Outside

These were taken just a week or so ago. Alex was having a fabulous time with the leaves, sticks and cats. When planes fly overhead, he looks for them and watches them fly by. We have five 4-week old kittens in the dog house. Alex loves to lean over the edge of the flower bed and look at them and talk to them. In the second picture from the bottom, you can see his two teeth! I thought he was teething a couple more a while ago, but I haven't seen them come in yet. So maybe I'm wrong. Alex is going to be walking soon. He's been taking steps on his own (3 or 4) and can stand by himself fairly easily now. He walks along the couches, foot stools, and coffee table more and more these days. Pretty soon we'll have to run to catch up!

CAT machines

Ok, so here's just pictures of tracters! (just for you, Grandpa!) I dont know the names of any of them, but I do know the second from bottom is the kind Pete and his team of engineers work on. This picture is of the biggest one there is (in the world actually), but Pete works on the smaller models too. However, the favorite pictre is the first one...that spec in front of the huge bulldoser is yes, Alex! (Pete, maybe you can make comments on the photos and give more details about each.)

Family Day at CAT

Andy's brother, Pete, works for Caterpilar in Peoria, IL. They recently had family day and we got to tour the proving grounds. Alex enjoyed the activity of all the people, but next year he'll be a little more excited about the tractors I think. Alex was facinated by Andy's dad, Wayne, facial hair! He kept poking it (top picture). In one of the pictures, Andy and Alex are in a new bobcat.....very fancy compared to the one his dad uses on the the farm. Most of these pictures are located in the brand new building used for testing equipment when the weather is unfavorable. It's a huge building..... equal to 8 football fields side by side! So just the width of this place is as long as a football field. The picture where Alex is pointing through the glass is an observation room were the engineers (like Pete) can control the tests on the equipment. The whole building uses wireless signals to transmit info from the tractors to the computers during testing. Needless to say, Pete is going to have a lot of fun playing in his new work space!