Mud is Fun

I broke down today and let Kate get her hands dirty. Literally. Her favorite thing to do when we go outside is to splash around in the water and mud in the gutter. I usually won't let her, but today I just let her have at it. Of course, the fun was followed by a bath!

Christmas is coming!

Sorry it's been so long since the last post. We are so excited for Christmas around here! And most of the shopping is done. Here are some pictures of our decorations; the tree is a fake. Jason requested a fake one and I didn't really care that much, so there you have it. At least now we don't have to worry about getting one every year. And the reason the stockings are so mismatched is because mine and Jason's are the ones we had growing up and I decided to "make" one for Kate (I use the term loosely because I bought a plain stocking and just added stuff to it). Merry Christmas!

Tagged again!

5 things I was doing 10 years ago

-Going to the U of U without a clue of what I wanted to do
-Working at Genealogy Research Associates
-Living with 5 other girls in a 3 bedroom apartment (and only 2 bathrooms! Gasp!)
-Driving to my parents house on fumes and then doing odd jobs to earn the gas money to drive back to my apartment
-Taking my mom to get her chemo treatments for her breast cancer

5 snacks I love

-Cheese and crackers
-Red grapes
-Jelly beans
-Chocolate (preferably with peanut butter)
-Twizzlers

5 things I have to do today (It is 9 pm so I am going to list things I did today)

-Made blueberry muffins and scrambled eggs for breakfast
-Went to a baby shower
-Read over the lesson I am substitute teaching in Primary tomorrow
-Went to Walmart
-Went to work

5 things I would do if I was a millionaire

-Pay off student/car loans
-Buy a VW Touareg
-Go on a trip to Europe
-Move back to Utah
-Buy equipment for my dad to donate to hospitals when he goes on his service trips. Better yet, go with him and donate it myself!

5 places I have lived

-Holladay, Utah
-Salt Lake City, Utah
-Houston, TX
-Los Angeles, CA (only for 6 months but it should still count!)
-Des Moines, Iowa (again, only for about 6 months)

5 jobs I have had

-Hostess at Frontier Pies
-Medco (good times, right Steph? Remember driving there at 5 AM?)
-Researcher at Genealogy Research Associates
-Nurse Aide at the U of U hospital
-Ultrasound tech

5 people I tag

-Becca T.
-Ashley T. (gotcha back!)
-Addy
-Cat
-Sally W.

Tagged!

My friend Ashley tagged me awhile ago (Sorry Ashley!). So here are 5 weird/interesting things about me:

1. I hate anticipating loud noises. One of my worst fears is little kids with balloons because they don't know that they can pop the balloon if they squeeze it too hard and I just watch them playing with the balloon cringing the whole time. I also can't open those cans of dough for rolls because of the pop when the pressure is released. Jason always has to open them for me.

2. The time on my alarm clock is always set 20 minutes ahead of time. I know I could just hit the snooze button, but I think there is something about waking up and seeing that the time doesn't look as early as it actually is. And 10 minutes doesn't cut it, it has to be 20.

3. I love to read, but I don't like non-fiction very much because I always feel like after I am done with the book I should have learned something; as if there is going to be a quiz on the material or something.

4. I couldn't take showers until I was about 9 years old. I had no real reason to be scared of them, but whenever my mom had put me in the shower before, I would just stand there and scream, so I think she gave up after awhile. My older sister asked once if I had seen Psycho and my mom told her to shut her mouth before she told me about the shower scene. I think that night was my first shower!

5. I hate things touching my neck. I refused to wear turtlenecks when I was younger and I will wear them now but spend the whole day stretching the neck of the shirt out so it isn't so close to my neck.

So there you go Ash, I hope I haven't freaked you out or anything! I tag Angela Repasi. Let's hear all your absurdities so I don't feel so weird!

Fe Fi Fo Fum

I'll explain the costumes. Kate is the beanstalk, Jason is the giant and I am the giant's wife. Kate carried around a little doll who was Jack. Creative, no? About a week ago our neighborhood had a fall festival with a petting zoo, a train, pony rides, games and food. It was a lot of fun and will be even more fun next year when Kate is a little older. But the highlight was the costume contest because we won second prize in the family costume category! That night was the ward party which was also fun, but again, I think Kate will have more fun next year.
On Halloween my friend down the street put together a little baby/toddler walk around the neighborhood and we went back to her house after for cider and yummy cookies that her and I had made the day before. After that Jason came home from work and walked Kate around to a few houses for trick-or-treating. Then we went to a ward members house for a party and more treats. Last, we had some friends over for pizza and a scary movie (I am Legend). Whew! A fun but exhausting Halloween!

Kate walks!

Work in progress

We have finally had someone working on the house and to my disbelief, they think they may be finished by the end of the week! The roof is done and the drywall and plaster are up. All that's left is paint and carpet. Yea! I had lost confidence that everything would be complete by Halloween, but that is starting to become a reality. So a month and a half and $9,000 later we are back to normal!
This week it rained so much in one day that the streets in our neighborhood flooded. I watched the water praying it wouldn't reach the house because wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake! Luckily it never got higher than the sidewalk, but you can sort of tell from the picture how high the water got by looking at the tires on the jeep. The crazy thing is that I called Jason to tell him not to bother coming home from work because our Jetta never would have made it and he had no idea how bad it was!

Fun with Kate

We have taken Kate to some fun new places lately. I'm so glad she is finally getting old enough to go places that she can enjoy instead of us just dragging her around with us when we go where we need to. We went to a nearby farm/petting zoo and she had so much fun petting the animals, especially the dwarf goats! They were so cute! Then I took her to the children's museum with some friends from church. The kiddos are a little too young to enjoy the whole museum, but there was a special toddler section that they LOVED. But beware, the cafeteria doesn't have high chairs. Why on earth wouldn't a children's museum have high chairs? Oh well. And this past Saturday we walked in the Race for the Cure. This was Kate's second Race for the Cure, but she was asleep the whole time for the first one. I got pretty emotional near the end because they have a special section for survivors to walk to go across the finish line. I was just thinking how much I wished my mom could walk that section. But it was great to see all the survivors walk it!

8 Years!

8 years of marriage

7 cars (all used)

6 computers

5 years in college (while married)

4 apartments

3 bar exams (Texas, Illinois, Florida)

2 hurricanes

1 everlasting love

Love you babe! Here's to another 8 great years.

On a lighter note...

My baby turned 1! I have always heard people talk about how quickly their kids grow up, but I guess it never really registered with me until now. Jason's family came to Houston for the occasion. I invited a few kids from the neighborhood and ward to a little party and I bought a ball pit and we blew bubbles and had a jar full of puffs that the grownups had to guess the number of. And of course I made Kate her own cake that she could dig into. She was pretty dainty with it at first but really dug into it after awhile. Her are some things about Kate at one year old:

She loves to read books. She also loves to pull all her books off the bookself and hand them to me to read. I read about a page before she pulls another one off to hand to me.

She loves the water. Sometimes if I get really desperate for something to do with her I put her in the tub even if she has already had a bath.

She isn't walking yet but she can stand by herself for several seconds.

She loves to try and get to the dog's water bowl to splash around in it before I figure out what she is doing.

She is a picky eater but she usually likes toast with cheese and peas.

She loves animals. We are pretty sure her first word will be "George" (that's our dog, not the President).

Love you Kate! Happy first birthday!

I hate Ike!

It's been awhile since I posted, thanks to a little hurricane named Ike. I was so unprepared for the wrath of Ike. I think Jason and I have become jaded towards hurricane warnings after hurricane Rita turned out to be not a big deal (for us anyway). So even when it started looking like Ike was headed our way, we still weren't very concerned. I filled up the car with gas and bought some water and canned food. Then all we could do was wait and see what happened. The worst of the storm hit our area around 2am Saturday morning. Sometime around then we lost power and since I couldn't hear Kate on the baby monitor, I moved to a couch outside her room. To be honest, I also felt safer there since I sleep on the side of the bed close to the windows! Jason got up to see what time it was, and we were both glad to see it was around 6am, because we thought the worst had passed and we had avoided any damage. I fell back asleep for a few minutes and was woken up by a huge BANG! I had heard other bangs from tree limbs falling so I wasn't too worried, but when Jason came running into Kate's room, I knew something bad had happened. Sure enough, I went in the bedroom to see a hole in the ceiling and rain pouring in the room. We got buckets to catch the water and moved some stuff out of the room. After that we just kept emptying the buckets. I think we were both in shock and didn't really know what to do. We happened to look out the front window to see someone in the ward driving around to make sure everyone was okay. We ran out and told them what happened. They got a hold of some other ward members and tracked down some chainsaws and tarps. The bishop (!) sawed through the tree and managed to get it off the roof and covered up the hole with a tarp. Other people in the ward helped us get everything out of the room and closet and take out the now ruined carpet. It was an awful day, but it was pretty neat to see so many people rally around us and help us out so much. The insurance adjuster came Saturday and said we would get a check in about 2 weeks. Let's hear it for home owners insurance! Until then, I am getting bids from contractors to do repairs. I have no idea how long it will take to repair or how much it will cost, but I guess once this is all over, I will be schooled in building houses, right? We didn't have power for almost a full week, but it wasn't as hard to deal with that as I would have thought. We have a gas water heater and stove, so we could take hot showers and heat up soup and stuff. Also, the weather really cooled down and the humidity was low so we slept with the windows open and it was quite pleasant. I didn't miss TV as much as I would have thought, but I tell you what, I couldn't stop smiling after the power came back on!

Male mentality

I had to share this with everyone. I opened the fridge the other day to find this. I asked Jason why he had put a fork in the fridge and he said it was because he was using it to eat his potato salad and wanted to save some for later and thought he could just use the same fork. I told him that was not normal and he said "What, am I so fancy I have to use a clean fork every time I eat something?". After he realized how that sounded we laughed pretty hard.

Utah!

Man I have been a blacker (blogging/slacker-I just made that up. Boy am I tired). I was in Utah almost a month ago and am just now writing about it. Anyway, the flight there was...let's just say I have blocked it from my memory. Now you really want to know what happened, don't you? Here goes. My friend dropped me off at the airport and she has a baby so I didn't want her to have to park and walk me to the ticket counter so I just had her drop me outside. I figured I would get a cart or something for my luggage and I didn't want to bring the car seat or stroller because I thought it would be a hassle. But I had no idea the carts cost $3.00! That seemed scandalous at the time and I decided I could make it the few feet that I had to go to get to the counter. So here I am with Kate on one hip and trying to roll two suitcases with one hand. It doesn't work that way. But how many people watched me struggling and were thinking to themselves "That poor lady, someone should help her?". No one did! Oh well. I somehow got to the ticket counter and got through security. I went to the gate to find out the plane had been delayed due to rain. So we sat and waited, We didn't have to wait too long and the seat next to me was empty so I thought my luck was changing. But Kate was so hard! She is at the age when they don't want to sit still and she was constantly up or down or throwing things or grabbing the hair of the woman in front of me. One minute I was ready to break down in tears and the next minute I felt okay. I wasn't on a direct flight; I had a stop over in Denver and by some miracle got to Denver. But because of the plane delay in Houston, I missed my connecting flight! I went to the customer service desk and the line was so long. Kate hadn't had a nap and all I had packed for her was grapes and crackers. Luckily I was able to get on a flight to SLC only about an hour and a half later than my original plan. I had just taken Kate to change her diaper and saw that she had had diarrhea and it had leaked out onto my white shirt. By that point I didn't even care anymore. She slept on the short flight to Utah so that flight wasn't bad. But poor Kate! The next day her diaper was full of undigested grapes!
Anyway, the awful flight was worth it to get to see my family, especially my brother Paul who has been in Afghanistan and I haven't seen since Thanksgiving. I also got to see some of my awesome high school buddies and meet their adorable kids. My sister Alicia and my dad and I took Kate to the zoo. I figured she was probably too young to really enjoy it, but she did seem to have fun. My sisters and I also took her to the fountains at Gateway one day but she did NOT enjoy that! It was a great trip and so refreshing to be out of the humidity for awhile. And don't worry, the plane ride home was not nearly as traumatic as the ride there!

Goodbye 20's, it's been nice

It's official. I am 30 years old as of Friday. I really don't mind because I think I am in a pretty good place in my life. I have a good job skill that lets me work when (and if) I want, a great marriage, a child, and a house. I mean, yes, I would prefer to be living in Utah, but maybe that will happen by the time I am 40. So turning 30 wasn't too hard. Anyway, on Friday we had some neighbors over to eat cake and watch the Olympic opening ceremonies (hence the sports themed cake). But the real day of celebration for me was Saturday. The Aveda company (they make hair and skin products) has a school here in Houston so if you don't mind having a student work on you, you can get facials, mani/pedi's, massages, etc for really cheap. So I had myself a spa day and got a massage, facial, and highlights all for under $100! It was so fun and relaxing. Thanks to Jason for staying home with Kate all day while I was gone! For those of you living outside Houston, if you ever decide to take trip here (and why on earth wouldn't you), we will definitely have to go to the Aveda school. And for those of you who DO live here; is anyone up for a girl's day out? Call me!

Breaking Dawn

I have read the Twilight books and enjoyed them, but I am by no means an obsessive fan. So how did I find myself at Barnes and Noble at midnight surrounded by a bunch of high schoolers (and one guy dressed up as a vampire, see picture) buying the latest book in the series? I am still asking myself that same question.

And the award for worst mom goes to...

I hesitated whether or not to write this post, but it has been a few days so I think I can laugh at the situation now. Wednesday started out so fun. My friend Angela and her 3 cute (and tan!) kids came down from Kingwood to go swimming at my neighborhood pool. The day was sort of cloudy and rainy so when we met at the pool it had been closed temporarily due to thunder. We went back to my house to wait and see if the weather got any better and the kids had fun playing the Wii and with George. The pool reopened about an hour later and because it had been closed earlier we were the only ones there for quite awhile. We stayed for a couple of hours and then decided to call it a day. Kate loves to play with my keys, and being the indulgent mother (i.e. pushover) that I am, I let her play with them while we walked to the car. I put her in her car seat and quickly grabbed my keys from her and replaced them with her toy keys that were in the car. I tossed my keys on the front seat and shut Kate's door. When I tried to open my door....locked. I tried Kate's door...locked. I ran around to the other side....locked! Angela was still in the parking lot so I went to her car and said "I locked Kate in the car, what do I do?" She said "call 911". So I reached into my bag to get my cell phone and couldn't find it of course. Angela very kindly let me use hers and I called 911. The operator asked me "what is the address?". Well I didn't know so I said "umm...the Fall Creek pool?" That apparently didn't cut it so I had to run back to the pool to ask the lifeguards what the address was. Meantime, the call was dropped but I didn't realize it and the operator tried to call me back but I thought it was someone trying to call Angela so I hit ignore on her phone. After I realized what had happened I had to call 911 again. Keep in mind this is the middle of July. In Texas. And the car was not running so there was no AC. Luckily the day was cloudy so it wasn't too terribly hot. Anyway, I could hear sirens coming so I went back to the car and a cop car pulled up. Out jumped a short, bald cop. Then another cop car came, and again, out jumped a short, bald cop. Angela turned to me and whispered "Are they twins?". Man, I wish I had checked their name badges to see if they had the same last name! Oh well. Then a fire truck (not a fire engine, just a truck) and an ambulance came. They popped the lock in record time and I got Kate out of the car. She was pretty mad but I think it had more to do with her being tired than being in distress. Everyone was very nice about the situation, but I felt pretty stupid. So what do you guys think? Do I win the award or what? Here's a poll:
A. Nope, there are wayyyy worse moms out there.
B. Yep, you win. Someone call CPS!
C. I can't answer the question, I'm too busy trying to get my kid out of my locked car.

Where does the time go?

So I know July 4th was forever ago, but I had to post some pictures. Our neighborhood had a little parade so I decorated the stroller and we paraded around that morning. It totally reminded me of decorating my bike and riding in the neighborhood parade when I was little. Of course, I was also dressed up as a pioneer because it was July 24th, but close enough! Then that night the golf course near our house had a firework show. It was a fun day (from what I can remember because it was so long ago!)
Kate turned 10 months last week. She is finally crawling around! It has been nice to have her be able to follow me around instead of sitting her down and then have her start crying because she can't follow me. But now I have to keep a close eye on her so she doesn't get into things or put everything in her mouth! She makes a really funny noise whenever we say "meow", like she is trying to copy us or something. But she only does it after "meow". She is eating lots of new things and likes most of them as long as she can feed herself. I can't believe she is almost a year old!

Memory Lane Tag

You're It!

Memory Lane.... the tag that gets everyone involved
Got this from a friend and I thought I would play the game.
Here's how you play
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and i had together. it doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember.
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory of you. it's actually pretty funny to the responses. if you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

A perspective on work

I have been working at a hospital near our new house (I'm an ultrasound tech for those that don't know) while one of their regular techs is on maternity leave. I have to say...working is so much easier than being a stay-at-home mom! It is really hard to leave Kate, but once I get to work, I have clear objectives and an immediate reward (in the form of a paycheck). At home, I have a child that can't tell me what she wants, a house that never seems to stay clean, and no paycheck! I can totally understand why some moms would choose to go back to work and respect even more the moms that decide to stay home. I remember my mom being there to greet us when we got home from school, and it meant so much to have her there. But I can see now why she went back to school as soon as Paul was in elementry! Anyway, my hat goes off to all you stay-at-home moms, the most difficult job on the planet!

Priceless

Baby oatmeal: $3.49

Baby applesauce: $1.09

Juice: $2.49



Letting the baby feed herself: Priceless