Is anybody watching Design Star?

I've been saving the episodes and watching them on my DVR. This made me laugh very hard. I love Youtube...

Colorado 2008

I can't believe I've had this blog for over a year. I'm now starting to repeat myself because this is my second entry about a family vacation to Colorado. We had a great time this year. It was much more enjoyable I think because we learned some lessons last year. 1. Road trips are a thing of the past. We flew this year and that was a fantastic decision. We weren't frazzled and tired when we got there which made a huge difference. 2. Sleep more. We didn't really do anything different other than take older kids with us, but it helped. 3. Lowered expectations when it comes to hiking. Mat and I used to try to do really hard, long hikes almost everyday on vacation, but that just doesn't work during this phase of our lives.

So here are a few pictures.












I picked a few more to add to our Flickr page. Unfortunately since Mat and I split up several times to do different things we don't have pictures of everything we did because we only took one camera. One of my favorite activities was the high ropes course and zip line. It was very fun, and I definitely want to do that again. Mat hiked Jackstraw Mountain which is only hiked by about 10 people every year. It's pretty remote. But no pics of that either. The boys went fishing one day with Grammy, Papa, and Aunt Becky. Umm, what else? Oh yeah, we got to go out to eat at the Dunraven Inn on our last night to belatedly celebrate Father's Day with my dad. That was my annual allowance of fettucine alfredo. Yum.

Jackson was a MUCH better hiker this year. Last year he whined and had tantrums and had to be carried. This year he went on two long (for his age) hikes. The first day I estimated that he hiked almost 2 miles. And on the last day I'd say he hiked another 2 miles, lots of it in the snow. At the end of that one I was complimenting him on the accomplishment and he said, "I didn't ever complain or throw any fits!" It's true. Even though he got tired and needed to rest a few times, he was very pleasant.

Lukey kept us all laughing because of this funny speech problem (?) he has. Any words with the sound "air" he pronounces it with "urr." It may not really sound funny, but he just does it all day long. Chair is churr. Bear is burr. Here is hurr. Over there is ober durr. Upsturrs. Downsturrs. Down durr. It's cute evey time he does it - never gets old. Speaking of bears...we finally saw one! I've probably been to Colorado 20 times, Alaska 3 times, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming (Yellowstone and Grand Teton), Utah, Oregon, Washington, um where else do bears live? Anyway, we've never seen a bear in the wild until now. It was quite exhilerating. Luckily we were safe in the car. We pulled over and just stared at him for a long time until he ambled away.

I think one of the best things about our vacation is that this is a short week and we have a holiday to look forward to this weekend! Lakehouse pics to come!

Lukey loves to read

I was procrastinating the other day while we were packing and took this video of Luke. He talks so much, but he always clams up when we're around other people. When he's at home with us, he's a little chatter box like Jackson. There's a pause in the middle of the video, but it's cute at the end.

It takes a village...

...to move the Hames. I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped us move. When we started the process I knew we'd never be able to pull it off on our own, so when our awesome realtor Jennie told us on the day we met her that she'd help us with everything (including painting if it came to it) I knew she was the one for us. That was just the beginning. We had a few days with Jennie in the house rearranging furniture and putting blue tape on everything we needed to pack away or get rid of. We had blue tape everywhere we looked for awhile. I chuckled the other day when I realized that the bottle of shower gel that Mat uses still has a piece of blue tape on it. Jennie was great throughout the entire process. Luckily she and Mat were in charge of negotiating because it became clear during the process that I was terrible at it and all my instincts were pretty much wrong. :-)

Then we had Mat's mom Jackie for almost two weeks helping us pack and stage the house. We had several days over the last few months when Mat's Dad and Wendy took the boys off of our hands so we could work on the house. We had inspectors at both houses and the bug guy too. We had Don the handyman at the old house several times. We had a vist from Keegan the air conditioner man. We had Steve the carpet cleaner, Edward the plumber at least twice, Brandon the disappearing house washer, a random yard crew that Mat recruited from the neighbor's house one day, and Texas Re-Key twice. We had Amy, Robin, Dahlia, and Casey who babysat on various occasions. The mortgage lendor, the appraiser, the title company people. We had Christy who kept the boys while we signed the papers on the new house, and Danny who loaned us his truck so we could make a run to the outlet mall. Doreen and Thomas who loaned us the best boxes in the world. We had my sister Becky who came for two weekends to help pack, move, and babysit, and who had to endure an unfortunate accident in the back yard related to Luke not wearing a diaper while playing in the sprinkler. We had my cousin Donice who spent almost 12 hours babysitting, packing, and moving boxes. We had my parents who came to babysit one weekend before their summer trip to Colorado. There was Rachel the house painter, James the carpet salesman at Lowe's, and Raul the carpet installer. We had two cranky movers, Vickie the house cleaner, the friendly cable guy, and Keegan again before it was all over.

All of this in addition to four work trips between the two of us, one weekend in Rockwall, one wedding in Houston, work, a birthday, an anniversary, Mother's Day, end of the year activities at preschool, a day trip to Blanco, church, etc etc etc. So I can't thank all of you enough for everything you did to help us. I don't know why you did it, but I'm so grateful. Love you guys!!! (Not the cranky movers, but everyone else!)

Look what happened while I was out of town!!!

Boy #2's hair has remained intact because he refused to sit in the barber's chair, thank goodness. Actually I think Jackon's new 'do looks great. It's definitely something different...

A Message from Lance Armstrong...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW?

Last week I was honored to testify in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about what our country can do to fight cancer. You can read more about my testimony on the LIVESTRONG Blog. I was thrilled to be invited to testify, and my participation was an important step leading into tomorrow.

Tomorrow is LIVESTRONG Day, a day when more than 600 cancer awareness and fundraising events will take place all across the country. Every staff member from my Foundation is attending a different event, and I'll be visiting a few of them myself.

But tomorrow isn't about me, it's about you – how you will make cancer a priority in your own community. Tomorrow is the day when we want our entire country's eyes to be focused on the cancer fight. Will you help us?

Anyone can take part in LIVESTRONG Day. Here are some things you can do join the fight against cancer:

1. Wear Yellow – Show us how you demonstrate your support for the cancer fight.

2. Attend a LIVESTRONG Day event – From bake sales to bike rides, there's sure to be an event in a community near you.

3. Pick a fight with cancer. Tomorrow only, when you register for the LIVESTRONG Challenge use discount code LSDay08 to receive 1/2-price registration. The LIVESTRONG Challenge is my Foundation's signature fundraising event. Walk, run or ride in Portland, Ore. (June 29), San Jose, Calif. (July 13), Philadelphia, Pa. (August 24) or Austin, Texas (October 25-26), and pick a fight with cancer.

4. Make a donation. Support our efforts to unite and fight cancer through a donation to the LAF.

Tomorrow we can make a difference. Tomorrow let's stand united in the fight against cancer. I hope you'll join me and do your part to make cancer a national priority and conquer this disease.

LIVESTRONG,
Lance

Recent Pictures

I'm breaking the rules tonight. We recently instituted a new policy - no computers after 8pm. It's all part of my plan to try to sleep more. Well, tonight I'm home alone because Mat has gone out to the movies so I decided to be crazy and post some pictures.

Luke and Jackson are at an extremely fun stage right now. Luke just talks up a storm, and if I can keep the paci out of sight he turns into a real motormouth. My favorite thing he does right now is when I point to something in a book and ask him what color it is he ALWAYS goes, "One, two, free." HAHA. He's not so good with colors, but he knows how to count to five. I usually spend an hour or so alone with him in the mornings before everyone else wakes up and he is such a sweet sweet boy. When we go in to wake Jackson up he gets jealous, though, and shouts MY Mommy, MY Mommy.

Jackson's latest is that he wants to be grown up. He even told me today that he wants Luke to have his Cars lunch box because he doesn't like toys and kid stuff anymore, he's only interested in grown up stuff like hunting. He's really into Indiana Jones. Mat has only let him watch the first 15 minutes, but he has the entire soundtrack memorized the same way he used to with Star Wars. He will tell you what's going on in the movie just by listening to the music - even the parts he hasn't seen because Mat has listened to the whole thing with him many times and described each scene. Road trips are a geek-fest in our family. Anyway, here are some recent pics...

Last week in Dallas we went to the ballpark to watch my nephews play. Here's Cody getting a hit.



Here's Rob about to hit.


The boys riding behind Papa's tractor.


Trip to Sonic with Emily.


I love this little hand me down. This was Jackson's Easter outfit when he was 13 months old. It fits Luke perfectly now at 21 months.


The boys listening to Indiana Jones music out on the deck.


We just discovered that Luke is really good at putting together Legos! Jackson was not interested at this age. I left him alone with a bunch of Legos for a few minutes and he made this. I asked him if it was a truck and he said, "Uh-uh Mommy. It's a crane." I'm not kidding. I'm sure he learned that from Jackson.


Luke likes to share.


We think it's a little bit sad that the boys probably won't remember our house that we live in now. So we're trying to take a lot of pictures of them these days. We love our backyard so much. It's probably the only thing we'll miss besides our neighbors.


Now it's 9:46 and I must get off this computer! Good night!