play with but he is now starting to experiment with using a spoon for the purpose of feeding himself. He makes quite the mess but it is fun to watch him develop better hand-eye coordination and gain even more independence.
Check him out in action...

And of course, I had to include a few pictures of Luke playing with spoons too.

Cheese!