Life According to Laura

2011-10-09T14:46:00.001-07:00

So on Friday, Melia comes home from school with wet socks in her backpack. On her feet, she is wearing her gloves and tennis shoes. Turns out she stepped in a puddle at recess. Very resourceful. :)

By the way, for anyone counting, I'm now 9 days past my due date. I've been on "bed rest" trying to get over a head cold and sore throat. So fun. Thanks Bo for stepping in and taking over everything for me!

Oh Where Oh Where Have My Feet Gone??

2011-09-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

I have no idea. I haven't seen them in months!

I haven't blogged in so long, I'm not even going to try to catch up. Malakai is due to come tomorrow! We'll see if he's ready or not. :)

Hangin' With Our MV Peeps

2011-07-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

There's something heart warming and comfortable about hanging out with old friends. :)
Welcome to Utah, Jeff and Amy!

Happy 4th!

2011-07-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

This year our friends had a block party/BBQ, so we chowed down with all of our neighbors and set off a ton of fireworks!

Finding red, white and blue outfits for them to wear was no easy task. I never realized how much their closet is a sea of pink and purple!

This was the first year since we've had kids that we've actually set off our own fireworks. Melia was scared to hold the sparklers at first, but once she figured out that they really do go out before they burn your hand, she loved them! Jeananne became her sparkler "dealer". The second one went out, she went back for another. She must have done over 20 of them herself!

Naiya did really well with everything. I thought she might be scared of the loud ones, but she stayed entertained all the way til 9:30! (The next day wasn't so happy with two tired kiddos, but it was worth it.)

I'm On My Own

2011-06-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

Well, Bo just left on a 4 day camp out with the scouts this morning, so it's just me and the kids and the big German Shepherd we are dog sitting left here at home. I had no idea what it meant to be Scout Master when he got this calling, but they say it's the second busiest calling in the church next to being Bishop and I believe it! I have never seen him so busy with a calling before. He's doing a great job, but I find myself alone with the kids a lot. Not that I don't love my kids, but I have come to greatly appreciate the help that Bo gives me when he's here.

The girls crawled into one of the leftover sleeping bags tonight to read stories before bed. They look very calm in the picture, but there was more wrestling, giggling, screaming and craziness than actual reading going on. But now they are in bed and I am wiped out. I think this calls for watching a little "So You Think You Can Dance".

Happy Mother's Day! (A Little Late)

2011-06-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

My 2 1/2 best Mother's Day presents. (The 1/2 is still in my belly, in case you didn't catch that). :)

My next best Mother's Day present. Thanks Bo! I love them!

What the?!

2011-05-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

Usually it happens during the teenage years...

But it looks like Naiya has hit the Goth stage a little early.

I don't know what kind of cult tattoos these are...

Hopefully, she'll grow out of it quickly.

Happy Easter!!

2011-04-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

So we had a busy day before Easter with 2 egg hunts, a work conference, a visitor from out of town, a date night doubling with Azure and Michael, and a guys night for Bo after that.
Here are some of the cuter moments...

Excited for the egg hunt!

Melia's still excited....Naiya's gotten a little impatient.

And the hunt is on!

Found one!

Whoah! Score!

Counting their spoils!

I can't believe we got a family picture where almost everyone is smiling and looking at the camera! (We only had to take about 10 other shots to get this.)

Cute little Easter bunny!

Uncle Jefe was in town and stopped by for a visit. We can't wait til you guys move here in June!

On to our second Easter egg hunt of the day at our friends, Sean and Callie's. The kids had fun and got more candy than they knew what to do with!

Naiya and her friend, Zalia, on the "easy" side of the egg hunt.

"Cannee!", as Naiya would say.

We had a great Easter day also. Church was really good and we really felt the spirit of the Lord there. It helped us remember why we have an Easter to begin with. We spent the afternoon at Bo's Aunt Kathie and Uncle Craig's house and had fun seeing family we haven't seen in a long time. It was so good to catch up with Bo's cousin, Kyle, who just got home from a mission in Korea. Melia hadn't seen him since she was about Naiya's age, but bonded with him again in no time! The girls both had so much fun playing with everyone! We even had a big double rainbow on our way home. What a way to end Easter! Haven't uploaded pictures yet, but I may just surprise myself and actually get back to posting them here soon. :)

Naiya--Officially 2!

2011-04-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

Even though she holds up 3 fingers when you ask her how old she is. Is this a sign of things to come? Fake ID when she's underage maybe?

We went to the park and had a picnic for her birthday on Saturday. The weather was beautiful!

We even got to wear shorts and flip flops! Yay! It was fun to watch Melia take care of Naiya on the slides and stuff. They are so cute together. Naiya even went down the big slide by herself! She's getting so big.

Seeing Naiya's awesome Chewbaca cake for the first time. Our friend Fawn, master cake maker, made it for us. Naiya just stared at it for a few seconds and then smiled and pointed "Baca!".

Here's Naiya on birthday day number 2 sporting her "surprised" look.

We had a little birthday dinner for her with our family friends. Thanks for the wonderful enchiladas Auntie Azie!

The cake looked great and tasted great! As she was eating, Naiya kept looking at the cake on her plate and saying, "Baca head!"

Adorable Lilly with Grandma Laura. :)

Here's Naiya modeling her new birthday outfit.

The girls got into a big tissue paper war with Josh. They had so much fun!!

Happy Birthday Bubby!! :)

Back Street's Back Alright!

2011-04-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm back! And I've come to the realization that the long list of things I wanted to blog about is never going to be blogged about. So I'm just starting now. Well, actually I'm going to combine the 3 most important things that have happened this year.
First, Melia turned 5! My little girl is growing up!

Dear Melia,
Happy Birthday! You are getting so big! You are finishing up preschool right now and you just love it. You especially love your teacher, Miss Pamela. You even asked me one time if she could be your mom and I could be your big sister. :) You are so smart and you are learning so many cool things at school. You always share random things you have learned and sometimes you even teach me some things I didn't know. You are a great big sister to Naiya and you still love to play with her and make her laugh. You two love sharing your room and you are great at helping her with what she needs. I love to watch you two together. When daddy gets home from work each night, you love to have him throw you up in the air 3 times every single night. You are very kind and thoughtful and you help me remember to be joyful in life. Daddy and I love you sooooo much and we are so happy that we get to be your parents.
Love Always,
Mommy

Event #2 Naiya's birthday (which will be happening this Saturday, but she gets her letter a little early.)

Dear Naiya,
Happy birthday to my little chub chubs! You are going to be 2 and I can't believe it! You are so full of life and joyfulness and you make me smile every day. You are learning so much from your big sister. You copy almost everything she does. You love to laugh and are learning to talk more and more every day. You currently love Ariel from the Little Mermaid and carry Melia's Ariel doll around with you everywhere you go. She bought that doll with her own money that she earned, so you are very blessed to have a nice big sister who shares her things with you. You are learning to share too and you LOVE to dance! You love me and your daddy and Melia and we are so glad we get to have you in our family! We love you soooo much!
Love Always,
Mommy

Event #3 We're pregnant!
And we are excited! I'm especially excited to be out of the first trimester now. 3 months hit and it was like I felt better over night. No nausea for me anymore. Yay! We think it would be nice to have a boy since we already have two girls, but we will be more than happy to have a girl too. Melia has her heart set on a baby brother though.

So there's the update on us. I plan to be more consistent with blogging again. I want to have some kind of record of our lives. :)

Prince Flynn or Chip n Dales Dancer?

2011-01-12T19:45:00.000-08:00

Melia accidentally dropped her new Prince Flynn into the bathtub and got his clothes all wet. After taking off his wet clothes, I discovered that he may be moonlighting in a different profession...

Ode to Naiya Bo Biaya

2010-11-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

I just want to take a minute and talk about my little chub chubs. She is growing so fast and she does so many cute things and I want to remember them and the only way I remember things lately is to write them down. So here it goes. Naiya is about 19 1/2 months old now and she is a little character! She loves to laugh and act silly. She does this thing where she rolls her eyes back in her head and rocks side to side like Stevie Wonder. It's so funny and I think she does it even more because it makes us all laugh so much.

She is a dancing machine! Everywhere we go, if she hears music, she stops what she's doing and dances. Last week, we were at the mall and I came to the realization that most of the stores have music playing in them. What made me notice? Naiya's journey through the mall went something like this: Walk, walk, walk. Hear music in a store. Stop. Dance, dance, dance. Mommy: "Come on Naiya." Walk, walk, walk. Hear music in next store. Stop. Shake booty. Mommy: "Come on Naiya." Walk, walk.....Needless to say, it took us like a half hour to get through one hallway of the mall. We couldn't tear her out of the Christmas section at Walmart...they were playing Christmas music.

Naiya babbles up a storm with more words becoming coherent now. I often wonder what all she is saying in her babbling. I know she knows what it means because she will come up to me when I am doing the dishes and say, "Mommy, babble, babble babble..." and then, after I acknowledge what she said, she seems satisfied that she has delivered her message and walks away.

Naiya loves her Daddy and gets so excited when she hears the garage door opening in the evening. She toddles over to the door and says, "Daddy? Daddy?" and waits for him to come in. She loves playing with her big sister, Melia, too. They crack each other up!
I totally understand the old saying "bundles of joy" now that we have two of our own. They are truly a joyful blessing in our lives and we are so grateful!

Halloween Solo

2010-11-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

So this Halloween Bo decided to get a bad head cold and sleep through the whole weekend, which left me flying solo to do all of the Halloween fun having with the girls. The nerve of him--I mean, poor Bo. :) Just kidding. It really was fun, just a lot of work.

Melia decided to be Ariel this year...

So of course, we had to have her trusty side kick Sebastian come along too. (Yes, it is actually a lobster head, but close enough!)

On Friday night, we went to a Halloween Carnival in Lehi with our friends, the Saavedras and the Votaws. They had tons of games, trick or treating, movies...everything Halloween you could think of and it was packed!

Here's us when we first got there with Melia and Naiya looking a little dazed and confused at all of the chaos. At first, Melia didn't want to play any games or smile for pictures....and I'm thinking "Ok, I didn't just get everybody all dressed up by myself and drive an hour in traffic to get here so you can not have fun, did I?" Luckily, she snapped out of it pretty quickly and started enjoying it.

Here's Melia with Sierra and Naya (sp?), two of our friends' kids.

Here's the whole gang hanging out on a huge purple spider.

The night was fun, but I was wearing very high heel boots and trying to keep track of two kids in a big crowd, so needless to say, after the long drive back home, I was worn out.

Next day: Trick or Treating!

Here's Melia doing her impression of Risky Business as we try to get ready.

Grandma Sue stayed home to hold down the fort as all of the Trick or Treaters came by.

The nice thing about our neighborhood is we know pretty much everybody that we were trick or treating to. Here's Melia's friend, Brooke, that we picked up along the way. I had a lot of fun watching the girls run up to each door so excited! The only bad part was that I had to carry Naiya almost the whole way and I was wearing uncomfortable shoes again. Why, you ask? Well, I tried not to. I thought, "There's no way I'm wearing those boots again. What can I wear instead? Disco mamas don't wear tennis shoes. I guess I'll just wear some of my lower dress shoes." Turns out those dress shoes weren't so comfortable for running around after two little girls while carrying a 1 1/2 year old all over the neighborhood. Go figure. Anyway, we had fun seeing all of our friends trick or treating too. We saw some of my kids from the 6 year old class I teach at church and they were a little blown away that it was actually their teacher under the huge fro! It was fun. :)

Here's Naiya checking out the spoils of her conquest.
Lots of fun, but we all got Daddy's cold the next day. :(

Ahh, the Joys of Working Out

2010-10-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

After doing the basic pilates workout for a couple of months, I decided to do the advanced one. As I was doing it, I was thinking, "Yeah! I'm stronger than I thought I was!". One hour later, my gluteus maximus was sore. Not one day, one hour.

Quest for a Pillow Pet

2010-10-15T18:53:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we were out shopping and Melia discovered Pillow Pets. In case you aren't familiar, they are big, soft stuffed animals that turn into pillows you can sleep on. Well, Melia fell in love with the pink and purple unicorn and asked me if she could get it. "Sure. Look and see how much it costs and then you can save up your money and get it if you want it." (My token answer for pretty much everything she sees in the store and asks me for.) "It costs a one and a nine, Mommy. Can I get it?" "Wow, $19 is a lot of money. You'll have to save for a long time to get it." "Ok!!" Usually, she forgets about most things, but this time was different. She kept talking about it all the way home and was so excited to save up her money and buy it. So we made a "Pillow Pet Fund" jar and Melia did jobs around the house for me and Bo and my mom (Luckily, Grandma Sue pays well. :) ) for a few weeks until she finally had earned enough money to buy her beloved Pillow Pet. She was so excited to go and get it with her little jar full of money.
Well, let me tell you, I know God has a soft spot for his little children and works things out for them even in the things that may seem small to us, but that really matter to them. For example, the way we acquired this Pillow Pet for Melia...
On the day that we are going to get it, I call ahead to the store to make sure they still have it. After all, she was so excited and had worked so hard--I didn't want to go there and have them not have the one she wanted and have her be disappointed. So anyway, I call the store and turns out they are completely out of pillow pets and will not have them in for two weeks. Great. I call around and Target doesn't carry them anymore and Walmart puts me on hold forever and we get disconnected. So I decided to just go to Walmart and take our chances and if they didn't have it, we could order it online. I told Melia all of this ahead of time to soften the blow just in case Walmart didn't have them. So we went to Walmart and looked all around the toy section. Nothing. We asked a worker and they told us they thought they had them but they were in the home section. So we went there and they had Pillow Pets....but no purple and pink unicorn. Melia was disappointed, but decided we would order it on the computer.
I still wanted to look around at the curtains and stuff and here is where God stepped in and created a chain of events that would lead Melia to her unicorn. While we are looking at the curtains, Naiya starts having a fit. Not just any fit--this one lasted and lasted and she screamed and screamed. I didn't know what was wrong with her because she usually doesn't do that. Finally, I had had it. "Ok, let's go pay for our stuff. We need to go." (Otherwise, I would have stayed because there were still other things I wanted to look at.) As we are walking to the checkout stand, Melia just "happens" to glance down the aisle of checkout stands at that precise moment and says, "Mommy! My pillow pet is in her cart!!" I looked and didn't see what she was talking about, but she wanted to show me so I reluctantly followed her thinking she had just seen a pink and purple stuffed animal or something. So we are weaving our way around people and stands full of stuff that Melia is getting distracted by and Naiya is still kind of fussy, so I finally tell Melia that we just need to leave and go pay for our stuff. "But Mommy, the worker had my pillow pet in her cart!" "It was someone who works here?" "Yes! Come on!" As we round the next corner of the check stand that is at the complete opposite end of the store (and would have never been close to if we had followed my plan), what do we behold? A lovely Walmart worker stocking the shelf with pink and purple unicorn pillow pets! I couldn't believe it. Melia was thrilled! She pulled out her little jar of money and was so proud to pay for it all by herself. In her prayers that night, I told her to make sure she thanked Heavenly Father for helping her to find her pillow pet. And she did--night after night. :)

After she got her pillow pet, I asked her what she wanted to save her money for next. Her answer was an example of why God said to be like little children. She said she wanted to buy a pillow pet for her sister, Naiya. Awwww. So she worked and did jobs for the next few weeks until she had enough money to buy one for Naiya. She was so excited when we went to buy it for her. Melia picked out the monkey and gave it to her and said, "Surprise! It's a pillow pet for you sweetie!" Naiya took it and hugged it and laid her head down on it right away. :) It is such a joy to watch Melia do sweet things like that. I hugged her and thanked her for doing that for her sister. Both of the pillow pets have had much use and love every day.

In other news, Naiya found Daddy's lotion and decided to lather herself up--her hands, arms, hair, face and clothes. Not to mention the newly mopped floor!

One of Those Days

2010-09-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Deep breath, sigh. I did a lot of that today. Just breathed through all of the stressful, frustrating situations. Here are a few of the more entertaining ones:
Situation: Morning Bath Time
So, I've just finished giving Naiya a bath and I'm getting her dressed in the girls' room while Melia is supposed to be starting her bath. Naiya was not too happy about having to get out of the bathtub in the first place, but I leave her to play while I go help Melia with her bath. As I enter the bathroom, Melia is sitting on the edge of the tub and says, "Mommy, I got a little pee pee in the bath tub." What??! Why??! How long have you been potty trained now and you decide to pee in the bathtub??? All of these things are running through my head as I am quickly trying to get her legs and feet and all the toys and poof balls out of the pee pee water. Meanwhile, Naiya has decided that she is not done with her turn for the bathtub and hurls herself head first, fully dressed into the bathtub. I use my cat like reflexes to catch her mid-flight and manage to pin her down with my forearm (because my hands are still full of toys) so that she is left hanging over the side of the tub upside down with her face about an inch from the water. Close, but no cigar, Naiya! Unfortunately, this sends her into a screaming fit while I'm trying to get Melia to take the toys from my hands so I can finish foiling Naiya's plan. After much crying from Naiya, much explaining from Melia as to why she would pee in the tub, and much deep breathing from me in the midst of the chaos, I managed to get two girls clean and ready for the day.
Situation: Trip to the Mall
I love using a specific brand of lip stuff because it is the only thing I've found that keeps my lips from getting dried out. Problem: They don't sell it anywhere near Orem, UT. I don't want to order it on line because they charge a crazy amount for shipping. So I have the bright idea that I can drive to Salt Lake to the mall to a salon called Apothica to buy it and save myself the shipping cost. Here's a run down of how it went: Naiya cries for the majority of the 40 minute drive, we get lost off the freeway. I battle an endless number of one way streets seeming so close, but never actually making it where we need to be. Can't find parking. End up parking waaaaay at the other end of the mall in a parking lot you have to pay for. (So much for saving the shipping cost.) Make the long walk back to the end of this outdoor mall, Naiya in the stroller and Melia walk/jogging the whole way to keep up with us--did I mention that we only had an hour until nap time and a 40 minute drive back? Melia was a trooper on the way there. Her little cheeks were all red by the time we got close to the store. Finally, we see it! Apothica! We enter and ask for Suki lip butter. Worker: "Sorry, but it's out of stock right now." Really? Really. "We can order it and have it shipped to you with no shipping cost." Hey, now we're talking. All is not lost. Finish up there. Melia wants to ride the escalator. Up the escalator with baby in one hand and stroller in other. Naiya walking at the pace of a slow turtle. Melia complaining that the only snack I brought is raisins. Melia pushing stroller and crashing into Naiya. Time ticking away. Forget this, Naiya goes back in stroller. Mommy pushes and Melia takes up jogging again. Did I mention it was hot? Make it back to car, kids loaded in car seats, stroller loaded in trunk. Look at the time. 2:00. Naptime. Wonderful. Pull up to pay. There under an hour. It's free! Yay! 40 minute drive home. No crying this time. Naiya awake the whole time. Home. Unload kids. Put Naiya down for nap. Put Melia in room for quiet time. Mommy collapses in bed for much needed mommy nap time.

There were more "moments" today, but we'll let those remain unwritten. :)

Dance Battling: A True Art Form

2010-09-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

The scene: Vero's second wedding reception in Utah. A somewhat subdued event. The happy couple greeting their guests. Chatting and mingling at tables. Cake eating. Guests beginning to leave. And then, it happens. The DJ decides to play a few dance songs to end the night while people are beginning to take down tables and clean up.

The signal for Vero's friends to let the good times roll!

There are few rules when it comes to dancing, but here's a good one: Dance, not only with your body, but with your mouth as well.

Uh oh...here comes the challenge. Vero calls Bo out with her awesome running man move.

Bo counters with a little Vanilla Ice.

Oh no she di'in't--MC Hammer typewriter move!

A new battler on the scene with his own MC Hammer moves! Go Alex, Go Alex!

Bo's back with some sweet Michael Jackson moves!

Tough battle....but there can only be one champion.

Victory dance!

Wait...looks like we have a tie!

Good work people. It was an honor to be there with you to witness such a thing of beauty.
P.S. Vicky, you were truly missed. :)

Cute or What?

2010-09-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

I've never been into all the girly stuff. In fact, at the time we found out I was pregnant with a girl, I didn't even like the color pink. I always said that my girl wasn't going to be into Princesses and stuff like that. Little did I know that it wasn't up to me. :) Melia absolutely LOVES all things pink, fluffy and Princess looking. And I have to say that since she has come into our lives I have softened to that kind of thing quite a bit. How could I not with this adorable little girl?

Anyway, Melia loves dancing and so do I and I have been wanting to put her in a dance class for quite a while now. After we moved here, another mom told me about this dance class that has a different Disney theme each week where the girls get to dress up like princesses. This class had Melia's name written all over it. So I called and Melia got the last opening!

We've been to 4 classes now--Cinderella, Mary Poppins, Tinkerbell and Alice in Wonderland and I have to say that this may be THE cutest thing I've ever seen! She and her friends are simply adorable dancing around in their costumes. These pics are from the Mary Poppins week.

I love being her mom!

Mar Vista Ward "Transplants"

2010-09-21T21:20:00.001-07:00

One of the coolest things about moving here to Utah is being able to hang out with all of our old friends who have moved to Utah from So Cal. There are a bunch of us from our church who were in the Mar Vista singles ward together back in Whittier. We've decided to start getting together once a month because, well, there's nothing like old friends getting together for a good time! And we know there are more of you out there--everyone's welcome! We'll try to get the word out better for next month.

Alex and Heidi

Fawn and Dave

Brian and Austin

Me and Bo

Vero, Peter and Olivia (Peter was adopted into the gang by marrying Vero. :) )

The mini me's. That's one of the weirdest things--seeing your friends morphed into little people.

I thought this was a cool shot.

Thanks for all the laughs everyone!

More Visitors!

2010-09-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned we've been a little non-stop lately? The weekend after Caleb and Palmyra left, Bo's parents stayed with us for the weekend of his cousin, Rashel's, wedding. The weekend after that, Blake and Dani came for the weekend. Blake is Bo's buddy from his last job in Chico, CA. It was fun having them here and we packed a lot of stuff into a short time.

Here we are at Temple Square. Melia was excited to show them the big statue of Jesus. :)

Bo was looking forward to this before we even moved here I think. He couldn't wait to take Blake to a real Brazilian BBQ. Meat, meat, and more meat. I have to say that, as a non meat eater, I was wondering if this would be worth it for me. But the salad bar was delicious!!

This was right after our farewell breakfast at Mimi's Cafe. But before that, other events from the weekend included trips to several breweries (Blake loves them), trip to the Great Salt Lake (yes, the saltiness was tasted), and a mean Hand and Foot tournament. :)

Thanks for the Princess tent guys! It has definitely gotten good use already!

Large man, little tent.

Another Crazy Week!

2010-09-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, enough procrastinating. We've had a ton of stuff going on lately and I've been taking mental notes of all the things I wanted to blog about, but had a total lack of motivation to actually do it. So last night I looked through some friends' blogs and got motivated.

So let me take you back to the week after our vacation--like mid August. That's when my brother in law, Caleb, sister in law, Palmyra, and nephews Alex and Jake came to stay with us for a week. What were we thinking having people stay with us for a week right after a week long vacation with the whole family? I'm not sure--but I'm glad we did. :) This week gave us a chance to hang out and get to know the people we love even better. Yes, we had our crazy moments--how can you not with 4 kids in a confined space?? But we had a lot of fun and we are really glad they came.

Here's their cute family plus Melia in front of the Salt Lake Temple. You would never know that we fought a huge storm just to get there!

Happy Birthday Caleb! We went to Azure's house for swimming and a BBQ.

Melia made Uncle Caleb a card. :)

We had lots of fun on the slip and slide! Thanks Grandma Carol!

This is right before Melia took Alex out!

Just chillin' with Uncle Caleb watching a movie.

Vero and Peter had their second reception and we had a ton of fun dancing! Here's us shaking our booties to the Macarena. Yes, we danced to the Macarena. Don't judge.

This was our attempt to spend the day hanging out on the "beach" at Lake Utah and get some swimming in. Can I just say that I really, really miss the beaches in So Cal? It was so dirty here and there were so many rocks that we could hardly get out in the water. Needless to say we didn't end up staying very long, but at least we got some cute pics of our families.

Thanks for a fun week guys!
P.S. We're waiting for a rematch of our Hand and Foot tournament!

Vacation!!

2010-08-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, we took a trip to Cedar City for a family vacation with Bo's family. His parents rented a big house there and we hung out and played together all week. We had a lot of fun...

Here's Naiya--"Look Ma! No Hands!" She was standing up by herself and was pretty happy and kind of surprised by it. :)

The kids totally got addicted to Wii on this trip. They played everyday and Melia and Eden actually got really good at bowling. Wyatt and Alex were a work in progress. Maybe next year's vacation--for getting a handle on Wii...and for deciding they really want to be friends after all. :)

It was so good to see Grandma Adeline again. We missed her and I think she really had fun watching the girls play and interact.

Naiya is soooo close to walking and we thought she might do it during our vacation since she had so many people to practice with. No dice. But actually, she took her first steps today with Bo and I in the living room. She took a good 3 or 4 steps and she could totally do more, but she's still got that mental block going. 16 months old. Just taking her time. :)

We did not slack too much healthwise on this vacation. Caleb brought his P90X workout DVDs and lets just say that many were sore for most of the week.

We had a Family Home Evening outside by the fire pit. Micah did a really good job giving the lesson. Eden just got a splinter in her finger prior to this, thus she's not looking so happy here. Yeah, the house was great, but the outside was not so kid friendly. Lots of dirt and rocks. Out in the middle of nowhere. Reminded me a little of Paradise. :)

The pool at this place turned out to be freezing, so we spent a lot of time in the jacuzzi. That is, until we actually went in it during the day time and realized the water was green.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

So we went to a park to have a picnic and we encountered a real live polygamist family there dressed in long dresses and bonnets and everything!! I don't know why, but I got excited to see this. :) Actually, I'm glad we didn't see this until after we had already moved to Utah and had been here for a month so we got to see that people are normal and cool here. If this would've been the first thing I saw...I might have been a little freaked out.

That night, we went to a Shakespeare festival and they had a fun show for the kids with dancing and singing.

So we planned a nice leisurely day at Zion's National Park to camp out by the water and swim all day long. Well, long story short, this is the closest we got to getting wet.

But we made the best of it.

We took a hike up to the emerald pools. We never actually saw any--emerald, that is.

We stopped for ice cream to cool down on the way home. Naiya loves feeding daddy.

We celebrated August birthdays while we were there. Happy birthday Caleb and Bo!

This is on the top of the "mountain" that the kids hiked up one morning because the one that some of the adults were hiking was a little too big.

Goodbye to Grandma Adeline, Grandma Carol and Grandpa! They left a day earlier than the rest of us.

Bo was really broken up about it.

We had a dance party on our last day there. When parents are away, the kids will play. :)

Naiya got really attached to baby Jake. She wanted to hold him in her lap and pet his head. Every time Tia tried to take him away, she got upset.

We're thankful for a great time and a great family!

When Is Father's Day Again??

2010-08-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this is totally late, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Bo for being an awesome father to our girls. They are so blessed to have him and so am I. :) The girls and I went shopping at the Dollar Tree for our Father's Day gifts for daddy and they had a blast! Melia was so excited and kept telling everyone that we were getting presents for Father's Day for her daddy. She went through the store singing a Father's Day song that she made up and saying, "Oh, I think Daddy would like this!" about practically everything she saw. This is what we came up with.

From Naiya, a football to play catch with Daddy. :)

From me, a Sudoku book.

From Melia, beautiful fake flowers. :)

Happy Father's Day! We love you! You're our favorite daddy! :)

Happy Pioneer Day!

2010-08-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

In our church, July 24th is Pioneer Day, the day we celebrate the pioneers of our church and everything that they went through to allow us to have what we have today. Anyway, I have never seen it celebrated like they do here in Utah though. It's a pretty big deal here and they have all kinds of events for it. We went to a kind of fair type thing in a big park and they had all kinds of boothes and games and stuff all relating to the early pioneers. It was pretty cool. Side note: When I told Melia it was Pioneer Day and that we were going to a fair she got really excited. She ran and told Bo, "Daddy, Daddy! Happy Pineapple Day!"

So for quite a while now, Melia has been wanting to ride a horse. We had a horse that lived down the street in Paradise and every morning, we would walk by and she would ask me if she could ride it. I would say, "Well, we don't know the people who own him, so we can't ride that horse." And then she would say, "Well, we could knock on their door and ask them what their name is." To her, that would solve the problem of us not knowing them and then we could ride their horse. How do you explain away that logic? Anyway, we tried a couple of times with a friend's horse and at a fair, but she decided they were too big and only wanted to ride a little horse. So when I saw these ponies at the Pioneer Day thing, I knew this was it. I earned a couple of notches on my mom belt by standing in the long line in the hot sun with the tons of other parents and kids while Bo and the girls walked around to look at the other boothes and stuff. Seeing the smile on Melia's face while she rode made it worth it though. :)

Auntie Azie and Grandma Carol went with us and have been a big help to us taking care of the girls through our unpacking process.

The girls got a little tired of looking around the Pioneer museum so Melia decided to entertain Naiya by playing her pioneer "kazoo" that she made earlier.

Later that day, we got together with a bunch of our good friends from So Cal at Alex and Heidi's house for a BBQ. Vero showed up decked out in her pioneer digs in true Veronica style. It took me back to the days when she would show up for church in random wigs, etc. :) It was so good to hang out and catch up with everyone. Even though we hadn't seen them for a long time, we picked right back up where we left off as if we hadn't even been apart. That's the cool thing about great friends.

It was kind of surreal to see all of our mini me's running around playing together. This is a picture of the world's shortest balloon toss competition. One toss and that was it. For all contestants.

We had a great time until the very end. Melia was wearing some dress up shoes and tripped coming down the wooden stairs outside and tumbled all the way down. It really scared us, and her, and we weren't sure if she was really ok until about an hour later at home. She started acting like herself again and we are grateful!

Never Thought We'd Be in Utah...But Here We Are

2010-07-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are in lovely Orem, Utah. The drive up here went amazingly well considering we had a four year old and a one year old, a truck full of stuff and a car full of more stuff. I think God really helped the girls do well and Bo and I to stay awake and drive safely. We did have one little incident though...The drive from Northern California to Utah is full of nothing. Nothing but land. So we're in the middle of nowhere and I'm trying to keep Naiya occupied so I gave her a bottle of Excedrin with a child proof cap to shake around. She loved it and it kept her entertained for quite a while. Later, I looked back and she still had the Excedrin bottle, but it's empty. What?! Child proof cap, shmild proof cap! So I called Bo in the truck and we pulled over to the side of the highway and started frantically looking for the pills and trying to figure out how many should still be in the bottle. We ended up finding all but 2 and we figured she'd probably be fine even if she did eat 2 of them. But yeah, that little episode freaked us out a bit. Side Note: I actually ended up finding the other two pills later in the car. As we started to get closer to Salt Lake the highway opened up into 4 lanes with some traffic and cars merging all over the place. Ahh, just like home. :) It's funny because both Bo and I said that we felt the most relaxed and at ease when we got to the 4 lanes.

We have been totally blessed since we got here. We had about 10 guys from our new congregation at church show up and get all of our stuff unloaded from our truck in no time at all. Our Elder's Quorum president (the one in charge of the men's group at church) lives a few houses down our street and has been over multiple times to help with everything from moving boxes to fixing sprinklers. He has made sure we have been included in social stuff too and has had Bo over with the guys to play cards and video games and his wife took me out for a girls night with some friends too. They have totally helped us feel more at ease here and have shattered our stereotypical ideas of what it would be like to live with Utah mormons everywhere. :) Not that it would be bad, we had just pictured people being kind of sheltered with not a lot of outside life experience. We were totally wrong though. Everyone has been great and most of the people we've met here have actually moved here from other places. Our Relief Society president (the one in charge of the women's group at church) lives across the street from us and has stopped by several times to welcome us and see if we needed anything. They also brought us dinner on our first night here. Our home teacher (the one assigned to check in on our family each month to make sure we're doing ok) has already been over several times to mow our lawn for us. A little girl from down the street that is Melia's age brought over some apricots she had cut up herself, some cookies and a letter she made for Melia. So sweet. It's definitely kind of weird to have almost everyone within a 10 block radius be in your congregation at church, but it's kind of cool too. We have felt so welcomed and included immediately in everything. This is definitely the most convenient place we've ever lived. All we have to say is "We've been meaning to water our lawn, but we've been so busy lately." And later that evening there will be someone there watering our lawn practically. :)

Our ward (congregation) at church is surprisingly normal with a good mix of young families and older people. After visiting our friends' ward (Fawn and Dave) who had an ocean of babies and kids, Bo and I were scared that all of the wards in Utah would be like that. But we were pleasantly surprised.

It feels so great to be living in a real city again where there are a ton of things to do. We have a Walmart and a Super Target--not just a normal Target--a huge library, a kids' water park, a miniature golf place, parks, natural food stores and everything else you could ask for all within a few blocks of us. Best of all, there are sidewalks and lawns with grass! :)

Another cool thing is that we have lots of old friends from So Cal that live in Utah now. We already got together at the Saavedra's for a BBQ and the Votaw's came over and totally helped us unpack. Plus, Bo's sister Azure lives here and has come over with his mom, who drove up with my mom and stayed for a two week visit, to help with the kids. Also, Bo has cousins and an Aunt and Uncle who live here too. It was fun getting to know his Uncle Gary and Aunt Sherri and the kids better when we lived in Paradise and I'm looking forward to getting to know Uncle Craig and Aunt Kathie's side of the family better while we live here.

As far as our actual house goes, we are loving it! We have never lived in a place where we had enough space to put all of our things and here, we have more than enough. We have the most awesome walk in closet in our bedroom! I think that might be my favorite part of the house. That or the kitchen. After 2 years of cooking on a single burner, an old oven upstairs that burns hot in the back and cool in the front because the door doesn't shut all the way, and having to use the top of the washer and dryer for counter space, this is like heaven! I actually have counter space! Yay! The sunsets here are beautiful and we can actually see lake Utah from our house.

Melia's favorite part is definitely our backyard. She absolutely loves it and asks if she can go out and play in it every chance she gets. I have to say that I'm loving it too. It's so nice to be able to go outside without shoes on and have grass to sit on and smooth pavement to walk on! You may be thinking I sound way too happy about lawns and sidewalks, but when you've had it all your life and then you live without it for 2 years, you really appreciate it when you have it back. :)

A close second favorite thing for Melia and Naiya is their own bathtub. We only had a shower downstairs at Grandma Adeline's house, so the whole bathtub thing is new for the girls and they are loving it! They have so much fun in there and it's fun watching them too. :)

Overall, things are good with us. It's been A LOT of work trying to get unpacked and get things situated, so we've been pretty exhausted and kind of stressed, but I think that's just a part of moving. It will continue to get easier. :) Hi to everybody back in Paradise! :)

Farewell to Paradise

2010-07-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come. We've been in the small town of Paradise, CA for two years now and it's time to move on. I have to say that these two years have been kind of like a refiner's fire for us in a lot of ways. We moved away from everything we knew to live in a small town, which was a totally foreign environment for us. I don't think we've ever completely gotten over the culture shock. :) But I think Heavenly Father had this in mind so that we could be away from the distractions and learn some important lessons. We've had to face things that have been, well, let's just say that to call them "challenging" would be an understatement. But we've learned SO MUCH and have emerged changed and better than we were before. We've learned to "let go and let God" in more ways than I can say.
First of all, we came to Paradise broke. More than broke. We were in a messy financial nightmare. Over these two years, we learned to live without credit cards for the first time. To create and stick to a budget. The difference between wanting and needing. How to tell ourselves no. That the kindness and generosity of people all around us is abundant and humbling. That no matter how impossible and bleak a situation may look, God is in charge and works everything out for our benefit. That we are safe and loved.
Healthwise, I came to Paradise very, very tired. All the time. Over the past few years, I've gotten into holistic medicine and it has helped me immensely. I used to get sick all the time and now I rarely do. A lot of things had improved for me, but my energy levels were still really low. Here, I was able to work with many amazing people in the field of holistic health that I really feel like I was led to. It's also way cheaper here than in So Cal, so I was able to get more help. These people helped me learn a lot about myself and my body. I finally processed and released deep grief concerning my dad's death that had been weighing me down that I wasn't even aware that I had been carrying. This was not only an emotional relief, but a physical one too that allowed me to have more energy, feel more joyful on a daily basis and be able to enjoy the present moment more. I also conquered a sugar addiction--and when I say "addiction", that's no joke. I used to be desperate to get my sugar fix every day and now I don't even miss sugar at all. That's amazing for me. I've incorporated many more whole, healing foods into my diet and recently gave up eating meat. I've basically done an overhaul on my health and I'm feeling a lot better. And the journey continues.
I've also changed my thinking about a lot of things to have a more positive peaceful perspective. I grew up feeling really bad about myself and I had this huge fear that Melia might somehow end up feeling like that too. So I was constantly worrying about doing things "right" with her and worrying about her relationship with Bo, etc. I've been able to let that and many other things go and see things in a better, more relaxed light. I've been able to relax about a lot of things and it has allowed my relationships with family to improve. There are many, many lessons that God has helped us learn here and, even though it's been really hard, I'm so grateful. We are emerging from Paradise pretty near perfect now. HA HA! :)

Anyway, here are some things we will miss and not miss about being in Paradise.
We WILL miss:
Grandma Adeline. She has been nothing but loving, giving and generous to us and we will miss having her around.
Our family in the form of Aunt, Uncle, cousins, semi-related cousins, and adopted family members.
Our friends from church, the community and work.
The beautiful trees and flowers.

We will NOT miss:
The huge amount of bugs.
The lack of lawns and paved sidewalks.
The dirt and spiderwebs everywhere.
That everything closes at 5pm. :)
Having to drive a long way through nothing but bushes to get to a "city".
The lack of variety of stores.
The lack of variety of people of different ethnicities.
Being in a small town.

Sorry, but the fact is we are city folk through and through. One thing's for sure though--it's the people who have touched our lives here who have made these two years well worth it. :)

What's Going On

2010-07-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've had like zero time lately to blog, but I need to because we have major changes happening in about a week and a half. We thought we were going to move to Utah sometime toward the end of the year, but all of a sudden it's happening now. My mom put her house on the market the first week of June and had a crazy amount of offers almost immediately. There was even a bidding war and it ended up going for above market value and she doesn't have to pay closing costs. My only explanation is that God was helping because her house is...well, it's a nice little house, but it was built in 1940 something and it's just that, little. Anyway, when she went into escrow, we all of a sudden realized we needed to have another house to move into at the end of escrow. So we finished unpacking from our trip to So Cal and then found ourselves packing to fly to Utah in a couple of days to find a house. Crazy! Long story short...we found a great house that fits the needs of my mom and us really well. It's a beautiful 2002 6 bedroom house in Orem. My mom will have the basement level and we'll have the upstairs. We are really excited! More details to come...

Trip to So Cal

2010-06-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

This month has flown by in a whirlwind! First of all, we took a trip down to So Cal for Vero's wedding. Yay! We are soooo happy for her! She totally deserves this and it turned out really nice.

Melia was the flower girl and she had so much fun! She was totally enchanted by Vero in the pretty white dress and didn't want to leave her side for the whole reception. In usual Melia wedding style, we had to pull her away from the bride so they could cut the cake, have their first dance, etc. Here she is at Vero's side while the happy couple are giving their thank you speech to all of their guests.

It was really fun seeing lots of our old friends and we took advantage of one of our rare opportunities to dance, dance, dance! Melia hung in their with us until really late in the evening for her and managed to get practically everyone there to dance with her (whether she knew them or not.)

The dollar dance was really the first time I got to meet Vero's now husband, Peter. That was really weird since Vero is one of my closest friends, but he's from Utah and it just never worked out that we were in So Cal visiting at the same time. Anyway, I got a really good feeling from him and he seems to really love Vero, so he has my stamp of approval. :)

The next day was Caleb and Palmyra's new baby, Jake's, blessing day in church. They are in the ward that Bo and I were in when we first got married, so it was fun to go back and see lots of familiar faces. :) Caleb gave Jake his blessing and it was really sweet. Overall, it was a really fun trip and we loved seeing my mom and Bo's family and spending time with them. God really blessed us on the drive there and back and helped the girls do so well. 10 hour car rides with a 4 year old and 1 year old could be really bad, but ours turned out great. :)

Death by "My Little Pony"

2010-05-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to go insane from hearing "My Little Pony" songs incessantly? If it is, I am very close.

In Hiding For Over a Month

2010-05-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

Oh man, it's been like over a month and it's been madness around here. First of all, I need to talk about Naiya. She turned one on April 16th! I can't believe it's been a whole year already. She is so fun to have in our family. She's so full of life and joy. She finally decided to start crawling about 2 weeks shy of her birthday. Now she's all over the place. Her favorite thing to do is chase Melia around the couch. They are so cute to watch together. They just laugh and squeal and giggle. Melia is really happy to have a playmate that actually plays back now. Naiya has 4 teeth and one more coming in on the top. She's still got her cute curlies on her head, but they are much lighter now. She loves to play with her food and lift big cups up to drink out of. This kid can eat a massive amount for her size! Her favorite part of meal time though is after she gets cleaned up and we move her chair away from the table. She immediately starts rocking and it makes a noise that she finds totally entertaining. She squeals with excitement whenever she sees a dog or a squirrel or when daddy comes home from work. She has decided that diaper changes take too long and is not happy until she escapes. We just love her so much and she is a joy in our lives.

Ok, on to other not so fun things. A few days after Naiya's birthday, we discovered that all of a sudden we have way more cable channels than before. We always just got a couple of the channels that grandma had, but now we have more than we know what to do with. We didn't know how long it would last either, so we spent a week staying up way too late watching cable and eating junk food. Bad idea. The next week Melia, Naiya and I all got sick with head colds. Let me tell you, it is no fun to take care of sick kids. It's really not fun to do it while you're sick too. So that week we spent having no school, no library story time, no play dates--basically cut off from the social world. Mommy no likie being cut off from adult interaction.

So Melia finally felt well enough to go back to school and then she came home with pink eye. This was my first experience with pink eye, so I was kind of freaked out about it. My week was full of impossible tasks--trying to keep Melia from touching her eyes, touching things and touching Naiya. It was full of one million hand washings, countless laundry loads of towels, pillowcases and everything else touched, spraying down everything after the kids went to bed, holding a screaming, flailing child down twice a day to try to put eye drops in her eyes, etc. Then Bo got it. Luckily, he can take care of himself. Melia got better after about a week and we were able to resume normal activities for a couple of days. Oh, by the way, did I mention that I stopped breastfeeding Naiya during all of this so my boobs were super sore for a few days and felt like they were going to pop every time I had to pick Naiya up?

Then Bo and I started a sugar cleanse because I finally wanted to kick my sugar addiction and start a new way of eating that would help us be healthier. Well, I've done other cleanses in the past, but I've never had such a rough detox. My body was getting those toxins out every way possible. My nose was running, I was coughing up stuff, my throat was super sore, etc, etc. So another week of sickness and isolation. I finally started feeling a little better on Mother's Day, so I went to church and it was really good. Melia made me some sweet cards and Bo wrote me the nicest letter and gave me a whole envelope full of coupons for him to do random chores, give massages, etc. I give him a coupon and he will stop what he's doing, no questions asked, and do whatever it says. I've got a good husband. :) And a wonderful family. I am truly blessed.

So anyway, later in the afternoon, I discover that I have pink eye in both eyes. Happy Mother's Day! My case was pretty severe too. Both of my eyes were totally swollen and oozing tons of yellow goop. When I woke up the next morning, my eyes were sealed shut and I had to stumble blindly to the bathroom to try to pry them open. Bo took the next day off work because I still had all of the detox symptoms to deal with plus the pink eye and the last thing we needed was to have Naiya get it or Melia get it again. I was in pretty bad shape, so I went upstairs and just laid in bed all day. I have to say that despite how bad I felt, it was kind of nice to be able to just lay there and take a break because the last time that happened was....well, I can't remember. All you moms out there know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I got through that week and I'm on the mend now. My eyes are all better and I only have a slight sore throat left now. The cool thing is I went to my holistic doctor and she tested all of my organs and systems and she said I tested completely different than I did before. I didn't need any of the supplements and herbs that I needed in the past. All I needed was a little immune support. That was really encouraging news because it shows me that my body is responding well to what I'm doing even though I don't feel great yet. I'm on the right path. Anyway, we went to library day yesterday and school today and I feel like I'm back in the land of the living. I think the isolation for stay at home moms dealing with sickness is almost the hardest part. Must have adult interaction to stay sane!

What??!

2010-04-19T19:23:00.001-07:00

Ok, so we have been living here in this little town of Paradise for 2 years now. We are pretty much used to how different it is from LA. However, every once in a while, I still experience things that trip me out. Let me illustrate. A couple of days ago, I was driving down to Chico and there are a lot of fields on the way. All of a sudden, I saw a cow running down the side of the highway with another cow behind the fence, where they are supposed to be, chasing after her--probably trying to help her come back to the herd. It kind of caught me off guard to see that, so I said a little prayer to help the cow get back to the herd safely. Then, on my way back out of Chico is when I saw what I have never seen before. There was a police car blocking the highway with some traffic backed up behind it. Yes, I have seen a million and one traffic jams in my lifetime, but never have I seen a traffic jam with a loose cow running around and a cowboy on a horse trying to lasso it! Crazy! It felt surreal. Anyway, I never thought that I would have a prayer answered by a cowboy on a horse. :)

Worms

2010-04-12T15:53:00.001-07:00

So today it was pouring rain and I was getting the girls ready to go grocery shopping. On our way out, Melia noticed 3 worms floating in a puddle by our door. They were still alive and trying to wiggle their way out. Melia immediately wanted to help them. Melia: "We need to get the worms out of the water because they don't like water." Against my more practical instincts that would tell me that it was more important to just get out of the rain and get to the car, I let her go ahead. I admit it--I am a sucker for all animals in need--great and small. So she tried and tried to get them out of the water unsuccessfully as it continued to rain on us. I tried to speed the process along by grabbing a pen and trying to fish them out myself, but to no avail. I finally told her that we just needed to go. Melia: "But what about the worms, mommy? They need help." Mommy: "I know sweetie, but we just don't have time to help them right now. We need to go." Melia: "Can we help them when we come back?" Well, I know and you know that they would probably not make it that long, but how could I say no to this sweet little girl wanting to help the worms? So I told her we could try if we had time. Up to the garage we went to finally get loaded in the car when what should we happen upon? Another worm in need. So as I got Naiya buckled up in the car, Melia actually got this one out of the puddle and put him on the floor of the garage. Melia (to the worm): "There you go little guy. It's nice and dry in here and this can be your new home forever and ever." As we drove to the store, Melia was so happy that she was able to help the worm and couldn't stop talking about how we needed to hurry and go back home so we could help the worm's mommy, daddy and sister, who were still in the other puddle by our door. She told the check out lady at the store all about how she saved the worm too. I asked her if she wanted to see a picture of her new baby cousin, Jacob, when we got home and she said, "Well, maybe after we help the worms." So when we came home, I let her go to work on helping the worms while I put away the groceries. There were only 2 left in there when we got back. I guess the sister managed to escape or floated down the stream. Anyway, Melia managed to get both worms out and on to dry land. One of them was still alive (barely) and the other had clearly gone to meet his maker. However, she watched over both of them and kept checking on them throughout the afternoon. The one worm managed to crawl away and the other is still lying in the exact same spot. Melia has accepted the fact that he died, but is comforted by the assurance that, if it's not raining tomorrow, we can dig a little hole and bury him. In her prayer before she went to bed, she let God know about her burial plans for the worm. :) Having kids makes me understand more and more why the scriptures tell us to be like little children.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-08T19:43:00.000-07:00

We had a low key, but fun Easter this year. We spent the entire day on Sunday in our jammies at home. We watched conference, had a little Family Home Evening about Jesus and the resurrection, painted Easter eggs, had a hunt, made Easter bunny smores, and just hung out and enjoyed our little family. :)

Melia "reading" a book to Naiya from their Easter baskets.

Melia met the Easter bunny at the park and was totally enchanted by him.

You can't really see in this picture, but Bo has a green bean in his mouth and is feeding Naiya "birdie style". It was totally cute!

Naiya and Daddy ready for the egg hunt!

The spoils from her conquest.

A Moment

2010-03-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at church I had this little lightbulb moment. It was testimony Sunday and one of our little 5 year old girls got up and wanted to give her testimony. She was a little shy, so her mom whispered what to say in her ear. As I listened to her say things like "I know God loves me." "I love my family." and "I am grateful to come to church.", it struck me that this mother whispering in her daughter's ear was like a physical picture of a mother passing on her faith and knowledge of God and life and what's important and what it's all about to her daughter. That moment was pretty cool and I'm grateful I get to be a mom and that I have so much light given to me in my life that I can pass on to my girls. :)

Chocolate Anyone?

2010-03-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

So I stopped eating sugar at night, which was my biggest downfall, and I'm on my way back down to my pre-pregnancy clothes. Yay! Miracles do happen. :) I give myself the weekends to eat whatever I want, but weekdays, I stay away from the sugar after dinner. Let's just say that this has been a challenge to say the least. Some days are better than others...and some days I feel like I would kill to get a sugar fix (Literally. Not really. Well, maybe.) Anyway, it was especially hard when I first started and that is when the chocolate incident happened. One day Melia, Naiya and I were out grocery shopping and Melia left a treat bag full of chocolate eggs that she had acquired somewhere in the car while we shopped. When we came out, we got all buckled up and on the road again and that is when I heard cries of distress from the back seat. Apparently, the chocolate eggs had melted and Melia squeezed one. Chocolate all over. I made her give me the bag and tried to clean her off without getting into an accident and before the chocolate spread all over Grandma Adeline's car. In the process, I inadvertently got chocolate on my finger. Then, my nose started itching so I swiped my finger across the bottom of my nose and got chocolate all over not only the outside of my nostrils but the inside as well. I tried my best to clean it off, but lets just say the aroma of sweet chocolate was with me for the rest of the day. Oh the irony of it all. But, thanks to Heavenly help, I did not falter. Life IS like a box of chocolates...and sometimes it gets smeared all over you, but it's what you do in those moments that makes all the difference. :)

Letter to Melia

2010-02-11T19:37:00.000-08:00

Dear Melia,

You are 4 years old now and you are growing into a beautiful girl inside and out. I wanted to let you know that you are a huge joy in my life! I look forward to spending my day with you every day. You are so sweet and smart and fun to be around. You are such a good example to me of loving everyone and helping people to feel good around you. You love saying hi and talking to everybody that we encounter in the day and you put smiles on the faces of people everywhere you go. Never underestimate the difference that can make in someone's life. You never know what kind of day they may be having.

I love to watch you be you every day. I love to see you dance and sing and stop to pet every animal you see. I love to see you adore all things pink, purple and sparkly. I love to hear you talk to your Heavenly Father every night and tell me you want Jesus to come soon so you can give him a hug. I love to see how your face lights up when daddy comes home. I love to see you dance with him and hear you call him your prince. I want you to know that he loves you sooooo much! I love how much you love Naiya. I love to see you play with her and make her laugh. I love to see you give her hugs and kisses before every nap and before bedtime. I love to try to answer all of your questions and act silly with you. I love to snuggle with you and read you stories.

I want you to know that I'm so grateful to be your mom and I've never tried harder at anything in my whole life. My wish for you is that you will live your life joyfully, feel your worth, and feel the love that your Heavenly Father has for you. You are wonderful. Just be you.

I love you forever!
Mom :)

The Evolution of Bo's Face

2010-01-23T19:38:00.000-08:00

So, as many of you have seen, in the past few months I have lost my husband under a massive amount of hairiness on his face. What made him want to grow a beard? I don't know. What made him want to let it grow so long that he looks like a lumberjack, a member of the Arian Nation, or a terrorist? I don't know. What made him brush it upwards and go to our church Christmas party like that? I don't know. All I know is that I missed his face and after months of waiting, the moment arrived where he finally decided to shave it.

But...he couldn't simply give me what I wanted all at once. He had to drag it out for as long as possible. So he decided to shave it off in stages.

First, he shaved it into the Fu Man Chu look.

Bo's hidden talent--accesorizing.

The next day, he tried the mustache with the flavor saver.
The next day, he went for the cop look--just the mustache. Unfortunately, we have no pictures of that one.

Finally, he shaved it all off! There was much celebrating and dancing in the streets. (Side note: This is what happens when a large man tries to crawl through a little girl's play tunnel.)

About a week later, he grew back his good old goatee. That's the way I like him best. All is well in the world again. :)

9 Month Update

2010-01-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I missed Naiya's 8 month birthday, but for her 9 month birthday we borrowed a friend's video camera and taped her, plus I'm blogging about it. So that makes up for missing the other one, right? Anyway, here she is--my little cutie pie. She's growing fast--20lbs already! No wonder I'm tired by the end of the day. Try lugging an extra 20 lbs around all day! And I pretty much have been literally carrying her around all day lately. She was already in the "I only want mommy to hold me and nobody else" phase, but since we got back from our trip, she only wants mommy to hold her period. All the time. She has done better the past week or so though. She has actually stayed entertained on the floor and given me time to make dinner without fussing several times. Amazing! She is such a sweetie though.

She is getting close to crawling and wants to grab everything in sight! She has her first 2 bottom teeth now and seems to believe that that's more than enough to eat everything we are eating. Baby food shmaby food--give me the real stuff! Melia is still Naiya's favorite form of entertainment. This is a life saver for me many times--especially in the car. She is still ticklish all over, which is one of daddy's favorite forms of entertainment. Overall, she is a joy in our lives and we are sooooooooo grateful to have her in our family!

Now, I decided to write a little about Melia each month too because she's changing so much and does so many cute things that I figured I should be writing about it so we can remember. So right now, Melia is 2 weeks away from being 4 years old. She's really excited about her birthday and keeps asking me every day if it's her birthday yet. She is still very into everything princess and her favorite colors are pink and purple. She loves to dance with daddy and she calls him her prince. She is very into interacting with every toy, imaginary friend and inanimate object around and likes me to be the voices for all of them. By about dinner time, I find that my brain can no longer do everything that I'm doing plus keep all of the constant conversations up in all of the different voices. The ducks end up neighing and the princesses end up quacking and the prince has a high voice, etc. That's about the time I have to give it up.

Melia is really smart and definitely keeps us on our toes. All I have to say is it's a good thing there are two of us and only one of her. I don't know what we'll do when Naiya starts talking too! :) She is such a sweetheart though. She absolutely loves Naiya and is always doing things to make her smile. She talks to everyone in the grocery store and always introduces Naiya and tells them all about her sister. She has a list of chores she does every day and gets a little allowance each week. Her latest purchase was her own pack of gum, which she was very excited about. I thought it was so sweet because every time she would chew a piece of gum, she would offer me one too. It's been kind of a ritual for Bo and Melia--every once in a while, before he goes to work, Bo will leave an envelop on the desk for Melia with a piece of gum in it for her. So this time, she left a piece of her gum for her daddy. :) I could go on and on, but I'll just end now and say that she is an absolute joy in our lives too and we love her verrrrry much!!!

My Playlist

2010-01-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

So I just finished having a dance session with Melia and Naiya here in our living room and I thought I'd take a minute to explain the inspiration behind the latest song picks for my blog playlist. Music has always been a love of mine and a huge part of my life. You name a song and I can probably tell you a memory I have associated with it. I've always thought it would be cool if my life could have a soundtrack--you know, like whatever is happening, there should be music playing in the background to go along with the situation. But, alas, that only happens on TV and the movies. Anyway, my play list...
1st, there's Magalenha by Sergio Mendez--I love this song! It just makes me want to dance. Back when I was going to school at Cal State Long Beach, I took a class on world music that totally opened me up to music from all countries. My teacher was awesome and had been to practically every country to study all kinds of music and instruments with the locals. Plus, I have had friends from all different cultures throughout my life who have introduced me to new kinds of music and broadened my music base.
2nd--"If It Kills Me" I really dig Jason Mraz songs--especially the ones that are not necessarily the radio edit. I like the more acoustic ones where he improvises more. He's totally talented at just going off in an original way every time he sings. I heard that's actually the way he writes his songs. This particular song reminds me of an amazing routine performed on "So You Think You Can Dance".
3rd "I'm Free" by the Soup Dragons. Some songs you like just for the way they sound and some songs you like for the lyrics as well. This is one of those songs where I like the message. It reminds me of my best friend from high school.
4th and last is "You Can't Stop the Beat" from the musical "Hairspray". The latest movie version of "Hairspray" with John Travolta was one of those feel good movies that just made me smile from beginning to end. This song, to me, is like joy rising. It's just so much fun and keeps getting more and more joyful peaking at the end. One of my favorite things to do to this song is to dance with wild abandon around the house with Melia, Naiya and Bo (yes, I said Bo). :)
So there you go. A little look into part of my brain.

Leisurely Walk? I Think Not.

2010-01-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

The night after we got back from our trip, Bo started feeling nauseous and felt kind of sick for the next few days. Last night, Melia came out of her room at 10:30pm crying and covered in throw up. This morning, I started feeling nauseous. After breakfast, Melia projectile vomitted across the room. Naiya is going through this phase where she only wants to be held by me. Since we've been back from our trip, she not only wants to be held by me instead of other people--she wants to be held by me period. All the time. So after a morning inside the house with all of us not feeling so great, I decided we needed to get out. We didn't have a car, so I loaded the girls up in the really old double stroller and went out for a "leisurely walk". My thinking was, "I'm not feeling so good, but I feel a little better. We need to get out of the house. I'll just take it easy on this walk." I don't know what made me think there is such a thing as a leisurely walk in Paradise, seeing as how there is no flat ground. It is either up hill or down hill. And the uphill starts with our driveway which is looong and is at an incline of like 30 degrees which feels like 90 degrees when you're pushing a 20 pound baby and a 38 pound almost 4 year old in a big old double stroller. So by the time I got to the top of the driveway, I was already breathing heavy. Just down our street a little way, there is another huge hill. As I pushed the stroller up the hill, I started to feel more nauseous again. I pressed on for another 15 minutes or so and then decided to give it up. I look forward to the time when we live somewhere with flat sidewalks again. :)

We're Back!

2010-01-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! We just got back from a week and a half long vacation to Southern California and it was a lot of fun! We spent most of our time with our families, but we were able to squeeze a few friends in too. There were many more that we wish we could have seen, but we just ran out of time. Although we stayed up late every night and I had to get up early every morning with the girls, I came home feeling pretty rejuvinated. I guess actually more mentally than physically. :) This past semester had really taken a toll on us with Bo being gone so much and so stressed out all the time. We literally had almost zero time together. I was so caught up in taking care of the kids and never really getting much of a break or getting out to do fun "grown up" stuff. Looking back, I think I was a little depressed. Anyway, it was so good to have Bo there every day all day and be surrounded by wonderful people on this trip. To just have fun and play games and laugh every day more than I have in a long time was so refreshing! It made me realize that we need that kind of stuff in our lives to stay balanced. I came back with a better perspective on things and I feel more motivated to do things now. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but now is as good a time as any to think about what I really want in my life. More fun for this year definitely!

Should I Be Worried?

2009-12-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

Bo's latest blog entry is called "Guy Love". Those of you who know us well know what I'm dealing with here. Check it out at http://boot2thhead.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-12-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

It's my birthday! Unfortunately, Wednesdays are Bo's day where he works and goes straight to school and doesn't get home until really late. I usually don't even see him on Wednesdays, so I knew it would just be me and the girls like usual today. We are also a few days away from Bo's paycheck so I didn't have lots of money to do anything.

But I still wanted to enjoy my birthday, so I packed up the girls and we went to the mall. We had fun looking around and trying on shoes that I will be buying for my birthday after I get money. :)

Santa was there at the mall and it wasn't busy at all so he let Melia come and sit on his lap and they even let me take pictures with my own camera--so we got unexpected Santa pictures for free. :)

Later, after the girls' naps, we went to the store and I had just enough money to buy myself a German chocolate birthday cake. Melia made sure to tell everyone in the check out line that it was my birthday and she even carried the cake for me (at one point, upside down on top of her head). We came home and Melia sang to me and blew out my candles with me. Grandma gave me an awesome present by doing a sink full of dirty dishes for me. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but after a long day and finally getting the girls to bed, the last thing I feel like doing is cleaning up a messy kitchen and doing a sink full of dirty dishes. Thanks Grandma! Also, a few days ago my friend and visiting teacher, Terry, came over and we were talking about how I love almond butter and how expensive it is. She told me that you can get it at Winco and I was thrilled at the possibility to get it for cheap. Anyway, today I found a bag on my doorstep filled with 3 large containers of almond butter. I thought that was such a thoughtful gift. :) These things combined with calls from friends and family made for a good birthday despite the circumstances. Oh yeah--I topped off the night with a little "So You Think You Can Dance" which always makes me smile.

P.S. The next morning, I woke up to find a present from Bo sitting on the table. The present was nice, but my favorite part was the letter he wrote to me. I won't go into detail, but let's just say it made me cry...in a good way. :) On Friday night, we went out to dinner at the Olive Garden to celebrate!

Thanks to God

2009-11-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

I'm thankful for at least a million and one things in my life, but these three are the tops! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The Real Story of Jesus' Birth

2009-11-24T19:54:00.000-08:00

Last night, Melia was playing with a little nativity set at our friend's house. Today she gave me her version of what happened. "The donkey sniffed baby Jesus and the fairy (angel) was on the roof and Mary was feeding baby Jesus some nummies."

Sugar, Sugar

2009-11-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

My name is Laura and I'm a sugar addict. Yes, it's true. Sugar has become my drug of choice and it's starting to really bum me out. Not only is it totally bad for me health wise, it's keeping me from fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothes, which is not only depressing but it's getting cold up here and I can't fit into my pants. :(
So here's the thing--I eat pretty healthy all day long for all my meals and snacks. I don't have any sugar during the day. But night hits and I'm exhausted and I fall in front of the TV and the cookie dough starts calling my name. Actually, it calls my name throughout the day and I look forward to the night time when I can sit down with some sweet stuff and just take a break. That's the thing--it's like my treat, my reward, my break. And I don't know how to not do it. I mean, I've broken the cycle in the past, but I always fall back into it. I want it and I don't want it. You know what I mean? It's good in the moment, but then I regret it afterward. The whole weight thing is just getting to me lately. It's not like I think I'm huge or anything--I just want to get back to fitting in my clothes and be at my normal weight. Somewhere during pregnancy, an extra 15 pounds snuck onto my body and it's been 7 months now and none of it has gone away. I keep psyching myself up to do something about it, but I find my efforts are always thwarted by something. My latest thing is the P90X workout system. Yes, I saw it on an infomercial and yes, I always end up wanting to try almost everything I see on infomercials. I admit it. Only this time I didn't have to buy it because Bo's co-worker lent it to us. It's 12 different workout DVDs that are pretty extreme. I was all set to be buff in 90 days, but so far every week that I've started getting up early and doing it, something has happened and I've only done it like a handful of times. Anyway, bottom line is I need to break this sugar habit. Not really sure how to do it though. I'm sure some of you can relate to what I'm talking about. Others may think I'm complaining about nothing. Whatever your take is on it is fine. It's just been my struggle lately and I decided to blog about it because life isn't all just fun events to report on.

7 Months Already?!

2009-11-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

Time is a weird thing. It seemed to go by so slowly sometimes during the first 6 months and now Naiya is already 7 months old and I can't believe it! Melia decided to play dress up with her on her 7 month birthday (even though I didn't realize it was her 7 month birthday until the day after. Luckily, Melia wanted to take a picture of Naiya dressed up in her tutu or else we would have no visual record of that day. :) ) Anyway, Naiya is growing fast--we already had to bust out the 12 month old clothes for her. She's having fun discovering her voice and is still my cute little smiley baby. Pooping is going better, which leads me into the fiasco that happened today. Luckily, it happened to Bo and not me. :)
Today, Bo was watching the girls while I went to a doctor's appointment. I actually got lost on the way there and called Bo so he could help me find it on mapquest. While he was helping me, I could hear Naiya crying in the background and Melia wanting stuff, so I told him to just call me back after he put Naiya down for her nap. Well, he took quite a while to call back. This is why, according to Bo: He started to put Naiya down for her nap when he remembered he hadn't changed her diaper. As he went to do so, he smelled something not so pleasant. He investigated further to find out that Naiya had had one of those explosive poops that went all the way up the back of her onesie. As she was screaming and he was trying to hold her legs up in the air so that the poop didn't get all over the bed, he dropped the poopy diaper on the floor and started throwing the wipes into it as he used them. Well, pretty soon Melia comes over to see what's going on and accidentally steps in the poopy diaper. Bo realizes this when she says, "Daddy, I got poopy on my toe!" Meanwhile, Bo is still trying to hold the crying, half covered in poop, baby's legs up to save the bed. He tells Melia to go wash off her foot in the shower and to try not to put her foot down on the carpet. She becomes distressed and adds to the chorus of crying. She makes it to the shower but can't turn it on, which causes more distress. Finally, Bo gets Naiya cleaned off and then comes over to help Melia as Naiya continues to cry. Bo turns on the shower for Melia who not only sticks her foot in to wash it, but her entire leg--pants and everything. Anyway, by the time I got home, Melia and Naiya were both clean and taking naps, so it all turned out in the end. I did find a little present left on my side of the bed--the poop covered onesie. So sweet of Bo to leave me that little momento so that, although I wasn't there to experience it firsthand, I could still feel (or smell) like I was. But I do totally appreciate Bo for his help with the girls and I have total empathy for him, having dealt with many similar situations in my stint at motherhood. It's all worth it though! Happy 7 months Naiya! We love you!

We Survived!

2009-11-16T20:23:00.000-08:00

Ahh, the wonderful germy world of preschool. Melia came home with a cold about a week ago which I then came down with, promptly followed by Naiya and finishing up with Bo. Let's just say this week has been filled with more mucus coming from every direction than I ever care to see again. I haven't been sick since last Christmas, so I've never faced the challenge of taking care of two sick kids while being sick myself before. Not so much fun, to say the least. The good news is we are all feeling much better--well, Bo is still having a hard time, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

Beauty and Teen Wolf?

2009-11-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

So this Halloween, Melia decided she wanted to be Belle and that Daddy should be the Beast. It was a cute idea, but it was only a few days until Halloween and I wasn't sure we could pull it off. But listening to Melia talk about it to everyone and hearing how excited she was motivated me to try to come up with a Beast costume. And vuala!....Here it is. Bo was totally a good sport to do this. He was not feeling very festive, but he did it--2 days in a row--itchy beard, make-up, fake teeth and everything! Proof that Melia really does have daddy's heart. I had fun being a farmer with my cute little chicken. :)

6 Months Old!

2009-10-16T14:01:00.001-07:00

I can't believe we are a half a year into this already! Naiya is such a cute little chunky monkey. Her crazy hair brings us many laughs, especially when Bo makes her kick her legs and sings "We represent the lollipop kids". She absolutely adores Melia and watches her with a smile wherever she goes. Melia can also make her laugh harder than any of us can. I'm glad they have a good relationship so far. Naiya has been having some constipation trouble, so that's made feedings not so fun lately. But we've been looking into some things that will hopefully help. She is sitting up on her own now, but can basically be pushed over by a fly, so she's currently working on her core strength. This week, we bought Melia new sparkly princess shoes that she's in love with--so much so that they snuck their way into Naiya's 6 month birthday pictures. :)

What a Little Sweetie

2009-10-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

Melia (while handing her first tithing envelope to the Bishop): "Here's my money for Jesus. Can you hold it for him?"

Arrgh...I'm One of Those Moms

2009-10-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

Monday was Melia's first day of her Tiny Tots preschool class. She was so excited to finally be able to go to school! She has been talking about it for like a month now. When we got there, she was a little unsure at first, but then started playing with the toys and I said good bye to her. On my way home, I started having all of these feelings--This was the first time I was leaving my child with complete strangers in a new environment where she is facing the world all on her own. I know she is totally capable but there's something about a mother's instinct where you just want to protect your child and keep them safe from harm. I don't know exactly everything that I was feeling, but I did it--I cried. I am one of those moms that cries when they drop their kids off at school on the first day. As a kindergarten teacher, I saw it happen many times and never in a million years did I think I would be doing it, but I did. I admit it. At least I didn't do it until I had already dropped her off and had gone back home. Anyway, when I went to pick her up after her class was over, she ran up to me and gave me a big hug and started to tell me all about what they did in class. Her teacher said she was a delight and that she danced for them and just really enjoyed herself. They said she asked where I was one time and they told her that they had one more activity to do before I would come to pick her up. She said, "Ok." and went back to what she was doing. I don't know what I was worried about. :) She told me all about everything all the way home and about how much fun she had and how she loved school. Today was her second day and it went great. I didn't cry this time. :)

My First Battle Wound

2009-10-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

So after 5 years of dog training, I actually got bitten--courtesy of Snowy, the fearful aggressive Australian Shepherd. I have been nipped at before, but never had a dog break the skin. Luckily, it wasn't that bad and I was able to remain calm, correct her, and then continue to take her for a walk. The important thing is not to freak out and become fearful because then you're in no position to help rehabilitate the dog so she can obtain a more balanced state of mind. Although I did not love getting bitten, I love the work that I do and every experience teaches me something new. What did I learn from this? 1. Don't wear shorts while working with big, fearful aggressive dogs. And 2. Charge the client more if their dog bites me. :)

Oh, Bo.

2009-09-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

Bo is one of those guys that has no problem getting in touch with his feminine side. His latest little discovery is that if he wears my nursing cover up, it's easier to get Naiya to go to sleep at church. So he's been wearing it lately without a care as to the pink floral pattern or the fact that only nursing moms usually wear these things. I actually think that this may just be his practical/efficient side overpowering all other cares. Whatever. He's a cute daddy!

Melia's 2nd Testimony

2009-09-27T21:52:00.001-07:00

"I love Jesus. Jesus loves all the little children. He loves everybody here. Jesus loves Karsen. Jesus loves Holly. I love my family. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

5 Months Old!

2009-09-16T20:55:00.001-07:00

Today is Naiya's 5 month birthday and I'm writing this blog on the actual day! Check me out! Anyway, it hasn't been that long since my last blog about her so she's pretty much still the same cute little chubby smiley that she was in my last entry. One important thing I forgot to mention last time though was her snorting. I'm not sure why, but she snorts all the time--when she cries, when she laughs. It's pretty funny. And now that we have found it funny, Melia has decided to start snorting when she laughs too. Ahh, my little family of piglets. Naiya has also become obsessed with my water bottle. Bo gave her some water from it the other day and now every time she sees it, her eyes get big and she starts flailing about. Her diet still consists of just breast milk so I guess water is a real treat for her. :) She really does bring joy to our lives every day and I'm so grateful to have her!

Madness at Winco

2009-09-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

Ahh, Winco. Huge discount grocery store. Lots of people. Me with a 4 month old and a 3 year old and a shopping cart. Let the fun begin! I should have taken it as a sign of how this shopping trip would be when we entered the store and Melia says: "I have to go potty." Ok, good--at least we can get that over with first instead of having to walk way back to the front of the store in the middle of our shopping trip to go to the bathroom. We get over to the bathroom and Melia says: "I don't need to go potty." Me: "Are you sure?" Melia: "Yes." Ok, I didn't really want to unload she and Naiya from the shopping cart anyway just so she could sit on the potty and not go. At least she was telling me ahead of time. On to our shopping. Big list in hand, kids in cart. Let's go. I have only been to Winco a few times, so it was taking us quite a while to find everything we needed. Plus, we had to navigate our way through the sea of Winco shoppers. Now people who shop at Winco are serious. They don't go there to just buy a few items. They shop for a month's supply at least. It's common to see people with 2 shopping carts packed until they're overflowing. So as I'm looking for the stuff we need, Naiya has this constant kind of moan going on--not actually crying, but the warning " I may burst into a full blown cry at any minute" type of sound. So I am trying to hurry as fast as I can with the amount of people I have to wait for and dodge. Meanwhile, our cart is filling up quickly and Melia has less and less room to stand in back there. She wants to get out. I don't want her to get out with this many people and carts around. She wears me down. I find an isle that is somewhat empty and foolishly allow her to get out of the cart. I spend the rest of the shopping trip trying to keep her out of the way of people, keep her from pushing the cart into people, etc. At one point, a rather large black lady passes by us and Melia says, pointing to the lady: “That’s a big booty!” Me: “Shhh!!!” Melia: “Mommy, that’s a big booty!” Me: “Don’t say that anymore. It might make her feel bad.” Luckily, the lady was out of ear shot. (I hope.) Kids. What are you gonna do? Anyway, by this time we have pretty much everything we need and we head to the check out stand. I glance down at my watch to be shocked that it is already 1:30pm which is the time that Naiya usually goes down for her nap. I look up to see each check stand has a big line with people who have packed shopping carts. Great. Just hang on Naiya. You’re doing good. We pick a line. Melia entertains herself by picking up every candy bar, breath mint, and pack of gum she sees and telling me she’s going to buy them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m trying to unload all of our stuff onto the conveyer belt and the lady behind us starts talking to Naiya, putting her face really close up to her. At first Naiya is amused, but then for some reason her amusement turns into terror and she starts to scream at the top of her lungs. Great. Just please calm down without me having to pick you up and carry you while I try to unload groceries, keep Melia safe and out of trouble and pay for our stuff. Luckily, she is pacified by me just talking to her. Thank goodness, she’s such a mellow baby. Ok, groceries unloaded, Melia back in the cart, pay for groceries, start loading them in bags. Well, Naiya’s had it. Full blown crying the whole time I’m trying to bag our groceries. Sorry kid, can’t help you right now. Melia tries her hand at calming Naiya by talking to her with her forehead pressed against Naiya’s forehead and “patting” (more like smacking) her belly. Somehow it wasn’t having the calming effect Melia was hoping for. My mission: Just get the groceries bagged and loaded back in the cart so we can hurry up and get home so we can all take naps. Ok, we’re on our way out of this madhouse of a store. We’re good. Everything is good. Did I mention I am not coming back here again? Just as we’re about to step out into the parking lot, Melia: “I have to go potty.” Me: “Are you serious?” Melia: “Yes, I have to go potty.” Ok, turn the shopping cart around and navigate our way to the bathroom. No problem. It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything. I unload the girls and leave our shopping cart full of stuff outside the bathroom cause you’re not allowed to take it in. I say a little prayer that no one will take our stuff. I try to hurry Melia along as she dawdles along noticing every little thing in the bathroom. She is very concerned about whether the toilet flushes by itself or not. It does. Naiya is actually gaining weight the longer I hold her. We finish and return to our shopping cart. Hey! Everything is still here. Yay! Load Naiya back in cart. Get Melia to stop playing with the ball from the big bin of balls and get back in the cart. Ok, let’s try this one more time. This time, we actually make it to the car. Load the groceries in the trunk. Get Melia strapped in car seat. Get Naiya strapped in car seat. Return cart. Get on the road. Listen to Naiya cry and Melia whine about being tired. Oh, did I mention that Winco is down in Chico which means we still have a good 20 minute drive through nothing but fields and trees to get home? I glance down at the dashboard—I’m going 106 miles per hour?! What?! Oh, Melia pushed the button to convert it to kilometers again. We’re ok. Get home and grab Naiya to put her down for her nap. Come back out and get Melia and the groceries. Arms full of groceries. Melia goes in ahead of me. No, don’t close the door! Yup, she closed it. “Open the door, Melia.” “Open the door!” No response. I manage to get a finger free to slide it open and accidentally hit her head with the handle. Crying fit ensues. Ok, mom is done. 15 minutes later, I have Melia down for her nap, groceries that need to be refrigerated away and I collapse on my bed. Just another Monday in the life of a mom. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Well, maybe if I had a good enough offer. Just kidding. Maybe.

She Woke Up Like This

2009-09-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone remember Flock of Seagulls? Turns out Naiya is a big fan.

Where's Melia?!

2009-09-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

So a couple of weeks ago, Bo was working late and I was putting the kids to bed by myself. While I nursed Naiya, Melia got her jammies on, brushed her teeth and then told me she was going to go to bed by herself. I told her it was ok and that I would come in to her room to say good night after I finished feeding Naiya. Well, a while later, I hear my neighbor's voice calling to me from our door. I went out there to find Melia at the door with her. She said, "Do you know where Melia was?" With a confused look on my face, I said, "Umm...was she outside?". She said, "Well, she decided to come to our house for a little visit." What?!! Ok, this is at 8:00 at night and to get to our neighbor's house you have to go all the way up a long driveway and onto the street and down another long driveway. Needless to say, this isn't a great activity for a 3 year old to be doing on her own. I'm just glad this happened while we're living in Paradise instead of in Santa Ana. Anyway, I talked to her about not going outside by herself and I resolved to not let her out of my sight at bedtime anymore.

Ok, so about a week later, I'm making breakfast in the morning and she goes upstairs to "get her shoes". When breakfast is ready, I go upstairs to get her and she is nowhere to be found again. I start to panic a little and I start calling for her outside. I hear this little voice from down the street calling back to me. What?!!! I go to get her and she is talking about something down the street. Who knows how far she went!! This time Sleeping Beauty, her Belle dress, and shoes--basically everything she values--was taken away from her for going outside by herself again. We're definitely going to have to get some good locks for the doors that she can't get out of.

Today I was in the kitchen and she went in our bedroom. A little while later, I went in there and couldn't find her. I started calling to her all through the house and she was nowhere to be found again. Panic. I went outside and started yelling for her. No answer. I came back downstairs and kept calling for her. All of a sudden, I see her peeking at me out of Naiya's room. She had been hiding in there to surprise me. We play like that sometimes, but usually I know where she's hiding immediately because she always talks to me from her hiding place. She just had to pick now when I'm paranoid to actually learn how to hide the right way. Parenthood may drive me crazy before I get out of it!

Melia's First Testimony

2009-09-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, it was testimony meeting at church. Once a month, they allow members of the congregation to get up in the front and give their testimonies about Jesus Christ and how he has affected their lives. Whoever wants to can, and so Melia said she wanted to. I followed her up there thinking I would probably just whisper in her ear what to say, like "I love Jesus." or "I'm grateful for my family." etc. But we got up there to the microphone and Melia just totally took over all on her own. She talked about Jesus and the boat and the big waves (She got that from a video that we have that shows Jesus fishing with his apostles). Then she talked about how Jesus likes to buy her pretty dresses. :) It was adorable and I felt so blessed to be her mom and be able to watch her learn and grow in this life. It also made me feel good to see how comfortable she is with herself to be able to get up in front of all those people and speak with no fear. Every week since then, she asks me when it's going to be her turn again. Well, her long wait will be over this coming Sunday. But lately she's been talking about how Sleeping Beauty and the prince dance with Heavenly Father because at the end of the movie it shows them dancing up into the clouds. So Bo and I are going to do a little lesson with her for our Family Home Evening about what to talk about in a testimony so we don't have any Sleeping Beauty stories in church. :)

4 Months and Counting

2009-08-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

Naiya is over 4 months old now and our video camera has been broken this whole time so we don't have any video of her yet. I feel bad because we have video of Melia every month on her monthly birthday. So I decided I'm going to at least write about Naiya every month on her monthly birthday until we get our video camera fixed. By the way, her monthly birthday is on the 16th. Yes, I'm a little late, but at least I'm doing it!

So here she is--my little smiley. That's my nickname for her because she smiles so much. She's such a sweet, easy going baby. She just learned to laugh and finds Melia totally hilarious. She just started getting pretty good at grabbing things and everything is starting to go in the mouth. I wonder why babies do that anyway. She has lots of curly hair, which totally looks like Jerry curls when it's wet. She is a total chunkster now and just has rolls on top of rolls. Adorable. Speaking of rolls--she can roll over now from her tummy to her back, but gets stuck there and starts to cry. Kind of like a turtle, except for the crying part. She is sleeping through the night now, which is heaven for Bo and I. Overall, we are just exceptionally happy to have her as part of our family. :)

3 Balloons

2009-08-26T13:41:00.001-07:00

Well, Melia finally got her 3 balloons. If you don't know what I'm talking about, refer back to the post "Oh, My Little Persistent One". She did not forget that she wanted 3 balloons and kept collecting the change every time we went to the store. After a few weeks, we took her change to one of the machines that counts it and gives you cash and then walked over to the dollar tree. Melia picked out 3 Happy Birthday balloons and paid for them with her own money. She was beaming! It was so fun to watch her. :) On the way home, she said (about the lady that helped us with the change machine) "She was beautiful and kind." Awww. I love being her mommy.

Yes, We Actually Made It Home...Barely

2009-08-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to say that I've been known to cut it close as far as getting to things on time goes, but this time I honestly thought I had plenty of time...wrong. Bo's sister, Azure, drove us to LAX and we got there an hour and a half before our flight. Plenty of time to check in and get to the gate...that is, if you don't accidentally stand in the security line when you're supposed to be in the check in line and if you don't accidentally stand in the on-line check in line instead of the normal check in line. That being said, we found ourselves in the middle of a huge check in line with only a half hour left until our flight was going to leave. The next half hour turned into a very stressful mad rush, but God put everything in place to help us through. First, He provided a kind manager who was willing to pull us out of the line and take us up to the front and check us in. Then, as we rushed over to stand in the long security line, a worker came and told us that there was a new security check point opening downstairs with no line. Blessing #2. So we rushed downstairs and that was when Azure had to leave me. There I was, left with a 3 year old and an infant, plus a stroller, a diaper bag and a carry on suitcase that has to be opened every time we go through security because it has a lap top inside. So after we get everything through and our shoes back on and Melia back in the stroller, God provides the next nice man to help us up the escalator with all of our stuff. He asks to see my ticket so he can tell me where my gate is and when he sees it, he lets out a moan. Well, that can't be good. At this point, I have about 10 minutes until our flight is supposed to leave and he tells me that my gate is all the way on the other side of the airport--a good 7 or 8 minute walk from where we are. Crap. So there I went, speed walking, pushing Melia in the stroller, carrying Naiya in the front pack, pulling my diaper bag on top of my suitcase behind me, begging God to help us make it there in time, and having the warning words of my mother ringing in my ears that I should have gotten to the airport earlier. A few minutes into this speed walk, I hear my name being called over the loud speaker saying I need to report to the gate immediately because it is closing in 5 minutes. Double crap. At this point, I take off RUNNING...Naiya still strapped to me, bouncing up and down. Double the prayers now. Making my way through the seemingly endless halls, charging up 2 escalators (blessing #3 is that we didn't fall down and end up in a big heap of stroller and suitcases), only running over one man's foot and giving him a flat tire, to at last see our gate number in the distance. We made it there--totally out of breath, sweating and disshevled--but we made it! Blessing #4! Once we got there, God blessed us with a really nice flight attendant who helped me with my bags and stroller and reassured me that I could relax and that they would take care of everything. He even asked the guy who was sitting in our row if he would mind moving so we could have the row all to ourselves. Blessings #5 & 6. Melia then decided to have a really loud meltdown, which made Naiya start crying too. Great. Oh, did I mention that we got almost zero sleep the night before because all 3 of us had to sleep in the same room which Melia is not used to at all so she kept getting up and doing stuff and trying to leave the room and almost waking up Naiya, etc. etc.? Yeah, so we were all very tired. Anyway, the meltdown didn't last very long and the rest of the plane ride went pretty peacefully. We got to San Francisco for what was supposed to be a half hour layover. That turned into an hour and a half layover. Let's just say that trying to keep tired kids happy and occupied isn't my favorite thing to do when I'm really tired too. But again, God blessed us with a nice mother and son to talk to and for Melia to play with. Also, another blessing was the lady in the bookstore telling us about a place in the other bookstore that had a section for kids with books and toys. Thank you! :) So our flight was finally ready to go and we got into Chico fine. More nice people who helped with bags, etc. Bo picked us up and Melia was so excited to see her daddy! I was happy to see him too. :) Then, we realize our suitcase and 2 car seats that we had checked in are not there. We spend about an hour there trying to see about them. Blessing #--I've lost count--was that I am able to breastfeed Naiya so I was able to feed her while Bo was trying to find our bags. The next blessing was that although they weren't able to find our bags, they lent us 2 car seats so that we could get the girls home. Later that night, they dropped off our suitcase and car seats to our house. What a day!

Trip to So Cal--Day 12 The Grandkids

2009-08-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

This was our attempt to get a group shot of all 5 grandkids. Eden, Alex, Wyatt, Naiya and Melia. They were great posers. :)

Trip to So Cal--Day 11 The Thompson's

2009-08-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

We spent Saturday hanging out at the Thompson's. Everybody was in town so it was a lot of fun! Everybody, that is, except for Bo. :( Sorry bebes.

Shane and Ericka got a new member of the family--Pete, the pug. If all goes well with him, they might move on to a baby. :)

Melia and Eden in the neighbor's tree house. Pretty cool!

Trip to So Cal--Day 10 Swimming with Trina & Piper

2009-08-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Guess what we did on Friday? You got it--swimming! For about 3 and a half hours this time! We got together with our good friends, Piper and Trina, and all of the kids. It was so much fun to catch up with them! All three of us have had babies in the past year since we've been gone. I can't believe how big theirs are! I don't know why, but I was expecting to see little babies like mine. I guess time didn't stop when we left after all! One thing I noticed all through this vacation seeing all of these wonderful people that we love--there's something about good friends, when you see them after being away for so long, you just pick up right where you left off and it's so comfortable, almost like you never left. :)

Trip to So Cal--Single Parenthood

2009-08-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

I have to say that being a single parent for these two weeks has given me a new appreciation for Bo and all of the help he gives me. Getting Melia ready for bed and trying to feed Naiya at the same time was interesting, but worked out for the most part. Reading them bed time stories together was my favorite part.

Trip to So Cal--Day 9 Water, Water and more Water!

2009-08-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

This time it was swimming first, then sprinklers second. Vicky and Lenore came over most evenings so the girls could play and we could chat. It was so hot during the days that it was nice to be outside in the evenings with a cool breeze blowing.

This is the aftermath of all the water antics.

It's all fun and games til someone looses some knee skin.

Trip to So Cal--Day 8 Swim, Swim, Swim & the Lemon Project

2009-08-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Our favorite pass time on this trip was swimming. Melia swam almost everywhere we went! Here, we're visiting my good friends from High School, Darlene & Jose. Melia had a lot of fun with their 2 boys, Nick and Andy.

Here's Nick taking Melia out for a spin in his nifty jeep. It was so cute. It looked like they were on a date. It was funny because afterwards, we went out to lunch and, instead of holding my hand while we walked through the parking lot, Melia ran over to Nick and held his hand. When we went in the restaurant, she stood by him and rubbed his back. Not so fast Melia! We've got a good 10 to 15 years before I want to deal with boys!

In the evening, Vicky and Lenore came over to--surprise, surprise--swim! After swimming, the girls decided to take on the lemon project. Lenore and Melia started to pick lemons off the tree and bring them over to us. After a while, there were 2 huge piles.

They took each one over to the pool to wash them off. Then they put them in bags so Vicky could take them home. Good little workers! Good reason to have kids. :)

Trip to So Cal--Day 9 Visiting GG

2009-08-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, we went to visit GG (also known as my Grandma Emily). It's always fun to see her and catch up with her. :) This is my Aunt Becky and Uncle Randy's new dog, Sierra. She has got to be the most calm submissive dog I've ever met!

She kept Melia entertained for almost the whole visit!

Trip to So Cal--Day 6 & 7 Lots of Good Eating and Good Friends

2009-08-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we had lunch with 2 of our good friends, James and Alisha, at my favorite restaurant, Red Robin. The closest Red Robin to us now is an hour and a half away, so it was a treat for me! It was fun catching up with them--we miss them! They need to take a road trip up here to see us soon!

So that night, Vicky and I went out and ended up in Uptown Whittier at Rocky Cola Cafe. Man, that place brought back some memories! I haven't been there in years! Anyway, I couldn't decide between the apple pie and the oreo shake, so I got them both. Vicky bet me a dollar that I couldn't finish them both. Silly, Vicky. Always underestimating me. :)

Here is angelic Vicky with her huge salad. I bet her a dollar that she couldn't finish it.

Yes, I finished it all. Not something I should be particularly proud of, but it is a good source of income on the side. Actually that dollar is from our waiter. Just as I finished, he came by and Vicky says, "She just finished all of both desserts! You should give her a dollar." He then tossed a dollar on the table for me. :)

Needless to say, Vicky did not finish her whole salad and turned to french fries to console herself. She owes me $2. :)

Trip to So Cal--Day 5 Sunday Dinner at the Waldvogel's

2009-08-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we went to church at my mom's ward. It was fun to see lots of old friends there. That night, we went to have dinner at the Waldvogel's new house. At least it was new to us--they've been there for a while now. They raised 3 kids in a little 2 bedroom apartment with no yard for as long as we had known them and they finally got into a nice big house with a nice big backyard when their 4th little one arrived. I've always said that no one deserves it more than them! They paid their dues!

Our friend Matt came over with his brother for dinner too. It was so good to see everybody again and catch up!

The kids picked up right where they left off and had a great time playing together. They're actually old enough now that they all sat down and played a board game by themselves!

Here's the whole gang! On our way out, Jim Weissinger and Danny Hunsaker were on their way in for a meeting with Jeff, so that was an added bonus for me. I loved seeing all of them again--it was like we never moved away. :)

Trip to So Cal--Days 3 & 4 "The Wife"

2009-08-09T20:51:00.001-07:00

Friday we were pretty tired, so we just laid low and hung out with my mom at the house mostly. We did make a trip out to target to buy an air mattress for me to sleep on because the fold out couch in the living room is super hard and doesn't fold out all the way, so you have to sleep diagonally on it. I tried it for the first night and pretty much got no sleep because of the bed combined with the fact that it's in the living room which is on the side that the street is on. I forgot how loud it is at night--sirens, motorcycles, trucks, alarms, trains...you name it and you can hear it from that room. Oh, did I mention that the weather was super hot and humid and my mom's house is pretty much like a sauna except for in the one room that has a little air conditioner? And no, that one room is not the living room. Anyway, I ended up sleeping on the air mattress in the den, which is not on the side that the street is on, with my mom. It worked much better that way. I've never been so grateful to have an air mattress before!

The next day was my cousin, Mitch's, wedding. It was in Long Beach outside next to the Queen Mary overlooking the bay. Very pretty, but very hot and very little shade. I stood in the back under a little potted tree/plant for most of the ceremony because I didn't want Naiya to get sunburned. The reception was really nice and it was fun to see everybody in my family.

Melia was a little dancing machine, like usual. Here's Melia dancing with GG (her Great Grandma). What you don't see is GG almost going down as Melia spun her around and around!

My cute girlies with Grandma Sue!

Here's Aunt Kitty looking jolly and Naiya looking not so jolly. It was a long day for Naiya with no real naps, but she was a little trooper. :)

Melia had been looking forward to 2 things about this wedding--"the wife", as Melia likes to call her, wearing the pretty white dress and the cake. Although we didn't really know Dianne, Melia pretty much attached herself to her side in complete awe through most of the reception. Here she is holding the wife's hand in their cake cutting pictures.

Here she is dancing with the wife during the mother son dance. I had to hold her back so that Mitch and Dianne could have their first dance without Melia in between them. Melia also refused to leave the wife's side during the bouquet toss. I had to physically take her to stand with the other single ladies. At one point, after most of the festivities had already taken place, Melia went and sat down with the wife and said, "So what should we do now?" I think Melia fully embraced this as her and the wife's reception. Mitch was a mere bystander.

Groovin with Uncle Ron.

Aww, so cute. Too bad my arm felt like it was about to fall off from holding this chunky monkey for so long!

Here's Melia living it up on the craps table! The dealer had come over to me and asked if Melia could help pick some cards to give prizes to each table. I said sure and the next thing I knew, she was up on there on the table gambling and drinking and having a good old time! :)

Funny side note: That night, as I was putting Melia to bed, I went to give her kisses and she said, "No Mommy. Like this." She then proceeds to hold my face with her hands, tilt her head to the side and stick her tongue out as she leans in to kiss me! Aaahhhh! Well, needless to say, I had to explain to her the difference between "wedding" kisses and our kisses.

Trip to So Cal--Day 2 Where Else Would We Possibly Go?

2009-08-09T20:41:00.000-07:00

So just about everyone knows that my favorite place in the world to be is at the beach. Since we live like 4 hours from the beach now, the first destination on our trip was obvious.

We went with my friends, Vicky & Vero, and Melia's friend, Lenore (Vicky's daughter) while Grandma Sue watched Naiya. Thanks mom. And a big shout out to Vicky for not only going, but driving us all considering she hates the beach! :)

We had a fun time and Melia and Lenore LOVED playing in the water! So did I. :)

That night, Vicky, Vero & I had a girls' night out in a part of LA called Little Tokyo. There's one little Japanese restaurant that we like to go to and chat about what's in the mindless magazines they have there to read and talk about life while we eat delicious food.

I am addicted to gyoza, so I get that every time. Vero is always undecided on what she wants to get, but definitely always plays it safe. Vicky usually gets something that either smells or looks funny and always tries unsuccessfully to get us to try it.
I was kind of bummed because Vero was leaving on a trip to Utah the next day so we only had one day together--but it was a good day. :) I have to say that, although none of the three of us are very sappy toward each other in person, we have an unspoken appreciation for each other and I don't think there is doubt in any of our minds that we are there for each other through the good and the bad. I'm deeply grateful to have friends like them in my life. Ok, no more sappy stuff. :)

Trip to So Cal--Day 1 We Made It! Barely.

2009-08-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

We've lived up here in Paradise for a year now and we've made short trips down to So. Cal for holidays, but never really had enough time to see all of the people we wanted to see or do all the things we wanted to do. So my cousin got married in July and it was the perfect excuse for me to come down and spend some real time visiting people and hanging out--just the girls and I--Bo couldn't get time off work. :( We spent almost two weeks there and it was quite an experience. Traveling with two kids went pretty smoothly...that is, after we got to the tiny Chico airport 5 minutes after their 30 minute deadline and had to beg for them to let us on the airplane that I could clearly see still sitting right there through the window. If any of you have seen "Meet the Parents"--it was reminiscent of the scene where Ben Stiller is trying to get on the airplane in the empty airport to go back home in the middle of the night. Anyway, they let us on. (I think the crying baby, the excited 3 year old, the stressed out mom look, and the prayers helped my case). The plane ride was fun for Melia. She was so excited--this was the first time she was old enough to really know what was going on and because the plane was so small, we actually got to walk out and climb up the stairs into the plane. We made it to LA and somehow in the year that we've been gone I completely forgot about traffic. I mean, I knew it was still there, but I totally forgot how to plan for it. For example, our flight arrived at LAX at 6:15 and I thought, "Ok, we can be at my mom's house by 7pm so I can feed Naiya and put the girls to bed on time." Silly, silly Laura. By the time my friend Vero, who was giving us a ride, finally got our stroller out of the oddly shaped baggage section (who knew that existed?!), we got two car seats strapped in her car, two kids in the car seats, suitcases in the trunk, and got through the line of cars to pay for parking, we emerged into good old Wednesday evening traffic. But not to fear, we ended up arriving at my mom's house with two crying children just in time to get Melia to bed and to start feeding Naiya at 8:00pm. Only an hour off of my projected time. But really, the only thing that matters is we made it just in time to see "So You Think You Can Dance". :)

Oh, My Little Persistent One

2009-08-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

So today, the girls and I went grocery shopping at Safeway. Melia saw some balloons and was convinced that she needed another balloon in addition to the huge "Super Dad" balloon that she got for free there at Safeway the day after Father's Day that is still floating around our house and the pink heart balloon that we got at the Dollar Tree because it was only, surprise, suprise, a dollar. So she spent most of our shopping time trying to convince me that we needed to get another balloon so she could have three. My attempts to help her understand that 2 balloons were enough, that we didn't have money to buy another balloon, that we were only buying food this time, that I was done talking about it, etc, etc, were just not working today. We then get in line to pay for our stuff and Melia starts asking the checker for a balloon. I tell her that she can't just give her a balloon--that it takes money. So then Melia's next words to the checker are, "Can I have some money?". Ahh, kids. The checker then points to the automatic change thing and some money comes out. Melia gets it out and is so excited that she now has money so she can buy a balloon! The problem was she had about 14 cents and the balloon was six dollars. I almost gave it up and got her the balloon as I looked down at her sweet little face beaming with excitement. But then my sensible side took over and I remembered that, one, I didn't want to teach her that it doesn't matter how many times mommy says no because you eventually get it anyway, and two, there was no way I was going to pay 6 bucks for a balloon. So we went over to where the balloons were and I showed her the price tag and helped her count how much money she had. Once she kind of understood that she didn't have enough money, I told her that she could save what she had and earn some more and then, once she has enough, we could come back and get a balloon. She seemed to be pacified with that idea. Man, I never thought that I would have to start teaching my 3 1/2 year old about money already. I thought that came later on. She definitely keeps me on my toes. I'm sure she'll actually remember about coming back when she has more money. But when that time comes, we'll definitely be going to the Dollar Tree where we can get 6 balloons for the price of one at Safeway!

Naiya's Blessing

2009-07-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

Naiya's blessing was really special. Bo did a wonderful job and the spirit was really strong. I cried (of course) as I heard all of the great blessings that will come to Naiya throughout her life. I feel so blessed to have two beautiful girls--daughters of our Heavenly Father that He has entrusted us with to care for and guide through this life. I'm so grateful to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life and to be surrounded by so many wonderful people who care about us. Thank you to all of our family and friends for being so great!

4th of July

2009-07-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

Bo's family came up to stay with us for the 4th of July weekend because we were having Naiya blessed. We started the 4th of July early with a 5k. Bo, Shane, Azure and Dad ran/walked it and had a good time. I wanted to do it too, but it was right when Naiya's first feeding of the day starts. :( I'm proud of Bo for doing it though considering we haven't been the least bit active lately. :)

After the race, we all met down at the water hole to swim. Yes, we now swim in things called "the water hole". Ahh, small town life.

We topped off the day by eating pizza and getting good old Thrifty ice cream. What could be more American than that?

Hair We Are

2009-07-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

After a year of being here, I finally went to get my hair highlighted and cut so I could feel normal again. Right in the middle of the process as I look like this in the above picture, Melia comes up and says, "Mommy you look so pretty. Are you done?" :)

June? July?! What?

2009-07-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

Where does the time go? I don't know. It's now been a whole month since I've updated this and a lot has been going on, so here's a little bit. First of all, our friends, Chris, Vicky and Lenore came up for a visit for the last time before they move back to So. Cal. We had a good time like always when we see them. Melia and Lenore were so cute playing and dancing together.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I would have to say that Chris is definitely Melia's favorite out of all of our friends. She's always excited to see him no matter how much time has passed since we've seen him and she likes to spend most of her time talking to him, sitting with him, holding his hand when we're walking, etc. She even noticed when I reframed our group wedding picture and Chris got covered up because he was up in a corner. When I showed her the picture in the new frame, I pointed out Grandpa and Grandma and other relatives and Melia's response was, "But where's Chris?" I have since found a bigger mat for the frame so that Chris shows again. :)

So Bo and I decided that we were tired of not doing anything up here besides taking care of the kids and going out to eat occasionally for "fun". So we started looking into other stuff to do. One of the things we found was a hike down to a river that was pretty fun. We had a good time and it was so great to just get out into nature again and enjoy.

That's my little smiley!

Another thing we found was the "water hole". It's this place where they dammed up part of a river and paved the bottom, so now it's like a huge swimming pool. We had fun swimming and Melia is getting more and more comfortable in the water, which is good except for when I'm not paying attention. :) So the other day, we went swimming with my friend and her daughter at the pool in the gym here. Melia and my friend's daughter were playing on the stairs and my friend and I were chatting just a couple of feet away in the water. Earlier, Melia had been jumping to me in the water and I guess she decided that she was going to do it again. The only problem was that I didn't realize she was jumping to me. So I look over and see this green thing at the bottom of the pool next to my leg. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that this green thing was Melia's bathing suit and that Melia was under the water. I grabbed her and picked her up trying to stay cool so she wouldn't freak out about it cause she's not used to going under the water--especially not by herself with no one holding her. Luckily, she was fine and I was able to convince her that she was such a big girl jumping all by herself. Child protective services hasn't showed up yet, so I think I'm good.

Que Paso?

2009-06-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

So the other day, Bo decided to shave his hair all the way off with a razor. Melia was very fascinated watching him do this and wanted to do the same thing to her head. She was pretty disappointed when we denied her idea. Hours later we were driving in the car and out of the blue, Melia says: "Sorry Dad." Daddy: "Sorry for what?" Melia: "Sorry your hair looks funny." Daddy was moted.

Ahh, life.

2009-05-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

So this is the image that I prefer to keep in my head during incidents like the following. Naiya is laying on our bed and Melia leans over to start talking to her. Naiya's hand gets caught in Melia's hair and becomes locked in a death grip. She then proceeds to pull on Melia's hair. Melia starts to scream with a look of hurt and betrayal on her face that seemed to say, "Why is my baby sister hurting me?!" So then Naiya gets scared and begins to scream too. I come over and try to get Naiya to release her Kung Fu grip, but I have no success. Who knew that such a tiny little baby could have such incredibly strong fingers? Anyway, I continue to try to pry her hand open while the two of them continue to scream. It was one of those situations where you can either become totally stressed or laugh. I tried to keep my laughter in though seeing as how my girls were both so distressed. By the time I finally got Naiya to let go, she had a big chunk of Melia's hair stuck between her fingers. It took Melia 10 or 15 minutes to walk around and finally calm down so I could explain to her that Naiya doesn't know how to open her hands on her own and didn't mean to hurt her. Luckily, kids bounce back quickly and a little while later Melia was sitting with Naiya again talking to her about how she doesn't know how to open her hands. :)

This is what happens when two 3 year olds are left in the bathroom by themselves for 5 minutes. Melia and her friend, Holly, found my lipstick and proceeded to smear it all over their faces. By the time we found them, Melia had already soaked the bathroom hand towel and wiped most of hers off. She was about to start wiping Holly's face when she was caught red handed.

After biting Cinderella's head off, Melia "fixed" her.

Ode To Bo

2009-05-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

I just want to take a minute and pay tribute to my awesome husband. He does so much for us and I don't think he realizes how great he is. Over the past month since we've had Naiya he has been on overdrive helping with the baby, taking care of Melia, cleaning the house, taking care of me, working, going to school, and on and on. Here is a small list of what he's done lately (in no particular order):
*Took care of Melia full time for the first two weeks after Naiya was born--got her up in the morning, put her to bed at night, read her stories, fed her, played with her, put her down for her naps, took her to the park and various other places, entertained her during the days, dealt with power struggles and fits, brushed her teeth, got her dressed, brushed her hair (even ponytails sometimes), danced with her, and the million other things that taking care of a three year old involves...
*Took care of me after my c-section full time for the first two weeks--lifted me up off of the couch, bed, chair or wherever I was because I couldn't move on my own yet, lifted my legs in and out of the car for me, brought Naiya to me every time she needed to nurse, changed her diaper every time she needed changing, got up at every night feeding with me to help with what I needed, brought countless things to me wherever I was (food, remotes, phone, etc.), made meals for us, took me to my daily doctor's appointments when my incision wasn't healing and watched the kids in the waiting room, loaded and unloaded all three of us in and out of the car countless times, cleaned and packed my incision with gauze twice a day (gross!), stayed up with Naiya when she wouldn't go back to sleep at night...
*Kept the house cleaner than it usually is--vacuumed, did dishes like 20 times a day (if there was a dish in the sink, it was only there for like 5 minutes), did countless loads of laundry, picked up the clutter frequently...
I could go on and on, but I just wanted to say how grateful I am to be married to my best friend who is so giving and loving and who never takes credit for all he does.
Thank you Bo!!! I love you!

What were we thinking?

2009-05-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

Well, we're 3 1/2 weeks into this new adventure and we're definitely feeling the lack of sleep setting in. It's funny how you go through all of this before, but somehow you seem to forget how challenging it really is and then you do it all over again and then in the middle of it you remember why you said you didn't want to do this again last time. :) Don't get me wrong--it's definitely all worth it. Too bad they don't come automatically sleeping through the night though. Naiya was a really good eater and sleeper for about the first 3 weeks or so and then she developed this gassy problem that has driven us crazy during the nights for the past 4 nights now. I started having flashbacks to the seemingly endless gassy, fussy, colic filled nights with Melia that lasted the first 4 months of her life and started panicking a little at the thought that this might be the same thing all over again with Naiya. But I'm trying to just relax and go with the flow. It could just be a short phase, right? Anyway, God is really taking care of us and blessing us with all of the help we need. My mom came up and spent a week helping us and Grandma Adeline has been a big help too. On another note, my incision is almost closed now and the nurse was impressed with how fast it is healing now that we started the other way of treating it (leaving it open and packing it with gause twice a day--Bo has been my at home nurse.). "No one ever said that life is fair. Just eventful."--some guy on TV. :)

Cuteness

2009-04-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

Oops!

2009-04-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

We had a little parenting oops the other day. We were at the doctor's office and they had what looked like one of those old hand held cartoon things where you hold it up to your eye and wind the crank on the side to watch the cartoon. So Bo is watching Melia and Naiya while the doctor works on me and Melia is walking around watching the little movie thing. After the appointment, we walk out to the front and she's still holding it. The nurse sees it and says, "Whoa, let's play with something else!" and takes it away from her. Turns out this was not a child's toy, but an instructional video entitled "How to insert a diaphram".

Giant Q-tips or Torture Devices?

2009-04-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

So I said that everything was going well--and it is--except for one slight problem. My incision has decided that it doesn't want to close. So I've had 3 doctors appointments this week alone (I like to call them my torture sessions) where my doctor rips off the steri-strips, pours tons of hydrogen peroxide all over my incision and then proceeds to dig around in the incision with giant Q-tips trying to get out all of the blood clots that seem to be keeping the incision from closing. She also uses tweezers sometimes too for a change of pace. So this goes on for anywhere from a half hour to an hour each time and leaves me completely drained and in pain. As of today, I now have all of the staples removed and it is just steri-strips now. I have to go back tomorrow to see if they can just leave them on and let it close, or if they have to rip them all off and dig around again. Depending on what they find tomorrow, I may have an appointment on Sunday and then I definitely have one on Monday. Man, I've never had so many doctor's appointments in my life!

She's Here!!!

2009-04-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Naiya Oliana Thompson is here! I really didn't want to have another C-section, but man does it make a difference to have one scheduled instead of having it after 30 hours of labor! We had to be at the hospital at 6am--don't ask me why they have to schedule them so early. I was awake during the surgery and even though I was numb from the waist down, I could still feel the pressure of them pulling and pushing on me, yanking out all of my organs to get to the baby and then putting them all back in. I couldn't stop shaking too--I guess because of the drugs or something. Anyway, one thing that helped me mentally through it was I kept picturing Melia's booty dance in my head. She does this thing where whenever she's naked, she sticks her booty out and slaps it chanting "Booty, booty!" I know it's silly, but it really helped me though. Anyway, Naiya came out beautifully and when I heard her cry and saw her for the first time, I knew I loved her right away. I had been wondering how it would be possible to love another little being as much as I love Melia--I mean I knew I would, but I just couldn't imagine how I would feel that. But I did, almost right away. She weighed 8 pounds 8 oz. and was 19 1/2 inches long. She has a full head of dark hair and looks so much like Melia did when she was born. We know she's definitely our baby. Bo brought Melia that evening to meet her new baby sister and she was so cute with her. So excited to have our new baby here finally. Anyway, the next few days in the hospital were good and all of the nurses were totally great. I felt a little better each day and Naiya took to nursing well right away. She also digests great and burps easily and sleeps easily. Basically the whole experience has been like night and day from the last time we did this. I can't believe how much better I feel and how much easier it is this time!
Coming home from the hospital was an experience. Funny story now, not so funny at the time. So Bo and Melia came straight to the hospital after church at about 4:30pm. It was right around that time that I knew Naiya would want to eat, so I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the time to feed her before we went or just wait until we got home. Well, Bo and Melia hadn't eaten anything and were starving and Bo was thinking he'd just pick us up "real quick" and then go home and eat dinner. Well, we now know that trying to do anything with a 3 year old, a new baby and a wife trying to recover from major surgery is anything but "real quick". Nevertheless, we foolishly tried. So I hadn't gotten a chance to pack anything really because I couldn't lift anything and I move around about as fast as a snail right now. So Bo gets Naiya strapped in the car seat in my hospital room and then she starts crying because she's hungry. Meanwhile, Melia is hungry too and therefore fussy and getting into everything--pushing buttons on my bed, playing with the breast pump, etc. The nurse is trying to cut the bands off of Naiya's ankles while she's screaming her head off and I'm standing in the middle of all of this not able to do much but start feeling pretty stressed out. So Bo and the nurse decide to take a load of stuff out to the car first before we try to load everyone in the car. Meanwhile, I'm left there with Naiya and Melia and I'm just trying to prop myself up on the edge of the bed and hold out until my help comes back. Luckily, Naiya stopped crying by then and fell asleep, which helped my stress level to lower a lot. But then, Melia says, "My panties are wet." Now normally, I would rush her to the bathroom before she had a full on accident, but needless to say, I couldn't do that this time. So I just watched helplessly as she fully emptied the contents in her bladder all over her legs, shoes and the floor. Then, she proceeded to start stomping in the puddle she had just created and bent down to use her hands to splash in it. So lovely. Luckily, Bo and the nurse came back in time to rescue us and get her cleaned up before she touched everything in the room with her pee hands. Unfortunately, we only had extra panties for her in the car. So with the nurse pushing me in the wheelchair and Bo with the baby in the car seat in one hand and holding our barefooted, barebutted daughter's hand on the other side, we took our little parade through the hospital and out to the parking lot. Once we reached the parking lot, Bo picked Melia up under his arm like a football because she didn't have any shoes on. This would have been fine, but she was wearing a dress and her little naked booty was sticking out from under her dress all the way across the parking lot. Then, trying to load us all in the car was a whole other story--let's just say, we finally made it home with everybody mostly intact. Success!

2 Weeks to Go!

2009-04-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm definitely feeling it. My belly has become this huge thing in front of me that has a life of it's own...literally. By this time in 2 weeks our baby girl will be here! We still haven't agreed on a name, but I think Bo is softening to the one I like. He didn't admit it straight out, but he told me to go ahead and look up middle names that go with that name, so I'll take that as a good sign. This past weekend some people from church came over and helped us put up the walls for the two new rooms for Melia and the baby. They went up really fast and turned out way better than anything I had imagined. They are pretty much sound proof too which will make life a lot more livable. It's funny--all this time we had been praying for a 3 bedroom place to live and we had it set in our minds that that would mean moving out somewhere. And now all of a sudden, we have a 3 bedroom place to live in right where we are! Heavenly Father is so good to us. Also, we had a baby shower and people have been sending us money to help out and it is turning out to be exactly what we need to get ready for the baby. We are so blessed and I'm so grateful!

1st Time in a Big Bed

2009-03-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was Melia's first time sleeping in a regular bed instead of a crib. She did fine during the night, but I wasn't sure what to expect during her nap time. We've always just had her in her crib and she would take a nap and then wake up and play til we came to get her. So now that she has the freedom to get out, I wasn't sure what she would do. I put her down at the usual time and she was excited to be in the bigger bed. She stayed pretty quiet during the whole nap time and when I went in to get her, she was still in the bed. But as I approached her, I noticed something was different. She had gone to bed in a yellow shirt and jeans. Now she was wearing a red shirt and shorts! I asked her about it and she said she changed her clothes to stay warmer. She makes me laugh. :) At least she didn't try to escape the room or something. If the worst thing she does during nap time is change outfits, we'll be in good shape!

1 More Month!

2009-03-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here's me and my big belly...exactly one month from today what's in there will be out. It's kind of weird knowing exactly what day she will come. (In case you didn't know, I'm having a c-section. Not what I wanted, but no one up here will do a normal birth after you've had a c-section before.) Anyway, we were really wondering how things were going to work out because Bo's grandma's sister just moved in last week and is now in the room that we were using for Melia. So now instead of one bedroom for two kids, we have only our bedroom and two kids. We were a little stressed about it to put it mildly. We have applied to several low income places in Chico, but nothing has come through yet. But it's amazing how God opens doors where there were only walls there before...
Bo's grandma came up with the idea of putting semi temporary walls up to create a room for Melia in the living room and to create a room for the baby in our room. It's actually sounding really good to me right now. Although it would be great to have our own 3 bedroom place, right now it's a blessing to be able to live here while we get ourselves together financially. And if we have these "rooms" for the kids, it could actually be a lot more comfortable for the time we have left here.
We had Melia take this picture of us, thus I am headless. This was her third try and we figured it was good enough. :)

Oh What Fun it is to Have Sick Kids

2009-03-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's kid singular for another month and a half, but still. So a few weeks ago, I was just thinking, "Wow, Melia hasn't been sick for a long time." I couldn't even remember the last time she got sick. The very day after I had that thought, she came down with a really heavy head cold and cough. Figures. Anyway, I spent the next week with the newly acquired full time job of trying to keep a little nose and face clean that seemed to have a never ending fountain of boogers coming out of it. And since she didn't feel good, the crankiness factor was increased. Very fun. Plus, this was the week that Bo was very busy with work and school and so I had no Daddy helping time for 3 or 4 days out of the week. I know this is nothing to those of you who do it by yourself all of the time, but let me just say that it really made me realize how much that hour of time that Bo spends with Melia after he gets home from work and before she goes to bed really helps me. Anyway, so that was the week before last. Last week, Melia got better but I started having really bad heartburn and acid reflux that kept me up for hours in the middle of the night every night of the week. So by yesterday, I was feeling pretty wiped out and guess what Melia wakes up with--yup, the same runny nose and cough that she had the week before last. What happened to my healthy, happy child? Needless to say, I had flashes of all of the upcoming fun we were going to have as I took on my second full time job of nose wiping again. So we've gotten through day 2 and I'm doing my best to enjoy my time with her between the nose blowing. :)

Guilty Pleasure

2009-03-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, I admit it. I am addicted to watching the Bachelor. There, I said it. Tonight is the season finale and I can't wait to see who Jason picks and what happens when Deanna, who turned him down last season, comes to talk to him. Drama. I know it's totally stupid and a waste of time to watch it, but who cares. I haven't always been addicted like this. Most of the seasons, I haven't even watched--but the past 3 seasons have had really likeable bachelors/bachelorettes. There's something about watching other people's relationships that fascinates me. Anyway, back in my real life, we have an actual date for the c-section now--April 16th. We've only got about a month and a half left! This pregnancy has gone by pretty fast. Maybe because I'm busy running around after Melia. Ok, that's all for now.

???

2009-02-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

Not really sure what to write about today, but I'm doing it. Let's pick a random topic....baseball cards. A few years ago, my mom gave me 2 shoe boxes full of my dad's baseball cards from when he was a kid. Well, last week I finally looked into getting some help to see how much they are worth and it looks like we have some that are going to be worth some money. So I was going through them and trying to organize them and I found myself wondering how a little card board card could be worth any money, let alone lots of money. And to think that people actually have whole shops dedicated to baseball cards and that people will pay crazy amounts of money for certain cards. I don't get it. I guess maybe if I liked baseball more I would understand it better.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-17T19:34:00.000-08:00

This Valentine's Day, Bo definitely scored some points. He had 3 different surprises all planned out. First was his surprise for Melia and I. He packed us up in the car and drove us out to the middle of nowhere (not hard to do around here), and as we pull up to where we are stopping, the first thing I see is this huge tiger! No, not just roaming around free--in a cage. Anyway, it was a wildlife sanctuary where they take in animals with special needs. Ok, if you know me at all, you will know that this was the perfect place to take me. :) And Melia too. She loves animals and it was amazing to be able to see them all so close up. I mean, I've seen tigers and stuff at zoos before, but they are always pretty far away. At this place, we literally stood like 5 feet away from them. I never realized how massive they are! We also found out that they have the ability to spray their scent from their butts at a distance of up to like 10 feet. We had to dodge a couple of times.
They had lions, tigers, mountain lions, panthers, coyotes, otters, birds, owls, snakes, lizards, and some animals I had never heard of. Oh, and they actually had a "Liger"--just like Napolean Dynamite was talking about. :) Anyway, we had a really good time there.

Later, Bo's second surprise was just for me. He took me to a lookout point overlooking this huge canyon that we live by. His intention was to watch the sunset, but it was overcast, rainy and freezing. Needless to say, we didn't get to see the sunset, but hey, it's the thought that counts right? It was still beautiful. That night, we went out to eat at Olive Garden, which is a real treat for us because we don't get to go out to eat that often anymore. (you know, money. Or lack of.) His last surprise for me was taking me to this little live theater in Chico called the Blue Room. The show was "The Twilight Zone". I know, kind of random, but it was actually pretty cool. A friend from Bo's work was in it. Anyway, overall it was a fun day. It's nice to be surprised and to know that Bo put in the effort to plan it all out. I'm grateful to have a good husband. :)

No Gestational Diabetes for Me!!!

2009-02-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

So the last three months of my pregnancy with Melia was spent poking my finger 4 times a day to check my blood sugar levels, following a strict diet (boo!), thinking about if it's been long enough since I last ate to eat again or if it's been too long and I need to eat something, having to take walks at all hours after finding out my blood sugar was too high, yearning to be able to eat something sweet or more than 2 french fries at a time, and worrying that my baby would be born with a huge head or something. Ahh, the joys of having gestational diabetes. They say that once you get it, you will usually have it for all your pregnancies and will be more likely to develop it later in life. So, needless to say, I was not looking forward to taking that blood sugar level test this time to see if I had it again. But I've been drinking Monavie juice every day (which has a great effect on stabilizing blood sugar levels) and I've been exercising, so I was hoping for the best and....my tests came back completely normal this time!! I can't even tell you how relieved and excited I was! It's so nice to just be able to eat what I want and not worry about that whole thing. Now I just need to watch it and not go crazy and blow up like a balloon. :)

Happy Birthday Melia!!

2009-02-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well, we've had a busy weekend! We had 2 1/2 birthday parties for Melia, plus Shane and Ericka came up to visit for the weekend. It was really fun though. Melia was so excited when she found out that her Uncle Shanie and Auntie Ericka would be there for her birthday party! So for the first birthday party, Melia made her intentions clear: She wanted to wear a pretty dress and have a Princess cake and dance. So that's what we did. We invited all of her little friends over and played games and had a good time. There's Melia playing "Pin the crown on the Princess".
Music, dancing and balloon time! We also played Ring Around the Rosies and London Bridge is Falling down.
Bubble time! We all went outside and let them go crazy with the bubbles. The other two girls are Melia's friends from church--Marissa and Angelina. Their birthday is the day before Melia's, so we had a combined party with them.
Princess cake time! When we went shopping for the ice cream, Melia picked the strawberry sundae kind because it was pink. :)
Here are the girls opening their presents. Lots of princess girlie stuff. They loved it!
After this party was over, we went to the park for Marissa and Angelina's family party. We had fun and more cake and they included Melia when we sang. (Thus, the 1/2 party)
On Sunday, we went to Uncle Gary and Aunt Sherri's house for the final party. We had dinner and more cake and ice cream!
Here she is blowing out her candles. 3 years old! How time flies. She didn't get a nap that day because they moved our church meetings to the afternoon which is when she usually takes her nap. But she did remarkably well all day long.
Melia and her friend Karson enjoying the cake. Overall it was a great birthday weekend!
She did have a melt down on the way home, but then again, I kind of felt like having one too after all of that! :)

The War of Names is On

2009-01-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally sat down and looked at a baby name book. I came up with 5 names I liked and one that I really liked. I thought for sure that Bo would like it too and I even started looking for middle names to go with it. Then Bo came home and I told him my wonderful name and he was less than thrilled. He didn't hate it, he was just like whatever about it. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. So then he sat down with the book and came up with his list. I had pretty much the same reaction to his names as he had to mine. Hmmm. I didn't expect this because we had such an easy time with Melia's name. We'll see how this turns out in a few months.

It's Monday

2009-01-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

I don't think I have a real topic today. I just decided to start writing every Monday, so that way I'll actually do it more than once a month or so. :) Our friends Chris, Vicky and their daughter, Lenore, who's 2 came up to visit us from Napa last weekend. We had a lot of fun playing famous people and dancing like fools to an instructional hip hop video for kids. We spent the week previous to them coming getting together with some of the young couples from church to get to know them better. It was good too, but there's something so comfortable about old friends. You can just totally be free to be yourself, say anything you want, and act as stupid as you want and it's ok. :) They were only able to stay for one night, but are planning another trip soon.
So, I'm throwing my first "real" birthday party for Melia this Saturday and she's excited!! Her last two birthdays she didn't really know what was going on, so this has been fun for me too to be able to talk to her about it. We went shopping together today for decorations--Princess theme, what else? Can I just say that the Dollar Tree is awesome?! We found almost everything we needed there. I had this idea for Bo and I to start writing a letter to our kids each year on their birthdays. I think it will be cool because a lot of times you can express way more in letters. So we'll do that each year until they're 18 or something and then I'll compile them in a book and give it to them. My grandma Evelyn put together a scrapbook of my whole life and gave it to me for my 18th birthday and I appreciate it so much now, especially because she's gone. Anyway, looks like that's it for now.

I'm No Longer Mommy

2009-01-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

Melia never ceases to crack us up. Her latest thing is to call us names from movies she likes. Last week, it was Toy Story--I was "Buzz Lightyear", Daddy was "Woody" and Melia was "Little Lady". She just started calling me Buzz one day and wouldn't respond when I talked to her if I called her Melia. I had to call her Little Lady. She would also correct me if I called Bo "Daddy". "No, not Daddy. Woody!" I think Bo was a little irritated that he had to be Woody instead of Buzz Lightyear. But not to worry, this week it's names from Ice Age and payback for Bo. Daddy is "Diego", the cool Saber tooth Tiger, Melia is "Sid" the sloth, and I have been dubbed "Manny" the Wooly Mammoth. I have been growing in size lately--Could this be related? Anyway, I started off the week as Manny, but today she has switched to just calling me "Ice Age". I don't know if that's better or not. Melia will even correct me when I'm saying a prayer if I say, "Please bless Daddy." She'll interupt and whisper, "No, please bless Diego the tiger." One of the small joys of having kids. :)