Fun parallels (me & Evette)

Little Evette looks just like her mom did at that age. Here's a picture to prove it:

In case you can't tell, that's Heidi on the left and Evette on the right at a few weeks old. Uncanny, right??

Well, when my mom was here over Thanksgiving, she got a couple pictures that (finally!) show that Evette has at least some resemblance to her dad.

Me, taking a bath. 

Evette with her second cousin, my cousin Timm's daughter.

Me and Grandpa Binns at 8 weeks

Evette and Grandpa Binns at ~8 weeks.

See? There's hope! Actually, Grandma Laurie (Heidi's mom) says she sees a lot of me in Evette when she smiles. :-)

Loving the Binns

One of Heidi and my favorite things of living in Utah is living so close to my mom's parents, Grandma and Grandpa Binns. After leaving their home on Christmas Eve last week, Heidi even said to me, "You know one of the main reasons I married you was so I could have them as grandparents, too!" They're two of our favorite people in the world. 

Grandpa Binns performed the sealing (temple marriage) ceremony  for Heidi and I, and if anyone has ever heard me talk about him before, him in his clean white temple suit is essentially my vision of heaven. They're wonderful people and we love seeing them as often as we do.

 Playing after brunch on Christmas Eve.

The next several are from Thanksgiving.

 (Great face, Megan! :-p)

And these are from late October.

PS - One of my life-long goals is to have Grandpa Binns' hair when I'm his age. A great, full head of "celestial" hair!

PPS - Since we're in the spirit of loving the Binns, here's one of my favorite photos of all time: Grandpa Binns and I when I was a young toddler:

Sibling dinner

This one's a little out of place, but it's still worth writing if only to keep a good record.

About every month, we have a "Sibling Dinner" - with whichever siblings happen to be nearby. Last school year that meant we saw a lot of Brenden, Natalie, and Dan. Now it's Dan, Scott, and Caitlan joining us for the sib dinners.

We had one of these festivities just a few weeks ago, on December 11th. For dinner, Heidi prepared an outstanding black bean and chicken soup. It was a smash hit! (We're making it again for New Year's tonight!)

Here are some shots from the night.
(Sorry, Dan, I have no idea why we don't have any of you... at least you got your own post here. Hope that makes up for it!)

Dinosaur Museum @ Thanksgiving Point

You all should already know that we love dinosaurs, Heidi most of all. Evidence of that fact here:

A post about Dinosaur noises

A post about Heidi being a dinosaur

A post about the Field Museum (Chicago's natural history museum) - which we visited twice. One of the best dinosaur museums in the world!

Well, now that our Little One has joined the family, we're trying to get her to love dinosaurs, too. :) Thankfully, there's a great dinosaur museum only 45 minutes away from us here in Utah, which we visited with the family on Dec. 20th.

Uncle Dan

See, she's fascinated already!

Albeit sometimes scared.... :)

She loved the displays - I don't know that she consciously leans forward yet, but she was acting like she was straining to see into nearly every display we passed (as seen in the photo above to the right)

Family photo! (minus Heidi, whom I assume is taking the picture) This was Evette's favorite display - the brightly colored ancient underwater life scene. She would not take her eyes away from it, not even for this photo. :)

The sibs.

Huge, huge dinosaurs!

Still attentive!

Uncle Scott building a dam. This exhibit showed how erosion could bury dinosaurs.

Aunt Rachel, Heidi, and Evette in front of the same exhibit

She had dinosaur hair...

Baby dinosaur?

She started getting tired towards the end...

Uncovering fossils!

Temple Square w/ McIntosh family

With half of Heidi's family already here in Provo (at BYU), her parents decided they'd prefer to come up here for the holidays than help get us all down to Houston. So, my "nother mother" and sister-in-law, Rachel, arrived in town on Dec. 17th and Jeff, my wonderful father-in-law, arrived on the 23rd.

One of the first things we did was visit temple square on Sunday, Dec. 19th (which Heidi and I did, too, with my family when they came for Thanksgiving). It was a terribly cold evening, but we had a lot of fun.

Evette enjoying her snow suit and carrier. Thankfully she's fitting into the snow suit better now. 

 The sibs and mom.

 The sibs

My happy little family in front of the temple!

{Happy 3 Months!!!}

 Baby Evette turned 3 months yesterday! She's growing up so fast!!! She's such a cutie. She's all full of smiles and coos and spit bubbles.

This was in the middle of a sneeze lol

check out this face - love this girly.