Organized Chaos

going quackers :)

2012-01-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, internet since we last talked it's been over a week. We're still alive without Rob (sad, missing him, but we are ok.) Last week I sat down with my school calendar for Joel and realized, no, he doesn't go back to school on the 3rd, he goes back on the 9th. Hmmm. Another week of sitting home and watching tv. Luckily my sister came back from Utah and we've been having a great time. So, here's what we've been up to. Kelcie and I took the kids to feed the ducks and to Pratt's Feed Store. Holy cow, they were happy. There are pictures of the feeding-the-ducks adventure below, but Joel and Charlotte both squealed with glee for about two hours straight. Teach me to try and spend money on them, feeding the ducks and going to the store are free!

Charlotte is trying desperately to walk, but when she does her chubby little legs start to quiver and I think she's still a little scared. I tell her to take her time, we waited 18 months for Joel to walk, so I've seen it all. As for Joel, his pediatrician wants him to start all these new therapies-- feeding therapy, a habilitation program designed and run by a master's student, more occupational therapy, physical therapy (for jumping, if you can believe that) and music therapy. Setting aside the fact that I have hardly even heard of most of these, it should be interesting. If we can get everything going, our house will be one crazy therapy station zoo.

Joel's always been a favorite with the chicks. What a ladies man :) He loved these little "cheep cheeps" and I had to pry him away before he loved them a little too vigorously.

After 2 years of growing it out (and 1 year of having my children constantly pull it out by its roots) I chopped my hair on a whim. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it's hair and will grow back,

Time for school, time for school! Joel has been soooooo excited to get on the bus this week. He runs to the bus with his backpack on and says "hi!" to the driver and basically is ready to leave me every day. The kid loves the bus and I have had to go on and remove him myself a few times when he comes home for the day and wants to keep on going. "We go, we go!" is what he'll say.

Our favorite game, "Wake up sister with jumpy-jumpy". I found him sitting in Charlotte's crib with her still sound asleep. Then Joel yelled "Jumpy jumpy!!" and pretty much scared Charlotte awake. They spent the next 10 minutes happily jumping in the crib while I wondered just how long we have with this thing before my kids break the bottom. And yet, he still needs physical therapy for jumping, go figure.

Our favorite days with Aunt Kelcie end this way. Such sweet kids. This is as close as I can get to having a picture of the two of them.

Aunt Kelcie has a huge germ thing and never shares her drinks (a source of contention around here considering every cup with in a 5 mile radius is Joel's and he'll drink it before you know what's going on.) So of course little Charlotte would be sneaky and steal Aunt Kelcie's drink. Silly girl.

Joel feeding the ducks. I have honestly NEVER seen kids so excited to see ducks before. We pulled up to the park and before we could even get out of the car both kids were wildly flailing and begging to be let out to play with the birds. Joel's favorite part was throwing bread at the ducks and then running away before they could catch him, Charlotte's was attempting to eat grass, mud, duck poop, and moldy bread. When I told Rob about this he said "You guys are having too much fun without me!"

Not my best look, but Charlotte cracks me up. I let her sit in the sand and "play" while Joel burned off some energy on the slide.

Apparently I don't feed her enough. Sand and rocks are delish.

In other news, I got food poisoning on Monday. I have never been that sick to my stomach before, and that includes both pregnancies and beyond. I'm feeling worlds better, but Monday was not pretty. Other than that, we're doing great and happy. We're counting down the days till we get to see Rob again!

back to reality

2012-01-01T05:24:00.003-07:00

We have had a wonderful week with Rob, and today is the bummer day where we stick him on a plane and say goodbye for another month. Actually, if I'm being honest it will be 6 more weeks before he sees the kids again. I'll hopefully be flying out to Kansas City later in the month to see him, but we'll see if that happens.

What's happened this past week? Well.....

We found out I have a severe reaction to raw shellfish. As in, my eyes swelled shut and my tongue got puffy and sent Rob running for a box of Benadryl on Christmas Day when no stores are open. Luckily, we got me some Benadryl in time, and I just spent the next two days looking like my husband walloped me in the eye. I had had a reaction to crab legs a couple of years ago, and now I know for sure: no raw lobster/crab/shrimp handling for me!

This is the worst picture I have EVER posted on here. Both eyes swelled completely shut shortly after this.

We had the weirdest Christmas ever with it being a Sunday. We whisked the kids out the house to church, bypassing all presents until we got back. By the time we came home, it was pretty anticlimactic and Rob and I ended up unwrapping most of the gifts because the kids just weren't into it.Our favorite toys this year include more Lightning Mcqueen, a Rock'n'roll Elmo, and 7 or 8 dolls for Charlotte.

We had an appointment (finally!) with a developmental pediatrician for Joel. There were some good things that came out of this and some bad, but overall not much has changed. We're still looking at an autism diagnosis, and he's still improving with therapy and preschool, so we'll continue that holding pattern. We'll also be starting some new therapies: feeding therapy, music therapy, and a habilitation program designed by a master's student (this is supposed to be 10 hours a week and scares me a little). Obviously, I still struggle with all of this, but it is what it is and the only thing we can do is go forward, so.... here we go.

Most importantly though, we've been able to have some fun with Rob around! We've been to the mall, the children's museum, and played with friends. Just thinking about dropping him off today makes me weepy. Here's hoping the next 6 weeks go fast!

December happenings...........

2011-12-18T20:45:00.001-07:00

Yes, of course that's a candy cane ornament in her mouth. We live on the wild side here, what with our vacuum cords and perilous stunts while wearing tights. And I'm actually surprised she spit this out instead of trying to swallow it while I took pictures of such a safe environment.

My baby is trying to stand all by herself. I keep telling her to knock it off so she can show off for Rob when he gets home, but as usual, she doesn't listen to me. Instead, she climbs up the stairs, stands, and tries to walk while I chase after her thinking "Please slow down!".

She ate two berries and spit one out. I'll give you one guessas to where the other showed up....

I don't know why I bought my kids Christmas presents. They are fascinated with gift bags and the holiday wreath hanger made out of plastic. And clothes hangers. And... the berries on our tree which I found out the hard way are not coated with lead paint and will most likely be pooped out if ingested.

The kids at the nativity activity last night. Notice Joel's oh so fashionable pajama pants, as he decided to exercise his veto power on wearing normal clothing. He wanted to push the baby and kept ramming people the whole night. I felt sorry for those in our group thinking "This kid is so loud, and OW MY ANKLE HE HIT ME WITH A STROLLER!" Joel would just yell "Jesus!" and really, who can argue with that logic......

We were lucky enough to go see a live nativity last night. I'm sure he was influenced by this and the "baby Jesus" of the season, so my son has not stopped saying "Jesus". I'm hoping he doesn't use it for all of his expressions, but our congregation today at church was lucky enough to hear "Oh boy, Jesus!" during the sacrament prayer, and at 15 second intervals for the next five minutes until he was taken out into the hall. While I was paying attention to that, Charlotte open-mouth slimed a boy sitting next to her. Good times.

"Where'd all the presents go?" Yeah, I'm onto you! This fascinaton with the tree as a special hiding place is new for our family, but so funny to find Charlotte trying to scale it in the morning.

I thought for sure my kids were too young for all this Santa and presents business. (SAYS THE WOMAN WHO BOUGHT WAY TOO MANY PRESENTS.) It was a rookie mistake from the first day I put gifts under the tree. I found Joel and Charlotte gleefully ripping them open within about five seconds. At Walmart, Joel points to anything Disney-related and says "Please, Santa". Wow, that started young. Right now, all the presents are hiding in our favorite spot-- the boat. It's finally good for something :)

<><>

Tis the season for sugar, Mom! And I am not sleepy-- watch! I will prove it! You will be powerless against my adorable face and Cars pajamas.

Yup, still not sleepy.

Looks like Rob will be home for Christmas. Words can't express how grateful i will be when that man comes home for a few days. The kids are missing him and so am I.

She had shoes on. I swear. They might still be out there in the field..... and that's not our teddy bear. I have no idea where that came from.

And here's our holiday photo for this year. If I don't get on here again before then, happy holidays to all!

if I had known....

2011-12-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

If I had known that we would be sick so much this year, I would have bought stock in mucinex. We have been sick at last 8 different times this year. Not sure what is up, but I believe I will be dedicating 2012 to beefing up this family's immune system. It seems like just about perfect timing that every one of us is sick (including Rob) while Rob is off in Colorado. Hopefully the poor guy gets feeling better soon, and I can step up our game here and keep the kids alive at least until Christmas :)

well, that was fun

2011-12-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the blogging hiatus, but life gets in the way most days. As was the case for most of November for us. We traveled up to Utah for Thanksgiving and for Rob to interview with a couple of Utah programs. Then it was over to Colorado for a few days to get a feel for the area before Rob started his away rotation there. He'll be home for Christmas, I hope. That's the plan, anyway. So we are here and happy to be back in our house with all of our stuff. You know how it is, it's just hard living out of a suitcase for weeks at a time. Some recent developments with us:

*My sister had her baby just before we went up to Utah. He's an adorable little stud, and I know she and Tyler will be awesome parents to this little guy.

*Joel has started a ritual of ending his naptime by stripping off all of his clothes and diaper and running around naked in his room yelling "Cold! Cold!". It never ceases to make me laugh.

*Charlotte is trying very hard to pull herself up to standing. I may or may not have set her back down on the ground because I don't want Rob to miss her walking and it's really just a matter of time with this girl.

*On a random and totally awesome whim (and after 3 months of paint swatches on our walls) Kelcie and I decided to paint my living room yesterday. Painting till midnight is never the best, but with your sister it is still awesome.

And now for some awesome pictures.

Adorable nephew Benson. Such a cute boy.

Our little thanksgiving turkey.

Kandice made herself and Joel matching indian headdresses. Obviously, one of them disagreed with the color scheme.....

And the traditional mashed potatoes for our little turkey. She really enjoyed these, obviously.

The main course, of course. Charlotte grabbed a huge piece of prime rib, and went to town gnawing at it. Sure, we wathced to make sure she didn't choke but she was SO happy to have meat, it just made me laugh.

the rundown- halloween edition

2011-11-01T12:50:00.003-07:00

Our house looked like this:

We went all out this year-- two spooky ghosts, two red eyed monsters in the bushes, a spooky doormat that howls, a spooky wreath, ghost lights, and our pumpkin cacti. Here's a picture that doesn't capture it all.....

Our pumpkins:

Rob's evil monstrous pumpkin who eats baby pumpkins :(

I had fun crafting a clever monogram with a power drill.

Kelcie gave us a silly pumpkin face.

Costumes:

So we started with the potato head costumes, plus Jessie and Woody.

We continued on with a Nemo-meets-Little Mermaid-meets Rob wanted to be a fisherman. As you can probably guess, I like as many opportunities to dress up (IE MAKE MYSELF CRAZY) as possible. So for our ward trunk or treat we ended up with Mama Shark, Baby Shark (who was very good at saying "rawr" and "num num num"), Ariel, and a fisherman who caught Ariel. Costuming success.

But wait, there's more. Halloween night we ended up having a "Ok, let's put a random costume together right now, Go!" contest. It turned out pretty good. Joel used his glow-in-the dark pajamas to be a spooky skeleton ( Joel says "ooooky"). Charlotte transformed into a Princess Kitty Ballerina Halloween Girl. I came up with Rosie the Riveter, and Rob came up with a judge costume, complete with white wig.

Oh excuse the tired face. It was a long, kind of awful day and I was exhausted by this point.

Judge Rob and skeleton Joel

Charlotte and me. She sure loves her pink tutu.

I have to laugh, it happens every year and this year was no exception. After trips to pumpkin patches, corn mazes, hay rides, pumpkin carving, ghost towns, ghost stories, and spooky movie nights I once again had nothing really planned for actual Halloween eve. And I'm usually too pooped to care :) We trick or treated a bit, handed out candy, and gaped in horror when we realized Joel had eaten SIX of those sugar coated Lofthouse sugar cookies while we were handing out candy and eating dinner. Guess who was literally bouncing off the walls until 11 pm....... I went in to say good night to Joel and try to get him to calm down a bit. After I turned off the lights and laid down with him, he started poking his pajamas and giggling. I realized that he just discovered the joy of glow-in-the-dark pjs. He grabbed his tummy with the glowing rib cage and said "Wow! Cool!". It was one of my favorite moments of the night, that crazy sugar hyped up kid is so cute.

Hope you had a happy Halloween. I've got to do something with all this sugar before I eat it all......

here we go Halloween!

2011-10-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Little Miss Charlotte loving the pumpkin patch.

Can you tell someone is teething? Right after this her first tooth popped through.

Joel was fascinated with the pumpkins and lots of room to run around, but looking at the amera was not high on his priority list at this point.

Found my pumpkin Mom!

My favorite people :) Ignore the solemn faces, they really are happy. I think they are just focused....

Classic Joel. Here mom, I'll look at the camera..... and stick out my tongue. Sigh.

I dragged everyone to a pumpkin patch this past week. I had bought the tickes about a month ago and was running out of time to get "Halloween Fun" in. So off we went, and made it on the hayride to check out the pupmkins befor it rained. Ah well, we still had fun. We brought my sister with us, and after we gathered over at our place to carve pumpkins.

vacaaaaaaaaaaaation

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just a few photos from our two week vacation. We pent some time in St. George with my parents and sister, then headed to Disneyland to see Rob's parents and three of his sister (plus one brother in law). A short recap:
* We drove to St. George with my sister, who sadly left her wallet at our last pit stop. So she spent the entire St. George trip without any money, poor girl.
* My dad cured Joel of his water fear (which was started the LAST time we were in St. George). As of right now, my boy loves the water but is still cautious. A perfect mix, if you ask me.
* My dad treated us to seeing "The Little Mermaid" at the Tuacahn theater. Definitely awesome, we had a ton of fun and left singing show tunes.
* My kids loved snuggling with Grandma and Grandpa-- to the point where think my mom has a permanent crook in her arm from holding Charlotte so much.

On our way to meet Rob's family in California, Rob let us stop in Calico, CA. It's a ghost town tourist attraction, and it pretty much made my day. Here are my kids testing out the "haunted rocking chairs" (they rock by themselves, oooooh.)

Rob and Joel panning for gold. Joel loved the icky mud and water part, and focused on letting Rob actually find the gold. Nice of him, isn't it?

Yep, I totally subjected my children to an "Old West" picture. It's one of my favorite things ever.

This character breakfast was hilarious. My kids didn't know who any of the characters were (we don't have Disney channel), so they were a little nervous.

I love this picture. Joel was so focused on pushing the buttons on Buzz's suit. It was adorable!

One of our favorites, Handy Manny

She loves her fairy godmother!

Yup, nervous to meet the characters. So nervous they both ended up chewing on the puppy.

Our favorite monster, Sully. I didn't get a picture of it, but the Monsters Inc. ride was Joel's absolute favorite. I think we rode the ride 5 or 6 times and he would go all day if he could.

Costumes for the Disney Halloween Party. This was one of the best Halloween things I have ever done, and that is saying alot! Joel loved the fireworks, the parade, and the treats. He was so cute, and Rob and I loved watching HIM have a good time. Win win!

Rob's family dressed up for the party.

So we had a fantastic two weeks and it was super sad to see our vacation end. I've been trying to get some Halloween fun in before Rob has to start back up with his rotations, so that's another post.

camping and cramming and canning, oh my!

2011-09-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

Well, we had our grand campout adventure last week. It went about as well as the trial run, with a few twists and turns thrown in. We made it through the night and it turns out that Joel LOVES camping. We had some folks that were not members of our group (I know because I chatted them up in the line for the outhouse) and they ended up setting up camp next to us. They pulled in around 11 pm, and were still setting up their tents at 1:30 am. Our kids did not exactly sleep through the noise that went on (and neither was handling the 40 degree weather very well) so they both ended up in the sleeping bag with Rob and I. Rob and I laughed and laughed when we woke up, the reason the noise was so loud was two of the tents were in OUR campsite. And only about ten feet away from us. Ah, adventures. We'll be going camping again soon for sure, but we are trying to get Rob's tent trailer down here so we have a heater next time-- my kids nearly turned to Popsicles even with all the extra layers and blankets I brought.

Rob has a test tomorrow. Not just any test, this is his LAST test. Ever. Of medical school. This is pretty exciting news, to say the least. I just have to say how proud I am of him, he's handled the past 3 years like a champ and now we are in the homestretch. Of course, that means applying for residencies, which basically..... we are clueless. Haha, we'll just have to figure it out I guess!

I've done some canning this past week. We had a funny incident regarding our pressure cooker and now we know-- peaches should go in the water bath, not the pressure canner. So, I have about 15 jars of peaches that are only half full..... on the plus side my salsa turned out great! Between this and my sister diving into baking bread and bagels, we should be quite the domestic women before too long!

time for school, time for school

2011-09-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Well, school has been a success for Mr. Joel so far. He gets excited when he sees the bus, and even says "Bus! Bus!". We've had quite a few adventures lately, so bear with me while I sort through a few:

Last week I ended up hospitalized for valley ever. Long story short, my insurance wouldn't cover the medications or tests necessary to treat it correctly. I ended up having a CT scan, which told us that the infection had created two nodules on my lung. After having trouble breathing and coughing and what not I finally just went into the ER. I spent the night, got the one antibiotic my insurance had been denying, and have been feeling great ever since.

Rob's been working in the ER, so I had the kids by myself at church this Sunday. We were doing pretty well through sacrament meeting until Joel started acting up while he was sitting on my lap. I leaned down and whispered "Honey, shhh. We have to think of Jesus." Joel then yelled "WHYYYYYYYYY?" and threw his head backward, catching me in the teeth. I handed him off to some friends to go get his wiggles out in the hall and handed the baby to our seatmate while I ran off to clean up the blood gushing from my mouth. Unfortunately I tripped right over Charlotte's car seat, and I went flying in the aisle. It was hilarious, and once I got to the bathroom to clean up the blood I just sat there and laughed for a few minutes.

We have our ward campout this week, so Rob and I decided we would practice camping with the kids. We went out in the yard in our big new tent. Our error came when we showed Joel just how fun it was to bounce on the air mattress that wasn't all the way inflated. For the next three hours Joel launched himself into Rob and laughed hysterically. We all had a good time until Joel socked Rob in the eye and gave me a bloody nose. Charlotte figured out how to roll off the air mattress and get stuck in between the mattress and the edge of the tent and thought she was so funny. we made it until about 11:30, called it a night and laughed as Joel ran around his room for an hour. So exciting!

Now that preschool is going and we have somewhat a routine going. Of course, that will change in about a week, when Rob has the week off. Ah, what fun,

Happy birthday, buddy!

2011-09-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

You may not be able to understand what Rob says in the video. He says "We don't usually let him go swimming in his socks and denim shorts." Which is true, that is reserved for special days (birthdays ) only.
My parents bought Joel a swingset for his birthday. Here he is using it to it's full advantage-- a water-slide!

I admit to struggling a bit today-- it's hard to believe my sweet little boy is now three years old. He starts preschool tomorrow, and although I love his teacher and his classroom and his cute little backpack and all that, I just am going to miss the little guy for half a day, every day.

squeaky laughs

2011-09-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

Rob and Charlotte playing together, these two are pretty funny, especially when Rob gets her riled up. I just love the sound of babies laughing!

and the living is easy

2011-08-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, three weeks since my last post. Well, it's ending summertime for us and we've been busy having fun. Actually, that's not true. We've been trying to have fun, but I've been super sick with a kidney infection, bronchitis, and pneumonia the past week or so. I guess no one ever said being sick is fun. Hopefully I'll get feeling better soon.

Updates on us all:
Joel: is starting preschool soon! His birthday is September 5th, so he starts probably that week. My little buddy going to school, on a bus, for half a day.... it makes me so nervous. But we're excited for him to learn lots of new things and make friends. He's headed to the district's developmental preschool, and I have a feeling he'll keep the teachers busy! He's still a skinny little guy, in fact today I ended up buying the same diaper size for him and Charlotte. Hey, if that package can handle 16 lbs-26 lbs then that covers both kids. Score!

Charlotte:
Turns 6 months old in a few days. And boy, does she act it. The girl just wants to do everything her bog brother can do.... she sits up almost by herself and is a rolling maniac. She's really close to scooting, and smiles and laughs for us all the time. At times, she is more verbal than Joel which just cracks me up. She's been eating baby food for a few weeks now and devours it-- she practically feeds herself with the spoon in an attempt to get even more food in faster.

Rob:
Rob's currently doing an Endocrinology rotation that he enjoys. He spends alot of time with diabetic patients adjusting insulin plans and such. His rotation plans are mostly set for the next few months, and he's beginning to apply to residency programs, which is just like medical school applications all over again-- in fact he just finished his essay after weeks of weeks of tweaking it. He's also done great with the house and kids while I've been sick and apathetic, three cheers for that guy!

Me:
Well, like I said, I'm recovering. I've been taking photos all summer and just realized how many there are-- so that's a fun project. Once I get feeling better I'm excited to get back to the gym and get a routine going again-- with Joel in school and Charlotte in the gym day care I may actually be able to be consistent. Let's see, here's a funny story about me: The other night I started walking in my sleep to the bathroom. I kept spinning in circles and Rob asked what I was doing. I told him I couldn't find the bathroom, because I couldn't open my eyes. He then told me to open my eyes, and I acted like it was this huge miracle-- I can see! Yup, I'm weird, especially on medication.

Hope your back to school plans are going well- here in Arizona everyone has been back in school for a few weeks now! It's nuts!

our trip in pictures- iphone edition

2011-08-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

the Weber State fireworks

We had a great time in Utah. These are all photos from my phone, as my camera is still somewhere in the mountain of stuff moved from the car to the living room that we are currently living out of.

Charlotte ready to swim. I love her shades!

Joel roughhousing with Grandpa Winter

You may not be able to tell, but this is Joel's happy face at the parade. We found out that he would really love parades if they were on warp speed. But too much waiting for the floats to pass left us with a cranky Joel.

Yup, his grandparents bought him a "Sally" bed. He loved it. He also spent a whole month in my little sister's bedroom, and I'm pretty sure he broke 90% of everything that was in there. Sorry Kandice, we'll send you a new mirror.

We did A TON of boating. I am more tan now than I have ever been before. Joel and Charlotte loved the boat, and as you can see Rob tolerated it :) (Ok, just kidding. We could barely get Rob off the boat....)

Poor Ainsley having to put up with her cousin Joel in the car. Good thing they both love the movie "Cars". There was lots of screaming going on from these two.

At the Winter family reunion

And well, this is the first batch of photos. There's lots more, but right now I have to tackle the mountain of laundry, change diapers, wash the dishes, and make some lunch. Just know we had a great time with friends and family, but it's great to be back in our favorite little Arizona house after being gone for almost a month. (While we were gone, our crazy neighbors moved! Hurray!)

4th of July-- whew!

2011-07-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I am a little behind. Sorry about thtat. I'm back tracking a little, obviously, trying to think of what we did for the 4th of July. Here are some pictures:

Whew. The 4th of July is one of my all-time favorite holidays. And of course, e had fun. Had a little barbecue over here and invited some friends. We had our festive food-- red white and blue strawberries, hot dogs and hamburgers, apple crisp, delicious cookies and treats.... it was great. I had to turn on "A Capitol 4th" on PBS-- it's tradition in my family to watch that on the 4th of July. And of course we were all dressed in our patriotic colors.The real fun started with our own little explosive fireworks-- Joel threw up all over the floor and soaking my sister as well. Turns out my son has a tendency to drink too much water while swimming and the consequence is usually very.... gross. We ended the evening with some fabulous fireworks of the light up variety. It was so fun to get together with everyone, although we missed the Robertsons and the Matthews!

four months, what??

2011-06-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Charlotte is four months old today. Boy, that flew by! She's growing like a weed and has almost mastered rolling over. There are a lot of times I look at her and it's like looking at a red head blue-eyed version of Joel. It makes me chuckle. I know I have posted this before, but she is the happiest baby I have ever seen. She laughs and smiles and coos all the time, and we just eat it up. She like the attention too, the little ham.

My friend Annie recently posted about her little girl and her obsession with headbands for her. I couldn't agree more-- I originally thought that I wouldn't be the type to get all "girly" with my baby girl, but oh my was I wrong. I want to put her in dresses, paint her nails, and a headband or flower is required all the time!

Charlotte is getting rather long and at this rate we're going to have to switch her carseat around by the time she's 6 months. As of today's appointment, she's in the 90th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. Wow. Definitely not built like her brother, who weighs mayyyybe 30 pounds and is almost three. She already weighs half of him! It's crazy how fast the time goes with these kids.

lazily dream

2011-06-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Us on our new swing. The best family picture we could get :)

The last couple of weekends have been really fun. Although we didn't really do much, maybe that's why it was fun. I had nothing scheduled, so we've had fun just hanging out and being lazy.

Joel:

We took the kids to Toys R US and just let Joel run around crazy-like. Oh, he loved it so much. He ran from toy to toy to toy and asked "What's this?" and we just loved it. The highlight was when he yanked out a tricycle and decided he wanted to ride it. He did pretty good, but the pedalling part is still a bit tricky for him. Soon, though. Also, we attempted a viewing of Cars 2. Didn't work out so well, but I think between Rob and I we did see the whole movie.....

Charlotte:

Charlotte has decided the reclining position in chairs and her car seat is no longer acceptable. She scoots herself on her bum everywhere and tries as hard as she can to sit up. She also loves to pull up her dress and eat it. At church I took her to one of the all boy classrooms to collect their rolls. Charlotte waved her arms and then lifted up her dress to show the boys her belly button. She was smiling like crazy for these boys. Then she spit up all over the classroom. :) We've got to watch out for little Charlotte at the toy store too- I handed her a pink princess purse and she hung it on her arm just like a purse should be. It made me laugh, she does such cute things. She has her 4 month appointment today-- happy 4 months baby! I'm guessing she weighs in around 16 pounds, which is over half of what Joel weighs.

Rob:

Rob's rotation in Scottsdale allows him to be home by 1:00 pm most days! We are loving all this daddy time, but it is time for his next board test in just another week. Rob is awesome-- we started a fitness/weight loss challenge at the end of May and he has been amazing. He's been to the gym almost every day (so far he has missed TWO days in a month.) I'm insanely proud of him.

Me:

I'm doing great. The kids have started waking up around 5:30 am, so we have some pretty early mornings around here. We've been spending a good amount of time outside and trying to get "the wiggles" out. And alot of time driving-- Joel has decided the only way he'll take a nap is if he falls asleep in the car. So we've been on some fun drives lately. I've discovered that I love water aerobics classes and try really hard not to miss a class. I find I feel so much better on the days I try to get to the gym, and Rob is good about pushing me to go. I've been taking some more pictures with my new camera, and trying to learn all the cool things it can do.

my adorable children

2011-06-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

heartbreakers. both of them!

ready for my closeup

make'em laugh

Oh I love these kiddos.

tribute to Rob

2011-06-19T16:00:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite pictures of Rob- from Christmas. He and Joel are hunting the magical Elefunt.

In honor of my husband, here is a list of things he is loving right now. Besides me and the kids, of course.

learning how to build a remote control model airplane

wanting build his own ACTUAL airplane

Weaponology

Mythbusters (of course)

playing new games with Joel, including kick the ball back and forth

making the old boat run

Love that guy. He makes me smile and makes the kids laugh. He's a great dad and a great husband.

swing low, sweet patio swing

2011-06-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

When Rob and I were dating, and even before we were dating, we loved to go to Wal-mart and swing on the patio swings in the lawn and garden swings. It became our ritual every time we went out. When we were married and living in Grandma Winter's basement, we seriously considered buying a patio swing in place of a couch. But, of course, practicality won out and we bought a couch.

For the past 5 years, I have been searching for the perfect patio swing. It had to be one that was comfortable, that would recline into a flat swing, and it had to be extremely cheap. Well, on Saturday we found our swing as an early Father's Day present for Rob!

Joel was especially thrilled about this purchase, on the way home he kept touching the box and saying "Wow!". When we got home, I tried to put Joel down for a nap so that Rob would be able to put together the swing in peace. I should have known better- Joel saw Rob dragging in the box and freaked out when he realized he wouldn't be able to "help".

I love this picture of him and the screwdriver.

And here's a little video of how helpful he is. Rob and I got such a kick out of how excited he was. At one point, he went to explore the big box. After the box shut on him, he screamed, got out, and stomped the box flat, like he was teaching it a lesson. Cracked me up.

sleepy girl

2011-06-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

Playing is exhausting! One minute I hear a squeal of happiness, the next she has fallen asleep on her play mat. Around the same time, Joel fell asleep on the couch with a train in his hand. Silly kids!

My girl is almost 4 months. How did that happen?! She's growing so fast.

according to the iphone

2011-06-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

According to my phone's picture stash, we've had sme fun around here. I'm too lazy to take real pictures lately, so these will have to do.

Rob's happy as can be snuggling the kids and watching a movie. I've had a cold, so I'm more than happy to let him be the hands-on parent while I cough myself into oblivion.

I had Charlotte here while I fixed a bottle. I turned around and Joel had plopped his favorite chair on the coffee table and decided he wanted to sit there as well. Made me laugh.

At Ikea. Rob was sitting across from Joel and said "Joel just told me if I don't get that memo to him by today I'm fired!"

Charlotte is the happiest little thing. Here she is wearing one of her favorite dresses from aunt Aubrey.

And last of all, our little girl's attempts at talking. SO cute.

I didn't know "super gun" and "monster gun" were actual types of guns.....

2011-05-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve finally entered the digital age, I suppose. I’m typing this on a shiny new laptop. This is a step years in the making, and I kind of feel that we need cupcakes and champagne or something to give it a worthy “opening day”. Ah well. I never wanted a laptop for fear it would tie me down to my job, because I would be able to take the laptop anywhere and my desktop just stays at one place—my desk. However, that argument kind of fizzled when I had baby number two and needed virtually any opportunity to work that I could to PAYYYYY for things. Speaking of fizzling though, that was the main reason for this change. I’ve been working out of my “home office”—a fabulous walk in closet that provides room for a desk and other office trappings. It does not, however, contain one essential requirement for an Arizona office —an air conditioning vent. I’ve been slowly inching my way to nuclear meltdown status as I hover over my desktop in 100+ degree weather. (Also, I can’t hear my kids screaming with the fan running in my office. I guess that would be a problem as well.)

My husband just spent forever setting up my email and work networks to function correctly.

So as a form of payback= we are now watching a special on gunpowder via netflix.

Yup.

Gunpowder.
I love my Rob.

hurray for May!

2011-05-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, I love this kid. I love his brown hair and eyes and his round little teeth that are just like mine. Can you believe he'll be three this fall? Boy,time sure does fly. Our visit to Utah was great for Joel, he's gained a lot of confidence in the past month. We stopped at the park the other day and he made a beeline for the big tall slide, something he'd never have done before. He loves climbing on anything in the house, and because of this we've had to begin using a time-out chair. The jury is still out on if he actually "gets" what he is in trouble for, but we're all still learning.He's started calling me "Dory", after his favorite fish movie. Not sure how long that one will stick, but it makes me laugh.

{By the way, did I mention all the fish died while Rob was in Tucson? They did. Which I predicted. We had to get some new fish because Joel has just been staring at the tank, thinking the fish are hiding. So we've started over, and we now have 5 fish in the tank-- 2 orange mickeys, 2 dalmation mollys, and one silver molly.}

Luckily I am better at keeping my children alive. They're fun little kids. Charlotte is getting so big. I was shocked to see how much she's growing-- Rob got her dressed the other day in a 3-6 month outfit and it fit her perfectly. I almost cried-- we skipped right over 0-3 month clothes! She's got the sweetest little smiles and is trying as hard as she can to roll over. She has awesome control of her head for being only 2 months old.

We blessed Charlotte on the 10th of April. Rob made her blessing dress! It originally started out that he was going to help me make it, and then I got overwhelmed and distracted and he just finished it. It looks awesome! This isn't a very good photo of it. But it looked really great.

After spending some time with family in Utah we met Rob and Kelcie in St. George for a little family get together. (Plus it was Kelcie's birthday!) We had a great time swimming, eating, and going swimsuit shopping (we got swimsuits for all four girls who were there in an hour!).

Grandpa and Joel had a great game of "throw me higher Grandpa!" going on. Joel enjoyed the swimming so much he drank about half the pool and then threw up 3 times on the way home :( We're happy to be home now. My kids missed their daddy so much while he was in Tucson. When Joel saw Rob in St. George, he literally just clung to him all night long and fell asleep holding Rob's leg. As for Rob, he's doing a family medicine rotation that he's enjoying so far. It's nice and close, only about a half hour away with weekends. off. He has his big physical examination in Philadelphia next week, so keep your fingers crossed for us.

easter

2011-04-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today's Easter activities were pretty fun. The weather out here has been really yucky-- especially for hot blooded Arizonans like us. My poor kids are FREEZING, and wearing two layers of clothing to bed. It's not THAT cold, but to us, well... yeah. We had a great Easter egg hunt and then tried to dye eggs. Mr. Joel was pretty tired and we took a great nap after. Hope everyone has a happy Easter!

thriving

2011-04-23T02:13:00.000-07:00

After two fun-filled weeks (SARCASM) of missing Rob in Arizona, the kids and I have abandoned ship for the next little bit. We've migrated north, and I have to tell you this is just what Joel (and I) needed. The grandparents are enjoying their time with my little ones, and I am catching up on work, sleep, and remembering what it feels like to wear pants with a zipper.

But the best thing about this trip has been the change I have seen in Joel. In the past three days he has learned five new words! That right there almost doubles the amount of words we have been able to understand from him.

Things I have heard him say just recently:

"Hiya Daddy" (to Rob on the phone)
green
yellow
do it
happy
wufwufwuf for what a doggy sounds like
meeee ow ow ow for what a kitty sounds like

We've also been trying a new bedtime routine, since we're in a new place and I figured-- why not, right? I tuck him into his blankets, pat his back and hum songs to him. He talks to me.... sometimes gibberish (I finally figured out with the help of my dad that tikatikatikatika means tickle tickle) but sometimes words he's been saying that day, like "ball" and "Buzz". I am so encouraged, especially because I have seen a direct correlation between how much hands on time he is given (and how little tv is used) and his speech progression. Very interesting!

our life lately

2011-04-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, it’s been awhile. Turns out having two kids is kind of a busy job. As of right now, Rob is probably getting a full night of sleep (lucky) in Tucson while I slave away here raising our children. Just kidding, it’s not that bad. Although I (and the children!) do miss him and wish he were here, he’ll only be away for a month and will come home occasionally. So all is not lost. We’ve been up to quite a bit. I decided to import some pictures from my phone. Oops, bad idea. I haven’t done that since NOVEMBER, so I’m getting a whole lot of blurry pictures that I’ve forgotten I have taken . Awesome. I did finally get me a new camera, but still learning how to operate the fine piece of happiness is taking a little time. I promise there will be REAL photos on this blog soon… Let’s start with pictures of the cute ones: Look at my handsome boy. He’s growing, and he's ACTIVE. Like, run around the house and just….. stir crazy active. I feel for Joel, Rob had most of last month in a very easy rotation. So Joel had a daddy around 24/7. Now it’s like cold turkey withdrawal. He’s struggling without daddy the wrestler here to get some of those wiggles out.

Oh, I wish every baby was like Charlotte. She’s so just….. easy. Not that Joel was “difficult”, but…. Well, I guess he kind of was. Maybe it was that he was my first and so I really paid attention to every squawk and cry. But Charlotte only cries when she wants something. She’s a great eater and a great sleeper. We're trying to accurately depict her fiery orange hair here..... a redhead. That still just cracks me up! She's adorable!

This guy is my favorite. We actually went out on a date last week, a LONG date that lasts more than an hour at Walmart or the pet store. And I LOVED it. We went to Castles and Coasters and played minigolf, then rode the bumper boats. Of course, I was the only one (including a bunch of elementary school kids) who couldn’t figure out how to drive my bumper boat back in to park it. So as everyone else is parking their boats, I’m out in the middle of the pond doing donuts and laughing hysterically because I CAN'T TURN THIS THING AROUND SOMEONE HELP ME! A whole line of elementary school kids waiting to ride were watching and got quite a laugh out of it.
Rob and Joel have been trying to have some “bonding” time together. We’re still working with speech therapists and will be starting occupational therapy soon. One of the things they have suggested is that Joel needs a few more structured activities, like with a definite start and stop time. (You mean running around and watching “Cars” doesn’t count?!) It’s been a learning experience, but he’s doing really well and we’re proud of him. He’s sure a cute kid.

Sad update:
-We only have two fish left (we started with six and exiled one to my sister's aquarium...). I'm getting pretty good at the whole "come here into the net dead fishy...." maneuver. We are Fish Killers, a la Darla in Finding Nemo. Actually, I’m thinking this has something to do with the fact that we keep turning on the fish light all day. I think it’s messing with their water temperature.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for right now. I’m running on about two hours of sleep, and miss Charlotte will probably be up again soon so I better head to bed!

awww

2011-03-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

My baby girl is already almost a month old. It's been one crazy month, that's for sure. Some new things about little Charlotte:

She has orange-ish hair. Right now she looks like she may be a redhead, which cracks me up. When I pondered all of the possibilites of what she'd look like, red hair just never entered the equation. We'll see if it stays orange, my sister was born with black hair and it turned blond. Another sister was born with white-blond hair and our hair is now the same color. Time will tell.

She's a great little eater. She's almost a pound and a half over her birthweight already, which is awesome.

She's a snuggler. And prefers Rob most of the time, I think he keeps her warmer than I do (darn post partum hormones, I have every fan in the house running.......)

She's a mover and a shaker: Several times I have gone into her room to get her from a nap and she has wiggled to the end of the crib. All swaddled up. Explain that one to me.....

Loves: Her swing/rocker, sleeping on dad's chest, waving her arms around
Hates : Being swaddled (although she always falls right to sleep), having a dirty diaper.

We sure love her. She's a sweet little thing and has just fit right into our routine here.

who loves naptime?

2011-03-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

my heart is full

2011-03-05T08:43:00.001-07:00

There are some amazing things happening in our family right now, and with the just-had-a-baby hormones coursing through me I've been caught crying a lot lately. Tears of gratitude, pain, frustration, happiness..... you name it.

We were so happy to bring Charlotte home on Thursday. I asked Rob if he wanted me to wait to pick her up until he got home, but he told me that the best birthday present would be to come home to both of our children. What a sweet daddy. My mom and I went to the hospital to pick her up, and right as we were headed to leave our nurse was pulled out in the hallway for a second. When she came back, she told us another baby in the unit had JUST been diagnosed with RSV and that we needed to stay and get Charlotte tested before she could go home. Luckily, everything came back just fine.

My parents have been here since Wednesday, and Rob's mom and sister are here just for a quick visit this weekend. I wish we were closer to everyone so my baby could get all the snuggles, she is the sweetest little baby. Because she was in the NICU, I haven't been able to love on her as much as I did with Joel in the first days, and now I feel like it is just a crash course in "make-up time". Speaking of Joel, he's not quite sure what to think about this little pink thing that screams and cries. He looks distressed when she cries, but I don't know if it's a "Oh no, she's crying" reaction or more "You are loud and bugging me!".

So, that's us. We're thrilled to have her home, and grateful for all the prayers that got her here :)

Miss Charlotte

2011-03-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

And we do indeed miss her. It looks like she won't be coming home until probably tomorrow or the day after. First it was a mild case of high white blood cells, now that she's been on antibiotics she's struggling a bit with her bilirubin. So she's spending some time suntanning under the lights while we wait at home for her to be discharged. I got released from the hospital last night, and other than being incredibly weepy and sore, I am doing pretty good.

Charlotte Marie Winter

2011-03-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

Born Feb 27th 2011 (on her great-aunt Camette's birthday)
Weighed 7 lbs 11 oz, 20 inches long

Has:
My nose
blondish hair
fair skin
Rob's chin

and a slight delay in the NICU

Will update more with photos when I am a little more conscious.

adventures with Joel

2011-02-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

Looks like someone had a sugar craving this morning-- I came downstairs to find Joel sitting on top of the garbage can, eating Frosted Miniwheats out of the box. (Of course, he was gracious enough to empty the trash can first all over the floor.)

I opened these last night and had eaten one. When I got off a phone call this morning, I found Joel had had quite a yummy snack. Although I can't find the wrappers anywhere, and I'm afraid he may have eaten those too.......

be mine, valentine

2011-02-15T10:18:00.001-07:00

We had a fun Valentine's day yesterday. Rob and I went out to dinner and a movie (Gnomeo and Juliet). My favorite part of the evening was getting to ride in the convertible with the top down and look at the stars. Kelcie came over to watch Joel, and boy was he a snugly little Valentine for her. He curled up to her on the couch and they watched movies.

Things with us are going great. I really wanted the baby to be born yesterday, I thought it would be fun to have a Valentine's baby. But it didn't work out that way. Regardless, I am ready for her. Room is ready, bags are packed, all set to go. I've been having contractions on and off for awhile now, but they never really increase in intensity and usually go away after awhile. It's kind of fun having Rob in his OBGYN rotation now, because he comes home and tells me about the cute babies he's delivering. It's getting both of us excited for this new little one.

As for Joel, he is growing like a weed. The kid is LONG and lean. He was running around in his diaper yesterday and I just realized how gigantic he looks compared to his newborn pictures. Aw. My boy is growing up.

(I'd show you some pictures, but my camera has been dead since October. Sad face.)

never a dull moment

2011-02-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

Wow. We just had the weirdest thing happen- one of our neighbors came to our house just screaming in pain. She had gotten sprayed with pepper spray. Luckily Rob knew what to do, because I was a wreck. I just kind of stood there. Anyway, after sticking her in our cold shower for 45 minutes and soaking her with milk, she'll be ok. I was glad I remembered at least that from my emergency classes. But it was just weird. She was hysterical, having a panic attack, and I had to go find her family to take her back home..... And yes, for those of you wondering, these are those same neighbors :)

Although I do love how snuggly kids are when they are sick....

2011-02-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

I woke up from my nap yesterday to Rob screaming for me. I ran into the bathroom, and both he and Joel, still in their white Sunday shirts, were covered in blood. Rob had blood all over one sleeve, and Joel's whole face was bloody.

Waking up from a nap like that is really scary, in case you are wondering.

I'm not sure on the details, but Joel and Rob were laying on Joel's bed and Joel pulled a lamp on top of his head, resulting in a nice gash on the crown of his head. We let it clot, and debated about running him into the ER for stitches. Luckily, he seems to be all right but has been a bear in the meantime. (He does have a pretty good sized goose egg on his head, I don't blame him for being grumpy.) When we were talking to Rob's mom on the phone she said that now Rob and Joel will have matching scars on their head. I hadn't heard this story before, but Rob got hit in the head with a sucker from a pinata (I know, my eyebrows are raised too) that resulted in a cut on his head. Also, there was some type of incident where he fell and the zipper on his hood dug into his head.

Today I found out WHY Joel has been such a bear, whiny, angry, refusing to eat -- poor kid has the flu. After about 15 diaper changes and sets of pajamas to wash and an incident in which he decided he would much rather throw up in the new baby's crib than in the toilet, I think it is safe to say that he is sick.

Is it weird that it makes me feel better that he is sick? I heard he was a terror at church yesterday, and although he's never really GREAT at church, this sounded worse than usual. Now I know why. I'm glad to know something is wrong that we can fix, I guess.

I would have been really mad if a Mac Genius had to deliver my baby though....

2011-02-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

So I don't think I ever told you guys about my phone! And before you ask, no, I did not drop it in any water this time (unlike the previous 3 phones). Last year , I had one terrible week in which all my electronics freaked out. My computer crashed, my external hard drive crashed, my phone completely stopped working, and Rob's computer crashed. When I went in last year to get a replacement phone, I left with a shiny new iPhone. Ooooh, I know. And thankfully, I know myself well enough to get any and all extended warranty coverage available.

Sometime in October, I noticed that my map application was freezing. This was quite frustrating, seeing as I have no sense of direction and the phone was supposed to be my guiding light. I figured it would fix itself and didn't worry about it. Then the camera on the phone started freezing. Then randomly the phone would turn on and off and on again. My favorite issue came when the phone refused to end calls, meaning I would just have to sit there and wait for the other person to hangup. You would think all of these issues would make me think of taking the phone to be fixed, but I really didn't think too much about it, plus it still worked WAY better than my last phone.

Enter Rob's phone. A shiny iPhone 3gS, more special than mine for sure. And when I played with it, I said "Hey! Wait a sec! mine doesn't work like that!" Nope, it sure didn't.

Last week I finally took the phone in. The technician plugged it in for the diagnostic test and my phone promptly crashed their computer. So they ordered me a replacement phone. Hurray, but they don't just have older iPhones sitting around (?) and had to special order it. So back I go two days later, to the apple store to pick up my replacement phone. In the store, it starts turning blue and green as soon as I touch it. Thinking it's just a special feature of the phone, I take it home. I quickly find my New Replacement Phone is possessed and turning blue and green blotches every 30 seconds or so. Next day, go back to the apple store, show them the phone. They replace the display, proclaim all is well and good, and I waddle back out to the parking lot. This time I don't even make it through the mall before the exact same thing happens- blue and green splotchiness everywhere. I waddle my way back and shove the phone at some poor mac genius (ha!). After waiting 45 minutes on those awful stools while having contractions, they tell me they want to give me another replacement phone. Obviously, these are top commodities and can only be found in Scottsdale at 9 pm on a Friday night.

I had already gotten a babysitter for Rob and I to go out on a date, and now I had two choices. Either go to the phone store for our date or deal with a possessed phone for another WEEK (I should mention also that I couldn't even read the display anymore. It was that bad.)

So, date night was to the apple store in Scottsdale. BUT-- this time was awesome! The people there were nice, they didn't make me wait on the birthing stool, and they eventually threw their hands up in the air and upgraded my phone for free. (I think they were hesitant to send another 3g home with me because of my track record of KILLING them.)

Moral of the story is....... I have no idea. Something about persistence and thank heavens I bought the stupid warranty on the phone.

This message is brought to you NOT by Apple. By Oxyclean and Febreeze and Pedialyte and Huggies. (Can you tell I have a sick little one at my house? :( )

works in progress

2011-02-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

A pink accent wall to match her quilt.

36 weeks and some change.

Another racecar

In case you are wondering (and even if you are not...)

2011-01-31T23:22:00.000-07:00

My doctor keeps telling me I will be having a BIG baby. HUGE. Because Joel was huge. Until I informed the doctor that my chart is wrong and that Joel was not huge at all but perfectly normal at seven pounds, one ounce. Now all of a sudden, it is just ME that is huge. I'm still chuckling over this one.

My huge baby is also transverse. Meaning her head is in my right side and ribcage, and who knows where the rest of her is. I've been having a great time with this site trying to get her to turn. Rob's been having a great time laughing at me trying to get her to turn.

Rob's car did, indeed, get totaled by the insurance company. A sad day in the Winter house, and almost a year to the day of when we bought it. Farewell, little red Miata. And now, time to begin the new car buying process.

Also, Rob started his new rotation today. What's that, you ask? OBGYN. He's gonna be surrounded by pregnant ladies for the next month, and his last day in the rotation is my due date. Ha, ha.
And finally--Joel found out he cannot fly off of coffee tables. He's cut his lip open twice in the past week. Hopefully this will be the time he learns the lesson, before he loses any teeth in the process.

all I'm good for is bullet points

2011-01-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

So, here's what's new with us. Rather than abandon blogging altogether (so tempting, I never know what to write here), we have bullet points of love.

Got our security system upgraded and installed. I've already set it off twice. Luckily I'm a fast learner :)
Still no word regarding Rob's crunched car. Meanwhile, we are driving a brand new rental until it gets figured out. Can't complain too much there.
Rob finishes up at the state mental hospital this week, and are we ever glad. He's met his share of interesting folks, his "favorite" being a delusional patient who fancies himself as a gay porn star who is BFF to Paris Hilton. Next up is his OBGYN rotation, which couldn't come at a better time.
I'm feeling really good! Still able to chase Joel, do my work and keep things relatively presentable looking. I am having contractions pretty much every day, but they are sporadic and more annoying than really painful. My doctor says everything is fine, so I'm not too worried. However, I AM getting worried because I still haven't thought about taking a birthing class, her room is still a disaster zone, etc. etc.
Baby is still breech. The girl loves my hip bone and occasionally moving her way clear up to my rib cage, which I am not even sure how that is possible. She's turned head down twice in the last week, but I can't seem to get her to stay that way. Come on, kiddo! When I was pregnant with Joel at this point, he was head down and I was already dilated.
Last week I freaked out because we had a $50 bill we were going to use to buy the new baby a dresser. (Wait, that's not why I freaked out. Keep reading.) We get to the store, get the dresser, and can't find the $50 bill anywhere. When we got home, we found it stuck to Joel's bum. True story.
I'm super grateful for the family I have out here. It's been nice to have someone come watch Joel while I get errands done-- thanks Aunt Camette and Kelcie!
Looks like we'll be enrolling Joel in a speech/social program pretty soon. Although I do love knowing that he can say "Woody", "Piston Cup", and "Whee", I'm hoping for a bit more function in his vocabulary. Like, oh, I don't know, letting us know if he's hungry/thirsty/tired/stinky. We pretty much are deciphering his whines and screams at this point, and it's getting old.
The weather is beautiful down here-- in the high 60's and sunny. Ah, love me some Arizona.

sorry if this post stinks

2011-01-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

There's a classic story about when Rob was a toddler. He had his favorite cowboy boots on and pooped all over the back deck, then stomped in the poop with his boots on. When Rob's mom told her husband what had happened, he started laughing, and she got upset, because of course he was laughing, he didn't have to clean up the mess!

I now understand. Let me just say, I am so grateful for the internet. I knew I wasn't the only mom out there trying to figure out how to clean poop out of carpets.... (hydrogen peroxide!)

I had to laugh when:

I can't seem to stop typing "ogle . com" instead of google.

Don't do this, please. The images will stick in your mind for way too long, and then your husband will think you're looking for some adult friends who are missing most of their clothing.

The corporate division for the insurance company called, returning my message. That I left LAST Thursday.

Pretty prompt, huh? They've been great to work with, so I can't complain too much. We finally got us a rental car yesterday, which means I can get out of the house again. Not that I am really feeling all that ambitious, but it's nice to know that if I do go into labor early (HAHAHA I wish!) that I could drive myself to the hospital if I was so inclined.

Southwest airlines called to ask about my father's "wheelchair status".

Somehow, he had been booked on his flight as a wheelchair assisted passenger. When I told them that was not the case, they told me had now had no boarding pass. So as a precaution, my dad is probably going to end up getting a wheelchair that he doesn't need and wheeling himself around the airport just so he can get a seat on the plane. Interesting.

And the grand finale:
I get a phone call from Walgreens telling me my Percocet is ready.

Um, I didn't order any Percocet. But it kind of sounds nice after a day of cleaning up poop puddles.....

in a wreck, need a check

2011-01-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

The last week has been insane. On Thursday, I came home from a doctor appointment to find the police waiting for me. Someone had tried to kick in our door and break into our home, but our neighbors called the police. Around the same time I was bidding the police farewell, Rob called. He and his shiny little Miata had been rear-ended in the tunnel on I-10 by a big truck. We're now waiting on the insurance company to see just what repairs are going to be covered, but it makes me sick to see the damage done to the car. I'm honestly quite surprised Rob wasn't injured, it freaks me out just to think about it.

So, that's what we've been up to.

Sigh. So that's the bad news. But things aren't all bad. We're getting closer and closer to my due date, and I was finally able to get some pictures of our baby girl's face in last week's ultrasound. She looks just like Joel, but with a little more of my nose (poor kid). We're getting pretty excited to meet her, that's for sure.

I'm only a hypochondriac when I feel sick

2011-01-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

I don't know how it is possible, but we are all STILL sick. Lest you think we have the plague or something (and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we do), allow me to elaborate.

Rob came home feeling ill on December 12th. It is now January 6th, and I am still sick. So is he. So is my MOM, who wasn't even around us when we initially got sick. I don't really know HOW we are still sick, unless we were sick the first time, got healthy, and then reinfected ourselves on our arrival home. Either way, I repeat: STILL SICK. MAYDAY. SAVE YOURSELVES.

Nothing like a little drama, right?

Other than being the snottiest family in town (literally), it has been good to be home. We had such a great trip up to Utah, and it will be the last trip up for awhile.

Other things I need to mention:

Christmas was fantastic. Rob got me a blue-ray player with Internet connectivity (yay, we can watch more movies than just Cars and Finding Nemo!) and I got him a table saw. Joel got a train that he loves, along with some new toy cars. Also, the boy was spoiled by his grandparents (as were we) and got two dump trucks and a Lightning McQueen ride on toy that WILL NOT STOP TALKING LIGHTNING IS READY...KA-CHA-CHA-CHA-POW. (My dad LOVES the fact that he has given my child a toy that is driving me crazy.) My parents gave us a fancy juicer, and we learned that mixing a rotten pineapple with grapefruit is not the best way to go. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Our drive home was the worst I had ever had. I had to throw up on the side of the road more times than I can count. For some reason, I have been unable to keep down any food except for chocolate protein drinks for the past 4 days. I blame the mucus running down my throat and hitting my stomach. Anyway, the liquid diet is getting old. I tried a bit of grilled cheese tonight, and I think I might finally be getting over it. Yup, TMI. Sorry.

Rob's Grandma Winter is getting remarried! Very excited for her, sad we won't be able to make it to the wedding though. (Rob has a test that morning.)

Pregnancy is on the final countdown-- t minus 7 weeks. Hurray. Baby girl is kicking up a storm, and you can see my stomach move from outer space. Seven weeks seems like a very short time to get everything done.... but then again....

Maybe by then I'll finally be over this cold.

hello, 2011

2011-01-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

As I look back on 2010, we had a lot of fun. Going though my resolutions, I had resolved to:

Eat healthy and lose some weight
Build something
Cook a turkey (a leftover goal from 2008)
redo the "blood" bathroom
Get a closet solution

And.... I did them all! Eating healthy was super fun (my poor sister moved in with us right when I was in the thick of it-- she still makes fun of me about my weird-tasting bread.) I also started getting fresh fruit and veggies weekly from a food co-op and that's been awesome. We are eating WAY healthier than we were last time at this point. I also did lose weight- about 15 pounds. I credit the 30 day shred-- amazing results. I felt great. I guess I can add, I lost another ten pounds when I was in my first trimester of this pregnancy, but it's all gained back now....

Building things! Yes, I did this. I built a hutch, a bench, a stool, and some other things I can't even remember because I was just so excited! I got my own nail gun, and it just ballooned from there. Turns out, I really love creating things with my hands. And, I sewed too!You better believe it! In June/July I sewed a quilt for my sister and ended up hand-quilting it for her too. It was insane, but I am no longer afraid of my sewing machine. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

I did cook a turkey! turns out you can do it in the crock pot! So fabulous, definitely doing it again. I also cooked the majority of Thanksgiving meal this year, and it was delicious!

Our red bathroom had driven me to the point of no return. One day, I merely ripped the mirror off the wall, and that was it :) That's almost exactly what happened, actually. I was pretty frustrated with the thing, and we painted it and installed a new (on clearance!) vanity within a day. So glad to have that done.

As far as the closet goes, once we bought a Rubbermaid system it was an easy fix. Turns out I just needed to donate 5 boxes of old clothes to Goodwill to get organized :)

Goals for 2011:
Lose the baby weight (after I have the baby of course)
run a 5k
tile the two upstairs bathrooms
backyard patio project
continue with Flylady!
paint something-- like a pretty picture
get Joel's room looking "cute"
make jam
try 3 new recipes a month
build something every month

So, as you can see, I'm full of goals. I'm driving Rob crazy by making lists and putting them everywhere. Here's to a great 2011!

Happy holidays!

2010-12-23T13:41:00.001-07:00

(Our Christmas card photos this year were an adventure in "hide the belly". And... yeah. That pretty much explains our card photos this year. I may look sleepy, but you can't see my fat!)

It's that time of year. I'm afraid we are almost Christmassed-out over here, what with cookies and lights and Santa and presents all over. So, just in case I don't get around to posting more in the next couple of days, we wish you a very merry Christmas.

Love, the Winters

I told him I bought him a bowling alley. For some reason, he has a hard time believing that one

2010-12-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I know you were all curious if I did participate in the gift exchanges that cost more for shipping than the actual present. yes, I did. And to make it worthwhile, we each wrote a Christmas poem, which is really priceless. So I felt OK about shipping dollar gifts with a priceless poem..... All of our Christmas shopping is finished, wrapped, shipped, and received for the most part.

Speaking of presents, we are having a tough time here waiting until Christmas to open our gifts. In an uncharacteristic move, I have been ADAMANT that I will not ruin Christmas for myself this year. (Every year, I can usually be found hacking into Rob's email to find out what he bought me or shaking the gifts or tearing off a corner piece here or there.....). Even more uncharacteristic is Rob, who is DYING not only for ME to open his gift but to find out what I got him. We've given each other some pretty contradictory clues, so I'm rather confident I have NO idea what he has got for me and he has got no clue what I bought him. That's the way it should be, especially since gift-giving holidays have been an evolution for me since we've been married. (Our first year, I told him exactly what to get me and made him hide all the presents outside in storage. He had to get up early, bring in all the presents- a few of which were really heavy- and then come wake me up full of Christmas magic and sparkle. Boy, that's not a tall order......)

Rob finished his pediatrics rotation the other day, so we took Joel with us and we delivered gifts to neighbors and then went to Glendale Glitters. It's our version of Christmas lights, except there's no freezing or snow. I won't lie, it's been weird seeing palm trees decorated with lights and cacti treated as Christmas trees, but after awhile you get used to it.

This has nothing to do with the story, but I wore a scarf and sweater the other day in the "spirit of the season" and it was way too hot and sweaty for that to last very long. (Well, plus I am pregnant and hot and sweaty as a norm.) It just feels odd Christmas shopping in flip flops.

Anyway, at Glendale Glitters they had a tree that lit up with synchronized music, and Joel loved it. He ran right up to this giant tree and just leaned back his head and stared and laughed and said wow. He also got to see a couple of dogs that were super friendly, so we stayed on the corner and Joel got to pet them. He was in heaven. He also saw horsies and kept showing us the horsies. The cutest part was when we passed Santa Claus on the street and Santa said "Hi there! Ho ho ho!" and Joel waved and said "Hi!". it was adorable. We had a ton of fun, and with obnly a week until Christmas it's time to watch our Christmas movies and do some fun Christmas activities. Tonight we are watching a Christmas movie and I think Monday we may go see it "snow" at a mall out in Phoenix. I have no doubt that if it actually snowed on Joel, he would have no idea what was going on. Yesterday it was raining (a rarity out here) and Joel just stared up at the sky with this really puzzled look on his face. It will be pretty funny to take him to Utah (weather permitting) and see his reaction to snow, although he's such an Arizona kid I don't know if he'll like the cold factor of snow very much.

Not much else is going on. We're just enjoying being together.

maybe he's allergic to advent calendars?

2010-12-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

I don't really know where to start. This has been a good week for us. Joel, however, has been really sick and has had a fever off and on for the past few days. When I took him to the doctor on Monday, his temperature was almost 104. Scary for me as a mom to watch him get all shakey and moan. Poor little guy.

I went to the grocery store to get some more children's cold medicine. While I was there, I was struck with this crazy paranoia about giving him medicine. I found a bottle of "safe for 2 and under" medicine and thought I would feel a lot better giving him that. (Although Rob has told me that what we have been giving him is fine.)I brought home the bottle and showed my discovery to Rob. He looked at the list of ingredients and said "I have never heard of any of this stuff before." Turns out I had bought a bunch of plant extracts and herbs in a bottle. We now call this medicine "Weed Juice". But it seems to work just as well as the stuff we were giving him before, so who knows.

I'm cruising along in this pregnancy, our baby girl is currently the size of a butternut squash and I will be 30 weeks next week. Yikes, time flies. She's measuring a little bit ahead, so it looks like she will be a February baby for sure. And all I have ready for her is a pile of pink clothes and a car seat.... and a half finished quilt. I guess it's time those nesting instincts start to kick in.

We've had a grand old time preparing for Christmas here at our house. Of course, I have an obsession with advent calendars and of course, as I do EVERY year, we have yet to start using any of them. What good is it to have an advent calendar that you don't use?? Argh. Every time I think the Christmas shopping is done, I find out that there's ONE MORE GIFT EXCHANGE. What's silly is that a couple of these exchanges are supposed to be "cheap", but by the time I buy for me, Joel, and Rob and ship them to Utah.... it's not so cheap for me. (Sorry if I sound a little Scrooge-ish.)

And just as I finished typing the last paragraph, I went to change Joel's diaper. And he has spots all over his body, so..... going to call the doctor now.

Whee! :)

sending Christmas cards, hang overs, rigging up the lights......

2010-12-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

(click on the picture to get the full effect of the scowl)

Christmas cards. A pain and yet.........

Ever since I was 18 I have been sending out my own Christmas cards. I just love the idea of sending something out at Christmas time. I remember my sisters and I used to get a good laugh out of all the holiday newsletters we recieved from family and friends. (We took a vacation to Hawaii and paid for it in cash so we have no debat. Our son is a 4.0 student and does nothing wrong, blah blah blah.) Although I've boycotted the holiday newsletter (for now), you better believe I am excited about this years' Christmas cards.

Yesterday we took Joel to see Santa. THE Santa, the one we have been seeing every year since he was a newborn. And Joel, well, he made this face like he had just been told that he would get coal this year for Christmas. To make it even BETTER, Santa's elves suggested that mom and dad get in on the picture to see if we could calm down our naughty child. So we were left to choose between a photo of my child scowling, or me and Ssanta trying to share the big red throne with Joel and Rob squished to the side. Needless to say, we did not purchase the Santa pictures this year.

Thankfully, we were able to get a few decent photos of the three of us yesterday. Every year, I put enough effort into creating our Christmas to start my own greeting card company. It is ridiculous. That's why this year I am taking advantage of Shutterfly's 50 free cards for bloggers promotion. If any of oyou are interested, just let me know, it's an easy process and the cards look beautiful! Plus, I like free, and not staying up till 2 am photoshopping is a great idea for me now that I am pregnant and cranky all the time.

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards is the link for the Christmas holiday card selection. I like that there are options for big cards, little cards, photo cards, and different price ranges for each. Also, you can find some here: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery.

I also really love the idea of doing a family calendar, but I ususally hate how they look when I try to make them. They have some cute ones here: http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars.

Thanks for reading my plug for Shutterfly! I'm excited to send out some cute cards this year :)

happy Thanksgiving weekend

2010-11-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

Wow! The past week has been full of fun and excitement. Rob's family came down for the Thanksgiving holiday. We were also thrilled to find out on Friday that Rob's preceptor for his rotation had given him the entire Thanksgiving weekend off- so we had him around the whole time! It was so fun!

And since nothing says "I am so thankful for everything I have" like crazy shopping, that's exactly what we did this weekend. Friday I took Rob's family Black Friday shopping. It was my father-in-law's first time, and my brother in law Nate's first time too. We found that Rob and I are REALLY good at spending other people's money, we love to encourage people to "Just buy it! Hurry! Go!". Although I always find myself wanting to buy things just BECAUSE everyone else wants them. Our favorite story was a couple that we saw at Target. The wife told the husband to keep his hand on the ping pong table she had just secured, and she was going back out for more stuff. And he just stared at her and said "How are we going to get this HOME?" (Apparently they got bitten by the good deal bug too.) And the wife just replied "I don't KNOW" and rolled her eyes like, my husband is such an idiot, this is OUR PING PONG TABLE. We saw folks at Target with three gigantic TVs in their cart. Who buys three TVs? I want to be on THEIR Christmas list!

We also found out that Joel has officially hit a new mischievous level. I'm a little afraid that he's traumatized his cousin Ainsley, who is just a year younger than him and has suddenly turned fiercely protective of all of her toys that he rips out of her hands. The rental house my in-laws stayed at was beautifully decorated, but definitely not Joel-proof. Consequently, in the past two days, he has spilled red punch on a white floor, broken a huge (and probably expensive) glass table top, pulled the Christmas tree on top of himself (it's been up for ONE DAY), and scaled a shelf to get to the precious snow globe at the top, only to drop it and break it into a million pieces. AND ripped open Rob's surprise Christmas present. Luckily I was able to fix it before Rob came home.

Speaking of Rob's Christmas present, the only hints he has is that it is something we have always talked about getting but never had the money to (until I found this awesome deal) and that it is gigantic and really heavy. I had to wrap it at the store and have the sales people carry it to the car for me, because I couldn't really see any way to hide it until Christmas. It is driving him crazy with curiosity, which is always fun. At least this way it is already wrapped :) I love getting him one big, heavy present every year, last year I got him a massage table and had to hide it at the neighbors' house for a month. Unfortunately I wasn't a very good Christmas elf, and when I tried to set it up Christmas Eve, it crashed onto my head twice because I was underneath the table trying to get it to stay up. The year before that, I had to have my brother-in-law Brad escort me to Sears to lift a motorcycle jack into my car.

And that was our holiday weekend. Food, fun, family, and we missed all the football this year but that's ok. Hope you had a good one as well!

balls balls BALLS

2010-11-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

Mistake #1: Buying the ball train by mistake. I wanted the Busy Ball Popper, but in my black Friday haste last year I got the train instead. Joel has spent an entire year obsessed with this train. He carries it around with it's dying batteries and shoves it at us daily, trying to get the train to work. But the train is SO annoying. And once you turn it off, well, complete meltdown. So it's pretty much either let him sit there and be obsessed with the balls going in the train or deal with screaming tantrums once the train runs out of batteries and won't work anymore.

Which is WHY the train is hidden in the linen closet.

Mistake #2: At a used toy store I found the Busy Ball Popper. I ended up getting it for free with my store credit. And Joel loves it, so parenting win for me. But again.... it's like an obsession with him. He wakes up, wants to play with it. For hours. We take it away, and he freaks out for a good 10 minutes. He eventually forgets about it, and thank heavens these toys both have OFF switches, but he's so determined to play with it that he's carrying this thing up and down the stairs with this "Ball, ball, BALL...." moan.

Oh, and for some reason he thinks sticking his fingers down his throat is fun. We've had three throw up incidences in the past three days because of this.....

He does lots of cute things, but these few things today are driving me nuts.

five years ago

2010-11-14T20:42:00.001-07:00

As we participated in our regional stake broadcast, it reminded me of the last time I attended one of these meetings. It was the day Rob and I decided to get married.

If I were back in Utah right now, I'd drive on 2700 North right past the Chevron and the Pepsi plant sign on the way to Farr West. That intersection is where the best conversation of my life happened.

We were on our way out to his parents' house for Sunday dinner and the topic of getting married came up. I remember being so nervous to talk about this, and hoping that he was being as honest as I was.

When we joked about getting married before my sister left for her mission, Rob asked what I thought about getting married. And when I replied "I'd be okay with that", I was trying REALLY hard not to show how giddy I was inside.

But I couldn't hold it in any longer when he said "Yep. I would be okay with that too."

And then I started to cry, because I knew it was real and awesome and I would get to be with him forever.

quick update

2010-11-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see.

It's been a fun, busy week. We tackled our massive closet overhaul this week, which was quite the adventure. We're still not completely done, but Rob the Laundry Man has made things pretty awesome. Since we got things cleaned out (um, SOMEONE had to donate about 5 boxes of clothes to Goodwill! Oops :) it has been nice to actually use our walk-in closet. Now if we can just get int he habit of doing and folding laundry we'll be set.

Rob and I got to go to the stake leadership meeting this week and then ran home, sent our awesome babysitter home (thanks Kelcie!) and waited for our next babysitter to show up in the next half hour so we could go back to the stake center for the adult session of stake conference. Joel had a lot of fun playing with someone besides his parents, but it was a tough adult session for me-- 2 hours of leadership meeting and then two hours of stake conference were about all I could take. Phew!

Baby girl is doing great and measuring right along schedule. I'll be entering the third trimester soon, which is just insane to me. This has gone fast. I'm glad the time passes quickly though-- when I was pregnant with Joel it seemed every day dragged on. With this pregnancy, it's like a train flying past and me standing there going "Wait! ".

Rob is finishing up his family practice rotation at the school clinic. It's been so fun to have him around-- he's been able to come home for lunch most days, and he's usually home for dinner. I'd love to think the rest of his rotations are going to be this swell, but I know better than that :)

As for Mr. Joel, he's doing great. He's still busy as ever, just running through the house making messes for me to clean up. His favorite things lately are watching Elmo's World and wrestling with his Dad. He can never get enough daddy time. He's grown enough that he's starting to resemble a bean pole-- his legs are too long for his pants but his waist is too small for the next size up. So there's a lot of safety pinning and cuffing going on around here.

That's our quick update. Can't believe November is halfway over!

yuck

2010-11-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

Things that make me crazy
Joel's sudden fascination with splashing his hands in the toilet and trying to (ew) drink the toilet water.

Joel licking the coffee table

Joel eating food crumbs out of the dustpan when I sweep

Thankful for
My testimony of clorox wipes, soap, and hand sanitizer.

Edited to add:
Probably as a consequence from all the toilet play, poor kiddo woke up sick as a dog from his nap. His hands are clammy, he has a fever, sneezing, coughing, and whining. And yet..... he made a beeline for the toilet to play some more. *Sigh*

marriage class 101

2010-11-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

So, our stake is holding a "Strengthening Marriage" class and Rob and I were signed up by our bishop. At first, I was a bit offended-- did the bishop know something I didn't? I admit that I didn't really want to go, but it was really good for us to attend. I grumbled and grumbled, but it was a good experience. The other funny thing is that Rob has been absolutely giddy about this class. Not sure if it's just because we get to drive his convertible to the stake center on starry nights or if he genuinely enjoys the CLASS itself, but he is all gung-ho. Anyway, a couple of cool quotes/principles we discussed:

from Elder Lynn G. Robbins

To achieve a Christlike love we must overcome the natural man (see Mosiah 3:19), control natural impulses, and even love our enemies (see Matt. 5:44). This is a command that requires a decision.

Too many believe that love is a condition, a feeling that involves 100 percent of the heart, something that happens to you. They disassociate love from the mind and, therefore, from agency. In commanding us to love, the Lord refers to something much deeper than romance—a love that is the most profound form of loyalty. He is teaching us that love is something more than feelings of the heart; it is also a covenant we keep with soul and mind.

^-----This quote was the one that stayed with me most of the night, for many different reasons. All of these things are difficult.... resisting natural impulses (including anger at times) and loving our enemies are things I just struggle with. But by making these sacred covenants of marriage, we vow to do just that-- and not just with our spouse, but for all of our brothers and sisters.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. It's been a rough week for me, both physically and emotionally and I have found lots of comfort in studying these things.

is it over yet?

2010-10-31T10:00:00.001-07:00

Well, I've accidentally deleted our Halloween blog layout-- on Halloween! Oh well, you're really here for the pictures anyway right? We've had a busy costume week. Here's a quick rundown of the costume changes:

The Iron "Rob", a sweet spirit, and a Sunbeam

A safari guide, tiger, and lion

Ghostbusters and Slimer

Mummy, skeleton, and Frankenstein

We've had so much fun eating candy and sweets and dressing up. We've watched nearly every spooky movie we own, carved pumpkins, decorated our house like crazy (we'll post a video later today of all THAT crazy) and been to some fun parties. Today is "real Halloween" in Arizona, and I am sure it really will be a nightmare-- especially at church. All those sugared up little bodies!! But, if you can believe it, I am costumed out. I am Halloweenied out.

Let the sugar coma commence.

slimer and the ghostbusters

2010-10-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

I never in a million years dreamed I would dress up as Slimer for Halloween. But I kind of hit a point where I am getting big and slobbery anyway so I figured why not. Amazing what a green sheet can do :) Rob and Joel are ghostbusters, although Joel's proton pack is a puppy instead. But he loves it and his laser blaster, so it turned out fine.

so creative.

2010-10-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

I spend days and days formulating our Halloween costumes. When Rob came home yesterday and said his clinical group was dressing up in 80's costumes, I had all sors of ideas and pressured him to figure something out. And he just rolled his eyes at me and said he'd figure something out.

It makes me crazy.

Especially when his costumes always turn out amazing after putting in half the stress mine do. I'd be bitter if I weren't so amazed.

Presenting.... Mr. Pac-man, an 80's icon.

I'm so excited to be here in purgatory, I can barely contain my inner demon.

2010-10-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Rob was pretty sure we were going to die on Friday night. I had ordered some cheap "Halloween" tickets awhile back for a date night, and it wasn't until we were driving around trying to find the place that we realized it was in an abandoned garage in the middle of inner-city Phoenix.

(I must not have learned from this.)

The event was called "poe" and it was touted as a selection of Edgar Allan Poe "performances", which sounded perfectly Halloween-ish to me. However, between the twisted art on the walls (our favorite was the cartoonish bunny with octopus tentacles) and the terrifying "back ground music", we were scared from the get-go. (Listen here for a sample of the night's soundtrack. Yay for Dark Techno.)

So let's paint an accurate picture.
The art. Creepy, weird, people-being-executed art.

The bathroom. A purple closet with a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Pictures of Jesus modgepodged on the toilet. Not to mention Octopus-bunny staring at you with bleeding eyes.

Background music--was like listening to an axe on a synthesizer, and it was loud. We're all sitting in a black garage in lawn chairs in the middle of who knows where. (It was at this point that Rob attempted to change my facebook status to "Kristen is: dragging her husband to hell.")

And it was absolutely terrifying once the two actors came onstage. The only prop there was a three legged stool. One actor went over to the wall, started patting it frantically, and started to cry. The other shuffled around grunting.

At this point I am really beginning wonder what I have gotten us into. As usual.

Anyway, the crying and the grunting (from the actors, not me) went on for the first few minutes with the awesome background music, and I was really just waiting for them to jump out and say "boo!". Rob murmurs awesome comments like......"We are going to DIE here, what have you DONE....." and "A three legged stool, as if this wasn't weird enough! I would have thought a bunch of hippies would use an empty garage for something else...like pot----tery. "

The weirdest part is that once the performance actually started...we loved it. It was actually done really well and we had a great time. So, despite the crackhouse facade, it turned out to be a great deal after all.

our first batch of costumes

2010-10-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Well, we had the ward trunk-or-treat tonight. We also volunteered to make a "haunted trunk" which was really fun. One day I will post pictures of it. But as for our costumes, we went as a mummy, a skeleton, and Frankenstein. Hopefully some friends with better photos will email them to me, because my phone pictures is what we are relying on here.

I have never seen a child so sugared up yet so tired. This picture of him pretty much sums up his attitude-- mean and cranky all night. Ah well. I'm going to go eat all his Halloween candy now......

Orbs! No, that's just dust.

2010-10-16T16:16:00.000-07:00

Last night I went with my sister and my husband to a ghost tour of downtown Phoenix. This is something i have wanted to do forever, and I was so glad we could go this year! I've always wanted to do the one in downtown Ogden, but just never got around to it. This year, I decided we were going.

Our experience was made infinitely better by the fact that I dowmloaded the most amazing free app for my phone. It is a "ghost hunting" app and will detect the ghosts for you! Actually, it is all just a joke but I found it really funny. Especially when we aimed my "detector" at my pregnant belly-- the spirits are hiding in there! There were a few times that I could hear weird things, but it easily could have been noises from the elevator or the pipes above us in the basement.

One of the tour guide's helpers was standing back with me when my "ghost detector" started "finding ghosts". She was so excited that my phone was malfunctioning, because that is a sign of the spirits. When I tried to explain to her that the whole "ghost detector"' wasn't real, she just wouldn't believe me.

The most random thing was when the guide was talking about a lady who had died and said her name was Ingaborg Jensen. We have a few Ingaborg Jensens in our family line, Kelcie and I thought that was weird.

Rob was good to let us have our weird, ghostly fun. He's a good sport, for sure. There are some weird photos that have come from this thing, you can see them here

the state of our various projects

2010-10-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

What can I say, we love a project-- or twelve! We are in the midst of an organizing frenzy over here. My nesting instinct finally kicked in :)

I think it's funny that when we have one or two projects planned, we end up with six on the table. I started cleaning out the closet yesterday. I absolutely love having a giant closet the size of another bedroom, but it is WAY too easy to just let it get disgusting and then shut the door and ignore it. Only AFTER we had gotten everything sorted, cleaned, and rehung did we realize our closet is about to collapse on us. Literally-- the brackets are all pulling away from the wall and there are cracks running down the wall. Apparently *someone* has too many clothes on one rack. Exciting news. I had only planned on CLEANING the closet and maybe organizing it a bit. But when I found Rob googling "closet plans" and talking about knocking things out, I got a little nervous. At any rate, it looks like a massive closet project is on the horizon. (Then Rob mentioned why don't we tile the bathroom and tile the closet while we are at it. Yay for spending imaginary money!)

Office space is another issue. I'll still be working for the rest of the pregnancy and after, but my office right now is in baby's new room. And that's probably going to have to change. Options include putting a desk in the giganto closet or.... suspending a desk from the ceiling? We're still not sure on this one. This is my dream idea, but so far from reality (around $900 dollars just for the desk space, not including where to actually HANG ALL OUR CLOTHES) that I'm sure we'll end up doing our own version.

Speaking of baby and pregnancy, Rob has designed a monster-super-changing table. To say this thing is high-functioning is an understatement. But my mind works in a layout format-- in order to build the table, we need to get the boat out of the garage. In order to get the boat out of the garage, I need to buy two carburetor kits to finish up the repairs. In order to do THAT-- I need an office to work in to make more money. And so it goes....

When I was pregnant with Joel, it wasn't until I was 7 months along that we even had a house to move to, so the whole nesting/ finishing projects thing never really happened. I bought stuff, sure, but by the time we moved in, I was far too exhausted and pregnant to do much of anything. His room was already painted, and a few other additions were enough for me.

That brings me to my most labor-intensive project (hahaha)-- a baby girl! I wanted to post an ultrasound picture, but our little girl likes to sleep. The ultrasound tech tried to get her to move around but nope. The only time she rolled over was to put her hands up on either side of her face- probably getting ready to fend off her big brother. But she sure does look as cute as a little blob can look, and I get to see her again in a couple of weeks since she was so stubborn about letting us get any measurements.

I hope this baby girl likes Lightning McQueen. It's back to the girly roots for me (I've got 4 sisters, Rob has 5.) We are so happy to be having another baby, and it will definitely be a change for us. (I've gotten really good at making car noises and playing with rocks.) Time to remember cute hairdos and doll house plans and dress up clothes and all sorts of girly stuff. We'll be having a baby girl in 4 short months, so I better get cracking!

halloweenie

2010-10-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

The weather today is so perfect. In the 80's with rain. We have not had rain in forever. I am actually *gasp* wearing long pants today! It's so fun and gets me in my "Halloweenie" mood. (That's what Rob calls me.)

He has good reason to. Yesterday, after I was updating the blog and after Joel and I had watched "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", I was upstairs working on laundry. I heard the garage door open, and it terrified me because it was around 11:30 am. I knew Rob wouldn't be home until around 6 or 7 at night. So I looked around for a weapon (this is SO Kristen), which I am probably going to have to use because whoever is opening my garage door is coming into my house! I got to the bottom of the stairs just as the door opened. I must have really been freaked out, because I began screaming as if I had been shot.

And of course, it was just Rob. The doctor had given the students the afternoon off.

He got a good laugh. Being pregnant and all, I nearly wet my pants.

Scary, scary....

2010-10-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

It was a couple of weeks ago that I learned that Joel knew the word "scary". We were wandering throuh walmart and walked past those candy bowls with the motion-activated hand that says "Want some candy?". I think you know the bowls I am talking about. Joel certainly hasn't acted scared of anything really, so I wasn't being too cautious with him. The hand snapped down on the bowl and Joel covered his face and screamed bloody murder. It was really funny, except he was absolutely terrified. The next time it happened was the same thing, except this time Rob had Joel on his shoulders. He nearly ripped Rob's hair out, saying "scary, scary" the whole time.

So when I pulled out the decorations yesterday, I hesitated because we have our very own "Want some candy?" bowl. However, I have gotten way more scares out of that thing already, and Joel seems fine with it now. (I turn it off when he's around so I don't traumatize him any further.)

Last night I got the house decorated for Halloween. If you're new here or can't tell from our sidebar for of pictures there on the left, we love Halloween aroud here. What makes me laugh is that although I was super into Halloween even as a kid, I am also a gigantic whimp. A pretty funny combination, actually. We added a couple of fun decorations to the house, including a screaming doormat and another "monster in the bush". Sadly, our beloved ghost passed on due to battery acid rotting through his brain this last year. I guess a new ghost is in order!

This morning, I slowed down a bit. We still worked and cleaned and played, but Joel and I spent some time together just playing. We ate chocolate pudding outside in the grass and laid on the grass for awhile looking at clouds. Then I introduced him to this awesome song. His favorite part? Katrina, who is "pitty pitty!"(pretty). And any time they showed the woods he would excitedly say "outside! outside!" I love that he is showing so much personality lately, he wants to play with the ball and outside, outside, all the time. Which is tough because it's been over 100 degrees most days. Hopefully the weather will cool down this week so we can spend some time outside!

very important

2010-10-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

He loves brushing his teeth. Or, at least pretending to brush them.......

A brighter tomorrow

2010-09-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

So, did I mention we went to Disneyland this past weekend? It was beyond magical and fun. We had ourselves a great time. Which was appropriate, because after our fun-filled weekend, yesterday was one of the worst days I have ever had.

I don't seem to have very many bad, horrible days. However, yesterday was one, any way you slice it. I tried and tried to put a positive spin on it, but sometimes you are just glad when the awful day is over.

Here's the lowdown:
The day began with more vomiting and ended with still more vomiting (all me). Between Sunday and today, the first time I was able to keep anything down was at 2 am this morning-which made me worried we were headed for another one of these experiences, oh the fun we have.

Rob left at some unseemly hour and didn't come home until around ten pm. (It's the first week of his surgery rotation, so I can imagine this will be our schedule for the next little bit.) This would have been fine any other day, but because I was taking the nausea meds, I kept falling asleep, usually on the bathroom floor. So, yes, Joel had a very fun day screaming at me to wake up :) I desperately needed someone to rescue me.

Around 2 pm I heard a loud thunk outside and found our ac unit spitting out smoke. Turns out our blade cracked, warped, and eventually took a nice chunk out of our ac motor. I spent nearly six hundred dollars on air conditioning repairs on one of the hottest record breaking days we've had. Since we had to turn off the thermostat to fix everything, our house turned into an oven. I'm sure the repairman thought we were quite the sad house, what with me smelling like vomit and looking like death and Joel running around screaming. The nice repairman, Paul, gave me this concerned look and asks "Do you HAVE a husband? Do you need me to... call someone for you or something?" (By the way, this guy worked his tail off. He ended up staying fixing the unit until 9 at night, because he was worried about leaving me overnight with no AC.)

Ha. Yes, Paul, welcome to the crazy train.

Rob came home and we had a nice chat about his day. (The highlights of which involved: He was the "poop-sucker" for a bowel obstruction surgery. Also, he forgot to do his hair and was worried he looked like a poodle, which ended up in him making several trips to find hair gel.)

I told him about our ac repairs. He fell asleep, I rolled over and threw up all over myself.

End scene.

and our announcement

2010-09-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, since I let it out on facebook the other day I guess we better tell the blog-world as well. We're going to be having another baby soon. Well, soon is relative, but in a few months. I'm starting up the pregnancy blog again soon (it's a great way for me to sort through pregnancy vs. non-pregnancy events in our life!). We're very excited. We will find out what we are having in the next couple of weeks, although right now I kind of like not knowing. I'm due at the end of February, so Joel and this new little one will be about two and a half years ~~pregnant~~ apart.

Two and half years pregnant? Yikes!

Wow. Clearly my brain is already doing that memory loss/pregnancy brain thing. Awesome. :)

things I'm thinking about today....(updated with video)

2010-09-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Now arriving:
My parents came down for a visit this last week. It was so fun to have them here, and of course Joel loved all the attention. It's really nice to just be able to hang out with my mom, which I really miss sometimes. My parents, of course, adore Joel and bought him the craziest present (which he adores). It's a gigantic teddy bear, over 4 feet tall. Joel thinks this is the most awesome thing ever-- he runs and wrestles the bear, squeals, rolls around with it, and chews on it (again, that's our puppy!).Now I just need to figure out where to put it.

Sisters........sisters.........there were never such devoted sisters
I'm also really appreciating the fact that my sister lives down here. It's like having another part of my brain around that I forgot I had, if that makes any sense. For example. the other day I was starving, and I needed a snack at her apartment. She pulled out a box of rice Chex and just started munching away and suddenly I remembered we used to eat that as a snack all the time when we were kids! Or, when I am trying to tell Rob a story about when we were younger, she can remind me how things "really" went. It's just good to have someone around who has known you for so long and sometimes knows why you do the things you do-- if that makes any sense. Another example is when my parents come down. I completely freak out and clean the house as much as I can and spend days panicking. It was kind of nice to see that when my sister came down, she did the exact same thing!

I, Nephi
Since today's Sunday, I've had a good chance to sit and reflect on how blessed I am to have been born to the parents that I was. I am so lucky to have four fantastic sisters and to have married into a fantastic, righteous family as well. I was just thinking today about the eternal order of families, and am so grateful that my family is sealed together forever and ever. Poor Rob and Joel, they're stuck with me!

maybe he knows something I don't

2010-09-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy morning for us. I've been working and cleaning on and off, and Joel has been busy watching PBS and chasing his toys around the house. I paused to take a break and started reading this post regarding the strength of the youth of the church.

As I was sitting there just thinking about the sunject, my son did something he had never done before. He ran out of the room and came back with Rob's scriptures in his hand. Then he climbed on my lap and pointed, wanting me to read him the scriptures. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never sat down and ever even tried to read the scriptures to my son, he's only two years old and usually pretty squirmy. But today we did, thumbing through wherever he picked and reading various scriptures. It was a pretty neat thing to have happen.

More evidence that my son is a puppy

2010-09-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

Kristen and I have joked ever since Joel was born that he was like our puppy. While learning to crawl I would find myself whistling and using squeaky toys to get him to move. I also reward good behavior with small treats. And since he got his short haircut, I'll pet his head while watching TV.

For his birthday he got a toy that will roll away if you shake it. Right now he thinks that Daddy is the only one that can make it move. The result is a game of fetch.

picture time for the kiddo

2010-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

The face of a two year old. His hair is growing back slowly....

Never without a ball. We love soccer around here, Joel's favorite is to go out with Rob and kick the ball around. And I think maybe Rob likes it too :)

Fascinated with the shadows on the wall.

How did the mom photographer take this one? He's actually trapped in between my legs trying to grab the camera while I pin him to the grass..... good thing he's cute.

Happy birthday Joel!

2010-09-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Kristen-
Things I love about Joel:
He has a great appreciation for balls, the outdoors, and cars. If we could combine all three, so much the better.

He loves his bananas and chicken nuggets and would rather drink water than anything else (except maybe chocolate milk.) I think today we hit seven glasses of water by lunch time (they are little glasses though.)

One of my favorite things to do with Joel this past year has been swimming. He has become quite the water boy, and loves anything involved with water. When you get him in a pool, he just loves it and hates leaving every time.

Something I love about Joel is he is very sweet. He loves animals and practicing being soft. I don't think I've ever seen him do anything just to be mean or intentionally hurtful.

Rob -
This kid loves books-I'm glad he got that one from his mother. I had a chance to sit and read with him today. The only problem is I apparently read too slow for him. I'd only get through the first sentence before Joel gets bored with that picture and is ready for the next page. So since it takes less than a minute to get through a story we have to read each book three times to make a full story time.

This one's for you Dad:
Joel has learned that daddies don't get to nap. I've been fighting a cold this week and needed a quick nap today. He finished his nap first and decided bouncing on daddy's full bladder would be the best to let me know that it was play time. Apparently it's genetic: for as long as I can remember my father would take a Sunday afternoon nap. And for as long as my brother could walk he made sure to find annoying ways to keep dad from finishing his naps. Even now that my brother is married with a kid of his own, I have no doubt that given the opportunity he'd still body slam our sleeping father.

Favorite things about Joel:
Every time I put him down for a nap in his big boy pants, he gets out and crawls down the stairs without his pants. It is hot here in Arizona, but every time?

Right after you put Joel to bed, it doesn't take long before you hear "thump thump thump". He likes to kick his wall. We don't really know why.

Like a puppy, he'll grab a ball and go to the door and whine or slam the door until you take him outside to play. It's really rather cute.

The insides of his knees are ticklish. A perfect spot for daddy to get during tickle/wrestle/play time.

Happy birthday buddy. We sure love you Joel!

Vicodin and too many Twinkies

2010-08-31T16:49:00.000-07:00

It all started with the funny tasting ice.

When we moved into this house, my absolute FAVORITE thing was the automatic water dispenser inthe refridgerator. We had lived with an old hand me down refrigerator that leaked like crazy in our last apartment. It didn't cool the best either, and we kept a filtered water pitcher in there that was our only source of nice cold water. We didn't know what we were missing until we moved here with our fancy-dancy fridge. And lately, Mr. Fridge has been taking his sweet time filling up our glasses. We even had ourselves a system- we'd prop our glass under the dispenser and then go do something else while we waited for it to fill up.

Around the time we came home from our billionth trip to Utah (that's what it felt like anyway) I opened our refrigerator and freezer and something just did not smell right. I whined to Rob about it, but he's gone all day and not in a "honey-do" mood when he comes home usually. I cleaned out the refridgerator, and found a few things that might be causing it. But the worst was the taste of our ice-- terrible. I'm picky about funny-tasting ice, I guess.

So, I came up with a way passive-agressive solution. I just stopped drinking water and using our ice. In 111 degree weather. Smart, eh? Eventually, we replaced the filter, and that helped some, but I still am afraid to use the ice in our fancy fridge/freezer!

Well, you can probably guess where this all is leading. After our fun-filled day at the water park (the previous entry) I ended up dehydrated and in the emergency room on Sunday. I also found out I had a high bacterial infection, which I was given antibiotics for.

(As an aside, here's what really worries me. When the ER doctor came in, he said "I hear you're having abdominal pain." To which I said, "No, actually, I'm not." And he replied "Well, we'll give you some pain meds for it anyway." And they gave me a prescription, just like that, for Vicodin! Now, if I like taking BENADRYL because it makes me float away, do you really think I am not going to get addicited to Vicodin? I did not fill that prescription, in case you are wondering.)

Today I had my follow up appointment. I woke up feeling lousy, thinking it was the infection. Ha ha, guess what. I also have strep throat. Fun.

I tried to explain all this to Joel. So he would let me relax, yeah right...But he just wants to continue eating twinkies, and I am too sick and lazy to stop him.....

Winding down

2010-08-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

We've had such a fun weekend. After waiting forever, we finally were able to purchase the parts for rob's boat that he needs. HUrray! He's since been out in the garage working on the boat, and we've all got our fingers crossed that this will give us a working boat soon.

At the beginning of the summer, we bought season water park passes. We've been out of town so often this summer that it's become my quest to go a few more times in the next month or so to make sure we get our money's worth. Yesterday was one of those water park days. I'm so pleased with the swimmming progress Joel has made this year- the sessions in Kelcie's pool have really helped! He loves the water, loves splashing, and loves trying to swim on his OWN. (I don't love that quite as much, I've had a few near heart-attacks, like when my father taught Joel how to just run off the edge of the pool and expect someone to catch him. Yikes.) We had a fantastic time at the water park, and Joel went on a few slides in the kiddie area. He was a pretty happy kid. He can never get enough of the water, and we have to literally pick him up and drag him away when it's time to go, even if he's shivering and exhausted.

I can hardly believe that my little baby is going to be two next week. As cliche as it sounds, where did all the time go? His birthday is next Sunday, so I'm hoping we can have some family fun on Saturday to celebrate. He's still not at the age where he even cares that a party is for him, so we're going to be pretty relaxed this year.

It's funny, out here in Arizona it is hot as ever, but I swear I feel fall coming on. I think I'm jut used to the Utah summers where it starts to get cooler once September hits. Not down here, Seotember is just as hot as August and it doesn't really cool down until November! I felt a little wave of sadness this last week as I saw my sisters go back to Weber State University, I always love the first day of school and new school clothes and football games and trying to find the new classes and everything. But..... not enough to really miss it THAT much-- I'm glad I graduated and finished!

losing my mind...

2010-08-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

Spent most of yesterday talking with Joel all about Wooz and Buddy. It never did sound quite right until we finished watching Toy Story and I realized I had been saying it wrong all day and it is "Buzz" and "Woody".

And I wonder why he says such weird things sometimes!

ugh

2010-08-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness. My little Joel was such a terror at church today. All through sacrament, this high-pitched half-scream half-laugh was pretty much all you could hear. And I got the feeling I usually get when this happens, which is somewhere along the lines of "Why do we even do this?". It's frustrating, as I'm sure most of you moms know, to have a kid scream and scream, take him out in the hall so he can scream THERE. I love my son, but I'm sure others in our congregation roll their eyes whenever they see us coming. Rob and I checked on him during nursery. And yup, still screaming. Not painful, get-me-out-of-here screams, but that same crazed scream that has been grating on my last nerve. I watched as all the other nursery children sat down and ate their snacks, while Joel made laps around the table, screaming.

like Sampson without his hair....

2010-08-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was time for haircuts. Both Rob and Joel have had thick, sweaty heads lately. Joel's hair, in particular, was wet on most days in Arizona. So Rob said he'd take care of him and they got haircuts together. When I was telling Rob how to get Joel's hair cut, I said "Just like we always do-- a little shorter with a little longer on the top." But the lady used clippers, and apparently Rob told her to use a "2" all the way around. In any case:

Now first, let me say that out of anyone, I KNOW that hair grows back. I have had my share of really bad haircuts, dye jobs, etc. That being said, when I saw his hair I wanted to cry. It will grow back, and Rob does LOVE it on him. Joel has always had this habit of twirling his hair, and now he just keeps running his hands over his newly buzzed head. He must like the way it feels, because I catch him grinning and rubbing his head. OR, it could be that he's pooping. I'm not quite sure the correlation, but since we cut his hair he has been pooping nonstop. Kind of odd.

Plus, I think his head really looks like an eggplant now. Do you?

Not much else is going on around here. We're just loving being back home and being lazy. Rob is almost done with his cardiology rotation, and we took a "field trip" yesterday to see his new rotation site out in Gila River. It's based on an Indian reservation, and not quite like anything I've ever seen before. Of course, Rob is very excited about it. Joel was excited to be there too, but mostly because there was this stray dog running around outside the clinic. Joel kept saying "doggy, doggy" and trying to get the dog to play with him near the window. Ah, this kid needs a puppy. But with the crazy heat here, we're going to have to wait for a dog until we move somewhere cooler or have a better place to keep a dog (I am strictly a no pets indoors person, so that leaves little doggy outside in all of our plans).

I've found some new things to keep Joel entertained while I'm working. For my birthday Rob gave me a new computer keyboard and a wireless mouse. After a few days of Joel thinking my wireless mouse was a racecar (it "vroomed" all over our house for awhile there) we finally got everything hooked up. Joel has had a blast with my old computer and mouse and loves taking the mouse through the house (it rhymes) and clicking at everything.

home, home, home HOME!

2010-08-12T11:16:00.001-07:00

Well, we made it home. Katelyn had a beautiful wedding and reception and we drove home yesterday. I am so glad to be home, to have my own bed again, to eat my own food and most importantly-- I have nothing planned for the next few months. It was so fun to see friends and family and to be there for my sister's special day (or days....), but I am a little burned out of travelling. Whew!

the grand update

2010-08-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

Wow. So it's been awhile. Here's what we've been up to:

Last week Kelcie and I travelled up north to help my family prep for Katelyn's wedding. Ahhh! So much to do and so little time and wait, did someone order the churros??! The highlight was being able to attend Katelyn's temple endowment, which was truly awesome. I'm so proud of her for being able to do that. Also, Kelcie and I did throw an AMAZING hawaiian luau bridal shower for our dear sister. Where we presented her with this:

Yup, Kelcie and I unveiled our grand sewing skills. I had never really used my machine before and so this was quite the project. And it is hand-quilted, baby. Kelcie made Katelyn a super cute apron as well, and she did it all by herself in like, a day. It was awesome. Thanks to some awesome Arizona friends for pitching in at the last minute for the quilt! I'm pleased with how well it turned out, but I am thinking about making my other sisters promise to wait a few years before they marry so I can get a bit more practice in before THEIR quilts.

While we were up there we did Katelyn's bridal photos as well. Man, this girl and I DO NOT look alike. Well, we're both gorgeous, but she definitely beats me.

I think she looks just beautiful. Here's my favorite, I think:

So, we went to Utah, had fun, had my birthday dinner at Maddox, and came home. We had a birthday breakfast at Cracker Barrel where Joel threw up all over me, himself, and the whole table. We already had plans for my birthday, so we left Joel with Kelcie (and she had fun cleaning up his explosions). Rob took me to see a play and we had ourselves a great time!

However, with Joel having his stomach virus I caught it as well. And it was a miserable two days where I couldn't eat, sleep, or drink. I woke up this morning feeling like a million bucks though. And it's a good thing, because we are driving back up to Utah and I need to not be having to stop at bathrooms every ten minutes!

sick boy

2010-08-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updating! My little Joel has been way sick since we returned from Utah, and it looks like we'll be taking a trip to the doctor today, because I'm pretty sure that vomitting 6 times in a 12 hour period isn't good. Poor little guy. He sure is snuggly though :)

tough little car

2010-07-16T09:01:00.001-07:00

On our way back from Utah, we were feeling quite adventurous. It must have something to do with hauling the old boat finally to it's rightful place in Arizona. Rob was feeling super-excited about fixing the boat, and we spent hours talking about what we would fix, in what order, and where we would take the boat. Grand family vacations were planned as we traveled I-15.

Unfortunately, (as is sometimes the case with us) we got too excited making plans and weren't paying attention to where we were driving. We laughed about it, set ourselves on the next turn, and continued talking.

And again, we missed the turn.

Teasing me, Rob said "Woman, you are supposed to NAVIGATE." And so I pulled out my iphone and mapquested us a new route. Problem solved.

It was about halfway up the first hill that we started to think that may have been a bad move with the mapquest. After about fifteen minutes of steep uphill driving, Rob muttered "I know this hill....."

Turns out, we were entering Brian Head. Rob and his brother Brad tried to pull a truck with a trailer up this one time and it resulted in a lot of frustration. So we weren't too excited about this-- me and my iphone had navigated us the wrong way. Not exactly the straight, smooth road we had been planning for our poor old boat with sagging tires. And we were too far up to turn around. We decided to see if our little car (not so little, but not the strongest one out there) could pull a boat all the way up to Brian Head.

It could. Summit elevation 11307 ft.

On the way back down, I *had* to find a bathroom. We stopped at the first gas station we could find and I ran in. (Literally). As I was leaving the gas station, I could hear people in the store talking about some crazy people who were hauling a boat through Brian Head.

Apparently, they had been stuck behind us the whole way :) That was a little embarrassing, and I kind of wanted to say "Yes, that was us, and it was totally me and my stupid navigating skills that caused it!" Instead, I ran out of the store before people could attach me to the crazy guy hauling a boat up a mountain.

You would think this is the end of the adventure. But no...... there's more. As if we hadn't learned our lesson about making maps and navigating correctly, this past Wenesday we again said "hey, let's drive the car out to the middle of nowhere and almost die."

I'll be posting that soon!

stories of Rob and Joel

2010-07-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know what I have done to my son. Seriously. I somehow have neglected to teach him what fruit is. If it's round and in the ball shape, well.... it's for throwing and bouncing. Not eating. The other day, we had some oranges set out. Joel grabbed one and took it to Rob. "Dad, ball!" he said. Rob chuckled and said "Let me show you something really cool about this ball. Look!" and he started to peel the orange.

Insert Joel's maniacal screaming here.

As Rob peeled the orange, Joel came totally unglued and sobbed. Rob tried to calm him down and say "Look, see, we eat it. Mmmm." Joel gave him a look that basically said "I'm not a CANNIBAL, dad. How could you be so cruel?"

Since then, I have had to.... hide our fruit. If Joel sees us eating an apple or orange or watermelon or tomato.... it gets ugly.

**********************************************************************
Yesterday we were quite inventive. We had peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch. I even tossed a couple of chocolate chips in there, and I was feeling quite proud of myself for being creative and proud of Joel for eating it. Yesterday, after his nap, I found a gigantic dark streak from his ear to his chin. Concerned that his ear was bleeding, I took a closer look. Shoved inside his ear were two chocolate chips that had melted.

**********************************************************************
We are loving Daddy lately. Everything is "Daddy? Daddy?" It breaks my heart when Joel wakes up in the morning and looks for Dad all through the house. Yesterday he finally took his blanket down to the front door and sat in front of it, wailing "Daddy, daddy, daddy". At the grocery store, he laid his head down on the cart and just wailed for Daddy the whole time. Several people at the store said "Well, sheesh Mom, where are you hiding his Dadddy? He NEEDS his Daddy!"

Trust me, I know. (We hear about Daddy all day but when he's mad, I get "No, mommmm, No!")

It has it's perks though, by the time Rob is home I can basically just turn over Joel and he gets his Daddy time. Last night, when Rob was supposed to be putting Joel to bed I was able to hear through the bedroom door. Rob would chuckle, then Joel would giggle, then Rob would full-out laugh, and then Joel would laugh. I love that noise, of the two of them laughing. And what's cute is you could tell Rob had to tear himself out of there, not because he was done playing but because Joel was NEVER going to go to sleep with Rob in there. They're buddies, for sure.

new favorite site

2010-07-13T22:41:00.001-07:00

Just check this out. We laughed until we cried.

summertime

2010-07-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

The summer months always make me feel sentimental and nostalgic. I think maybe it's because I wanted so badly to have a summer romance when I was single. I always wanted to have someone to go see the fireworks with, go boating with, have smores over a fire and water balloon fights with. Any time I thought I had found the right guy, we would always break up just in time for summer to be long and depressing. I remember one guy and I actually breaking up AT the Weber State fireworks.... too bad, because that's one of my favorite traditions. (Not breaking up over fireworks. Just watching them.)

When Rob and I were in the process of "dating-not dating-I guess we're just friends-wait, we ARE dating", I pushed as hard as I could to make things happen in the summer time.

We missed the fireworks that year.

But in August he decided that I was the one for him. We went boating out on his old boat (it hasn't worked in the five years since, and I feel obligated to get it fixed) and stayed out late at night watching the stars. We first held hands at Peach Days and our first kiss was in October.

I wanted to write this because I am so glad now that I have someone to watch fireworks with. To go boating with and camping and swimming and all the fun summer has to offer. I'm a summer girl at heart.

Well, and a Winter as well.

Rob circa 2005. What a hottie.

ball, ball, ball, BALL!

2010-07-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

My little Joel has quite the obsession with anything round. He'll try and bounce even the funniest things (like an onion ;)), thinking that it is a ball. Last week, we went to Walmart to get some 4th of July things. In the middle of the aisle was a gigantic bin of watermelons. As we walked past the watermelons, Joel's face lit up. "Ball, ball, ball...." he said, pointing to the watermelons. I laughed and said "No honey, those are watermelons. We eat them. Yum." Joel did not care. "Yum, ball, ball....." he cried. Before I could stop him, he ran to the bin and rolled a watermelon out onto the ground. As I chased after him, he rolled the watermelon up and down the Walmart floor, chanting "ball, ball, ball.... no, no no..... yum yum!"

At least our fellow shoppers got quite a laugh.

On Saturday, I went to go pick up our first Bountiful Baskets order, which included a canteloupe and a watermelon. When I came home, Joel made a beeline for my basket and pulled out the canteloupe, watermelon, apples, nectarines, and onions. I need to upoload the pictures, but a good portion of Saturday morning was spent rolling and trying to kick my fresh fruits and vegetables all over the living room.

oh what fun it is to eat sidewalk chalk all day....

2010-07-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

On today's menu: A delicious blue sidewalk chalk stick, followed by a handful of dirt and some rocks from the fresh garden. Bon Appetit.

Well, it's been another week! Rob has started his rotations for family medicine this week, and he absolutely loves it. he has told me some funny stories about the doctor he works with, who has a "dedicated nap" exam room where he.... just takes a nap every day. When Rob first arrived at the office, they told him "Students do EVERYTHING here." His first day included quite a few prostate exams, but it shouldn't be surprising since his youngest patient was in their 60's. But he is having a great time and learning a whole lot every day.

As for me, I've been having a great time at the gym lately. I got enrolled with some personal training sessions, so I am excited to see how those go. Got to look good for Katelyn's wedding in August! I've also been given the chance to do her invitations, so I'm working on getting those finished up for her. It's been a busy summer for us, that's for sure.

Joel is doing great. Other than eating random pieces of chalk, that is. We've had a good time having "playtime" together and reading stories right before naptime. I sure love my little boy. He's getting big, and it's hard to believe he'll be two in September. Sheesh. Time flies. I love being a mother, but there are times I just sit back and look at this kid who EATS CHALK and think "Ok.... what next?" Like any mom, I have my days where I just hope that what I am doing works, that he knows we love him, that he's happy. My sister-in-law had this on her blog, and it made me feel much better about my mothering skills. I am so thankful that the work we do as mothers is blessed and sacred. I hope you enjoy it!

fun in Utah, Arizona

2010-06-24T17:34:00.001-07:00

Oh Internet, forgive me. It has been too long. And we've been up to no good. Well, that's not entirely true, but we sure have been lazy lately. After our two weeks in Utah, it's good to be back in the Arizona sun. (Until it hit 112 degrees today. Blech.)

With Rob in and out of school, we've had the time to do some house projects. Remember our Purgatory bathroom? (Brace yourself for a very flattering picture. Please, give me a break, I was eight months pregnant and it was sweltering.)

Before

After

Our Arizona friends and our family will know the craziness I went through trying to get this thing painted. It's safe to say it has been on my to-do list since we moved in two years ago. I guess three years ago almost.... and it took THAT long for me to decide on a paint color.

I'm not sure if I wrote about it here, but we've been having Joel sleep in his 'big boy" bed for at least the past month. he's done great, and rarely gets out of bed. We'd talked and talked about what kind of bed to make him (he was just sleeping on the twin frame) and loved this bed. But not the price. Imagine all the fun he could have in here-- plus it's reversible so he can be up on a higher bunk bed when he's older. We were sold. Oh yeah, except we're cheap.

Voila. An exact replica, and one I didn't have to build at all. This was Rob's project, and he did an awesome job. We got the plan's from Knock-Off Wood again. For Mother's Day, he "gave" me the gift of building this bed and said he would help me as much or as little as I wanted. And this week, eh.... I didn't want to do anything except get the boards and get two major cuts in. So Rob got to finish it. With it being so hot down here, I had to let him assemble it in the air conditioned house. It turned out well, I am super pleased with it.

Except. For. The Joel. (Notice the crib still in his room.)

Oh, that child.

In Rob's exuberance to get the bed built, he took the crib out. I panicked. "Rob, we NEED the crib still. For naps," I pleaded. The child can open doors now and loves getting up and wandering the house if we don't lock him down somewhere. Rob's response? "I'll train him to stay in his room, don't worry." After one entire day with no naps (why nap when you can open the door and Mom and Dad are right outside?) and three attempts at bedtime last night, I began to think I may have been right. Joel can sleep on his "big boy" bed well enough, but the kid needs the cage awhile longer. So his room is fully accommodated with multiple sleeping arrangements.

And lastly, I got to do some engagement pictures and bridal pictures up in Utah. here's a couple of my favorites:

First, my sister-in-law Milly. Beautiful.

Milly and her husband, Rob. So cute. And my sister Katelyn got engaged while we were up there. I love this picture.

I think this one is their favorite. Congratulations, Katelyn and Tyler, and Milly and Rob.

my random Sunday post

2010-06-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the absence! Read about what we've been up to lately. Click here.

he's amazing

2010-06-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

I love my husband. That pretty much says it all.

If I give him water to drink, will he grow tomatoes in his tummy?

2010-05-31T12:45:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was having a bad day. My sister cheered me up by buying me (and herself) matching "Upsy Downsy" tomato planters. This totally and completely made my day, and we have since spent many laborious hours making sure our little tomato seedlings are thriving.

In the form of friendly competition, the heat is now on. My tomatoes simply must be better than hers. I've formulated plans involving classical music and daily pep talks to my little tomatoes. Rob helped me build a semi-greenhouse (ha! Build. Technically, we stacked Tupperware.)

Anyways, today I was chatting on the phone and suddenly noticed my mischievous little boy with a rather, well MISCHIEVIOUS AND EXTREMELY MUDDY face. Sure enough, his fingers were digging through the dirt and shoveling the tomato plants into his mouth as fast as he could. Dirt was everywhere, especially in his mouth and nose, and when I caught him he had one sad little plant hanging out of his mouth.

I should mention here, I am definitely not complaining that Joel is mobile and running around the house like crazy. When I think of how long it took that boy to walk, I am so grateful that he is now so active and busy. Last week he learned how to open doors, as all our door handles are the type with a lever. We haven't had too much of an incident with that until yesterday, when I was on the toilet, and in marches my son. He totally caught me by surprise, so I started laughing and told him to leave. "Bye, Mom," he said, and continued opening and closing the bathroom door.

Since we'll be visiting family in the next month, we've been worried about if there will be a crib available for Joel. We decided to move the big boy bed into his room and see how he does. It's been in there for a week now, and I have to say it is the most adorable thing in the world to see him sleeping on his special "Lightning McQueen" bed. He's usually pretty obedient and doesn't move from the bed until we come get him.

However.

This morning, around 6 I heard my boy crying "Mama, mama". I turned to Rob and said "It sounds like he is in the hallway". Sure enough, there is my boy climbing back up the stairs. Since I never even heard him get up or go down the stairs, I have no idea how long he'd been awake and running around. I laughed when I walked downstairs and saw the refrigerator door ajar and his water glass on the table tipped over. But then I completely flipped out when I noticed that the front door was WIDE OPEN. One of Joel's favorite things is to open the front door and just run down the driveway. We're incredibly lucky he didn't get kidnapped or hit by a car, and now I'm going to have to make sure I deadbolt all the doors (we always do and I have no idea how the front door slipped out of our security!).

So. Joel is fine. He is a little turkey sometimes, but we just adore him.

Good idea, bad idea….

2010-05-24T10:34:00.001-07:00

Remember Animaniacs? And their "good idea, bad idea" feature?

I feel like that today.

Good idea: Rearranging my workspace so I can look out the window.

Bad idea: Yelling at the pigeons that I can see all over my roof now. (Before I could just hear them. This is about a million times worse, being able to see them poop on my house.)

Good idea: Making sure my child eats breakfast.

Bad idea: Shoving pancakes into his mouth when he refuses to eat. He then threw up all his food all over the two of us, and now I smell like vomit.

Good idea: Exercising in the morning.

Bad idea: Getting too exuberant in the cross-punches and messing up a muscle in my shoulder.

Good idea: Fixing my hair cute and even using hairspray.

Bad idea: Mistaking hair spray for bathroom cleaner. Gotta love those Scrubbing Bubbles.

And it’s not even ten am

2010-05-13T10:07:00.001-07:00

My son. Sheesh. It’s not like I just let him run through the house at his own will. I’m right here, chasing him as this stuff happens. So far today, we have:

· Fished my diffuser attachment out of the toilet
· Rescued 3 stuffed animals from the dishwasher
· Had a nice long talk about not drinking toilet water (although I am not sure it did ANY good)
· Unclogged ANOTHER toilet, this time with an entire roll of toilet paper, a toy airplane, and some goldfish crackers (maybe we’ve been watching Finding Nemo too much around here)
· Found the door from the kitchen to the garage open and Joel sitting in the pile of my wood saying “Guys! See?” as he looked longingly at the wood glue.

Now that he’s down for a nap and I can survey the damage, here’s what I am finding:

Oh, that's safe. (No water in the tub.) How fun.

My shoes. In the dryer. Along with one of his to keep them company.

Finding pancakes all over the stairs. At least he left a trail so i know where to find him.....

Post-discovery: I have to say, I am laughing now. Apparently, the toilet paper got stuck to one of his feet before I found him. Toilet paper is tracked all through my hallway. Better get to cleaning up!

mother, I love you...........

2010-05-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

Well, another Mother's Day. Today's been a fun day, but Rob and I have been sick all day. Still, I got a cute card from Joel and a nice set of redeemable coupns from my dear husband. My favorite coupon= a shopping spree. With no limits on it and the option of having a husband with me to tell me how good I look.

I'm so grateful for the mothers in my life.

it was starting to curl around his ears. Someone asked if I liked having a daughter the other day.....

2010-05-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

The "before". Lots of hair, pretty dark, and all over the place. Plus, a nice swirl in the back.

The "after". Look at all that hair on the floor!

Joel has already had a few haircuts, his first being at about 9 months old when I could no longer handle his “devil horns” the curled up on his forehead. Usually, we just ask the stylist to trim it up, not too short. In fact, I just took him in for a haircut last month, so I’m not sure why suddenly my kid has hair everywhere.

And for some reason, this haircut was super real. With a razor and scissors and not just a trim, but sheesh, where's all his hair?? And as the stylist is cutting away this thick, dark hair I am seeing blond and blond and blond creeping out from his scalp.

Yup. Definitely getting bigger.

kamikaze

2010-05-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, it's been a good day. We've exercised, cleaned, and cooked and worked. We've played "chase Joel around the room", made dinosaur noises, tried to eat pennies (yup.) and taken 2 awesome naps. It turns out my child is not so much of a terror when his awesome mom (that'd be me) gets a clue he is not evil, just teething with those darn molars.

On the other hand, we have ........ today's list of things to keep Joel away from:

Mama's 5 lb weights that he has dropped on his little feet TWICE (even after I put away the weights, he finds them and does it again).
Pennies
Quarters
Light bulbs
Oh, the DISHWASHER
Refrigerator which he can now open and loves to go "hmmm, hmmm" and smack his lips :)
The pantry shelf that he can reach with snacks on it
Electrical sockets
Anything sharp, pointy, or remotely usable to poke
Toilets
Toilet PAPER
Pens, markers, and crayons

Also, we should include anything high because he has discovered how to throw himself off... and out of his crib. This also includes keeping him away from couches, chairs, and beds until he realizes that gravity will indeed HURT on the way down.

Today he has hurled himself down the stairs, out of his crib onto the floor, into the tub, into the toilet (yum), into the trash can, and off the couch. He doesn't seem to realize that the harder he throws himself (you should have seen him nose dive into the trash can) the harder he falls.

About the hutch……

2010-05-04T15:04:00.001-07:00

This is my hutch. I built it from these design plans from a fabulous site, knock-offwood.com. I have wanted a hutch ever since we moved into this house. So, here's what we did:

First, I went to Home Depot and got the guys there to spend an hour or so sawing my mdf for me. We decided to use mdf since I knew I was going to paint it a flat black. I also got my first nail gun for this project, which has been so fun. (Except now instead of splitting the wood with my hammer, I am shooting nails out the sides of the wood. Oops.)

We did end up modifying the plans a bit because Ana's plan is for a hutch going on top of a dresser. My plan was to mount this puppy to the wall. So we added a bottom to the hutch and used the same cuts for the top trim piece as the bottom, resulting in a cute little shelf area at the bottom, perfect for putting bins in. As for the finish, I specifically bought a paint (a semi-gloss from Lowe's) that had a poly layer included. I also learned that painting a big piece like this with paint brushes is dumb, and forgetting to wash the paintbrushes is even worse. Ah well, we know for next time. And last but not least, the backing is not the same color as our wall, it just shows up funny in the pictures. I papered the back of the hutch with contact paper from Target.
Cost:
2 sheets MDF and trim boards $90
Wood filler $6
Paint $13
Paintbrushes $5
Foam rollers $5
Contact paper $3

Total: $125

And..... the button!

pictures of my adorable boy........

2010-04-29T00:47:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've posted some pictures of Joel around here. So, here you go.

Cheeser! Look at that tongue, boy, he's his mama's kid all right. My tongue was always out like that as a kid.
Really, these are not staged at all. He just really loves books. What a silly little kid. Look at that grin!

His face when he knows he's in trouble. Like when he starts ripping pages out of his beloved books or drawing with permanent marker on his face. But with a face like that, it's hard for me to stay stern for very long :)

SO BIG

2010-04-23T13:09:00.001-07:00

Joel is getting so big these days, I can hardly believe he used to be my sweet little baby boy. I mean, he's still my sweet little baby boy, he;s just not so little anymore. He's a toddler, through and through. I took him to Walmart on Wednesday to get the two of us out of the house for a bit (with me working from home, we do spend a lot of our time inside). Joel has been doing so good with his walking, but his weakness is balls. When he sees a ball, the only way he knows how to play with it is to get down in his knees, push it, and then crawl after it. We have at least five balls in the house right now for this very game, and he couldn't be more satisfied with the game. But I wanted to see if there was a way we could get him to play with a ball standing up.

And at Wal-mart, they have those big, gigantic plastic balls. When I put one in the cart, I saw Joel's face light up. "Ball!" he said excitedly and pointed. "Ball, ball, BALL!"

"Yes," I said. "But we need to play with it standing up, because it's SO BIG. Are you SO BIG?"

Joel stretches out his arms for me and shows me how he is SO BIG. And we find an empty aisle and pull the ball out of the cart so I can see what he'll do when faced with this big gigantic ball. Joel got to his knees immediately, and when I tried to show him how to stand up and push the ball, he wanted none of it.

I then did something I now really regret. I put the ball back and watched his face crumple. I told him "If you can't play like a big boy, you can't have the big ball."

And then I realized--- he's not going to be this age forever.

Today, we're going back to Wal-mart for the big ball. Because my boy is SO BIG. And he'll learn.

Typing all this makes me sleepy.

2010-04-22T16:15:00.001-07:00

We've had our share of events this week. And it's only Thursday.

Well, Monday there was the hostage situation, and Jenn's experience with the vacuum salesmen (same story as mine, except hers stayed for over 3 hours!). I was angry about that, probably more angry than Jenn or her husband were. I still AM angry about that. Especially when the salesman offered to come to MY house and give ME the same "sales presentation". I was not very nice, as I am sure that you are aware of me and my attitude towards vacuum salesmen. AM NOW TYPING IN ANGRY LETTERS, ARGH!

Back to our week.

On Tuesday, I was picking up toys and needed to run downstairs to grab the cleaner and paper towels. I had just finished my workout, so I was all sweaty and gross and hair was in my face. Because of this, I wasn't watching where I was going and tripped right over Squiddo (have I told you about Squiddo yet?), plummeting down the stairs and crashing right into our staircase wall, where I left my bloody nose all over the place. I struggled to get up and felt shooting pain in my right ankle and leg. Just then, something weird popped in my leg, and I thought for a second that I may have actually broken it. But no, I could walk. And after awhile, I rotated my ankle and whatever it was popped back in place. A few frantic phone calls to my mother assured me I was not the victim of anything broken. The pain faded quickly after that. So. That was nice.

Coincidentally, this afternoon, Joel and I were on the phone with my parents. Joel wanted to play with the phone, and as I pulled it away he knocked me square in the face with his hard little head. Once again, I have to go "Hmmm, did I really just break something? Did my son really just break my nose?" Although there was a lot of blood, nothing is broken, so we are fine. And yes, that's nosebleed #2 in two days.

Last night, we were awakened at 12:30 am by a whole bunch of people out on our neighbors' driveway, laughing and being noisy. We rolled around and tried to ignore it, until we heard a loud CLUNK outside. Then everyone starts screaming, "Oh my goodness!" {well, that's my version} and then we hear two women just start screaming at each other. I am pretty sure one of them was our neighbor's daughter. {I should point out here that last night was the first night ever that Rob has left his shiny car out in the driveway instead of parked in the garage. Excellent timing.} Anyway, the daughter yelled at everyone to leave, and they got ready to, but she was sobbing and screaming and so was the girl she was fighting with. Being the awesome neighbors that we are, we were peeking through the blinds at this point to see what is going on. Then I saw the mom of the family (who is a tough lady from Bahrain and you do not MESS with her) come out and start yelling at all the friends and shaking her broom at them. They leave, but the daughter is still outside just sobbing and telling her mom how sorry she is and the mom is MAD as can be and cursing and yelling in her weird language. Still not quite sure what happened, but this morning there was broken glass everywhere and something spilled on their driveway. Hmmmm.

And in case that isn't enough drama for you, I went to Dollar Tree about an hour ago. There was only me and a couple of other customers in there, so the lines were short and thus, I was happy. As I was getting ready to go to the checkout lane, the fire alarm came on. I watched as the cashier cursed the stupid high school kids who pulled the alarm and I giggled when one of the other employees had to get on a ladder, with a broom to turn off the alarm. "I'm so mad," she said to me. "Those stupid kids!" Imagine my surprise when I walk out to my car to see the building connected to Dollar Tree ON FIRE. Just as I was backing out, the fire department was rushing into Dollar Tree and evacuating everybody. You should have SEEN the lock on the cashier's face as she was being evacuated. Just…. stunned.

So much FUN

2010-04-20T10:28:00.001-07:00

So. Right now, our house has helicopters flying over it. We've been encouraged to stay inside our homes until the hostage situation a couple of streets away is resolved. The story is that a man broke into a home a few blocks away around 4:30 in the morning. Just broke a window and went in with a gun, and took the family hostage in the upstairs part of the house. Things are still going on now, and the SWAT team is there, so….. hopefully it gets resolved soon. It terrifies me A LOT that things like that go on here, but then I have to remember the bomb threat when we first moved in and the car that crashed into our neighbor's house and…. yeah.

Nice way to start the morning.

And since I am here blogging, why stop now?

Did I tell you guys about physical therapy? About how my kid walked and showed off his cute little strut and the therapist was all "No more therapy for you guys! He's doing great!"? Well. Yeah. That happened. It wasn't a dream. He rocks the walk.

This weekend was a fun one. I made a bench for our neighbor girl and painted it purple. It weighs more than she does and I think there are probably rusty nails sticking out of it, because I am a Master Craftswoman and all. There's a reason her parents made it the "timeout bench". In other craftiness news, I am almost done making my first quilt for Joel. Quilt is a very glorified way of saying "some fabric kind of sewn together and mostly held together by pins and batting". I am here to tell you that without my neighbor friend Jenn, this would never happen. It's an awesome relationship I have with her, it goes like this:

Jenn cuts the fabric. Jenn pins the fabric. Jenn gets my sewing machine ready. I sew. I mess it up. Jenn fixes it for me. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, PLEASE invite me to your next craft night. Can Jenn come too?

and..... here it is

2010-04-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

The hutch I built. Rob was nice enough to almost kill himself yesterday hanging it up for me. I papered the back of the hutch with some paper I found at Target. I'll post another picture when I get it all "cute", but I really love the way it turned out! Rob's pretty insistent that I built this hutch, and I think that may be because there were quite a few.... learning experiences that he doesn't want to be associated with. Anyways, it was really fun to do something totally new, and next I think I am going to build a storage bench.

Watch out Home Depot..... here I come!