Tulip Festival

Last week Wade and I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point. The tulips were beautiful, but unfortunately Wade was not in the best of mood so this is the best picture we got. If you have the chance, I definitely recommend going.

Lookin' Sharp

Is he not just so adorable when he is all dressed up? I know I am a little biased, but I think so!

Our Easter Surprise

So the Saturday before Easter, we had a great day. Phil got to mow his lawn for the first time with his brand new lawn mower and weed-wacker, and he got it fertilized. We also got our new patio furniture and BBQ put together. Needless to say, we are ready for summer.

We put Wade to bed that night (knowing he had a cough and thinking it was just a chest cold) and finished dying Easter eggs since we were hosting Easter dinner at our house. We had just laid down to go to bed ourselves when Wade woke up crying. I went to check on him and quickly yelled at Phil to come. He was barely breathing in between cries. He was so raspy and sounded like he was hardly getting any air. I knew this wasn't just a chest cold. So at 11:30 pm, we all rush to the ER, completely freaked out, to find out that he has Croup.

Turns out that Croup is the children's version of laryngitis, but because babies airways are so much smaller than adults, it can be pretty serious. They gave him some steroid treatments and watched him for a few hours. He was a champ by the way, he hardly complained and the doctors were impressed with how good he was to take all the treatments. Anyway, they sent us home at around 3 am. Because Croup is contagious for other babies, I didn't take him to church on Sunday so he didn't even get to wear his new Easter outfit. Oh well.

Even with all the bustle, we did manage to have an enjoyable Easter. Wade even managed to find a few Easter eggs that the Easter bunny left for him. He is doing much better now and should be back to normal in a few days.

We hope everyone else's Easter was less eventful than ours!

Man Shed

When we bought our house:

it looked like the previous owner had used the shed:

for little other than an extra storage room.  So, we have a few projects on our list to be finished in the shed.  Last weekend, we finished up the first shed improvement project.  Jen's dad and brother in law came over to help me wire the place for electricity.  (A keen observer will notice the trail of dirt leading up to the shed.  That was a trench that we had to dig to bury the electricity line.)  Notice that there is a light on.

Other projects I'm looking forward to:

• Finishing the siding in the shed
  
• Landscaping both the front and back yard
  
• Installing a new kitchen faucet (our current faucet doesn't have a sprayer, how does one live without a sprayer?)
• Building a secret passageway from the house to the shed, in case of an intruder

Wedding

Congrats to Steve and Kalina who got married on Saturday! We are excited to have Kalina in the family and we had a great time with all our family who came in for the wedding.

Wade also wanted to show off how handsome he was in his little suit.

Baby Landon

Our friends from Virginia, the Zundels, were able to adopt a little boy last week. Their adoption story is incredible, everything just fell perfectly into place. They were visiting their family in Utah this weekend and we were so excited to see them and meet their sweet little Landon. We are so happy for them. Congrats Zundels!

Shiner

Wade loves his new found freedom with walking. Unfortunately, he took a tumble the other day and hit his eye on the corner of a chair. He's got a nice black eye now...I promise I'm not beating my kid!

Happy Presidents' Day

Happy Presidents' Day. We didn't have a video camera handy, but we got some pictures that show the story. Just like he learned to crawl, Wade is learning to walk by following his tummy. His grandma was holding out a mini M&M for him.



I appreciated that he smiled for the camera once he got his candy.



Jen and I finally moved into our new house. We closed a while ago, but wanted to lay down new carpet and paint a wall or two before we got all of our stuff into it. We'll have a house warming party sooner or later.

Very First Birthday

Happy Birthday Wade!

Wade was super excited about his first birthday party, so we had his nearby cousins come over to celebrate with him.

As is somewhat traditional in Jen's family, he got to eat an entire cake all by himself. (Obviously he didn't devour the whole thing himself, and in fact, he preferred to pick the sprinkles off the top so as to keep his hands clean until his Mom forced him to take a handful out of the cake)

He asked me to thank everyone for his presents. He really loves them!

Happy Birthday Baby Boy

Happy Birthday to our beautiful boy, Wade. We can't believe how fast time has gone and how much he has learned in a year. He has been such a calm and happy baby and we are so blessed to have him in our lives. We love you Wade!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas from the Broadbents! I hope each of you has been able to take a few moments amongst the hustle and bustle of purchasing presents, wrapping gifts, and stuffing stockings to remember the true meaning of the season. "For unto us a child is born ... the prince of peace." So here's a special holiday greeting from Wade.

And let's not forget the presents.

The Mouse

Need I say more?

The Old Apartment

Wade found a little cubby he likes to hide in. It was only a matter of time before he figured that out, because he used to spend hours a day opening and closing the door.

About two weeks ago we packed up all our stuff and drove across the country so I could start my new job. This is my good friend Ryan who helped us pack ALL of our stuff into these two boxes. Hopefully he doesn't mind his picture being on a non-private blog.

And this is Wade, watching his Baby Einstein videos in the back seat of our car somewhere between VA and UT. He learned how to wave, so when I get home from work he waves violently to make sure I know he missed me.

It's Official...

We're moving! After 2 1/2 years of living in Virginia, we are moving back to Utah. Phil took a job with Overstock.com and starts Dec. 1.

Things we will miss about Virginia:
1. Friends
2. Tysons Corner Mall
3. Free Entertainment on the DC Mall/National Monuments
4. Beautiful Seasons/Weather
5. Some great restaurants (The Espositos, Coastal Flats, Silverado, etc.)
6. All the green, green trees everywhere

Things we won't miss about Virginia:
1. Completely unpredictable traffic on I-66
2. Not having our own washer/dryer
3. Somewhat upredictable traffic on I-495
4. Paying way overpriced rent for small, old apartment with moldy walls (and did I mention no washer or dryer?)
5. Not being able to watch the BYU games on tv

We are excited (although probably not as excited as my mom who can not wait to hug Wade again!)

Halloween

Hope everyone had a spooktacular Halloween!

So we dressed Wade up as Mickey Mouse for Halloween. Yes, I am trying to brainwash my child in preparation for our trip to DisneyWorld in a few weeks. He hated every minute of it! Everyone would get so excited to see him, and he would just pout or cry, like he knew how humiliating this was. I dressed him up to go see Phil at work, but he pouted the whole time...until I took him out of the costume, then he felt much better.

Now that he can crawl and pull himself up on everything, I took him to the playground for a while yesterday. We quite enjoyed ourselves and the beautiful day it was.

100th Entry

100 Entries!

Shortly after returning from Italy I started sending periodic updates of my life to my following, a practice I titled "Phil's Pills". The title came from a website I created even prior to serving a mission in Italy (they were labeled "Epistles" while I was in Italy) on geocities. I labeled it "Phil's Pills" mainly for the rhyming affect.

The earliest recording I have of the Phil's Pills updates being sent out is from my newly created Gmail account dated 10/25/04. These updates were pretty mindless and I can't really blame a portion of my readers who didn't actually read them, but promptly hit the archive/delete button.

This practice continued until Phil's Pills started using a Blog as a medium to reach its readers on 4/18/06, with an entry documenting my niece's new Easter dress. The final emailing of Phil's pills was on 9/30/06, urging readers to visit the blog often.

Since then, Jen and I have taken turns updating the blog with events from our lives. Some of the highlights include moving to Virginia, a documentary about Jen, a trip to Italy, the Wade being born, cherry blossoms in DC, and Wade's first attempt at crawling.

So, Phil's Pills has seen a lot in my life, from finding my beautiful wife,

Jen and me at Virginia Beach, VA

to the birth of my little boy,

Wade and me before we went to workout

Here's to another couple hundred over another couple years!

I love FALL...

I love the fall because of all the yummy food I get to make. This week I have thoroughly neglected all housework to spend time in the kitchen. I decided to put all those apples we picked to good use and make some homemade applesauce, which is actually VERY easy. For those of you that are interested, I peeled, cored and sliced about 12 apples (mixed variety). Put them in a crockpot with about 1 cup of water, 1/2 cup of sugar and sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg. I let them cook for about 2 hours and then mashed with a potato masher. That's it!

The finished product. It's quite tasty and makes your house smell so good.

I also love pumpkin anything. This is a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins I just pulled out of the oven. Is your mouth watering yet? I found the recipe online here.

Happy Fall everyone!

Project

I wanted to make a tree skirt last year, but never got around to it. I have been needing a project to work on and I thought it would take me a lot longer to do, but here it's not even Halloween and I'm already done. I think it turned out pretty cute considering I didn't have a pattern. Anyone have any suggestions for a new project?

Apple Picking Time

Wade has been telling us that he wanted to go pick some apples for quite some time, so we finally went down to an orchard. Jen got pretty good at picking the good apples.

Jen had packed a lunch so we could have a picnic there in the orchard. Wade had a great time with the fuzzy caterpillars. He told me it reminded him of the story his Mom reads to him before he goes to bed sometimes about the hungry caterpillar.