St. George

When our friends asked us a week or so ago if we wanted to come down to St. George with them, we jumped at the chance.  It was a great deal: good friends, the chance to babysitter swap and go out on a date, warmer weather, a fun town, and her parents have a beautiful second home down there for us to stay in.  In fact, this was the view from their kitchen.

We ended up spending most of our time lounging around the house, since both families have a little nursing baby, but I don't think that was a bad thing.  We hardly saw the kids, since the four older kids spent the whole weekend running around in the yard.  Sometimes even in their jammies.

Jasmine was very excited that we let her crawl around on the warm concrete out there.  She is constantly trying to head out the door when Tyler comes home from school, so when she got to run around with the others and chase the remote controlled car, she was in heaven.

And I have to throw this picture in just because it is so Kaitlyn.  Climbing all over, and using big hand motions to get the gist of her long-winded stories across.

My favorite part of the weekend was that we each got in a Valentine's date.  The other couple went out and wandered the Parade of Homes for a few hours one day, starting with the home three doors down that has the same layout as this one (and not as much view).  But for our date, we ended up making a little bit of a splurge.

The house was just 5 minutes from the mouth of Snow Canyon, so we went horseback riding!  Christopher had never actually gone on a horseback ride before, and I hadn't been out of a corral on a horse since I was a teenager.  Sure, these trips are just a slow walk on a trail, but when you are surrounded by beautiful red rocks, it is a wonderful and relaxing way to take in the scenery.

One thing I learned quickly, however, is that no matter how awesome the landscape is, trying to take pictures one handed while steering a bumpy horse with the other hand is not the easiest plan.

But the way the sunset lit up the rocks was too beautiful to leave my camera in the bag!

I was also fascinated by the blues and greens in the vegetation next to the red and black in the rocks.

And our guide was really great to chat with as we rode.

The only other activity we really fit in was a trip to the pool.  Which made me glad that I brought along my waterproof camera.  Underwater shots!

Someday we'll convince Tyler to close his mouth in the water!

Kaitlyn loved jumping in.

And then there was baby.  She thought the water was a bit cold, but still decided it was okay.  Since our house is still covered in snow up here, we certainly decided it was worth it!

Put On a Happy Face

I've expressed this concern before, but sometimes I worry that my blog makes my life seem too . . . plastic.  By putting all of my good news and happy pictures on here, I fear that it might seem like I have some perfect little life.

Of course, there is a reason for that.  When I look back on my day, the good parts are the ones I want to remember.  I'd rather not have an eternal record of many of my struggles, day to day.  Some are too private to share: some are bad memories I want to block.  I'm a big believer that focusing on the positive is a key element in improving our lives.

And yet, without that balance of good and bad, is this an accurate record of my daily life?  Or is this as ridiculous as Pinterest, which posts pictures of delectable and calorie-ridden deserts next to a model's Photoshopped and unrealistic body with her "exercise tips" that will have you looking like her in no time?

I think the reason that I am thinking about this today is that, quite honestly, the last week has been kinda horrid.  I was being rather depressed about stupid things I can't change for a while.  A main one is our house.  We bought this house because my husband wanted a project to work on - something we could buy cheap when we were young and poor and slowly work on and make beautiful.  But now he is rather burned out on house projects, which I can't blame him for.  I would never be able to count the number of man hours he has spent hammering and painting and sweating over this house.  The outside looks amazing, and I adore the laundry room he built for me, among other projects.  But even beyond how burnt out he is, now he just doesn't have time.  That's the real kicker.  I had been slowly gearing us up to replace our kitchen, since there is no room for Jasmine to eat dinner with us once she exits the high chair, but a few extra things have crowded Christopher's off hours and there just isn't time for a kitchen reno of all things.  None on the horizon either.  So every day I go back and forth between telling myself to stop being a "first world problem" whiner and be grateful that I have a kitchen that functions, to looking at the holes in the cabinets, the drawers that can't close properly and the countertop that is literally peeling off on the sides and comparing it to the stupid HGTV shows I probably need to stop watching and get upset again.  I'd being doing better about this if I hadn't decided years and years ago that we would have to get a new kitchen when/if we had a third baby.  (The bar seats four people, not five.)  I probably wouldn't be that upset about it if I hadn't been looking forward to it for so long.  And yet, now that I realize no renovations are anywhere in my near future, all I see is stained bath tubs and ugly carpet and the long list of things we would replace "someday" when we first bought the house.

And then, one by one, we all got sick.  None of that was too noticeable in my book until I got sick, and then everything in the house just falls apart.  I am SO glad that I hit my worst part over the weekend so that Christopher was here to pick up the slack.  Saturday I woke up with the fever and chills.  Ugh.  I always forget how bad that feels until I get the flu again and then I lay there in agony.  Thankfully, that part only lasted a few hours, but with mom barely able to move for a few days, my house may take a week to look presentable again.  (Please, no one come over here yet.  I mean it.)

But when I looked at the pictures I took on my camera in the last week or so, all I saw was happy faces.  We managed to get all of us up on the snowmobiles to our cabin before I got sick, and some friends came too.  That is the bright spot about not spending much money on our house: we had enough to have a cabin.  I'll that quantity over ritzy quality any day of the week.

I'm so glad that our kids get to grow up with this experience.  A chance to get away from cell phones and schedules and TV and just sled down the hill or go for a hike.

Tyler got some serious distance on his sled!  He told us he was sledding into the forest.

And just when I started to sick enough that I didn't leave the house much (but sat around feeling sorry for myself and my kitchen instead) a friend called and asked me for a favor.  Honestly, I think she did me one.  I needed a service project last week.  A few minutes doing something for someone else, even as simple as a photo shoot of her beautiful daughter that I turned into invitations to her baptism, did me a lot of good.

(Sorry, the invite info is faded out on here.  This is my blog, not hers: you're not invited!)

And we had fun!  She was so cute.

Most of all, I'm glad I was well enough to go to Kaitlyn's gymnastics show.  I love the place she takes gymnastics from!  She knows what she is doing and teaches them good technique and form, but she is not pushing them for perfection.  At the show, I could tell that at each level, she designed the routines not to just be things they could to perfectly to show off how good they were, but included things the class was just getting the hang of so they could push themselves for the show.  It wasn't about a perfect show.

And Kaitlyn loved it.

The song that Kaitlyn danced to is called "Put on a Happy Face".  And I think that was the right song for my week.

Sure, sometimes the happy face feels like a lie because you are hiding things that are really going on in your life.

But putting on a happy face and focusing on the positive is what helps us to BE positive.

And by the way, Kaitlyn was the smallest gymnast in the entire night by at least a few inches.  Multiple girls and moms came up to us afterward to tell us how cute she looked up there.  She didn't do all of her stuff perfectly, and in fact she even fell on her head on her handstand!  But she put on a smile, kept going, and had a great time.  We took a video of the performance, but I also took a video the other week at practice and posted it here.

Another mom asked me to take pictures of her daughter too that night. No problem!

These girls were really good.  Especially because they flung themselves into smiling the part!  So I guess that's what I'll keep doing too.

A better birthday than most

I have this birthday curse that occasionally rears its ugly head.  Back when I was single, I had more than one boyfriend that broke up with me between my birthday and Valentine's day.  I can list of numerous birthday party attempts that have gone quite badly.  My poor husband thought he would break the trend by proposing on my birthday, and that night didn't go very smoothly either.  Last year was I think one of my worst, mainly because I had hoped to do something special for my 30th and it went even worse than normal.

But you know what?  This birthday turned out okay!  Not perfect, but close.  A good friend threw a group party on Friday, and I had a bad couple of days before that so I wasn't the best guest that day. I'm just glad I have good friends that understand.  And thankfully I was back to my normal self by the weekend.

The highlight, for me, was Saturday night.  Christopher was gone on a scout trip the night before, so when we talked about schedule, that was our option for a date night.  Now, Christopher isn't much into planning things out.  Usually when we pick a date night, I arrange the sitter, and then when I ask him what we are doing, he says "I don't know, what do you feel like?"  This time I reminded him that it was our turn to go out and have our friends watch our kids (we swap occasionally), so maybe he could call his friend and see if they were home that night.  And then when I followed up, he wouldn't tell me anything else.

So we came to drop off the kids and I started to show my friend the contents of the diaper bag, Christopher grinned and corrected me.  He had arranged a girls night instead, and got us all tickets to see Les Miserables together.  So the three guys stuck around with eight kids while we headed off to dinner!  And I gotta say, it was wonderful.  We loved the movie, and Jasmine was even a happy little camper for him the whole time.  To top it off, Christopher had bought extremely awesome cakes earlier in the day and dropped them off at the friend's house so I wouldn't see them!

I always love a good carrot cake, but the lemon was surprisingly awesome and Christopher said the chocolate was the best cake he had ever had.  The best part of the evening, to me, was just knowing that my husband had actually planned out so much behind my back, because that is SO not like him!  Major brownie points for him that day.

The next day was Sunday, so we couldn't do much on my actual birthday itself.  For dinner, I thought I would try a recipe I saved a couple of years ago.  The Monte Cristo Sandwich.

I can only think of three places that you can purchase this sandwich, but the most famous is in the Blue Bayou restaurant in the Pirates ride at Disneyland.  And let me tell you, there isn't a redeemingly healthy ingredient in this fabulous sandwich.  It is ham, turkey and melty cheese on white bread, dipped in batter and deep fried, and then topped with powdered sugar and blackberry jam.  It is my all time favorite calorie splurge, and the homemade version lived up to the fancy version quite nicely.

Last year, one of the parts that went wrong was when I headed out on a date with my husband, and Kaitlyn cried because she wanted to come to my birthday party.  So this year we made sure to have a separate family event.  Bowling!

Unfortunately, it was league bowling night, so I couldn't use my flash that would startle them too much.  So my pictures are really grainy.  And I had another hilariously bad night of trying to hit pins.  But that didn't matter.  We had fun!

On a whim, we had Kaitlyn try and roll the ball down without the ramp once.  It made it halfway and lost any momentum!

I loved watching Tyler try to mimic our handgrip as he took his ball over to the kiddie ramp.

And this girl has been so fun lately.  She suddenly started imitating us all day!  A couple of days ago she was still doing her own thing all day, and then she started waving her arm around whenever we said "hi" to her.  Now she claps when we cheer for her, picks up the phone and jabbers, wiggles the computer mouse around, points the remote at the TV, and she even tried to brush my hair the other day.

That's what made this a great birthday: having such a great little family!

Kaitlyn is 5!

Birthday month continues!  First up was making treats for Kaitlyn's class.  They celebrated a few days early, since her birthday fell on MLK day this year.  And I thought that I might as well try something I saw on Pinterest.

Here's what the original looked like:

And here's what they actually look like:

Let me tell you, these cookies we WAY more trouble than they were worth.  We're not doing that again.  But she really liked the "lollipop cookies with no stick".  She has been obsessed with lollipops since she saw them at Disneyland.

The day of her birthday I let her do whatever she wanted to.  And for her, that meant watching TV ALL DAY.  Normally I make her turn it off, but . . . it was her birthday.  Sigh.  That night I asked if she wanted me to make her something for dinner or go out, and she said she wanted to go to Chubby's so she could use a quarter she found in the house and get a bubble gumball from the machine.  At least she picked one of our favorite restaurants!

Seriously, this girl is the worst to take pictures of.  As soon as she notices my camera, she stops whatever she is doing and makes the worst "I'm trying not to smile and refuse to look anywhere near the camera" faces.  Case in point.

She loves that present though.  You can design your own character and put it in a princess book to color, which is right up her alley.

For her friend party, she (of course) wanted to go skating again.  I still can't believe how good she is.

We combined her favorite things - dress up and skating!

I'm glad all of her friends could make it this year.  Last year half of her list got sick at the last minute.  But this year we had a great group, and the entire skating rink to ourselves!

This is Lily, a neighbor girl in her classes at church and school.

Katie, a girl at school that comes over for play dates all the time.

Jamison, who just moved in three or four houses away.  Since it was empty, they even let him use his big wheel bike!  That was great for him, but not so great for his little sister.  I think he ran straight into her three times.  ("I didn't see her!"  Riiiiiight.)  That little sister was hilarious though.  She is two, and ran away faster than any kid I have ever seen.  She took off into the men's bathrooms, and than as her mom brought her back to us and told us how much she runs off, she realizes she is gone again.  That time she went out an emergency exit and sent off the alarm.  I was really grateful that day that Jasmine doesn't go very far right now!

Cody, whose dad was best friends with Christopher when they were growing up.  Both of his parents spent a lot of time at this rink in high school, goofing off and flirting, so it was great that he got to come and try it out!

And Avery, also in the playgroup from school, who didn't care for skating, no matter how much her mom tried to help her.

The girls did, however, love wearing the skirts I made for party favors and running around.  Christopher was the "giant" that the "fairies" were all running away and hiding from.

Christopher got really into that part, which was fun to watch.

Captured!

And of course, baby sister tagged along.  She even wore her Minnie Mouse dress to get into the fun of it all.

By the way, a lesson learned more than once: cheap candy necklaces and a roller rink don't mix!

And a trip to the rink wouldn't be complete without Christopher showing off his tricks. :)

I guess it is good for my diet that my kids keep picking chocolate cake, which I really don't care for.  But they love it!  And Kaitlyn loved that we found candles that spell her name.

Did I mention she is obsessed with lollipops, but her lame mother has never actually let her have one?  I think you can guess what her favorite present of the day was.

After the party was "over", Jasmine decided she had enough, so the girls got to run around the bounce house and climbing area for an hour or two while I played human baby bed.  This was our third or fourth birthday party at this place, and it really has worked out great every time!

Some tidbits about Kaitlyn:

*She has the funniest little girl, valley girl voice.  And she never stops talking!  Her stories just go on and on, but everyone that listens to her stories looks at us afterward and asks if we have video of her because she is just so funny.  She still has a few mispronounced words, like telling me that things are "in-stra-ting", but mostly she talks like a drama queen with a flair for piling as many details in her stories as possible.

*She is doing better at reading, but it is still a lot of work for her.  She can read a lot of the BOB books all by herself, but she also tells me that "I'm to tired to read now", and lets me take a turn.  I'm glad she is making progress though!

*She is a great big sister to Jasmine, and in some ways to Tyler too.  She honestly is a good help around here!

*She is such a loving girl.  She can't go to school or bed without telling us she loves us a few times and kissing us on the check, it seems.  And she loves making pictures and fans out of paper for us.

*She is still quite convinced that monsters could come get her at night, though.  I think almost every prayer at night involves keeping her safe from the monsters, and we have to leave her bedroom door open and the hallway lit.

*She is still such a tough girl to feed!  She eats like a tiny bird.  Every single meal time seems to end with me telling her how many bites she has to eat to get down.  But her favorite meal is probably sweet potato soup.  Both kids will ask for seconds of that!

*She is so excited about Kindergarten next year!

The Coldest Vegas Trip Ever

Normally, our January trip down to Las Vegas is a glorious respite of warmth.  This year, however, it has been in the teens up here every day, and we got down to 28 degrees overnight in Henderson.  Yikes.  So we didn't get to play outside as much as we usually do.

Or at least, that was my idea.  Every time I went outside, I wanted to go back in immediately.  Kaitlyn had no idea what we were complaining about.  She wanted to go swimming in my brother's pool.  I laughed and told her to go see how cold it was out there, and she came back and reported that it was just fine, "let's go swimming!"  When we mentioned that to Jackie, she laughed and told us that the pool is not heated right now, so she sent Kaitlyn outside to feel the 45 degree water and see what she thought.  That also seemed fine to Kaitlyn.  She was ready to change and hop in.

Thankfully, my accommodating family heated up the Jacuzzi so she could get her wish.

He even heated up the towels for us in the dryer!  What service.

Kaityn also loved the playground just a couple of doors down from their house.  But of course, the best way to get there is by roller skates.  On wings.

Another day, we came on foot with her cousins.  She told me she was pretending to be a lion . . .

. . . so she could get Maya and Sydney.

That was one of the best parts of the weekend.  Tyler and Kaitlyn have a lot of really great cousins who honestly enjoyed playing with them, despite being much older.  These girls carried them through Costco, took them to parks, and endured far too many games of hide and go seek.

Nicholas even took her "flying" around the house.

And Kaitlyn loved the pancakes my brother made one morning so much that she asked for them the next day . . . INSTEAD of cereal.  To put this in context, I can't ever remember a breakfast that she didn't ask for cereal.  It doesn't matter if I make German Pancake, waffles or even the day I made chocolate pancakes with chocolate sauce on them, she wants a bowl of cereal first.

I need to get that recipe.

Tyler's favorite part of the trip, I think, was the doggies.  We stayed with Gary, who has energetic Lucy and calm Sam.

Jasmine wasn't as happy about the dogs as they were about her.  As soon as I set her down to crawl, they would swarm on her to lick her face, and she would just panic.

Tyler also loved Mackay.  He was a fun dog!  He was totally docile and gentle with Jasmine, but as soon as you took the rope, he went crazy.  You just had to yank it above your head as fast as you could and flinch while he lurched for it, and then throw it to see him skate down the hallway.

Tyler also loved the puzzle they brought out for him, though Jasmine loved crawling to the middle of it and triumphantly pulling up the pieces.

Tyler's other favorite of the week had to have been the Play-doh.

On the first day we were there, we made a Target run to get some carpet cleaner and Febreeze, since Tyler puked on the way down.  (Kaitlyn puked in my car the next day.  Ugh.)  But the most amazing thing happened in Target that day: my kids behaved!  I had never seen them that good before.  Normally Tyler and Kaitlyn start wrestling and Tyler starts running laps up and down isles and I have to leave as quickly as possible.  But this time, they just calmly walked beside my cart.  I was able to try on clothes!  So I told them we could head to the toy section.  Since this particular store was being re-done, there was empty shelves and clearance all over the place.  Kaitlyn got her wings for $4, and this little set was $3.11 cents.  I think he spent at least 2-3 hours a day with it.  That kid loves play-doh!

And my favorite is just spending time with my family.  I got my neice a tutorial on making duct tape rings for her birthday, and so we made one before we left.  I may or may not be a craft nut.

The only down side was that my poor sister-in-law got the flu, so we didn't get to spend nearly enough time with her.  But she did make it the night everyone in the family went out to dinner together, and we had a great time.

We loved the hats one family made for everyone's birthdays!

Tyler loved the chopsticks so much that he used them on the french fries his cousins shared with him.

But everyone else at the kid table decided they were good for sword fights.

Funny side story: this is my dad's badge from a job he had in Salt Lake recently.  We went up to go see him while he was in town, and Jasmine was in LOVE with this tag he was wearing.  She would lunge from my arms to go attack it.  So they included it with her Christmas present, and now it is in my diaper bag as a toy for her.

Kaitlyn had a lot of fun with Megan, who is only a few months older than her.  The night we went over to their house, Kaitlyn showed up in her wings, and Megan came downstairs in her Princess dress, so it was an easy match.

I'm sorry, I have to include this picture.  Somehow the night got to silly finger tricks and who could do them. It just made me shudder!

Does this count as Jasmine's first photobomb?  I only meant to take a picture of how much Tyler loved snuggling with his cousin!

Happy birthday everyone!

And then, on our way home, we saw a plume of smoke from miles away.

A tanker had fallen over and burst into flames on the other side of the road.  We could feel the heat from our side, and the fire looked about 40 feet into the air.  The haze in the picture is from all of the snow evaporating, even though it was negative 10 degrees outside.  Since the driver wasn't injured and we were able to drive quickly past before they locked down the freeway, I think we'll count that as just an amazing experience.