November 30, 4 years ago...

... Nick and I had our first date. It was the most amazing first date in the world and lasted all day. I can't remember if that was intentional since we did have the YSA dance that night.

We started about 9 in the morning by going up to Monte Sano to walk around on one of the trails up there. It was an amazingly gorgeous day and both Nick and I kept saying that it was more like a day in September back "home" (Utah for me and Idaho for Nick), than the day before December. We walked around the trail, climbed on some big rocks and talked and talked for a few hours. As we were heading back to the car, we stopped to see some terrific view and Nick stopped behind me and put his arms around me and I thought that it felt like we had done this sort of thing before. (Aww)

We then headed to Olive Garden for lunch and did the soup and salad deal. We still love doing that and in fact the second time we went there after our first date (which happened to be after we were married), we sat in the very same booth. I have such a silly smile on my face remembering that. :)

Then off to the movie theater to watch the Disney movie Enchanted. Its a really cute movie and Nick and I were really enjoying it but we both just about died laughing when the Prince and Giselle are on their date and he asks how long a date lasts and she says "They can go as long as you want, really. They can just keep going and going, just so long as you keep thinking about activities that you can do", since that was essentially what we were doing since we were going to the dance that night.

We then went to my parent's house so we could change for the dance as it was 'church dress'. We grabbed a quick bite of mac&cheese and while eating my sisters got into a silly fight which culminated in one sister throwing her phone at the other which hit the other sister's bowl of dinner just right to fling mac&cheese all over her. As she was sitting on the couch covered in her dinner, she couldn't really move so Nick very kindly helped to clean her up. I thought that was really sweet of him considering he'd never met her.

Finally on to the YSA dance. I actually don't remember too many details about the dance. We did get a little bored at one point and went exploring because I had never been in the Cullman building. There was a cute little half basement but we didn't stay there long because it was the scouts room and smelled like teenage boy BO. (lol) There was a point when I was dancing with Taylor and he was saying something about leaving because there were no worthwhile girls there to dance with. Of course I smacked him a little and he said "Well you're taken". I was like "I'm taken? This is only my first date with Nick". He really was right though :)

Nick took me home and of course we had our first kiss. It was the most amazing kiss. I stopped breathing and heard bells and whistles and saw stars (maybe cause I wasn't breathing)   :)  Everyday we spent together after that just affirmed that we were meant to be together.

Love you honey! Even though we have our downs, I'm still very happy that we finally went out together :)

16 things for today

1. Even though all of Monday and Tuesday morning was really, really rough, I'm very happy that I have Nick as my husband. Thanks honey for all the sacrifices you are making to go to school.
2. I have an appointment to get my wisdom teeth out on the 6th on January. I'm a little nervous since I've never (knock on wood) had anything medical happen to me before. Not even stitches.
3. I think its so cute that my son loves to watch Into The Woods right now. For those not familiar, its a Broadway musical and I love it.
4. Went to a dress rehearsal of Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare last night with Nick and had so much fun. I really like Shakespeare's comedies.
5. I'm glad Nick took theater this semester cause I get to go plays. I love going to plays.
6. Kaleb just gave me all the broken crackers and kept the whole ones for himself. He cracks me up.
7. I have serious van envy right now. And not just any van either. I want an 8 passenger Toyota Sienna '06 or newer.
8. Some days I do better at my load of laundry a day then others. Today I still need to put it in the dryer.
9. I always fast-forward through the 'trading insults' part of The Sandlot. I don't think my kids need to pick up those kinds of things for a long time.
10. I absolutely love the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books!
11. Nick set up a web camera at work and so now we can Skype with him. Kaleb loves to see Daddy at work and even Jay talks up a storm when he sees Daddy.
12. I'm really excited about the big family gift that Nick's mom is getting us for Christmas.
13. Kaleb is really into the 'I do it' phase of getting dressed.
14. Some days you need a lot of chocolate fortification.
15. Trying to curb Jay's biting has been an ongoing, difficult thing. This is only so much you can do to a 10 month old.
16. I really dislike the fact that it gets dark at 5 now.

Cool and random LDS finds

So a couple of days ago I was reading some of the Momformation blogs off of Babycenter, when I came across this cute post about family costume ideas. It totally caught my attention cause that is what we are trying to do this year. As I was reading, one the ideas the blog used was from another Kendra. Of course I went to see what her blog was and as I was checking it out, I had the feeling that she was LDS though I hadn't yet read anything to confirm that. In fact just looking at her picture for the costumes gave me that impression. I quickly got distracted by her awesome Halloween stuff and found her on Pinterest here. I have spent a lot of time today (when not cleaning Nick!) perusing her Halloween board and only just barely decided to look at her other boards and low and behold I find one entitled LDS. It was kind of exciting to find out that my impressions about her were right and that you can find so much good on the internet. So you never know where you will run into members of The Church.  :)

Food!

I just wanted to tell everyone that I love corn on the cob! And Dr Pepper! And fresh coconut! I must be really hungry right now cause all I can think about are my favorite foods. Extra sharp chedder cheese, raspberries, french toast, ham and pineapple pizza, shrimp, asparagus, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, Mom's Hurry Curry, Razzelberry pie,... oh the list could go on for quite a while.

Some Things

1. A few weeks ago we found The Sandlot at a yard sale. We watched it that Sunday and Kaleb found the new love of his life. He asks to watch it every day. "Ball, ball" he comes running up to me all excited every day wanting to watch it. Sometimes I can get him to say Bay Ball, but not very often. I could write a huge post about it but I have a ton of other thoughts I want to get out.
2. Jay is like a turtle lately. Every time I put him down on his back he immediately wants to flip over on to his stomach, which make changing his diaper just a little challenging.
3. I've been trying to be better about my sacrificial produce (the fruits and veggies you buy with good intentions and then go bad in your fridge) but to my horror, I found some moldy raspberries. Such sadness! So I planted them as an experiment. LOL
4. A ton of other thoughts huh? as I sit here stuck on number 4.
5. Yesterday Jay had two baths because of some food incidents and Nick and I noticed that when he is in there all by himself, he actually sits in the tub, whereas when he take a bath with Kaleb, he is always standing.
6. I sometimes miss knowing all the grammar and punctuation rules.
7. I LOVE my clothesline.
8. I LOVE Olive Garden.
9. AHHH, its the 10th of October and I don't know what I'm doing for the boys' costumes.
10. Lastly cause I wanted to put a picture in last, my AMAZING husband made me a wonderful dinner last night. For some reason I HAD to take a picture to share, so here it is.

Yesterday at the Duck Pond

We were able to go over to the Duck Pond near the college while we waited for Nick to finish his class. I wasn't entirely prepared because I forgot to bring something to feed the ducks but fortunately there was a couple there who shared their crackers with Kaleb (probably cause he's so cute!). We started in the grass trying to get the ducks to eat and made our way down to the water mostly because Kaleb was chasing them into the water. He seemed to think that all the ducks belonged in the water and if one ran back toward the trees, he would yell at it and point to the water.

As we were trying to get the ducks to eat the crackers in the water, some turtles (red-ear sliders) started to appear and eat the crackers. So we went from trying to feed ducks to feeding turtles. More and more kept appearing until I counted and came up with at least 12. They were all about the size of a flat soccer ball. Their shells were all mossy and they kept poking their heads out to look at us. Then there were two little ones about the size of hamburger patties that were just the cutest little things. We were having so much fun feeding the turtles and Kaleb was really excited to see them. Then, in the middle of this swarm of turtles, this huge head of a snapping turtle appeared and started to try and get the crackers. He was the biggest turtle I have ever seen that hasn't been in a zoo. His head was the size of softball and I don't even know what to compare his shell to. I don't know if Kaleb saw him cause the sun was glinting off the water about where he was, but I was quite excited.

Kaleb really likes ducks ever since we visited Grandpa and Grandma Huskinson and is one of the few words he will say. I'm really glad that we decided to go over to the pond and now I really want to go back again this time with a camera and the sun in a different place!

15 Things for August 15

1. I'm sort of using this idea from my cousin-in-law, except she does 13 things every Thursday.
2. Yesterday when we picked up Kaleb from nursery, the ladies said "Don't mind the scratches on his face. He and Bre Bre where fighting every five minutes." My son sure knows how to pick a girlfriend.
3. I'm glad that my husband is trying to better himself by going to school, but hate the fact that now he is never going to be home.
4. If you leave How to Train Your Dragon running after the credits, it starts all over again after a certain amount of time so we end up watching it a lot more then I want to. I only really want to watch it once a day.
5. I really want to play with my Legos.
6. Yesterday was my Mother-in-law's, cousin's, and two friend's birthdays. Happy Birthday Gloria, Hayley, Jenny, and Clarissa.
7. I don't like not having a peephole in my front door.
8. My birthday is on Friday which is the same day of the week I was born on :)
9. My husband made this amazing bean meal thing for dinner last night. It had black-eyed peas and rice and cooked green peppers and tomatoes and lime juice and other flavors that made it so incredibly delicious.
10. I really love having cold cereal for breakfast. In fact if I don't start my day that way, everything feels off.
11. Jay is teething a lot lately and wants to bite my shoulder every time I'm holding him and even left a bruise when he bit me on Friday.
12. Now that the last Harry Potter movie came out, Nick and I are finally reading the books together. He wouldn't read them before the movies were done cause he didn't want to spoil them.
13. I love my recycle bin.
14. The dishes are my least favorite chore.
15. You really can do tons in only 15 minutes. Set the timer if you don't believe me.

Jay

If you didn't already know, I did not have a very enjoyable pregnancy with Jay. The whole last month seemed to be just awful. I didn't make any plans for the month of December cause I knew that as soon as I did, the baby would come. Now I look back and wish I had made some.

I had contractions (which I don't think were Braxton-Hicks at all!!!) almost everyday until he was born, starting at about 37 weeks. At least 3 times I thought they were the real thing. The last two I even alerted my doula because they were so regular and seemed to be going some where. Which they didn't. He was 4 days late. Every night for the last week and a half before he was born I would have regular contractions and would go to bed expecting to wake up in a few hours and go the to hospital. Every morning that I woke up to no contractions I just wanted to cry.

The only day I had plans was Christmas day. The plan was to go to Hael and Krista's for dinner. I thought for sure that because I really wanted to do this, that the baby would come. Instead I woke up in the middle of the night throwing up and wasn't really able to do anything because of some 24 hour stomach bug. And I was so huge.

That was Saturday. Sunday I stayed home and rested and went to bed again with contractions only to wake up a couple of hours later cause they weren't going away. I didn't want to wake up Nick or do anything else in case the just went away again and I was still pregnant. Finally at about 1:30 I did wake him up and said the magic words, "We need to go to the hospital." Called my parents and sister cause Shannon wanted to be with me while I delivered. Called my doula and said we really are going this time. Then she called me as we were on the way to say that another mother of hers was in labor too and she wanted to go with her cause she was trying to do a VBAC. I totally understood.

Got to the hospital and the walk to the room seemed like the longest of my life. About the only thing I noticed was that it was about 2:30 when I got in there. She said that I was about a 6. The monitored me for about 15 min and then took off the belts cause that's what we had discussed with my doctor. Then it was all about getting through each contraction. I guess I was getting loud cause the nurses came in and said by the sound of things I was getting close. Checked me again and said I was about an 8 and my water hadn't broken yet. She wanted me the let them know as soon as it did. Seems like just a few minutes later that it did. All I could say was "Water. Broke" so Nick let them know. They came back in and wanted to get the heartbeat. Just as she was about to I had a really huge contraction, so she said she wait for it to be done. Then I had another really big one and said I needed to push. All the nurses were telling me not to, probably cause the doctor wasn't there but was no possible way that I couldn’t. Everything felt like it was happening so fast and when I pushed with my third contraction I thought that if felt really odd so I looked down to see a head! And of course the next push he zoomed right out. Yeah, 4 pushes. No doctor.

So Jay Samuel was born as 4:34 in the morning, two hours after I had gotten to the room in the hospital. He was 7 lbs. 1 oz. and 19 inches long. I forgot what his head measured but he was only in the 5th percentile. That probably helped him come so fast.

I have loved every minute since he was born. He is such a cute, wiggly, little baby. He moves and moves. In fact he is almost crawling. I wish he would wait till he is older but he seems to be in some kind of hurry. I can't wait to show him off to our family out west. Especially his grandmothers.

Weird, Creepy, Insomnia Producing!

On Wednesday I spent the day at Mom and Dad's like I do almost every week. Like almost every week it was pretty late by the time we left. Around 8:30ish, which is good for Kaleb since that is his bedtime and he conks right out in the car. So we pull up to our house at about 9ish to find the garage door open and the light on.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?! The garage door is open with the light on!!! We KNOW that when we left that morning it had been closed and its not like we accidentally hit the door opener in the car - that hasn't worked in years.

So Nick goes in the house to check things out and the first thing is the cat is meowing at the door in the house. We KNOW that cat was outside when we left because we both thought it was weird that he was sitting on top of the dew covered car and getting wet.

I'm waiting and waiting in the car for him to come back out and give me the bad news and imagining all sorts of nasty thing when he does come back out and say that everything is fine. The front and back doors are still locked and nothing has been stolen or moved or anything. There isn't anyone hiding in our closets or bathtubs. Just that the cat peed on the kitchen floor.

WHAT?!?!?! Someone opened our garage door, turned on the light, let the cat in and left?!?!

I am of course totally freaked out and am nervously trying to care for our baby and not think about all the bad things that could have happened. So Nick calls the sheriff's department and they send two people out very quickly (must have had nothing else going on) and they both say that its very odd and at least nothing was stolen. Not "Oh, somebody just down the road had this happen to them the other day", like we were hoping to hear.

It was past midnight by the time I wound down enough to go to sleep and Nick slept on the couch that night just in case anyone came back. We found out yesterday from our neighbor that when his wife left for work at 11:30am that the garage door was open then. I felt so bad for our poor cat being inside all the time with no AC or even water set out for him because he is now an outside cat. The only water out was out was in a pot in the kitchen sink.

It is going to be a long time before I feel completely secure in my own home again. Which is very sad.

A Goldfish Story

A long time ago when I was living in Logan Utah, my 6th grade class had an abundance of goldfish for whatever reason (I'm very hazy on the details cause it was a long time ago). They made the offer that anyone who wanted could take one home for a pet. I was so excited to go home and tell my parents because I was sure that they would let me have one. So of course I had a huge disappointing evening when my Dad immediately said NO!

But not being a very obedient child, I brought one home anyway. Very grudgingly I was allowed to keep it. Its home was on the living room shelf about the couch. I remember climbing on the couch everyday to feed it and talk to it a bit.

So it came as a huge shock one day when I went to feed it to find that it was gone! I couldn't believe my eyes that the fish was missing. After being dumbfounded for several minutes, my first thought was that my dad has flushed it down the toilet because he was still upset that I had brought it home.

Quite a while later my mother was doing some detailed vacuuming and was moving all the furniture, when I heard her shout something about a fish. She started to take apart the vacuum and saying that she thinks she just vacuumed up my fish. Sure enough in the bag was a little, dried up skeletal goldfish. The only conclusion that we came up with was that he had jumped out of the bowl and landed behind the couch.

I look back on it now and just laugh. I mean why did I ever think that my dad had flushed the poor thing. All the water was still in the bowl. He didn't seem to care beyond the initial bringing it home after he said no. I guess I was still feeling a little guilty about that  :)

Obsessions of the Month

#1
CHOCOLATE

I'm only obsessed because I can't have any right now. I had to cut it out of my diet because my sweet little baby was having tummy troubles. He is doing ever so much better now, but I miss chocolate with a passion.

#2

Story Time

It is definitely all about me getting out of the house and not feeling trapped where story time is concerned. My 19 month old doesn't really get anything out of it yet. The only time he sat still was when they read a story about a dump truck. We did miss one week because of sickness but have gone the rest of the past 5 weeks. I'm really glad my husband has been supportive about me going and leaving the better gas mileage car with me on those days (cause I can't drive stick... YET).

#3

Breastfeeding

I am so glad that I'm back in the groove with feeding my baby. I had forgotten how often babies need to eat and that I can't eat certain kinds of foods and even how my cover worked. I feel so bad about the first month for my son because he could have been a much happier baby if I had just remembered that I couldn't eat certain foods the first few months. I also kept thinking "AGAIN?! You just ate I swear". Now I'm just like "Ok, I'll feed you". I totally love how convenient it is and that I can take my baby anywhere with me and I don't have to pack a ton of stuff for him.

#4

Diapers

Two kids under two in cloth diapers means I'm changing diapers all day long and washing them every day. Sigh.

Kaleb Ralph - 19 Months

Loves, loves the movie Cars. He will sit through almost the entire movie which is a really long time for his age. He will ask to watch it several times a day, but so far I've tried to keep it to once a day. Sometimes we'll watch the end a couple of times. Car is also the one word he will consistently say.

Loves to Help:
          - Aunt Shannon unload the dishwasher. Once it was open and he decided to do it himself by putting assorted dishes in the corner cupboard. It was so cute seeing the plates, cups, and tupperware scattered among the pots and pans that live there.
           - Do the laundry. He will help me carry the dirty clothes to the laundry room and once added clean clothes that I had on the couch to fold. We have a stool in there (so he doesn't use it in the kitchen to climb up to everything he is not supposed to get into) and he will stand there and throw the clothes in the washer. He always wants to add the soap too. Our washer and dryer are opposite each other so I will just throw the clothes across to the dryer and if they don't make it all the way and are sitting on the door, he will push them all the way in for me.
          - Feed the cats. We give him the food at the garage door to take though the living room to the bathroom to put in the cat's bowls and he always wants the cats to go in front of him, while they only want to follow the food. Its very funny to watch and usually we have to herd all 3 of them to the bathroom.
          - Put away groceries.
          - Daddy with his tools. For daddy that's not really helping :)
          - Mommy get her newspaper.

Insists that all the stuffed animals he sleeps with come out to the living room in the morning and after his nap. Which is really funny cause he can't carry them all and gets really frustrated when he can't pick them all up.

Thanks to his parents, thinks that stickers belong on his head.

Has brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast almost everyday.

Loves taking a bath. In fact we cannot even mention the words bath, shower, or wash without him tugging at his clothes and running to the bathroom.

Loves to just be with his Daddy. Nick takes care of him the most when he is home because Kaleb is always following him around and asking him for things.

Prefers his Grandma to his parents any day. If mom or dad leave him and he is with Grandma, he doesn't even notice that we left. However when Grandma leaves without Kaleb, he cries and cries. I sure hope that he has just as good a relationship with his other Grandmas when we are able to see them more.

Last because it is the most important, Kaleb LOVES to be outside. If I let him he would live outside. He asks to go out all the time and will run and get his shoes for us to put on him. He has a small obsession with shoes because to him it means that it is time to go out. For a few months we had to put away our shoes because if he saw them he would bring them to us to put on and would get so very unhappy when we weren't going outside. He loves to just wander around outside and sometimes will head off down the street to the rock pile (a pile of very small rocks about 5 feet wide and 2 feet tall) where he will climb up and down and show me the big rocks he finds. He also likes to follow the kitties off into the field next to our house and gets quite far sometimes. He has figured out that the front of the house with the road, the neighbor's houses, and the rock pile are far more interesting than the back yard with the garden that mommy won't let him plod all over or the fire pit that mommy says is completely off limits. When I try to hang my laundry on the line, I'm constantly running after him to bring him back to the back yard where I can see him. It is nice that he wants to go out all the time cause it gets me out of the house and into the fresh air.

I am so blessed to have this little man in my life and can't wait to see what he discovers tomorrow!

My First Pie

I know this is a little after the fact but oh well.

During Thanksgiving this year I made my first pie ever. I've helped other people make pies before but this was the first time I did most of the work. Well maybe I did most of the work. I started making the pie dough but didn't have a pastry cutter and was very uncoordinated with the knives so my Mom took over with that. I did roll it out and put in in the pan. I was going to cut up the apples but was going really slow so Mom and Nick did that too. I did manage to mix the filling together and put the top on and make a little pattern in the crust. So I sort of made my first pie for Thanksgiving.

Pet Peeve this week

I would have to go with the automatic flushing toilets. I mean what does it matter if you have to touch the toilet to flush it when you are just going to wash your hands anyway? I don't like any of them. From the ones that flush when you are still sitting there to the ones where you have to wave your hand in front of it to get it to actually flush, I really don't like them all. And I really hate the ones that flush so vigorously that water gets sprayed up on the toilet seat and the next poor person that comes in after you is going to think that you hover peed.

And what is with the automatic faucets and soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers when you just have to touch the dirty door handle? And they never put a garbage can next to the door so if you want to use a paper towel to open the door you have somewhere to throw it when you are done.

Whew, just had to get that off my chest.

:P to my Mother

Mom sent me this picture and told me to post it, so here I am posting it.

Kaleb only wanted to hold him for a second and then he pushed him away and he still does it 3 weeks later :)