Vacation Time!

At the end of February Chris and I got to go on a 4 day vacation with our good friends Collin and Kristel, and we didn't bring any kids! This was big for us because I have never been away from the kids overnight. Ever. I didn't even end up leaving William when Isaac was born since I had him at home. Anyway, some getaway time was overdue! And even though it seemed like the fates had aligned against us, we decided to go through with it. We left at midnight to catch a 6:30 am flight from Salt Lake, tried to catch a few minutes of sleep on the floor of the airport, boarded the plane and 2 hours later landed in Long Beach California!

After picking up our rental car and getting some breakfast we went to fulfill Collin's dream of going to Knotts Berry Farm. He we incredibly excited, so I'm not sure why he was making this face! Hmmm...we must have been up all night!Here we are at the entrance. You can see the super long jerky wooden roller coaster in the background. I used to love roller coasters. I could ride them all day. I found out at Knotts Berry Farm that I must be getting old because they make me somewhat motion sick now. Funny thing is that Chris actually really enjoyed them, and he is the one that usually gets terribly motion sick. Weird.
This is after riding the xcelerator, which goes from 0-30000 in less than a second. Collin made us ride it twice.

After spending a couple of hours riding the rides we were all incredibly tired so we checked into our hotel. I was so tired that I walked into the hotel room, dropped my jacket and shoes fell onto the bed and was instantly asleep for several hours. That evening we walked down the street to a restaurant, and then walked to Target and got some icecream which we ate back at the hotel. Then Chris and Collin tried out the pool while Kristel and I relaxed and just hung out.

The next day we spent at Universal Studios. It was SO COLD! The weather kept rotating between hail, snow and rain, but it was actually kind of a plus because there were no lines and most of the rides are indoors so they didn't shut down because of the weather.

We're so cute!

I think Chris got a little nervous when he saw King Kong.

Sporting the 3D glasses!

We were supposed to be looking "cool" in this picture, but I just look like I'm pouting :)

We took a little trip through Whooville,

and Jurassic Park,

and saw some sweet cars!

We froze as we stood in front of WaterWorld forever while they kept telling us, "There is a fifty percent chance this show won't happen." "We are waiting on the weather." And a bunch of stuff like that till long after the show was supposed to start. They finally let everyone in and did the show (probably because they couldn't get us to go away!) Kristel and I are rocking our ponchos. The boys were too cool to wear them.

And for some reason I find this picture hilarious, so I'm putting it up.

I think my favorite moment of the day was when we were sprinting to go to the Shrek ride before it closed (and to warm up) and some voice over a loudspeaker from somewhere we couldn't figure out said, "Hey, why are you guys running? Are those guys chasing you? (The Hunters were a little way behind us) Hey, what's the hurry?!!" And on and on. It was hilarious!

Because of the short lines we were able to do every single thing we wanted to do at Universal Studios in one day. We even stopped and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in the middle, and took our time. It was great!

The next day was absolutely beautiful weather probably in the 60s and sunny, which worked out great because we had wanted to spend the day at the beaches looking for tidepools and such. This is the first beach we got out at and it was like something came alive in me that I hadn't even known was lying dormant for all these years. I LOVE the ocean!!! I mean, I've always known I liked it, but this was different. This was a connection, a yearning for, a need! I told Chris that we were going to have to live by the ocean at some point or else. :) Actually he probably got really sick of hearing me talk about how much I needed to live by the ocean. Not just vacation. Live. It was a glorious day!! I'll mostly let the pictures talk.



(Note: I'm not sure why, but in all the pictures from this day I look like I'm not wearing any makeup. Maybe I forgot to put it on?? I have no idea!!)

Karate Kid!

We ate at the Fisherman's Restaurant right on the Pier at San Clemente. The clam chowder that Chris was eating in this picture was amazing! And my salad was very good. Other than that however, we were somewhat disappointed in the sea food. We were hoping for some amazing fresh lobster or crab or something, but they didn't really deliver. Oh well. Maybe when we go to Oregon this summer?!
This picture makes me laugh! You notice the fishing pole next to us? Well there were a bunch of people fishing off the end of the pier, and one guy had a bunch of rods out and kept going back and forth between them. Whenever he was away from one, Chris would think he was getting a bite and would barely be able to restrain himself from grabbing it and setting the hook. It was pretty funny. We had to leave because he couldn't stand to watch it and do nothing!

Sunset on the beach. Is there anything more romantic? :)That evening we all went down to the pool. Kristel was a good sport. She had shingles (remember the whole fates aligned against us thing? That was part of it!) so she couldn't get in. She was nice to come down with us anyway though!

The next day we checked out of the hotel, found a big outdoor shopping center to kill some time in :) and shopped for a while before we had to catch our flight. We then had a crazy drive to the airport with all of us shouting directions at Collin, made our flight with some time to spare after all, and then boarded a plane back to Salt Lake.

Once in Salt Lake none of us really wanted to go home, so we drove to Layton, went to the mall for a while (where I FINALLY bought some boots) went out to dinner and then finally started the drive home. We got home a little before 11:00 pm to adorable sleeping kids, and went to bed.

All About Isaac

Isaac is the sweetest little man ever. Here are some things about him lately.

Isaac loves to draw. It's kind of strange to me because William has never been much interested in drawing or coloring, but Isaac will do it for a long long time. Look at the way he's holding the pencil. Not bad for a 17 month old don't you think?

One thing about his love of drawing is that he doesn't discriminate what he's coloring on. He's fine with drawing on the wall,

he likes to take a break from the paper and color the counter,

but his favorite place of all is the freezer. I will often catch him grabbing a writing utensil and sprinting for the freezer to get some color on it before I can stop him. This picture is after I had scrubbed all the coloring off a couple days before.

Isn't he cute?

He can also be quite the little ham. He sings all.the.time. It's one of my favorite things to hear him about his busy little work of constant destruction singing as he goes.

Speaking of constant destruction, this (picture below) is how he likes to read magazines. This kid gets into EVERYTHING. He can pull every item out of every drawer and cupboard, tear the label off anything with a label, pour cocoa powder, powdered milk, or laundry detergent all over the floor faster than you can blink. Some days I feel like I spend my whole day trying to pick up the current mess as he joyfully runs to his next project of havoc.

I know this is another coloring picture, but I just want you to notice the stool that Isaac is standing on. It makes me laugh because William went through a phase a while ago where he had to be standing on this same stool at the counter if any adult was in the kitchen. Now Isaac does the same thing. He loves standing on this stool at the counter, sitting at the stool playing, or pushing the stool around. It's a little bit bad because William still has some attachment to the stool, which can cause some conflict, but Isaac has pretty effectively taken it over.

One of Isaac's favorite things to play with is the plunger. It doesn't seem to matter where I hide it, he still seems to find it at least once a week. I have actually considered buying a brand new unused plunger labeling it with Isaac's name and letting him go to town. I might still do it. When he does get ahold of the plunger his first choice of activities is to dress it. He will go back and forth from the laundry basked to the plunger adding layer after layer of clothes. I would have taken a picture, but for some reason he really prefers using mine and Chris's underclothes. Let's just say that I try to circumvent this activity as often as possible.


Isaac doesn't talk a whole lot, but his babbing and singing sure sounds like talking. He does say "Where is it?" "What" "Dog" "Woof Woof" "Daddy" "There it is" "Thank You" and a few others I can't think of at the moment. He has also become much less stubborn about signing, and signs quite a bit now, although not as much as William did at this age. I have to say that it's basically impossible to refuse him anything when he looks at you with his big eyes and signs "more please".

He is such a joy to have in our family! Today William threw a big fit because I was holding Isaac and he wanted Isaac to come play with him. Although they do fight a fair amount, they are starting to play together more and more, especially rough and tumble sorts of things where they run around and laugh like crazy. I love it!

Meet my baby...

Isn't she beautiful?

We were able to buy our first piano back in August, and I absolutely love it! Each time I play I grow to like this piano a little more. When we were first thinking about buying it I played it a ton in the piano store to make sure I really liked it, but I still had my moments of doubt and wondering if it was really worth spending most of our savings on (scary purchase, I assure you!).

But I really do love it. I love the color, I love that it is very simple and stately, I love the action which is not too soft, but not too hard, I love the crisp sound it can get, I love that it gets a really big sound, even for an upright.

I also love that I can teach piano lessons in my house for the first time ever, and I've really enjoyed being able to take more students and try some new things.

I also love the handy adjustable stool (for the students too short to reach the floor) that Chris made me for my birthday and stained to match the piano. You can see it under the piano stool in the picture at the bottom.

There are only two things I don't like about it. It shows dust and fingerprints like crazy. The fingerprints seem to breed. It's kind of amazing. But...as the good points vastly outweigh these negatives, I am still very happy with my purchase. I figured that once we are ready to upgrade to a grand piano we would trade this one in, but now I'm not sure I will ever be able to give it up. We might just have to keep it AND buy a grand :).

Moving on...

For the last couple of months my friend Halsey (she plays the violin) and I have been working on some music that we are going to play in a recital this Saturday. We did one a couple of summers ago, and decided that we needed some motivation to practice again, and I know it would have been completely impossible for me if we hadn't bought this piano.

If anyone would like to come to the recital, you are invited and welcome but I have to explain a couple of things:

#1- Please understand that between the two of us we have a 3 year old and two 1 year olds and so our practice sessions together usually consist of 5-7 minutes of practicing, followed by 10 minutes of taking care of the kids, repeated for one hour at which point William is tugging on my arms whining for me to be done, Isaac is crying to get up and play the piano, and KJ is trying his very hardest to knock over Halsey's music stand.

#2- Finding the opportunity to practice on your own with kids is extremely difficult. When I was in college it was normal to practice 3 hours a day 6 days a week. Now, if I am able to practice 4 days out of a week for more than 20 minutes I think I had a great practice week.

#3- Sometimes you listen to yourself play so much that it's hard to know what to change, or how to make it better, but getting feedback from a teacher costs a lot of money and requires a babysitter for the kids etc. etc. etc.

So if you want to come, you are welcome. Please enjoy the music and don't judge too harshly :).
Here's the info:

January 29, 2011
3:30 pm
Piano Gallery Recital Hall

We are playing music by Mozart, Sibelius, Brahms, Debussy, Bach and Gershwin.

Have I mentioned that I love my piano yet?

Christmas 2010

We spent Christmas morning at our house with my family this year. My mom was called to a birth late the night before and ended up being there all day (bummer!) but we still managed to have a good time even though we missed her. Here is Christmas morning in pictures.

(Yes-Issac got a baby boy doll for Christmas, and yes-I vetoed the battle axe that Chris insisted was necessary to counteract this gift, and yes-Isaac absolutely loves his baby)

(Yes I do have tape holding my glasses together. Just a note--never let Isaac get near your glasses. He has managed to break 3 pairs so far.)

We spent Christmas afternoon at Chris's parent's house and had a lot of fun, but in all the festivities didn't really manage to get pictures--except this one.

I somehow managed to stay up until 5 am Christmas morning (the first non child caused all-nighter I have pulled in a LONG time!). By the afternoon I was exhausted and this was my unsuccessful attempt to get a quick nap in before we started opening presents. Luckily I completely zonked out later and Chris took care of the kids so I could sleep (not that it would have made that much difference with how tired i was).

Later that evening (around 9:00) my mom finally got home and we were able to give my Mom and Dad their present. My poor Dad had hardly had any presents to open since we had one for him and Mom from all the kids and we insisted that Mom be there when it was opened. He had all day to think up all sorts of things it might be, but I think we still surprised him.

Watch their reaction here. My Mom had been at births the last two nights with no sleep for at least 48 hours, so she was slightly delirious. I think they liked their present though, :) and we are all very excited for a Family Reunion on the Oregon coast this summer!

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our Christmas this year!

Sunbeams

Today was William's first day of primary. He is now a sunbeam! In our first married ward there was one couple who had a sunbeam age boy and a nursery age girl and they were the oldest ones in the ward! It was funny to reflect that we would be that couple now.

Naturally, we had to take some pictures of how cute he looked on his first day of primary. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and let me tell you, this beholder thought he was the cutest darn kid in the ward, possibly the city or the state.

GQ William

Doing his version of the Charlie Brown. So excited for sunbeams!

And my personal favorite. A completely typical silly Will face.

One funny thing about all of this was that as I was telling Will all the things that would happen now that he is big enough for sunbeams, I mentioned that when all the kids go up on the stage to sing he will be able to go up and sing with them. Apparently in his head that meant that sunbeams=going up on the stage. For the last year or so Chris and I have been going in to sing with the sunbeams for the first 5-10 minutes to get some wiggles out after sacrament meeting, so we did that today, and when we got up to leave William tried to come with us. I told him he needed to stay and he said, "But I want to go to SUNBEAMS!" I explained that this was sunbeams, and Chris decided to stay in with him a little longer. After the lesson they let the kids play with toys, so Chris decided to leave, and as he was walking out, William said "But Mom said that we were going to go up on the stage!"

Apparently, despite the disappointment of not going onto the stage, he had a really good time, and even got to hold one of the pictures during singing time. Lets just hope they do a primary musical number soon, because I have a feeling that he is going to ask to go on the stage every single week until they do.

Family Pictures 2010

I have been wanting to take family pictures for a couple of months, but haven't really wanted to spend the money on them, so a couple of weeks ago we went out and tried to take them ourselves. Let's just say we got some cute ones of the kids, but none of our whole family. We came close though, and we figured that if we just got someone else to come along and make the kids smile we could make it work. So despite last Sunday being Fast Sunday and Isaac not having had a nap, I got the family (aka Chris :)) up and out, and my Mom and Tim were nice enough to come with us to help.

Tim ended up actually taking the pictures, and he did a great job for his first time ever trying to take pictures. However, since Issac hadn't had a nap he was very hard to get a smile out of. He wasn't crying, just completely somber. Most of the pictures turned out with his face saying "Are we done yet?". However, with much effort on the part of Grandma we managed to get a few cute ones and that was enough to satisfy me. Just in time too! It snowed the next day and every day since.

Anyway, here are my favorites.







And here's some from our previous attempt. First a cute one of the brothers, and then one of just Issac. Don't think that we don't love William enough to give him his own picture. We do, it's just really really hard to catch him. We haven't gotten one that we loved yet, but I am determined that we will at some point!

Halloween Weekend

We had a three day celebration of Halloween this year. Festivities started Friday morning when a couple friends and I took the kids trick-or-treating at Melaleuca. Every year they decorate the building really awesome in different themes and everyone dresses up. You walk through the whole building, and get lots of candy. :) This year they had a Wild Wild West section (complete with gold mine) a Candy Land room, How to Train Your Dragon, Toy Story etc. We had a great time! Here's a picture of all the kids (minus Chandler who was being camera shy). Aren't they cute?


Chris had to work Friday and Saturday (and ended up working till after 11 both days) so Friday night I took the kids to his parent's ward Trunk-or-Treat and chili cook-off by. Since I was trying to keep track of two kids, hand out candy, get food for the three of us and eat while Isaac was trying to dump all the food in my lap, the last thing on my mind was taking pictures.

Friday night was one of the funniest parts of the whole weekend. We had borrowed William's monkey costume from Katherine (thank you-I really didn't want to make a "bird with wings" costume which is what he at said he wanted at first) and he had been VERY excited about it and hadn't wanted to take the costume off. Isaac wore the same puppy costume I had made for Will a couple of years ago. Anyway, in the middle of the night I woke up to William sobbing. Sometimes when he cries like that in the night he has to go to the bathroom, but can't wake up enough, so I went in to check, but he was obviously still pretty sound asleep. I asked him what was the matter, and in his sleep he mumbled "I wanted to be a puppy!!!," and then was back to sleep. It sure made me laugh that THAT was what he was dream-crying about!

Saturday was our ward's trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off (must be a Mormon thing :)). They had it at the park and had a little train ride and games, and it was a lot of fun. Here are my kids on the train. Isaac was pretty skeptical in this picture and was sobbing half way through, so I took him out. William wasn't quite sure he liked it either, but was excited at the beginning if you can't tell by his cheesy grin.


I came up with spur of the moment costume's for Tim and I to wear, and we had an epic Wizard's duel right in the middle the park. Obviously, I won.


The kids had a lot of fun playing on the playground (and stuffing their faces with candy) and although I could not get a decent picture of my boys together, I did manage to get a couple cute ones separately. I really like my kids!



I think every kid should have an uncle Tim! They love him so much and he is so great with him. We are sure going to miss him when he goes back to college.


Here he is leading all the kids in a pagan ritual dance to the gods of autumn around Issac. Isaac looks pretty content to be king of the ceremonies, don't you think?


And here are some of my kids with their cousins that live here in town. Don't mind the comatose looks, they had devoured excessive amounts of sugar and red dye. At least Trey looks happy!


Sunday was the day we had with Dad, and so after the usual church, naps, dinner, etc. we carved pumpkins. Will had been so excited to carve pumpkins with Daddy that he begged to go home after Sacrament meeting so we could. He kept asking if it was time yet. How about now? How about now? :) Isaac didn't last very long into the carving process and had to be put to bed, but we did get a cute picture of him in his church clothes with a pumpkin.


I usually don't enjoy doing things like carving pumpkins because I am way to perfectionistic and never live up to my own standards, but this time I just let go and actually had a lot of fun. Here we are with the finished products. William had insisted on a frowny face for his. Don't ask me why, it certainly doesn't match his face :).


And here they are in the dark. Spoooooky!!!


And of course, even though Halloween was almost over, we still put them out on the porch. Lucky for us, Popeye showed up just as we were putting them out!


All in all it was a very enjoyable/exhausting Halloween Weekend!