Independance Day

Since my parents have moved to Texas, we weren't sure where to watch the parade this year. Their next door neighbors were out of town, and offered their curb to our family and friends.

Grandma Linda and Grandpa Gary were tending Petyon and Meryn while Matt and Sara were in California, so they got to join us for the parade as well. Linda had bought Andrea and Meryn matching outfits for the 4th.

 My brother Eric's family came as well as my brother Brent and his wife Becky, my friend Kristi, her Mom Laura and sister Jenna, and Jenna's husband Carl. This is why the 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays... getting together with family and friends to laugh at the silly floats in Tooele's parade. Unfortunately there was no fly over this year by the jets, and no statue of liberty float doing the limbo under the power lines :( But the kids really enjoyed all the candy, even otter pops, flags, and necklaces were given out.

We really didn't do any other activities. Later in the day I had to help load all of the luggage for girl's camp and we had watched fireworks the Friday before at the high school football field. So a pretty relaxing 4th, the best kind of holiday!

Swim Lessons

Since I've had a 3 month break from babysitting, I thought it would be fun to sign Andrea and I up for Mom & Tot swim lessons. The lessons last two weeks and luckily their first session was still during the time we had free. Andrea did so well on the first lesson, she did everything the teacher asked. The next day she realized she could say "no" when the teacher challenged her and I think she was onery from allergies. But as the days went on she got used the routine, got some allergy medicine, and we both looked forward to going to the pool.

 I was a little nervous to have the classes at an outdoor pool but the weather was nice for the most part. The water was also heated so that helped.

The teacher had some really cute ideas for getting the little ones to learn the basics. We would sing wheels on the bus with varied actions to teach them the front stroke and back stroke. We also sang "I'm a little pancake on my back" to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot. This taught the kids to float on their back. Andrea's favorite was jumping into the pool to Mommy, and playing "Blast off" by pushing off of the wall and kicking.

The last day Grandma and Grandpa came to watch us and were nice enough to take some pictures. I hope we will get to do more swim lessons next year, it was a lot of fun!

Tonsil update: We took Andrea to an ear, nose, and throat Doctor who said as long as she is breathing ok, then there is no reason to remove the tonsils. The dr also gave us allergy samples (I love Doctors who are sympathetic to those of us without insurance) and even though Andrea's tonsils are still swollen, she is a lot happier!

Cedar 2011

Ryan and I decided to take a trip to Cedar City over Memorial Day weekend. Our main purpose was so Ryan could help his brother Matt put in a back flow preventor. Which, I'm sure Ryan would be embarrassed to know, I still don't understand exactly what it does... but apparently it's useful.

Andrea did awesome on the way down, just watched her movies without much complaint. She used the potty in every town we came to, even was a good enough sport to go peepee in her potty chair off the side of the highway :) We arrived late Friday night and tried to get Andrea calmed down enough for bed, her and I spent the night in the spare bedroom and Ryan was a good sport to sleep in the recliner or on the couch, he tried both. I think it really helped Andrea sleep in being in the quiet bedroom.

The next morning Matt and Ryan began working on their project while the kids rode bikes and played. After they were satisfied with their work, we all decided to drive to Richfield to visit Grandma LaVelle. She had fallen while on a visit and hurt her hip. She is staying at a rehabilitation center until she is walking again on her own. So we piled all 7 of us in Matt and Sara's Durango and headed off. It was quite the trip, trying to keep 3 kids happy with ipods and making numerous potty breaks. I think LaVelle enjoyed her surprise visit and the kids were very well behaved. Afterwards they definitely needed somewhere to run around before we took the hour and 1/2 trip back, so we stopped at an Indian museum. They did have a small kids area to play in and a walking trail to look at petroglyphs. I think the kids enjoyed it enough, at least they could stretch their legs.

Saturday night we had some yummy pizza and visited Grandma Helen and Grandpa Ray. We were still debating whether to go home Sunday, and have Monday to work on projects at home, or wait until Monday to make the drive. We decided that the weather up North was even worse than down South so there was no rush to get home. So Sunday was a nice relaxing day which started with a visit to Aunt/Grandma Sandy and Uncle/Grandpa Fernlee's while the family headed to church. Grandma Sandy had a bag full of goodies for Andrea and a surprise for us all. Sandy, who's dogs are always a hit with Andrea, had a new puppy! Her name is cookie and she is adorable! Andrea wasn't too sure of cookie at first because Grandma Sandy warned her that she likes to bite. But Andrea enjoyed all the dogs, she made sure to check on Buster sleeping under the bed, she fed Teva lunch, even laid down with Cookie, when the little pup had been tuckered out.

Sunday we ran some errands, got Andrea some new DVDs for the trip back, and stopped at Beall's to check out the bargains. Matt and Sara had planned a nice barbeque (being Memorial Day weekend after all) and even though the weather brought us inside, the food was still delicious!

As you can see, Meryn and Andrea dressed up for the occasion in Meryn's princess dresses.

Monday morning we headed home and Andrea slept most of the way, that's always a plus! I thought it was a very enjoyable trip and although I wasn't looking forward to traveling with a two year old I was pleasantly surprised. Andrea adapted well to staying at Matt and Sara's and Ryan was, as always, a great help.

Now we get to deal with Andrea's mystery illness. Monday night after our trip she got a fever and since her tonsils have been swollen for 2 weeks I took her in the next day to check it out. The dr was very shocked to see the size of her tonsils but the strep test came back negative, so now we have to consider taking them out. I guess you'll all found out soon enough if that's the case.

Keeping Busy

I've been a little stir crazy lately. Not only because Winter seems to be lasting all year, but also because I am currently a full-on stay at home Mom. Bracken's mommy is on maternity leave with their newest little baby girl, Leah, so I haven't had anything on my schedule during the days which is a little well... boring. I guess this is when most women say, "time to have another baby"... but not me :) So I've been trying to keep myself busy, church callings have helped. On top of preparing weekly singing time and monthly song charts, I'm also this years Young Women's camp director.

Being camp director has been a little frustrating because there isn't much you can do ahead of time. You have to plan a lot, but have to wait until a few weeks before camp to put it all together. I've been working on sewing the mailboxes for secret sisters. Yes, it looks like a shoe rack and that's is basically what it is but the girl's will put their name on a pocket and wait for their gifts. Glad this is almost done (just some dowls and ribbon left).

 Andrea calls them my "pockets" when I work on them.

Next I'll cut out of wood location signs for the girls to paint, "latrine" "mess hall" "barricks" and "officers quarters". Our camp is Boot Camp themed, if you can't tell. Then will be the flag and schedule, luckily my assistant is handling those.

I've also been working on a few house projects... ever since Andrea has started sleeping in her bed again I've been anxious to get her more girly bedding, the Elmo stuff was driving me nuts. As I looked online Andrea wanted Dora, Princess, Backyardigans, but I wanted the ladybug one. Luckily she liked that one too! It works great with her lady bug tent and actually happened to be the same colors I used for her padded seat on the toy box.

Our masther bedroom is always a work in progress and when I found these 3D flowers at Bed, Bath, & Beyond I knew they would work great. I had some red, white, and blue stars there for a long time and as you can see, did not match the decor. I love these flowers and they were a lot of fun to put up. 

On a completely different note, Andrea is potty trained! She actually has been for over a month. My friend gave me a copy of "3 Day Potty Training" and it was just what Andrea needed for it all to click. But while washing 10 dirty pair of brand new underwear after only 3 hours on the first day I didn't know if I could make it, but the next day she totally got it and I'm glad I stuck to the method. She still wears pull-ups at night and during naps but I couldn't care less. She does so well all day long, even tells the nursery leaders when she needs to go and is comfortable going potty at the store, the library, in restaurants, I am so proud of her!

Easter

Easter really snuck up on me this year, but that made it an easy going week. I wanted to try coloring eggs with Andrea this year and kept trying to figure out a night when we could do it with Ryan, but between him mowing lawns in the evening and me going to aerobics it just didn't work out. In all honesty, I knew Ryan wouldn't care if we did it without him, so we did it during the day.  

My first plan was to just let Andrea put stickers on the egss but I couldn't believe how well she did at carefully lowering the eggs into the dye. I only boiled about 14 eggs but I wish I had more, it was a lot of fun and Andrea loved it!

 When I was young the Easter Bunny always hid the egss we had dyed. I don't remember getting plastic ones filled with candy. So I thought we would have the best of both worlds and re-use the plastic eggs from last year as well as the real ones. We heard the weather was going to be bad on Easter so we decided to let Andrea hunt for Eggs on Saturday, plus it would give us more time to get ready for chuch the next day. Even this 2 year old is too smart of the Easter Bunny... while hunting she told us "thanks for the eggs guys". And after she emptied the candy from the eggs she asked where the Easter Bunny went so she could give him his candy back :)

 

Sunday she found her Easter basket on the island after we had let her wake up for a while. The Easter Bunny left her a bunny Mrs. Potato Head, new sandals, Minnie pajamas, peeps, a chickie that chirps, and a chocolate bunny. Only a little girl would be most excited about the shoes!

Sunday we put on our most Eastery dresses, and Ryan put on his usual boring church clothes and headed to church. In Nursery they also joined in on the Easter fun. One of the Nursery leaders had planned an Easter party. They hunted for eggs and got to eat lots of candy. When I went in to do music time Andrea was wearing the funniest bunny glasses. The best part was... she was the only little one wearing hers and she never took them off, not even on the ride home.

Grandma and Grandpa gave us all our own chocolate bunny when we joined them for Easter dinner and even Grandma LaVelle had a little basket of coins for Andrea to put in her piggy bank. What a fun Easter weekend, I know we all enjoyed it, especially Andrea.

Hello, it's Me

I often get depressed when I blog hop, everyone's life seems so perfect. Then I realize that my life probably comes off the same way. Most blogs are all about holidays, birthdays, vacations, and cute babies. My friend Kristi and I were discussing this one day at lunch and I was inspired to open up a little more. I use this blog as a journal and one day hope Andrea will appreciate the few things I wrote about. But I also want her to know that our life wasn't perfect, so I'm hoping to become a little more realistic.
First confession... depression. Being a stay-at-home Mom is so difficult emotionally. I know it's just a small moment in time, and I know it's best for Andrea, and that is why I do it but it would be so much easier to send her to a day care while I get paid and get some adult interaction. It's surprising when I talk with other stay-at-home Mothers and hear how many of them are on anti-depressants. I've been there, and don't want to do that again, so I guess the result is a lot of days that leave me crying at the drop of a hat. After a year of staying home full time, these day are getting farther in between and I'm adjusting to our routine and lifestyle. I think the cause for my depression is the feeling that I am a nobody. Most days no one calls me, no one even sees me. If it weren't for facebook I would feel even more alone. While working I talked with countless co-workers and felt like the job I did was important and necessary, now all the sudden the world keeps turning without me.

Andrea and I have a great relationship, we laugh together, we clean together, we cook together, we understand each other. When I do have those "breakdown" moments she come and gives me a kiss and says "are you happy again?", what can I do but say "of course that makes Mommy happy again!" so the plus of staying at home is to have a close relationship with my daughter. I can't wait til we can go shopping together, to the movies, on vacations...

My entire life growing up I dreamed of being a stay-at-home Mom and all my friends in High School know that I wanted to be a "walking, talking, baby factory". Now that it's all come to reality my dreams have changed. I really can see the benefits of an only child and right now without insurance it really does look like the way to go. So there you have it, a little bit of our real world, as a preview to more down to earth post yet to come.

St George

Last month we were able to go on a fantastic weekend getaway with some of the owners/employees of Ryan's company. Going to St George in March was such a nice break from the winter weather.  We started with some hiking in Zion on Friday afternoon.

Because it was still early spring the crowds hadn't invaded and it was nice to get a parking spot and the hikes weren't crowded. It was, however, colder than we all expected up the canyon so by the third hike we were all borrowing jackets from the only prepared couple Amanda and Chuck.

The Weeping Rock, left to right: Amanda, Chuck, Socorro, Josh, Jeff, Stephanie, Me, Ryan.

The Riverside Walk

Emerald Pools

Zions Park always surprises me with it's beauty, no matter how many times I've been, and seeing it in Spring was a nice change, there was still snow in places and lots of deer on the hikes.

That night we all had a nice dinner in St. George and rested for our next day of golf. Chuck, Amanda, and myself all went to the driving range before our tee time since we hadn't golfed for quite some time. This course was beautiful and had the coolest carts I'd ever seen. Each golf cart had a digital screen telling you the info for each hole: distance, par, your cart's location, and it kept score. The course was beautiful and none of us were prepared for the sun... we were all pretty red after 6 hours.

We played golf scramble style, which is my favorite type, in groups of three. Not only did we play off the best hit out of the group, we also each got one free throw (with each hand), a roll, a kick, three man toss, and 10 sticks of liquorice that could be used to measure the distance from the ball to the hole. So with all those freebies and our great coach Josh, mine and Ryan's team won, which meant we got 2 more cents than the other team :)

This was my golden shot of the day, I got this close to the hole with my drive!

One of my favorite parts of the course were the critters. Jack rabbits were everywhere and so were squirrels who were obviously used to mooching off the golfers.

The rest of the day Saturday was on our own so Ryan and I did some souvenir shopping for Andrea, had a nice dinner, and drove around the town (I really love St. George) dreaming about having a condo of our own there some day.

Sunday on the way home we stopped in Cedar City to visit with Matt (on his birthday, Happy Birthday Matt) and Grandma and Grandpa Baumgartner.

The weekend went by far too quickly, especially since it may be the only vacation we get this year. But I can say that I took in every moment... loved the scenery, the company, the weather, and a full night's sleep with no worry about when Andrea would come in the room saying "watch Mickey".