Joys of Living

I can’t believe how fast time goes!  A lot has happened to us since our last post - let me try to sum it up.

New Home in Gilbert: (1352 So. Western Skies Dr, Gilbert, AZ 85296)
We’ve been looking around for homes for a while now and just waiting until we found something that was just right for us.   We were in no rush to move, but didn’t want to miss out on any good "deals" out there.  While we were out looking one day we saw a home in Gilbert that we really liked and decided to place an offer on it, and told ourselves that "if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen."  Well, our offer was accepted and about 6-weeks later, we’re in a new home!  Here are a few pictures (pre-move) of our new home.  We’ve since moved in and I’ll try to post some other pictures later.

Our family:
At the end of July my family took our "every other year" reunion to Zion Ponderosa and we all had a great time!  Isaac took his first horse ride and the reaction on his face when we put him on the horse was as though he had died and gone to heaven, he absolutely loved it!!  Of course the whole rest of the time there he kept wanting to go back to pet the horses.

Earlier in August we blessed Mason and took some family pictures

Mason:
Mason is doing great!  He’s growing very fast and is very healthy!  He’s about the size and weight of babies two months older than him!  He is a very ticklish boy and just loves to smile.  Isaac and Mason get along great.  Many times when Mason is crying, Isaac will go over and hold his hand to help calm him down and it usually works! 

Isaac:
Now that we’re in a bigger house with a bigger "play room," Isaac has a bigger basketball court.  Here are some final pictures of shooting hoops at our old place.

And a few other random pictures of Isaac

Thank you for being a part of our lives!  Hopefully we will be better about taking more pictures of our family and updating this blog more often.  Looking back through these pictures and site always reminds me that my real happiness is with Anna, Isaac, and Mason.

Now that we’re a little bit more moved in we hope that you come visit us, we’ve got room now!

Charlie McInnes has since sent me more pictures from Anna, Isaac, and Mason’s visit to Prescott over the 4th of July weekend.  They were too good to not share.

Charlie is such a great photographer, thanks for sharing!

It’s hard to believe that 6 weeks have already gone by since Mason came into our home!  I also can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to update our blog.  I really need to find some way to be able to update "on the fly," any suggestions?

Anna, Isaac, Mason and I are all doing great!  Mason started off with his days and nights mixed up and we’re slowly getting that turned around.

ISAAC
               

MASON
               

I took Isaac to his first baseball game and we both rode the new light rail for the first time.  We met up with my friend Kris, Uncle Ben and Brock, Uncle Ross, and our friend Nate.  We all had a great time and even stayed late for the fireworks show.  We were literally up in the "nose bleed" seats - Isaac has a hard time sitting still and at one point he took a tumble into the row in front of us and had a bloody nose for about 5 minutes!  Thanks to Dr. Ross and everyone around we got him cleaned up and as soon as he remembered that a ball game was going on, he was just fine.
  

Along with his obsession for horses, Isaac’s other obsession is basketball, baseball, football, soccer ball, golf ball (notice a connection?).  All day long he is asking to shoot hoops, dribble a ball, or golfing around the house.  For his 2nd birthday we bought him a small hoop and he could play with that all day if we let him.  And he just loves performing for an audience, he’s always asking us (and everyone that comes visit) to sit and encourages us to cheer as he shoots.  If Isaac develops my sweet shot and height from his mom we’ll have a superstar on our hands!  Isaac is also a great excuse for me to sit and watch sports, we sat together through most of the NBA Playoffs!
     

For the 4th of July, I went to Washington, D.C. to help out with the Independence Day Parade and Anna went up to Prescott to spend the weekend with family. 

At the Parade, Meredith, my sister, sang the National Anthem in front of over 100 thousand people to start the Parade off.  I wasn’t able to hear her, but was told by many that she did a great job!  I’ve been able to go to DC a lot for a lot of different reasons and this time I did some things that I’ve never done before: I took a tour of the Capitol Building, visited a not-so-well-known cemetery where John Phillip Sousa, J. Edgar Hoover, and many others are buried, visited the Native American Museum, and visited the National Shrine (literally bumped into Newt Gingrich there!).  After the Parade we toured around the many different museums and eventually made our way to the Capitol lawn, watched the Capitol 4th production and watched an amazing fireworks show!
     

In Prescott, Anna went with Max, Emily, and Isaac to the rodeo to feed Isaac’s new obsession with horses.  Anna told me that as excited as Isaac was, he still fell asleep half-way through.
     

Father’s Day
  

I may be a little biased, but I must admit that I’ve got the two greatest boys in the world and the best wife that anyone could ever hope for!

Mason Maxwell Wiscombe was born on May 21, 2009 at 5:28pm.  He weighed in at 6.8 lbs, 19.5 inchesl long, 13.75 inch head, and 13 inch chest.  He’s got all 10 fingers, and toes that are very long!

Anna and Mason are doing very well and we’re all home now.  Anna and Mason had to stay at the hospital for 48 hours for observation, and by the first day there, we were already going stir crazy!  Isaac came and visited us on the day he was born, thanks to Aunt Emily and Grandma McInnes.  Then after their visit, they went up to Prescott to spend the weekend.  Isaac’s birthday is on May 22, and he spent the day with the McInnes where he played all day, ate pizza, and visited the horses.

Baby Isaac:

Baby Mason:

They look like brothers don’t they?

Here are a few updated pictures of Isaac:
   
   

And some of Mason’s first pictures:
    
    
    
All pictures can be seen by clicking here

Thank you everyone for helping out, for visiting us in the hospital, for bringing us edible food, and for visiting us at home.  We couldn’t ask for better family and friends than who we have now.

I know it’s been a long while since we’ve shared anything on our blog and I apologize.  I’ll try and sum up everything since our last post:

• Christmas was great!  We spent the majority of time in Tempe with my family.  Thank you to everyone that helped make our christmas wonderful!
• New Years was great!  We went out to dinner with some friends and then everyone came to our place to watch all of the specials on t.v.
• Shortly after New Year’s, my brother Luke and I went to Washington D.C. during President Obama’s Inaguration.  During the actual ceremony we stayed in our hotel where it was warm, but it was awesome to be back there during such a historical event!
• At the end of February I went on a site inspection tour to Shanghai and Beijing, China.  If you’re interested in any pictures from this, click here.

• I learned that Duck, Chicken, Turtle, Pigeon, “Tree Ear”, Eel, Duck Feet, Fish, Fish Stomach, Pig Ear, and Pork really don’t taste that bad if prepared properly!

Anna and I are both bad about taking pictures and sharing them with everyone, so we haven’t felt like much has happened lately.  Anna is doing great!  She’s about 7 months along and she still gets surprised reactions when people hear that she’s pregnant, she looks fabulous!!  I think we’ve settled on the name Mason.

Isaac and I are doing great, Isaac is starting to talk more and he is a lot of fun to spend time with, he seems to have such a wonderful imagination and pleasant disposition about him.

On March 10 our cousin, Leigh Jones was asked to sing the National Anthem to start the Suns vs. Mavericks game so she and her mom drove over from L.A. and invited my mom, Anna and me to watch and go to the game!  Leigh did a fantastic job and we had great seats to watch her:

Included with the seats to the game we got VIP and Suite level passes, so soon after the game started we made our way to the VIP area.  It was right on the court level and just on the opposite end of the tunnel where the Suns go off an on the court!  We saw many of the players during half-time and stayed around after the game to meet some of the players!  We had a lot of fun!

We had a hat and got a lot of their autographs and we bought Isaac a little “Nash” jersey and asked Steve Nash to sign it.

We wish Leigh all the best success and appreciate her inviting us and letting us share in her spotlight for a night.

We went to the Dr. earlier this week to get another ultra-sound and find out what we’re having!  We’re glad that everyone is healthy and our new baby has a strong heart beat! (you’ll need to click on the last picture to find out what the sex is)

Isn’t technology great that we can see our kids before they’re born?  We had to wake this kid up in order to see what we’re having.

We are totally excited and can’t wait for May 19th (our projected due date)!!

We hope that everyone had a fun Thanksgiving holiday!  We made it up to Prescott to spend the weekend up there and we took our camera hoping to take a lot of pictures of everyone, but we didn’t take a single shot!  Thanks to Charlie we have a few pictures.

Thank you everyone for taking such good care of us and treating us to a wonderful Thanksgiving meal!  We were all well fed, and enjoyed spending time with everyone!

We have so much to be thankful for, among our greatest blessings is having great families and friends!  Thank you all!

We hope that everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!  We had a great time at a neighborhood party that our ward is invited to every year.  Isaac and I went trick-or-treating on a hay ride and gathered as much candy for as long as Isaac would stay on the wagon.  Isaac loved watching the tractor pull the wagon, though!

I wore a hot dog hat, Anna wore a hamburger hat, and Isaac was our french fry:
   

This past weekend we also decided that it was time to take Isaac to the Phoenix Zoo.  Isaac loves reading books and his favorite books are the ones that have pictures of animals in them.  He doen’t seem to care much for the stories, but loves making all of the animal sounds!  It was a warm day at the Zoo so unfortunately a lot of the animals were not very active, but when Isaac did see them, he seemed to love it!  It’s been years since Anna or I have been to the Zoo, so it was fun for us too, to see all of the changes they’ve made.

"Nothing is official until it’s on your blog" - Adam Dibble

We’ve known about it for some time, but wanted to be sure before we told everyone and also wanted to get pictures to share.  We’re about 12 weeks along and set for another May birthday!  We’re very excited!!!  We’re so very grateful to have another opportunity to raise another wonderful baby.  Anna says that she has been feeling good, just a little tired.

Isaac loves being outdoors so this past Saturday we spent the morning at Kiwanis Park feeding the ducks:

and then in the afternoon we went out with the Fullers to Schnepf Farms: