Sledding in the backyard today

Today we woke up to a couple of inches of snow and decided to test out our "new" sled we just received from the Markus family this weekend. Dominic loved sliding around on the snow, but most of it was gone by the afternoon!

California last week

Over the St. Patrick's Day week we went down to San Jose. It was a tremendously sad occasion to visit, as we went down to attend Uncle Jim's funeral on Thursday. We stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Cassinghams' through the weekend afterwards though, and really enjoyed the California sun. Grandma's tulips were up, so we posed some pictures with Dommy in the front yard. Here's Dommy smelling the flowers, then posing with the ducks. Next are a couple of pics the next day of the Cassinghams with Dommy, then Dommy solo in front of the potted flowers.

On the way home to Lakeview we stopped for a burger fix at In-N-Out in Redding, CA. It was a beautiful, sunny day to eat delicious burgers on the patio.

We also stopped at the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA on the way home for "belly flops." These are the irregular jelly bellies that get rejected from the factory, and they sell for half price. Same flavor, just oddshaped or doubles joined together. We definitely stocked up for Easter, including the chocolate belly flops!

St. Patty's Day

While St. Patty's Day is officially later this week, most of the festivities in Lakeview were this weekend. This area was almost entirely settled by Irish, with the last wave of immigrants arriving in the 1950s. That is, there are still lots of ranchers around that were actually born in Ireland, so St. Patrick's Day is a special day for them. There were several activities in town, but the only thing we were able to participate in was the 5K ShamRun/Walk on Saturday. Below is a picture of us at the starting line--a cold start to the day.

Dommy enjoyed some finger jello....

And hammed it up in his green getup...

Kisses for the baby BITOO

Not sure why it only shows a black screen, but click the arrow below to play a short video of Dommy giving BITOO kisses. He likes to do this often, and it cracks us up!

Daddy's got a brand new truck (sort of)!

It took awhile, but Daddy finally has a replacement for the Milky Way. After doing all the necessary homework and waiting for a good truck to come for sale, we finally went to buy the 2005 Toyota Tacoma in Eugene two weeks ago. It has really low miles, and was owned by an outfitter company that just used it to ferry kayaks upriver when they had large groups. Now we have a 4WD rig with room for the family! We chose this truck for reliability and the fact that we can comfortably fit 2 carseats in the back. Dominic really enjoys riding in it, especially the 6-CD changer loaded down with classic rock!

Getting Bigger (in different ways!)

Lots of growth in the Lakeview Tighes household of late--Daddy's beer gut, Mommy's belly, and Dominic's height. Here are a few pics of Dominic showing us "where the baby is" in Mommy's belly, then next to the growth chart on the wall in his room.

Dominic has grown ~2 inches since his last measurement just before Christmas! Amazing to watch the changes in our little science experiment. He's now a year and a half old, and the doctor's office gave his official height and weight last week as 34 inches tall and 34 lbs. This puts him at the 95th and 100th percentile for his age, respectively!

Mural and New "Plates"

Using a gift card Dommy received for Christmas from Barnes&Noble, Dad decided to buy him one of his favorite childhood books--The Giving Tree. He seemed to really like the drawings, so Dad figured we could paint this on the wall of his new room. With Dommy supervising, I think it turned out pretty well! The only changes from the original drawing are the addition of the words and no black hair. Aside from the fact that Dommy has blondish hair anyways, it was more a function of deciding not to paint a huge black blob on the wall,....just in case it's a little hard to paint over in the future....
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We also finally worked out everything to get our official Oregon plates on the car this weekend. It only took about 4 months!