Monday, December 24, 2007

Another Post!

We go from one post every two weeks to two posts in one day. I found the opportunity to get some pictures and videos up and I thought I would take the chance.

Unfortunately, I am unable to get the video of him taking a couple steps up on the blog yet, but I will get one up soon.


Here is a short clip of Jack clicking his tongue



Here is a great video of Jack laughing. Sorry if it is a little dark.



We also had the opportunity to go out and look at Christmas lights with the Hanks family and along the way, we ran into Santa! Here is Jack meeting Santa for the first time and getting a present from him.




Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas! I know that we are looking forward to spending time with our families. We are so blessed to have both of our families living in the same area. Tonight (Christmas Eve), we go to church with Matt's family and then over to their house to open up gifts. I think the Grandmas and Grandpas are just a little excited to be having Jack come over to open up gifts. Of course the only thing that he will care about is all the wrapping paper! Rip, rip, rip!! Then, on Christmas day, we will open up our gifts to each other and head over to the Hanks house to open gifts and have a Christmas fondu party! The difficult part this year will be with our position as caretaker. Every day at 10 a.m., somebody has to go through and do OK checks. They have a little sign to put outside their door to let us know they are OK and if they don't have it out, we have to call or go in and check on them. We do these checks on weekends and holidays. So, after we open up our gifts, we will have to get these checks done before we go over to the Hanks. That won't be any fun, but we'll just do it as quickly as possible.

Jack is doing great. He is starting to take steps! He just started in the last week and we only have one little video clip of it and we don't have it on the computer, yet. I promise we will have it on here before too long. His great grandma taught him how to clap last week and he loves it. He loves to clap when he is happy.

Sorry I don't have any pics or videos on this post, but I will make up for it later. Thank you to all those that sent Christmas cards! It was nice to get caught up on what is happening in your lives. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a great new year!!

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Busy, Busy, Busy

Sorry that it has been so long since we posted, but we have been extremely busy! It has been a little bit of everything. The caretaking has been crazy lately with all of the cleaning and shoveling. We have already had a couple of snow storms in Minnesota that has required a fair amount of shoveling. Of course, with the time of year, we have been doing a lot of things to get ready for Christmas. Shannon has helped decorate the church and attended a cookie exchange for the ladies at the church. Of course, it is also for the men as their wives get to bring a lot of cookies home! YUM! We have also been planning for our adult Sunday School's Christmas party which happened last night. We had a great time! There were 11 of us at the event and we had great food, played some fun games and just had some great Christian fellowship.


Jack has been extremely active lately. We think he is on the verge of walking. He is walking along furniture and venturing out with only one hand on the table. He sometimes lets go and stands there for a while. The other day he let go and tried to take a step toward me, but he reached out and missed my leg and fell down. He's not very far away!
Here is a picture of Jack helping us with the Christmas decorations. He sure loved the lights!



I am also including a video of Jack playing some Peek-a-boo with the whole Hanks family. It was cute how he kept lifting the napkin over his face over and over again.





Saturday, November 17, 2007

The 8th Floor

As long as I can remember, going to the 8th Floor at Macy's, formerly Marshall Field's, formerly Dayton's (or as Matt calls it Damarcy's), was a highlight of the year in the Hanks family. This year it is the Nutcracker, and we took Jack for the first time along with Grandaddy and Grandma Hanks. I don't know what he got out of it, but we all enjoyed it. It was also one of Matt's and my first dates in 2001. We had a great time and got a Christmas card picture out of the deal, too, so you will all see that before too long. And then we had to have a cookie at the end. What a treat! Here's us....

Friday, November 9, 2007

First Haircut!

It's a Friday night in the Fure household and we are having a party! Well, not really. Actually we are quite boring. We gave Jack a haircut (as you will see), we went to Home Depot (WOO HOO!), and now we are sitting outside of a closed library using their wireless internet in the parking lot while Jack sleeps in the back seat. Oh, the exciting life of a poor family!!!


Well, we finally had to cut Jack's hippie 'do! As the pictures will prove, he was getting pretty shaggy. It was really just a trim, but it was needed. It started out OK, but it got a little challenging toward the end as he was getting bored. We have a video, but we don't have it on the computer, so maybe we'll put it on later. We didn't get a lot of hair, but it did make a difference.


Here are the before pictures:





And here is the after picture:




Jack also got a new winter jacket!



Friday, November 2, 2007

New Toy(let)

Jack has started to find some new toys to play with. Shannon walked into the bathroom the other day and was startled to find Jack fascinated with his new toy. You also get to see him waving a little bit.

No, we weren't celebrating evil on Wednesday, but Jack looked way too cute in his fireman outfit.






Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Jack is waving

We owe you all a video of this, but alas, hasn't happened yet. But he is waving at people and run-crawling! If you could run while you are crawling, that's what this would be. He's pretty quick! And we're his favorite toys. Why do we waste money on all of those fun little gadgets? I mean, we have hair to pull, glasses to pull, and Matt's security uniform is like a playground itself with all of his badges!

So we will update with pictures and videos next time, but there is definitely progress every day!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Fall Fun




As you can tell, we all had a great time at the apple orchard! Counting all the kids there were 20 of us at our Sunday school's apple orchard outing. We went on a wagon ride, tried to get lost in a corn maze, some of the kids took pony rides and then we went and bought a bag of honey crisp apples! YUM! Jack likes to attack the core of the apple once we are done eating them.

We also bought Jack a pumpkin at the orchard. The next day we went over to Shannon's parents and her mom had bought Jack an even smaller pumpkin. Here is Jack with his two pumpkins. There were too many good pictures of Jack and his pumpkin, so I am including a few.









Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Another Update

Hello Everybody!


Just thought we'd post since it has been a week. Not a lot has happened since last week. We had a good weekend and we are looking forward to next weekend when our Home Starters Sunday-School class will be going to an apple orchard on Saturday. It sounds like the weather will cooperate as it is supposed to be in the upper 50's. Perfect weather for a fall activity!





Jack is doing great. Since we got rid of our internet at home, we are updating our blog at the local library. That makes it interesting with Jack screaming as he sits on our laps banging the keyboard while we try to type! He is getting over his cold and cough. He has a couple teeth poking through on the bottom. He is also starting to look like a hippie with his long hair!





Here are some pics and I also included a video of him walking around in his walker.









Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Update

Just reporting to say that there's nothing new to report. I feel like we're boring this week. Of course, it's not boring to us, but maybe you wouldn't find it too entertaining.

We've been so busy at church with our missions conference and some financial seminars which by the way were very good and resulted in us canceling our cable and internet, but we will still try to keep the blog updated and interesting. So keep checking with us! Would love to hear from you all!

Monday, September 24, 2007

WHEE!!!

Well, we have a new word! WHEE! I wouldn't say it's the first word - hard to tell when they start understanding - but it's definitely the most repeated one so far even though it comes out as BWHEE. I can be a clumsy and wild stroller driver; so whenever I hit a bump or bang into something, I say "Whee" so he'll think it's fun. So he says it about every 30 seconds now.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Another Milestone

Another day and yet another milestone in Jack's life. We walked into his room the other day and he was standing in his crib! He pulled himself up for the first time!










Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Jack Kissing

I know we all think that Jack is a handsome boy. But I think even Jack thinks he is a handsome boy. He has always enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror, but the other day he decided that he needed to give himself a kiss. Watch for yourself.

Saturday, September 15, 2007


I just thought this was funny. What an innocent little chub!

First Tooth



Believe it or not, there's finally a tooth there! YAY - Progress!
I love any outfit that has ears!

Friday, September 14, 2007

My son, the reader...


This was cute this first time, but probably won't be allowed too much more!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Since this is a new blog and our son is 7 1/2 months old, we figured it would be a good idea to share a picture of Jack from each month of his life.
Here is newborn Jack
Jack at about 1 month old

2 months old

3 months old
4 months old
5 months old

6 months old

7 months old


Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Grandparents Day


I thought how cute it would be to do a handprint and footprint for the grandparents. Jack has some great ones - grandparents, not prints! I am the most un-Martha Stewart-like person, but here's our good old college try (totally gave up the idea of a footprint after finally getting two decent handprints)! I have great respect for you crafty people! My Leeann Chin fortune cookie said someone would be impressed by my artistic ability - HA. Matt said he was impressed! What a good husband!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Here is Jack looking devilish!
Here is Jack looking innocent!

Pat-a-cake

Jack loves to play pat-a-cake! Here's a video of Jack having a good time with Mommy!

Sorry that the video is a little dark.

Welcome to Our Blog!

Hello everyone!


We have buckled under the peer pressure and entered the blogging world. It is probably for the same reason that most people have started one. We just thought it would be easier to share pictures and videos of our little Jack with our own blog.


Just an update on us - Matt is our part-time assistant pastor at our church and also works as a security supervisor along with now recently adding our caretaker position at a retirement building so that I can stay home with Jack. That actually might provide us with some interesting blogs, so stay tuned! I just stay home with Jack and play all day! HA So we both stay pretty busy. We are just trying to adjust to this new position and to the fact that we have to do it without Buddy. Boo hoo.


Jack just started crawling, so that's our biggest news! He recently went to his first Twins game and is now a fan. I'm just happy he now has some hair and that I finally found some shoes that so far have stayed on! Big accomplishment! It's funny the things that excite you once you have kids! Well stay tuned, and we would love to hear from you!

Love,
The Fures