Trip to Placerville

We made an impromptu trip to California for President's weekend to visit the Johnson's. I feel like I have this small window of time to take these trips - no newborn, no school, and a holiday thrown in the mix. But oh the bathroom breaks and the sitting for 10 hours in the car - that was brutal to this pregnant lady. But it was worth it - we had a great time and hopefully Miles and Claire got their fill of the outdoors, animals, and Papa-May-Duke (the word Miles has created to mean going to Placerville.

Lily and Claire did their makeup. Claire had purple eyebrows for two days.



A rare quiet moment with Miles and Rosy


Me and Megan, and the next cousins - due 3 weeks apart


Trip up to Apple Hill and Boa Vista Orchards for some apple doughnuts and local apples and honey. The Vegas kiddos were freezing - Miles is especially wimpy in the cold.







The theme of every night of our trip - homemade ice cream! Oreo and toasted almond, our favorites. I ate waaaay too much. I am guessing at least five pounds to show for this trip. Just a drop in the bucket, these days. :)

Kid Quotes

Miles calls an apple a "wah wah" - for no explicable reason. He will say "a" and "pple" but when asked to combine the two, it's still "wah wah." The other day we were in Sam's club and there was a display of pineapples. I thought, here we go - surely he will say a new word that contains the word apple. I said, "Miles, say pineapple." He said, "pine wah wah." Go figure.

Claire is resisting her afternoon naps - I guess I should count myself lucky that she has napped this long. So we do quiet time in her room, and sometimes she ends up asleep, sometimes she doesn't. I had a work call scheduled while working from home so I told her she needed to do quiet time while I had the call. She said, "It would be a lot easier if you did what I want to do, Mom." Oh boy.


The other day Claire told me that polka dots are her favorite color. Mine too, Claire! It's no wonder she likes polka dots with them in her bedroom, on her comforter, on a blanket, clothes and church bag. I can't help myself.

Miles has now started calling everyone a silly goose (I blame myself for saying it to him a few times), He says it after almost everything, only since he doesn't pronounce the end of most words it comes out, "That's my drink, silly goo!"


Watching Star Wars, Claire was asking me non-stop questions and driving me crazy. I am not the Star Wars buff that Matt is so I was trying to get her to stop asking me questions. She said, "Mom, I am just really, really interested in learning about this stuff."

Be Still My Heart

I felt very loved on Valentine's Day. Breakfast was made for me (migas, my favorite Mexican eggs), tulips on the table, my car was out front waiting for me, filled with hearts. Then when I got home, a heart on the door told me to come inside to find more hearts, each one with a cute note. Miles and Claire were so excited to give me their valentine's cards, and Matt actually got crafty with construction paper, felt and paint. I was impressed. I loved it!

Happy Valentine's Day!

New subway art for my wall for Valentine's Day. I think I will keep up the ABC poster in Miles' room, soon to be the baby's room. Cute way to look at the alphabet!

The Junk Drawer

I don't know why it took him so long actually, since it's not child-proofed, but Miles has recently discovered the junk drawer. The drawer contains very random things that I probably should just throw away, but for some reason I am too lazy (I will blame pregnancy). He gets in there multiple times a day and brings out the most interesting things to play with, and it is kind of fun to see what he will come up with.

And though it does highlight my need to clean out said junk drawer, it is interesting how the drawer is like a little time capsule - things in the way back are just about pre-kids I think, then the things in the front are from recent days, or stuff I actually use often like tape, pens and Claire's hair brush.

So far he has found:

1. A plastic chopstick that he has turned into a "Potter wand", as in Harry.

2. Small sticky note stack that he unpeeled one by one, crumpled up and put into a bowl. He asked me to pour water over it to make cereal.
3. A pedometer (oh yeah, I used to exercise)
4. Tape, that he used to cover his mouth (it was a quiet 45 seconds)
5. A glow stick from a past camping trip
6. An unopened toothbrush
7. Multiple hair accessories
8. Layers of random crafting tools - ribbon glue, crochet hooks, glue sticks, etc

Time to organize. I am starting to "nest" a bit - we are cleaning out the garage and the kids' rooms to make space for baby. Might as well add the junk drawer to the list.

UNLV vs. San Diego State

Matt and I went to the sold out UNLV men's basketball game on Saturday - I don't know what we were thinking, but we only gave ourselves about 45 minutes to get to the game and park. It was a madhouse. But it was nice to see some school spirit and genuine excitement over a good sports team at UNLV (not a regular occurrence), so we tried to not have road rage.

It was a great game - close the entire first half, then UNLV took a strong lead in the second half. Only to then have the Rebels not score for 5 whole minutes, letting San Diego State back into the game.


But they held on in the end, with UNLV stealing the ball on the last San Diego possession with just a few seconds to go, winning the game. This is hard to read - taken from our seats and with my phone - but the score is 65 to 63.
=

Matt's Birthday "Week"

Ah, the birthday week. No one knows its exact origins (as my dad is known to celebrate the week as well), though I expect it's just when a birthday falls on a rather dull day of the week, like a Wednesday. A small celebration on the actual birthday stretches into the weekend's real party, with multiple celebrations and many references to "it's my birthday week" thrown out in order to get extra treats, eat out more often, and buy more presents in between the two events.

So, today marks the end of Matt's birthday week, along with the Super Bowl. Since the 49ers didn't make it, it's a bit of a let down for us. Though Betty was going for the Giants and Noah for the Patriots - I think the rest of us didn't really care who won. But since the day was also combined with Matt's birthday celebration, he got to pick our menu - pizza, 7 layer dip, mozzarella sticks, chips and salsa, and of course, Nothing Bundt Cake in chocolate chocolate chip. Delicious.

I had a hard time getting a photo of a non-silly face from Matt - he was teasing Miles so much about not letting blowing Miles help blow out the candles.

Mitt Wins Nevada

While visiting Brady Industries to look at their large meeting space for our BYU Management Society luncheons, I stumbled into a meeting of the Mitt Romney call center, all prepped and ready for a visit from Mitt. Once inside the room, secret service had us all stay inside until Mitt arrived, so though I had already checked out the room for our purposes, I was stuck. So, I just settled in to see Mitt. I was a Romney delegate in 2008, so it was kind of cool to see how much support he had in that room and in Clark County. A day later, he won the caucus for Nevada. The caucus was kind of a mess - I wish we just had a primary like everyone else. If you want to participate, you have to be there at 9 am and then everyone has to make their case for why they should be a delegate, who they would vote for, answer questions from the audience, etc. Since it's not an in and out process, Matt and I have taken turns attending (and being delegates) the last two elections. We should have just brought our kids. Oh well - live and learn.