Birthday trip

So we didn't get to stay the night in Monterey, like we had wanted. We left later than we wanted, too. The drive to Monterey was gorgeous! We drove on Highway 1. It's right by the ocean for a majority of the way. The ocean was amazing. I haven't ever seen the water that color of blue before. It was so pretty. Unfortunately, there really wasn't any turn offs going the direction we were going. So we weren't able to stop a whole lot to enjoy the views. Maybe another time! The drive took a lot longer than had been expected. We htought it would be like 2 an half hours...no try 4! It was LONG! It was lunchtime, and I figured we'd be there by lunch time, so I didn't plan so well for the snacks! The kids weren't liking the long drive, but we finally made it! There was a big wine tasting thing going on on the Wharf, so there wasn't any parking. We did end up finding free parking along the street, but it was quite the walk! It was good though. The ocean air was nice! Along the wharf are many many restaurants. I really only wanted clam chowder in a bread bowl. That sound SO good. But, Adam convinced me that I needed to go to a nicer restuarant for my birthday. We got to sit by the water and hear the seals and things, so it was fun! I had Mahi Mahi...I'm not a big fish eater, but it was pretty good. And for the first time I had calamari. Yeah...octopus. It wasn't bad. I can't say it was exceptionally good, but not gross either! Noah loved it. We didn't tell him what it was until later. He didn't believe us when we told him! He thought it silly to eat an octopus! After lunch we headed to the Aquarium. There are lots of fish there. Hence, it's an aquarium! If it had a button or a knob, Noah loved it. He's rather push the buttons than see the exotic fish around him. So, we paid 16 bucks for him to push lots of buttons and turn lots of knobs! Oh well, he enjoyed it! If you ever have the opportunity to go to Monterey, you should totally do it. It's a must see! It's a cool, pretty little town. We walked down Cannery Row, and that was cool. There are a lot of shops along the way, we opted out of most of them...it was getting later and the kids were hungry. We will for sure go back. We didn't get home until midnight...and then I had to finish my talk for the next day. Not fun. But it was a good day. Good way to celebrate my birthday. I'm not liking the fact that I'm 26. But Adam assured me that 26 is okay...it's 27 I have to worry about. He then went on to rattle off everyone who has died at age 27. Including, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and other rock or music stars. I think if I stay away from the drugs, however, I won't have anything to worry about!

I'm old.

Well, tomorrow I will be anyway! I will be 26. Can you believe it. I'm too old! But, I will always be the youngest sister and I'll always be younger than Adam, so I guess it's okay! We are headed to Monterey for my birthday. We may leave tonight depending on if we can get a cheap hotel room...I don't want to tell you why we could get a cheap hotel room yet, you may hurt my chances of getting it if I do...but if we get it we'll leave tonight. And so, we had cake last night. It was very good. Adam asked what kind of cake I wanted, and I'm not a huge cake fan, but I LOVE cheesecake. I told him I would have been happy with just a Jell-O no bake cheesecake, but he got me a Costco cheesecake. And it's pretty good. He's not a cheesecake fan, so I have a whole cheesecake to eat. The kids like it though, so I have a little help! Macie has been loving the Happy Birthday song lately. She always sings Happy Birthday to Daddy, though. The kids sang to me last night and it was so cute. I wanted to share how cute my kids are, who doesn't? Mine are just exceptionally cute!Ü

Happy Birthday, Bryan!

 

Happy Birthday! We didn't want to let today go without tell Papa happy birthday! Noah and Macie love their Papa. And they are very excited that Papa might come and visit in September! They had so much fun with him when they were at our house in February. Papa is just so much fun. He always gets them to laugh...even giggle. We'll never forget when we were in Seattle for the summer with Adam's internship. Noah was only 4 months old when we got there, and he immediately warmed up to Papa. Every morning when we'd wake up, I'd bring Noah into Papa's office to say good morning. Noah loved it. We have lots of memories of that summer. Just watching Noah with Bryan was the best. Even now, watching him with all of his grandkids is great. He's a great Papa. They all adore him and all of his little tricks! We hope you have a happy birthday. We all love you so much! Have fun!

Boys, acrobats and rock climbing.

Macie loves boys. Yes, she is only 22 months old, but she's nearly 23 months! Whenever we are in a store and see a boy, she runs up to him and says, "Hi, boy." And then follows him. For family home evening last night we went to the park. There is a skate park next to the play park. Macie really wanted to go see the boys. We went over there, and she just stood mesmerized by the skater boys. She kept saying hi to them, but they couldn't hear her. She loved it though. She didn't want to leave her boys when it was time to go home. I don't know, she's maturing rather quickly! First it was the hair and the clothes...now she likes boys. Jeez.



We had lots of fun at the park. The kids are quite the little acrobats. They both just hung there for a while. I was impressed. But even more impressed at their rock climbing skills. Both kids have no fear of heights, which is a bit unnerving. Both of them jumped right off the top of the rock without much hesitation. Adam caught them, but the thought of them jumping without any one there scares me to death!

Taco Bell

Noah loves Taco Bell. When we lived in Rexburg, we would go there pretty much every time we went to Idaho Falls. My mom and dad are Taco Bell fanatics! They really like Taco Bell. My mom likes the Pepsi. She claims that the Pepsi there tastes better. I think it's all in her head...but that's okay! :-) It's just their Denny's. Since they don't drink coffee like people do around the country, they go to Taco Bell for a caffeine fix and meet my grandparents there. It's good times. But...anyway, Noah has gone there his whole life. And now Macie is starting to like it, too. We haven't been in a long time. Not since we were in Idaho, I don't think. But no matter where we are, Noah always spots the Taco Bell signs. He doesn't eat the tacos much, though. I think it just reminds him of his Momo and Pa, and Cory, too. He always talks about going with Momo and Pa to Taco Bell. Macie says "Momo?" whenever we drive by, it's pretty funny. So, today we drove by, and Noah asked to go there. I told him if he was good as we ran a few errands we could go. He sadly replied, "But Cory won't be there." No, Cory wasn't there, but he was happy again when I told him that they had root beer. That lifted his spirits! I ordered a taco kids meal. You get two tacos, cinnamon twists, a drink, and a toy. But the toy is lame. It's a book. You don't get a kids meal to get a book! The title is, Todd and the talking Pinata talk Sacrifice. It's kind of interesting to read Taco Bell's version of sacrifice, but the kids really do love books, so it works. I opened the kids meal bag, and we didn't get our cinnamon twists. I was a little bummed out. I didn't realize it until we were almost home. But I kept looking in the bag. We had to have gotten wrong order, we got 4 crunchy tacos, a soft taco, and a cheese roll up. All for $3.50. That's a lot of food for not that much money. I think it was a mistake, but still you can't go wrong. And who doesn't like Taco Bell? Yo quiero Taco Bell?

The Dark Knight Returns?

O.k., for my first official Blog, I want to start on a good footing - a comic book nerd footing!

Noah wanted to watch Batman Returns - he's on a kick since our FHE outing two weeks ago to see the excellent "Batman Dark Knight" at the drive in. So it got me thinking, Heath Ledger is gone but I can't get enough of the Batman. I know the Christian Bale "Batman" is no match for the George Clooney "Batman", but we must make do right?

This is my question: with the Joker out of the way now, besides resurrecting the Joker or having someone else do the character (maybe Jake Gyllenhaal could play it? jk) what other adversary is out there for the Batman to match the previous Bale versions of the Dark Knight? Remeber Keaton only lasted two movies. Personally I'd like to see Batman vs. Superman, like the classic Frank Millers' Dark Knight Returns (I warned you I was going comic nerd on y'all, essential reading to understand how the Adam West Batman got human- plus the guy who played Superman in the last movie could use a good butt kickin')

What do you think? C'mon fellow comic nerds...if it weren't for us, Holly-weird would be nowhere this summer!!! and please don't say bring Arnold out of retirement for Mr. Freeze...

-Adam

We like pictures!

Sundays are always good times to take pictures. Everyone is dressed nicely...it just works! Noah insisted on holding his pirate ship, however. Oh well. It was also really sunny...which surprised me. It's not usually sunny here until around noon! We don't have church until 11, but we were all ready by 10. Yay for us! I hate being late to church, so I always make a point to get everyone ready early. We were way early today! Last week we found out that Noah had impetigo, which is a skin infection. That was basically what caused his febrile seizures...the infection and everything that came with it. I thought I did a good job keeping his hands washed and stuff...but Macie came down with it yesterday. We got all ready for church. And were even sitting in the chapel, and decided that she didn't look so good, so I left with her and took her to Urgent Care...and sure enough, she has it. They gave me a cream for her, but she doesn't have a fever or anything...just the skin rash and bumps. Poor girl. Noah's have gone away...we're just working on the terrible diaper rash now.

I set up the camera on the grill to get this picture. It's hard when you set the timer. But it was such a nice day. Macie isn't looking at the camera, but everyone else looks decent! We love our backyard, it's a perfect picture backdrop! And we don't have to worry about it...the gardener does it all!

I haven't posted a pregnant picture yet...so I decided I would. I orignally wanted to get a picture every Sunday so I could see how I was growing...but that lasted a week I think! Yeah, not too long. I feel huge. It looks just like I have a basketball in my shirt. With Noah and Macie, I really just stuck straight out. This time around is proving to be the same thing. Before I got pregnant, I was wearing a size 2. Can you believe it? A 2!? I don't think I was a 2 in 6th grade even! It was nice. Macie just ate everything off of me! She nursed and nursed...and grew and grew. It was a perfect weight loss program! (FYI: That isn't why I nursed her for so long. She really was just the world's best nurser!) I don't know if I'll get back down to that size...we'll see. But for now, that size 2 is history! My belly just keeps getting bigger and bigger. In the past week it has really grown. All of my clothes are either too big, from wearing them with the other pregnancies...or too small. It sucks. I had to go buy new clothes, bummer huh? JcPenney actually had some really cute shirts at reasonable prices. It's nice that the styles for regular clothes are almost maternity looking, so I don't have to buy actual maternity clothes. It's funny...maternity clothes are too short, while regular clothes are a lot longer. It's weird. Pregnany is getting better though. I'm not sick...and I can feel the baby move. That's the best part. But the little bugger moves like crazy. I don't think it ever sleeps! Ever. We go in on the 13th for an ultrasound...we'll keep you posted.

The new house

We love our new house. It's a lot smarter of a floor plan than our last. The kids love it. They have a huge play room. I'll take pictures of the actual rooms once they are all unpacked and finished!


This is part of our backyard. We actually have grass. It's so much nice than the dirt we had in Palmdale, a lot cleaner, too! We have a gardener, so we don't even have to mow it, or water. Oh, it's nice.
This is the view from our kitchen window. The flowers are just started to bloom. They're pretty. And I don't even have to worry about keeping them alive...plants don't last long when I'm in charge of them!


Our dining room is just a dining room. I'm in the process of thinking about sanding the chairs down and painting them. I've had them for a while. 40 bucks on craigslist...but I just haven't had the motivation to do it yet! I'm lazy. I admit.

And on that note, this is my third post today. Talking about being lazy, I have some unpacking to do.

My big girl

When I was little, I always wanted my hair done in the web. My friends always had their hair done like that, and I wanted in on the action. I don't think I ever had my hair done like that though. And I didn't want to deprive my daughter of having the web hair, and so I attempted it. Macie held still surprisingly well. I was impressed. She loved that I was making her hair pretty. She sits in the sink while I do it, and watches me in the mirror. When we were done, I gave her a hand held mirror, and let her look at the back, and she loved it. She smiled, and kept saying, "I pretty. Thank you." It was pretty cute. And then we went to the store. She showed everyone she saw her pretty hair. Funny girl. She is such a girly girl. She picked out a dress while we were at the store. A "pretty dress". Everything she sees she takes off the rack and brings to me, and says, "Cute, mom." Everything. But this dress was pretty. I put it on her today, and of course, I had to make the hair pretty again too. I think I started a terrible trend. I should have stuck with pony tails! She brought me the comb and the elastics and wanted her hair pretty. When I was done, she wasn't. Now she needed her picture taken. Where did she get that? Maybe I take too many pictures! She isn't a baby anymore. She's a big girl.

Potty Training.

Potty training is awful. Macie has gained interest in the potty. She wears panties a lot of the time, actually. She tells you when she feels like she has to go, and then sits on the potty for a little bit, and then gets bored. So she runs around, and usually just pees where ever. But, she has gone in the potty a few times, even pooped in the potty three times. That's pretty good, I think. But, Noah on the other hand, he still could care less. We have been potty training off and on for 2 years, and not once has he peed in the potty. What am I doing wrong? He really just doesn't care. I've given him lots of pretzels and sugary drinks, because I heard that's what makes you have to go the most...and then have him sit on the potty for ten minutes every 20 minutes, but he just holds it until I tell him he can get off the potty, he'll go somewhere, pee, and then tell me where he peed. It's so frustrating. Half the time he won't even tell me that he went...he just continues on his merry way, wet, but merry. Today, I was changing his disgusting diaper, and I just had it. I'm sick of changing three year old bums! I told him he's too old. He's done with diapers. Macie gets to wear them sometimes, but he's done. They are no longer for Noah. I put him in underwear and told him that if he pees on the floor, he has to clean it up. He's in charge of taking his underwear off and putting them in the hamper, he has to find new ones...and he has to wipe up any accidents. It's not even 12...he's had three accidents. And he cleaned them up. The potty was right next to him, he just won't sit on it. He actually had been sitting on it watching the Transformers cartoon. He had been there the whole show...nearly a half hour. He got off the potty when it was over, and then went. I'm going to go crazy. I have seriously tried EVERYTHING. He has a terrible diaper rash. It's yeast, but Adam wants me to say he has "jock itch." That's more manly. And everytime I have to change his diaper he just screams in pain. It's so sad...so I'm hoping that the pain he is experiencing will help out with the potty training. Who wants to have that pain? If he just went in the potty it would be all better. We'll see what happens! He gets lots of different toys if he would just go in the potty. Just once to start. Just once. How do people do it? I'm about to give up and just change his diaper for the rest of his life!