Recapping July

So July has been busy!
We shingled the playhouse roof and have spent a lot of time working in our yard and Grandma Earl's. For all you non-relatives that read this, Grandma Earl turned 90 this year and she's still going. She lives in her house with her widowed brother Uncle Karl. They have some one who comes in and helps around the house and a little in the yard. Some one mowes the lawn, but most of the garden has been left to go totally wild for the last 5 years but it was starting to go wild from the far corners in about 5 years before that, and since she has about a 1/2 acre lot thats a lot of yard!
Well we've started to reclaim the yard from nature. It's totally like The Secret Garden there's still a lot of good stuff growing under the weeds and creeper vine, we just need to give it some TLC. And maybe you've heard those jokes about "Nature's a mother!" well some days thats how it feels working out there, and then John whips out the weed eater and 30 minutes later we go oh well maybe that's doable. I'll have to do another Grandma's yard post after I get the pictures off the camera.
Little John and I started a once a week mommy & me tumbling class, he loves it. And we're in the last week of our mommy & me swim class, which it sooooo much fun!
We keep canning: cherry pie filling, blueberry pie filling, raspberry jam, tomato juice, maraschino cherries (non-alcoholic), danish cherry sauce, and just canned raspberries. And we froze the ecsess purple carrots from the garden, because we don't have a pressure canner.
My mending and alterations bussiness is picking up a little, I just altered a wedding dress for a girl.

Recapping May and June

So May was a good month because school got out.

Ben went to his first ever fancy dance on a date. He took Amanda Wendel from down the street, they look so good!

My grandma Earl (she is actually my Great-Grandma) had her ninetieth birthday so we celebrated with a great huge part with all the reletives from out of state that we don't get to see very often. Someone found out that you can get amazingly good deals on huge orders from Maddox so we got the food from there. YUM!!! Two different flavors of cake. After the lunch we had an open house so that all of her friends and neighbors could come and see her.

We made and frosted donuts, chocolate and vanilla frosting!

Little John decided the sand box is more fun with water.

We started buildingLittle John a playhouse in the backyard, we modified some plans off the internet. John's parents came over and helped a lot. The weather was hot not foggy, the fog in the pictures is Little John's fingerprints on the camera lens but no one noticed until too late.

We enjoyed a nice picnic up the canyon.

We made jam and our sticky helper is so cute!

We went to the zoo and Little John was mezmerized by the elephants, they are deffinately his favorite animal.

We ran the Race For the Cure 5k with my Aunt Juli and her daughter Kate. It was awesome! I hope to do it again next year. Maybe next year I'll jog part of it with the stroller instaed of just power walking with the stroller.

My brother Ben graduated from Box Elder High School and Seminary. At the high school graduation things were getting boring since the speakers just go on and on and on. Then all of a sudden, at the back of the students there was a great commotion with everyone looking all over and looking under their chairs. It turns out that someone had let loose a mouse. Ben appreciated the break from the monotony. After a while they caught it. Then there was some more commotion because they had let loose more than one mouse. It kept the audience very well entertained. It also kept the sutdents awake. Oh, and some guy wore a kilt, it was cool.

We spent a lot of time working on the playhouse.

We took Ben for a ritual "last meal" before shipping him out to boot camp.

We spent a weekend with my sister Heather in Loa, UT (near Capitol Reef Ntl Park), for her baby shower.

We made arricot, pinapple apricot, and apricot plum jam

Little John ride his trike a lot.

For Father's day I helped Little John collect stuff and we put it in plaster to make Daddy a paper weight (I gave it a few coats of sealer to protect it).

We are loving your year pass to the Jensen Historical Farm (where we went to Baby animal days) We saw lots of chickens and washed clothes.

Little John loves bubbles!

My Mom entered an online contest and won a Pizza Party! So we had a bunch of friends and family over. The kids loved the backyard.

We took Little John to the pool.He lasted about 10 minutes because once the wind picked up it got cold.

Nana (my mom) lets Little John get away with things sometimes. Like making the backyard a nudist camp. He decided sitting naked was a mistake, but had fun doing everything else.

Typed by Sarah Snow the cooliest ever!!!! ('Cuz I don't type, I chicken peck:D)

Baby animal days (pics)

So I have so many pictures I like uploading them as collages, if you want to see them bigger just click on them :D

So we went to baby animal days and little John loved it!
1. Him and the easter bunny 2. He loved the pony ride so much he cried when I got him down
3. Looking at sheep 4. Touching a centipede 5. Touching a hissing cockroach (we washed hands right after the bugs) 6. He's laughing 'cuz the cow licked his face 7. More horses! 8. His first twinkie, he loved it 9. Goats


He loved the baby animals so much that Nana and Daddy took him again the next weekend (we got the year pass)
1. They jumped on and off of this a lot 2. He rode the pony twice today 3. Fuzzy baby duck
4. The sheep "baaad" really loud and scared him so bad that not even the baby bunny cheered him up 5. & 6. He spent ages playing with this wheel piece, the stick, and a rock. I love his simple joys!

So I'm still here...

Wow I knew it had been a while since I blogged but I didn't realize it had been almost a month. So I've been busy, here's the basic rundown and then I'll do some more blogs on the more interesting stuff afterwards.

Spring has arrived, complete with it's fickle whims of crazy weather. It beautiful, it rains, I wonder where my shorts are, it snows, its beautiful again. Over all this is great for the yard, but I lost a blueberry bush :(. The most obnoxious part of that is for best fruit you plant 2 different varieties and I'm not sure which one died so I'm not sure what to replace it with. This weather is not so great for Little John, he just doesn't understand why he can spend 3 days living in the backyard and then has to be cooped up for another 3.

Spring break came and went for Mom and Ben and it was nice to have them around for a few extra days. We went to baby animal days, drove to Idaho to see cousins, and just hung out. (Blog with pics soon to follow)

General Conference weekend was great! We loved the speakers. We DVRed it and I put it on DVD and mailed it to my friend Clerie in Iraq (the internet there is too slow to stream the feed). We also (mostly John) got the railing on the deck out back, between sessions. I worry a lot less about the little guy playing out there now.

We finished the Man Cave, it's all decked out and John enjoys using it. (Blog w/ pics to follow)

Easter Sunday we got together with some cousins and did dinner and an egg hunt. Little John loves to find the eggs and for quite a while didn't care that there was stuff inside them. He got upset at the city hunt when we made him wait till they said "go" to start finding them. (pics blog soon)

We joined this fruit and veggie co-op thing (it actually started in AZ) and the produce is great. We got the italian pack and I made 6 cool whip containers of sauce and froze it (I added the tomato paste/sauce and some spices but most everything else came in the pack). We also got 40 lbs of pink lady apples that I'm in the process of turning into apple pie filling and canning it. I will be doing this for a while because 27 apples gave me 7 qt jars of filling and there's 115 apples in a 40 lb box plus the 13 I also used 'cuz they'd been in the fridge for a while. So I figure I'll end up with between 30 an 35 jars of filling. And I made a pie from the jar that didn't seal- delicous! Here is the link to the co-op if anyone is interested. (The only UT places right now are Brigham and Clearfield)

I have been stage managing a show at the local community theater. It's a straight play (as in not a musical) called The Women. It's basically Desperate Housewives, set in the 1940's. The author got all her material sitting around in hair salons and pwder rooms and women's shop just listening to ladies gossip. The play is fantastic a lot of drama but still funny. Opening night is tonight. (More stuff in following blog)

My mom went to the doctor for a rash on her face that started to swell and was told it was shingles. First of all she isn't old enough to be having shingles! Second, because its by her eye she has to keep a close watch 'cuz if it gets in her eye she could go blind, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, but just thinking about it freaks me out! So I'm praying for her alot, feel free to join me :)

So see I'm so busy doing things worth blogging that I have no time to blog :D

The art of story telling

So I read Crystal's blog about fairy tales and I made this comment :

"Fairy tales rock! I've read them since forever. I love to read different nation's versions of the same stories, there's lots of versions of Cinderella for example. My favorite is a beautifully illistrated version of the egyptian cinderella."

And it got me thinking about how much I enjoy them and how I like to tell them to Little John. I started telling them to him when he was just a few weeks old to soothe him and keep myself awake during 2 am feedings. I still tell him them in the car and sometimes on those sleepless nights when he's awake for an hour or 2 in the middle of the night. (I can't just let him sit in the crib and scream, but if I let him get up and play he might make a habit of it :()

I tell him classic Grimms' tales and shortened Disney movies (like my favorite, Mulan) and Hans Christian Anderson and sometimes I just make stuff up. I read an article about how story telling encourages kids' imaginations and builds language skills and stuff, but mostly I just enjoy doing it.

I enjoy reading aloud, but there's something about story telling that really appeals to the preformer in me. If I'm not driving or trying to get Little John to sleep, I love to decribe things with my hands and sometimes I get up and act out the monsters and battles. Little kids love that! I started doing it when I'd babysit, as bedtime stories. And the best thing is little kids are such non-judgemental audiences. They don't care if you forget the details or tell it different than last time, so long as you're into it and animated.

I don't tell the tales quite the way you'd find them in print. As hard as it is to belive, I can't remember all the details at 2 am. Sometimes I make up the details and sometimes I just skip bits I can't remember very well. And I've added my own personal twist to any tale I tell. As I tell the story I always specify that the kings daughter is old enough to date and that's why her hand in marriage is the prize for whatever nasty task needs doing. And also of course the hero is old enough to date too. And I tend to elaborate on things like clothes and the country side (when I'm fully awake that is) and I love to do different voices for different characters. (I do that when I read aloud too) I also love to add sound effects and cheesy melodrama things like "da-da-daaa!".

When I make up stories sometimes I barrow details from other stories I've read. Sometimes my stories follow a regular pattern (begining, middle, end), but a lot of them are silly nonsense that either end very quickly or ramble on and on. The good news is Little John doesn't seem to mind if the stories are real or not or make sense or not. He especially loves when I tell stories about him and Daddy doing things together, even when its nonsense stuff.

As he starts to talk more and more clearly I plan on having him help with the made up stories. Things like what color things are, what weapon the hero uses, what kind of car the bad guy drives. All the little details. I'm really excited to see what neat things he comes up with. I already know he has a good imagination because he holds his cars up to his head and babbles at them like they're telephones.

I still read fairy tales myself and will totally read them to my kids. If they grow up and would rather read text books, that's cool, its their choice, but at least they had the choice. It bugs the heck out of me when people are like "I don't let my kids read that magic stuff because they need to understand reality" (and yet most of these same people let their kids watch cartoons, go figure). It reminds me of that poor little girl in Miracle on 34th Street, no hopes or dreams, no fantasies.

Sorry, my soap box ran away with me there. What I meant to say is: I've read lots of fairy tale collections (among other fantstical stories like the tales of Sinbad the Sailor and Arabian Nights), but there is this collection I've heard such great things about but have never been able to find them so I can read them. They're a series of collections (I think) called the Blue Fairy Book, the Red Fairy Book, the Lilac Fairy Book, and so on. I think there are 7 or 8 all together. Maybe I can find them on Ebay or Amazon. Oh, well, my next story post should be about my other love, scifi. Anyway I should go. Go share a story with a kid. Later.

Hobos and doctors and laughs oh my!

So I'm going to smash a lot of stuff in this blog, since my sister was home from collage last week for spring break.

I almost had a shower with a hobo! I was running the water to get warm and this giant hairball gets floated up to the other end of the tub AND THEN IT UNCURLED A BUNCH OF LEGS! And it was a hobo and it was big and John wasn't home so I had to smash it myself. It still freaks me out to think I could have gotten in and been bit 'cuz I never would have even seen it 'cuz I don't wear my glasses in the shower.

So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the "man cave" so I'll explain it a bit. It's a guy's personal space for working or playing and stashing or displaying things like comic book collections or high school ball trophies. They tend to be smaller than bigger unless most of the kids are grown and gone. Well for John's birthday he is redoing the closet under the stairs for his man cave. Before you freak out, he picked the space and is very happy with it, even though it makes me think of Harry Potter. He painted it silver and I did the floor a marblized blue and green finish and we're going to give it several clear coats to protect it. I designed and built him a set of shelves (with lots of building help from everyone) as a suprise and after we get it all finished I'll post pics.

Sarah had her wisdom teeth out. It went well, very little swelling, and no need for the heavy pain pills.

All the stores are having seasonal clearance to make way for the spring clothes, so Sarah and I did lots of shopping. I did really well with my budget though and didn't go overboard. I got some way cute stuff but only if it was cheap.

Now that our insurace has kicked in I found a new pediatrician for Little John. He's great, he used to be head of peds at a big hospitals but went back to private practice because he likes it better. So poor Little John got all caught up on his shots and he's been under the weather since and pretty cranky.

5 out of 6 Hizers are born in March so we had the everybody birthday party this last weekend. It was lots of fun. We took advantage of the nice weather and BBQed until the wind drove us inside.

Sarah's ride back to college was in Salt Lake so Ben and I drove her down there for the rondevouz. We had to hang out there for a bit so I helped Sarah reveiw her anatomy flash cards. She's working on muscles right now. I was asking a lot of "identify the muscle that originates at... and inserts at... and does such and such" questions and while she'd think about it Ben would make random guesses. So Ben's last five guesses had been "your rump?" when the question "what is the insertion of the gluteous maximus" came up and I was waiting to tell him he'd guessed right when he said it again. But instead he says, with this funny look on his face, "Its called sex, and you should never, ever do it!" And his face goes all red. Sarah and I luaghed ourselves silly! And when we finally stop laughing he says "So what's a gluteus maximus anyway?" He had no idea it was a butt and we started laughing all over again.

I went to the chiropracter today (my first appointment was last week) and he worked out the whatever I did to my shoulder over the weekend. My mom talked me into going after my shoulder had been bothering me for a few weeks. I was kinda resistant to the idea, because some of those guys are quacks. But I googled the one my insurance said it covered in our area and picked the guy who did mostly sports injury stuff because he seemed very unquacky (so does his office partner). And he was very professional and none of this "I'll need to see you 3 times a week for 6 months ot fix it" stuff and no wonky promises like "I'll cure your athletes foot by feeling you skull". The day after I was pretty sore but overall much better. He also worked on my neck and lower back. He says I carry all my tension in my neck and shoulders and I didn't realize it until I felt so much better afterwards. My back hasn't felt right since I was pregnant (which he says is really common) and it feels tons better now. So now I'm sold on chiropracters. I know a bunch of you have raved over how much good your's has done you but I had to try it to belive it.

So that catches us up to right this very second, so now I need to go do stuff to blog about.

A photo Blog

Since its been a while I decided to do a photo blog, and let the pictures explain most of it.

Ben and John got Guitar Hero for Christmas and Little John loves to play too on his guitar.

We took the train as a family and John's mom and brother Kevin came too. Little John even sat in his own chair until he got too rowdy.

They were playing chase one night and Little John tripped and hit a chair, but the stiches healed up just fine. He got his own glasses so he'll leave everyone else's alone. And we played in the paint to make Valentines.

I've done a lot of sewing lately. My sis-in-law was a bridesmaid and they had these immodest dresses so the 3 girls asked me to make them sleeves. I love the design they picked and it didn't take me too long to make-up the pattern. And the pretty blue one is a skirt I made over into a dress for my sister Sarah to wear to a dance at collage. And I did the purse to match.

I caught up with a friend I haven't seen in like 8 years. Dorian was home from Australia for about a month before moving to Tucson this week. She came over a second time for dinner and games but I didn't take any pics of that.

Little John is going stir crazy from being inside so on warmish afternoons we go out in the sunshine and blow bubbles. We'd play in the snow but he doesn't know what to do with it.

We have very much enjoyed the principles of static electricity and balloons. Well except for the dog, she didn't think this was fun.

And Ben is still doing his army stuff and he loves to play with Little John if he isn't playing video games. Which catches us up to where we are now.

Little John is so precious!

Ok so it's been a bit since I updated you all about how precious Little John can be.
He gave me real kisses this week! I was addressing a postcard and he came up and reached for me, so I bent down so my head was by his. He closes his little mouth, pushes it against my face and opens it again with a tiny pop sound. And then he did it again a few times. My heart just melted! He's been making kissy noises for a long time, but this was diffrent. And afterwards he just walks back over to his toys and starts playing again, like he has no idea that he is so sweet my heart is puddled in my toes.
So not quite as sweet but just as adorable, he loves phones. He has loved to push the buttons for a long time now. But just recently he holds them put and talks to them. And after he talks for a minute he holds it to my head to talk. Now if I could just get him to talk when there's a person on the other end of the line! He clams up if there's really someone to talk to, but he smiles really big and waves hello and goodbye. It cracks me up.
I love him so much!

Mamma Mia!

So we watched Mamma Mia today and this is the most hysterically funny movie I've ever seen. The sound track is all Abba songs, the plot is amazingly twisted. It sounded like it might be a chick flick but John loves it and my anti-musicals teenage brother loves it too! I am totally amazed about that. And even though the guys like it this is the perfect girls night in movie, where you all sing along (it has a sing along setting:D) at top volume while eatting chocolate ice cream!

I can't wait to see what Sarah thinks of it, I bet she goes nuts. Little John loves it, he "sings" and claps and laughs and dances around. It is so adorable!

This is from our family pics at Thanksgiving, I love it 'cuz he's laughing :D

Wow its cold here!

So yesterday at church Little John had one heck of a poopy diaper durring sacrament meeting. So I fish all through the diaper bag and find a diaper but no wipes, then I remember seeing them in the car. So I ask Sarah to run out to the car and grab them and I'll meet her at the bathroom with Little John (it takes 2 people if we have to use the cold fold out of the wall changing thing). So she hurries in and I strip off the diaper and she's over there struggling to get out a wipe. I'm like his tush is hanging out here hurry it up a bit and she tells me the wipes are frozen! I try to get one and she's right- its a solid block of frozen wipes. So she makes me some "wipes" with warm water and paper towels (not the first time I've had to resort to that sadly) and we get the whole thing taken care of. We opened the wipes again after church and found that at least some of them had thawed out. Man , I thought they were made with rubbing alcohol. I didn't think that stuff could freeze. This would never happen in Arizona. In AZ I would have opened the box and probably found that they were all dry from the heat LOL.

Cause for hysteria LOL

So my youngest brother joined the army national guard months ago and since he's a senior this year he hasn't been to basic yet but he still does his "one weekend a month". So today they were supposed to do first aid stuff but instead they did "how to clear a room like SWAT". They were given a five minute shpeel about if you stand in this order these people check this part of the room and be sure to crouch down . Then they were sent on training scenarios. Usually they have 4 man squads but the numbers didn't workout so Ben was in a six man squad. So they do their thing and five minutes later everybody was killed by the "terrorists". Reset: it takes longer but the "terrorists" win again.
Take three: They do much better checking things and find 2 of the 3 "terrorists" so they split up and most of the squad takes in the prisoners leaving Ben and a guy to keep watch I guess (he was vague on these details). So they hear a noise and go in to check it out and see a very skinny cabinet is open so they check it out- empty. So Ben turns around and sees that his buddy (who is tall) is a hostage to the last "terrorist" Cadet Mowers (who is short and has the hostage bent over backwards into a headlock threatening him with a cardboard knife, the squads use unloaded m-16's and shout "bang!" to fire them). Mowers backs away using the guy as a shield all the way down the stairs (the guys feet thump down every step) while shouting in Arabic (made up gibberish really). And then the two of them disappear into the bathroom. Ben (who is also really tall) crouches down and follows them hoping for a chance to fire but hesitates outside the bathroom because the door opens into the hall and he worries about being ambushed. He finally goes in and sees no one. He checks under the stalls and sees only one pair of feet- hmm his buddy's or the "terrorist's"? So he sneaks over and gently pushes the door with the gun- locked. So he sneaks into the stall next door, climbs up on the seat, pops up over the top and...
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The poor Staff Sargent (who is not part of the maneuvers at all) has the poop scared right out of him. He yells all sorts of things and Ben ducks back down. He leaves his stall and is "killed" by the laughing "terrorist" who had "killed" his buddy (who is also laughing) before Ben came in. The staff Sargent gives Ben a cussing out and a bunch of push ups, but Mowers (the "terrorist") defends him, so Ben only has to do 50. Poor kid, he will never live this down.
When he told us we all laughed so hard we were crying and I could barely breathe. Little John thought that was great so he starts laughing and shrieking and waving his arms all over which only makes us laugh harder. In Ben's defense: they really shouldn't let people wander into active scenarios if they aren't involved.

What goes around, and around, and around...

So the flu has gone all around our house. John came down with it just before Thanksgiving and since then everyone has gotten it. And sadly recovering seems to be complicated by a nasty cold, but maybe its part of the flu too. Fortunatly I got it mild, you couldn't take me too far from a nap or a bathroom, but at least I never threw-up. Everyone is mostly better but Little John seems to be lingering on forever. I might take him in to the doctor tomarrow. Aside from the germs, laundry, and dishes that pile up when people are sick- I am way behind on Christmas! So for everyone who reads this your Christmas cards are coming but they'll probably get there on Christmas Eve 'cuz I'm so behind.

Is there a Santa Claus?

So this is Little John's first Christmas that he'll remember (he was only 2 and 1/2 months old last year) and I've started thinking about the whole Santa Claus thing. I really want to teach him the nativity story and go from there with something along the lines of "and just like the kings gave baby Jesus presents we give each other presents, because we love each other and to remember his birth" and then I want to go farther with the story of St. Nicholas- the nice old guy who gave kids toys to play with and coal to keep warm. And then to go on from there with thats why there's all the nice stories/movies about santa, but he's just a nice make belive name we use to give present with out saying who gave them like a secret suprise. And then to bring it back to love and family and Christ.
But... I don't want to squash the magic of the suprises from santa, and I don't want to be the mom of the kid who goes around crushing other kids dreams by saying there is no Santa.
But... I don't want him to get all into the "Santa will get me anything I ask for" and thus get caught up in the "gimmes" at Christmas and miss the truth of it all.
Maybe its too soon to worry about this, but you set patterns early on and whatever we do with Little John we'll have to do with the rest of them. Any ideas from the other parents out there?

Halloween

So I know it took me a long time but here are our Halloween pics.

A friend gave me this hood, but we already had a costume for him. Its too big anyway, but he had fun wearing it around.

This is the costume I made him, he's the ace of hearts. He didn't like getting stuffed into it though.

John and I were the King and Queen of hearts. Little John's was out of fabric but it was easier to do ours out of garbage sacks using sharpies.

This is all of us. I tried to talk my brother into coming with us as the Jack, so we could be a royal flush, but he went to a Halo-ween party instead.

But this one is my masterpeice: Hogwart's portait of the Fat Lady. (Click on the picture to see it bigger) If we'd have been in Phoenix I would have worn it too the Harry Potter party. Instead my mom wore it to school and the kids loved it. It took me a couple weeks because everything has to dry before I can do the next part. I painted it on part of a giant cardboard box, because I didn't feel like getting foamcore, but foam core probably wouldn't have curled as it dried. If anyone wants more details so they can make their own just leave me a comment.

Lagoon

OK so if I stayed up to date on blogging these wouldn't be so late or all out of order.

Anyway Saturday of UEA weekend (umm, Oct 18 I think) we were all set to have an adventure driving up to see my Aunt Debbie and then we find out that they're going to be in Twin Falls all day. So this left us adventureless and we're all geared up for some fun, so we tracked down some discount tickets and went to Frightmares at Lagoon. For those unfamiliar with Lagoon it rivals Disneyland in cost but doesn't have the characters or the seamless "magic" atmosphere. However it does have lots of roller coasters if you don't mind the lines. (Another thing they should barrow from Disney would be FastPasses) So we spent the day and in the evening they have all this haunted stuff (hence the Frightmares part). Me and Mom took Little John on his first rides while Ben and John did they're own thing. Then while the little guy and Mom had a nap I went with the guys. I love and hate thrill rides. I like the "whee" part but I hate the way the stomach-falling-out feeling gets so intense I can't feel my arms to clutch at things for dear life. And by the end of the night our feet were killing us, but it was SO worth it. We had a blast.

Everyone by a pumpkin sculpture naer the entrance.

Ben, John, and I on Rattlesnake Rapids, Its cold here so I wore a ponch because you get off the ride SOAKED.

Everyone but Mom rode the log flume, I think it scared Little John but he didn't cry.

He loved the train.

He liked the boats 'cuz he loves water.

This was his first ride and he didn't know what to think.

And for Halloween they had all of these put your face through things so I made us use them.

Me and John

Little John

And Ben, gotta love the face.

UEA adventures

So UEA hosts a teacher confrence every fall and there's lots of booths that are fun to see and lots of free pens and notepads and other small tidbits to collect. But the best part is the 4 day weekend. We went down to UEA with Mom and looked around at everything Thursday. It was fun. The not so fun part was when we stayed overnight in Salt Lake so we could get there early before the convention got crowded.


We stayed at a nice hotel at a good rate because they were doing a dicsount if you were with UEA. So since there were 4 of us and the baby- Mom booked a 2 room suite. Well it turns out to be just one room with a king size bed. However, do not despair! Despite my love of adventure and "winging it" when we couldn't verify via room description if the couch was a pullout bed we brought the air matress and some sleeping bags. And of course thr porta-crib.


As a perk the room had a jacuzi tub, which Little John and I enjoyed since the pool was freezing and the hot tub was out of the question for him. He loved the jets. Alas the jacuzi tub is not in the bathroom, it ocupies a coner of the main space. For those of you who have not attempted to sleep 2 people on an air mattress, you spend all night rolling into each other because it dips into the center. So we got a roll-away bed from the front desk. But because of the jacuzi tub there is barely room to walk and no room for the porta-crib. So it ends up like this: John, Little John and I in the king size bed, Mom on the queen size air mattress, and Ben my 6 foot plus tall brother on the roll-away bed.


I don't think anyone got any sleep. Little John had an ear infection from his cold and had just started antiboitics that day. He was up 3 times that night and even when sleeping took up a lot of the bed squirming. Ben might as well have been sleeping on rocks there were so many springs in his mattress. John and I where hot. Mom and Ben were cold.


So after the provided breakfast which was actually really good, we check out. And Mom explains about expecting 2 rooms and only getting 1 and they finally determine that a jacuzi suite and a 2 room suite are the same price and the recently hired employee who handled the reservation booked it on price not description. So thanks to the mixup no charge for the roll-away bed.


A few few days latter and after some decent sleep we think this was quite a funny thing. But we definately learned a few things. 1 travelling with sick children is a dumb idea. 2 double check all reservations before you leave. 3 if there is a reservation problem fix it before bedtime or right at check in if possible. and we relearned the importance of this last one 4 if you can't fix it, laugh and enjoy it or you only make yourself more miserable.


But we didn't let lack of sleep keep us from having a good time at UEA the next day. And The Mayan (areaaly cool theamed resturant that can be seen in the movie The RM) was across from the convention center so we had lunch there. All the boys LOVED it.

Loading the car

This is where a picture of the over stuffed hotel room should go but I was to frustrated to take a pic at the time.

In front of the Mayan

In the lobby

By our table

Colds

So I hate playing musical colds. Sarah and her friend come visit from college for confrence weekend and bring a cold with them. A Little John catches it. And now John and I catch it and man I am miserable. I don't think AZ colds were this bad (of course the flu there is terrible). I didn't think colds were sopossed to leave you exhausted just from going up and down the stairs carrying the baby. Of course he does weigh 21 pounds.
On the other hand today is cold. It's snowing but not sticking and so we started up the fireplace. I sort of wish it was a "put on another log" fireplace 'cuz I love the smell. But mostly I'm really glad its a gas fireplace. No going out to the cold for more firewood, no messy firewood, no popping sap to set the baby/dog/carpet on fire, no ashes to scoop, and a very stable glass and metal screen to keep Little John out.

Little John's birthday

So we had Litlle John's birthday party. And it was so fun. He liked the ballons best, followed shortly by cake. He did so good opening his presents and I couldn't belive it but he even read the card :D I have tons of pictures but I'll keep it limited to the best ones for posting. The whole thing wore him out so he and G'ma had a nap after we cleaned up.

Autum leaves

So we've been driving past these beautiful fall leaves in the canyon all week and then I read some blog posts about how Phoenix has no fall and so for all of you who are missing fall this is for you.

We decided to go hiking and took a picnic lunch (I am planning a whole blog about picnics so watch for it)

Little John and the dog were so excited. All the pics are of Little john 'cuz I took the dog to run through the hills (we were at a campground)

He dragged John all over exploring and getting messy

and eating as much nature as he could get his hands on

And while I was off with the dog I collected a sack full of leaves which I'm going to laminate (thanks H.) and for a limited time special offer: if you leave me a comment asking, I will mail you some. I still have my PP RS directory and I will share the wealth. And because kids love to get mail I can address it to them if you want. You can link to this if you think someone reads your blog and not mine and might want some.

Happy Fall!!!!

More Photos!

We made Little John a sand box and Gr'ma and Gr'pa got him a bull dozer to play in it with.

He loves to be out in the yard

Him and John wrestling

He loves the camera

This is the dog, she's so small I call her a puppy even though she isn't any more

And this is what that cute dog can do to an unattended baby bottle.