Spring...for now

"We're going to the zoo zoo zoo you can come too too too we're going to the zoo zoo zoo!"

I remember learning this song when my first grade class went to the zoo with Mrs. Hayes.  Anytime our little family heads over there I sing it over and over in my head.  We had a decent snowstorm this week and now today it is 70 degrees.  April is such a goofy month here.  Like other states nearby I am sure.  But spring may actually be here now because all next week it is supposed to very spring like.  Well spring like you associate spring should be. To celebrate the nice weather we spent the morning at the zoo.  The recently completed a new exhibit called "Encounter Africa". The lions and elephants now have a very fancy new exhibit so it was fun to check it out.

 

 Lydia enjoyed her animal crackers, very fitting for the zoo right?

 

Knuckles!

 

We had fun feeding the giraffes and enjoying the gorgeous weather.  And Lydia rocked her first set of pigtails.  Too bad one side stuck straight out while the other laid flat.  Oh well. It was still super cute.  They may have looked more even if she hadn't been jerking her head around and crying constantly. Better luck next time.

 



 

We also went to Lowes and picked out my Mother's Day Flowers.  Each year we pick out flowers and them Mark plants them in our hanging baskets.  I really don't enjoy planting them but love enjoying the pretty colors. Happy Spring!

Lydia Grace at 15 months

 

 

 

Lydia did really well at her 15 month check up.  At her 12 month check up she was not happy to have the Doctor or nurse near her.  Yesterday she was happy as could be. She is 20 pounds (8th%) and 30.5 inches (46th %). She got 3 teeth in the last month and now has 7.  She really is not saying much besides mommy and daddy.  She loves signing please for everything, which is polite but not real helpful.  She is always lunging for or pointing at things so we play a lot of guessing games. Most things are called "mah".  She seems more frustrated then I remember Jared being at her lack of communication so it may be time for me to teach her some more signs.

 

Lydia loves: couch cushion slides, climbing on anything she can , the refrigerator, making a mess out of all our reading books, taking clothes out of dresser drawers, her brother and giving kisses. Most objects become a brush to her and she loves to grab mine off teh ocunter and try to use it. She also does this really cute little head titlt thing.  It reminds me of my sister Susanna. Occasioanlly when we talk to Lydia and she will tilt her head to the left most often.



 

She has also learned that she can pick on get her brother to play with her if she takes what he was playing with and runs away with it. She likes to push her arms back behind her and stick her head out really far when she runs away from him. 

We found a great little play kitchen on Craigslist and she and Jared have had a good time cooking us up lots of yummy food. Or just dumping it out on the floor.

She does not love it when I try to "do" her hair. But looks pretty cute when I get it out of her eyes.

 

 

She is a sweetheart and we love her to pieces!

Once a quarter

Jared and Lydia are both sick. Lydia seems to have a bad cold and Jared once again has croup. This poor little boy gets Croup like once a quarter.  He had it last October, this January and right now.  I had an appointment set up for Lydia's 15 month check up scheduled for today but after hearing poor Jared cough and wheeze and toss and turn all night I called to see if I could either bring him with me to her appointment or if they could both be seen yesterday.  The lady heard Jared coughing and said she would make it happen today! He was just coughing non stop. So we went to the doctor and Lydia is great minus her cold and Jared was able to get some medicine.  I love our pediatrician. He is really awesome. Jared slept much better last night and has more energy/better coloring today.  Even though I just have two kids it was really hard having both of them so sick at the same time.  Fortunately I have this week off from work so I can spend more time with them.
So we have been reading lots of stories. watching more movies then we ever do, using lots of tissues and snuggling a lot

Which I love.

Congratulations...

Today I got a new calling at church. I am now the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society Presidency.  A lot of people were really surprised they were changing the presidency but I was not. Not because I had some amazing spiritual enlightenment but because the current counselor is moving in June and I have held every calling she has had right after her.  She was the Primary President before me, then the Visiting Teaching Supervisor which I just got released from and then the 2nd counselor which I now am. We were talking after and I said "we are three for three."  It was funny and weird. I told her I would anxiously wait to hear what her new calling was after she moved so I can start preparing for it. I never quite know how to respond to someone when they tell me "Congratulations" on a new calling.  A baby sure, a new job of course but a calling?  Just seems a little off.  But people were really nice and supportive.

We have been having some fun around here.  We went ahead and bought Jared a bike.  He has only ridden it once as we have had this weird cold snap here. It's a Lightning McQueen Bike (of course) and he was very excited about it but even more excited about the fact that it came with 6 cones. We debated long and hard about buying this bike or the one slightly larger but since this one had cones we got it. At least he is enjoying the cones while we wait for some warmer weather.

 

This is how we like to spend our mornings before church or anytime I lay down on the ground.

*Bonus you can see his cones on the ottoman in the background.  He LOVES them!

 

 

 

My Dad (who is a Realtor in Northern CA) just listed my Grandparents house on Realtor.com.  It made me miss them and feel a little sad.

I am so grateful I got to see my Grammie last March (2012) and she could meet Lydia.

I am so grateful I got to spend so much time with them when I was growing up.

I am so grateful I got to spend a few days at their house last August when I went out for my Grammie's funeral.

 

Seeing their house listed made me start to think about how it will feel when my parents sell their house my childhood home. They have lived in the same house since I was 5. I don't get back there much but do have a lot of special memories there. It was a happy place for me. I LOVE the song "Best Day" sung by Taylor Swift. I feel like I did have that kind of  childhood and want so badly for Jared and Lydia to be able to sing that song about their childhood as well. Soon they are going to be in school all day and I will miss them. I must take more videos of me with them. And I must be less selfish with my time during the day. They both take their nap at the same time so I do have time to myself for now during the day and they are both in bed by 7:45 so plenty of time at night.  I am pretty sure there was a conference talk (found it :great reminder must read it often!) about just sitting on the floor while they are playing and watching them, being there, present. I love Jared and Lydia and want these special memories with them so much. I am fortunate to have this opportunity. Now to just find a way to not feel like I have to be doing something to not feel like the day is a little too long.



Mesa AZ Temple

While we were in Arizona we also took a quick trip up to Mesa to visit the temple and see one of Mark's good friends from Turlock.  I forgot that we took some cute pictures because we had to take them with Mark's IPad because I unfortunately spilled a whole glass of water into my purse where the camera was.  Yeah. That was annoying. How did it all go right into the little pocket where the camera was?
I really like the Meas Temple.  It is so different then other temples we have been too. I like how on the front it says "The Arizona Temple" there are so many there now! Like 6 operating/announced.  The Mesa Temple was the 7th operating temple.  Jared of course loved walking around the grounds and touching the water so much that he was quite the pill when we tried to take pictures together. I always try to remind him that he will be sad later when we look at pictures and he is not in them.  It does actually convince him at least half of the time so thats something.

 

 

 

 

"Look at all the Cacti! It's so big!"

Grandma Sue's house

Jared: I wish we had a house like Grandma Sue's
Me:  Why do you like her house so much?
Jared: She has lots of trains, and golf balls and it's fancy.

Jared loves going to Grandma Sue's house.  He thinks that any house with a bigger backyard then ours (not too hard to do) and a garage (also something we lack) is a fancy house. We are so glad we could go visit Grandma Sue.  I wish his other Grandparents lived closer so we could visit them more. It was so nice to get to visit with Sue.  I am so fortunate to have such a nice, comfortable relationship with her. We also got to attend Mark's nephew's baptism which was great.  It seems like we missed so many events in the past so I am super happy we could go to this one. While we were there we went down to the Heated Pool in her neighborhood (its heated by some hot springs and feels just like a nice warm bath, definitely not a summer thing for me) and both Jared and Lydia loved it!

Sue was nice enough to hang out with our kids so Mark and I could go shopping and also watch them all day while we were at the Temple/reception. Mark was determined that I would not leave Utah without getting at least one new dress. They are so hard to find. So we headed to Orem and hit the jackpot! I found so many cute, stylish, modest dresses.  Go check out this website MikARose.  That polka dot dress on the homepage I own it and love it! I found three on clearance for like 18 dollars (each) it was awesome.  It was super fun to go shopping with Mark and just hang out with him. I do not love going to malls but loved University Mall.  We also stopped by the Sister Missionary store to look for dresses but were not very successful.  They just didn't seem to have anything in my size.  That store better start ordering more inventory with all the new sisters going out on missions. But it did have cute things so go look there too if you have as hard a time as me finding dresses.
We loved being in Utah and are so glad we could go visit.

Utah

Besides visiting Grandma Sue there was one other reason I wanted to go to Utah for Spring Break this year. My sweet friend Kim would be getting married in the Salt Lake Temple.  Kim is pretty much the sweetest girl who always makes me feel like I am the coolest most amazing person in the world. I don't know how she does it but she always makes me feel so good about myself. We have known each other since the 6th grade and she even came to visit when we were living in Egypt. When I found out she was getting married during spring break I knew we had to be there even if it was just outside the temple. Luckily for us we got to be part of her actual sealing and it was wonderful.  I loved being there with Mark and thinking of our marriage and seeing how happy Kim and Nate were.  I also got to visit with some old friends which was so nice.

 

 

 

We are so happy we got to be part of Kim's special day.  After her sealing we wandered around Temple Square and enjoye a nice day outside together. Just Me and Mark.

The Grand Canyon

also known as the really big hole. I felt that if we were going all the way to Arizona it would be silly to not stop by and visit the Grand Canyon.  Unfortunately I forgot to pack sunscreen, had a cold hangover and a sick husband. But we made the best of it. It was a beautiful day there.

 

 

 

 

Jared loved running around and climbing on the rocks.  I took one Geology class in college and despised it but it sure would have come in handy this day. I think it is definitely a better trip for older kids and am pretty sure our kids won't remember going but I just had to go.  Who knows when I will go to Arizona again?

 

Jared was showing us his muscles:

 

 

 

Arizona

is hot and far away but still a fun place to visit and visit only.  We spent about a week there visiting Mark's sister Kristi and my dear friend Becca and Mark's good friend Brandon, stopping by this big hole and learning the difference between Cactus and Cacti. Jared mastered it pretty quick. We are happy we could go down there but unfortunately Jared and I both got really bad colds the first night we were there. (Then Mark got sick the day before we left.) Mark's sister Kristi has a cute 19 month old little girl and I was so worried about getting her sick. Nobody wants to be the parent who brings their sick kid places, I promise we were perfectly healthy before we left. We did manage to have some fun though but didn't take many pictures because I was using all my energy to just feel alive.  It was nice to get to visit with Kristi and Ben because I feel like we never get to so that was great. We drove down to Tuscon to visit Becca who I hadn't seen in years.  I love that even though I hadn't seen Becca in so long we picked up like we had just seen each other. It was such a nice visit. She is such a great example to me. I love being around her.
The day before we left we went and visited a little farm in town.  We rode a train, fed some animals, played on the playgrounds and had a special snack.

 

We stopped by the little store/snack place and were debating about whether to get a muffin or cinnamon roll. We asked Jared which he wanted and he kept saying he wanted a cookie.  Again and again. We finally decided on a cinnamon roll and when we told the lady she said there was  special that day for people who bought cinnamon rolls.  They would get a free cookie with it.  It was so sweet of her. Jared was thrilled.  It's so nice when people are nice to your kids like that.

 

I hope if I ever visit Arizona again we can go in like November. I am just not a hot weather kind of girl and it was only like 85! But really 85 in March is a little weird coming from Colorado. It was so good to see so many fun people.  



Easter celebrations

We spent Easter at Mark's Mom's house in Utah. I made sure we took some of our traditions with us.  We dyed eggs, ate bunny buns, and had multiple egg hunts.  Lydia loved hunting Easter Eggs but wasn't too keen on her Bunny ears.

 

 It was a little stressful dyeing eggs with Lydia so we did one then improvised.

 

 

"Official Egg Hunt" Easter morning. 

 

 

Mark's Mom's backyard faces a golf course so she often has a  collection of golf balls in her yard. Jared loves picking them up. So we had a couple of golf ball hunts. On day Jared collected them all and kept wanting to go out to see if the golfers hit any more balls into the yard.  Grandma Sue has a tupperware container full of golf balls so she threw them out in the grass for Jared to pick up.  He may have liked it more then the egg hunt.

 

 

I also made sure we had some Easter fun before we left on our trip:
 Matching uppercase and lowercase letter eggs

 

Finding surprises in eggs and practicing opening and closing them

Play Doh Jewelled Eggs

 

 The favorite: Finger Painting with chocolate pudding. We made our own chocolate bunnies. It smelled so good and was such messy fun.

 

I recently read that ARTICLE floating around Facebook about people scaling down Holidays and had so many emotions.  Her reaction made TOTAL sense but I absolutely LOVE doing these fun activities.  I personally am not into the over the top birthday parties and I try to keep all our activities in our home (the advantage of having no kids in school yet).  So only people who read my blog really know what we do but there is no way I am doing less activities. (Well at least not until it drives Mark or I crazy) I love them.  They make me feel creative and like I am helping my kids see that learning can be fun too. Also as a stay at home Mom I don't have the luxury of going out many places (and we don't have the budget to support that) so doing these things helps shake up the routine of our daily lives. I definitely have the advantage of not having kids in school and I really do understand her point yet reading her article sort of made me feel bad which I really didn't like. Anywho, we had a super fun Easter and I don't think it was that over the top.