San Antonio Day 2

Saturday we were planning to go to Waco early and spend time there and in Austin, but Julie didn't make it there until about 11am because of baby troubles and we decided it was too late to spend that long in the car.  So we hit the missions.  We were planning on going on Sunday, but I'm glad we didn't wait because it took most of the day and it was so worth it!  We started out by going to see the temple and then to eat at a place called La Gloria, where I had a Texas sized tamale that was the food highlight of the trip:) 

This is Mission San Jose.  It's by far the grandest mission and is SO BEAUTIFUL!  

 However, Mission Espada was my favorite.  It's tiny, and weirdly homey.  I just loved this place.

The takeaway from this day is that I am well suited to dry heat.  I was made for St. George:)  Haha.  My hair is weird, and my heavy RayBans would barely stay on my face it was so humid and sweaty!  Yuck!

San Antonio Day 1

I basically have the best husband ever.  Even if we did have to shame him in to letting me go a little bit:)

I went to San Antonio, Texas for a girl's weekend with my high school friends/freshman roommates.

It was pretyy much a miracle.  We all had the same weekend available, all husbands/fiance were on board, and we had a place to stay and cheap flights.

This idea started brewing in the spring when Logan and I were looking for cheap places to fly for a family vacation.  We noticed that flights to Houston were affordable and I have a friend (Julie) who lives there.  I talked to her a little bit about it, but then Logan ended up taking the scouts rafting and using his vacation time for that.  Then during our high school reunion I said something about a girls night in Texas, totally joking, and Mandy and Julie and Brittney acted interested.  Then we found out flights to San Antonio were cheap too.  So we booked it about 2 weeks later.

My Friday, Sept 16 started at 3am.  I drove Logan's truck across town to catch the shuttle to the Las Vegas Airport.  We arrived there about 5am Nevada time.  My flight left around 7.  I was originally assigned the very back seat with no window, but the flight literally had like 30 people on it, and they let us sit wherever we wanted.  I chose a window seat just behind the wing, and I got to experience my first daytime flight with a window seat.  It was beautiful!  God is amazing!  I thoroughly enjoyed that.

My flight got in a couple hours before Brittney's, so I hung around at the San Antonio Airport until she arrived.  Then Mandy picked us up with a Texas sized Dr. Pepper:)

We headed straight to the Alamo.  It's small, free, and not a lot to it.  I had read a book about it prior to going, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't have known anything.  There is very little information there.  That was kind of disappointing.  So many people visit and have no clue. 

Then we hit up the River Walk.  SO PRETTY!  We took a little $10 cruise and it really made it easy to see and learn everything.  

 After that we went to a yummy mexican place called Taqueria Data Point and it was delish!

We finished the night off with some pedicures.  Day one was a blast!

New Room

We decided to move Chapter downstairs, mostly because having Merit in our room 17 months later was getting a little old.  What I wouldn't give to have 3 bedrooms on the same floor in our house, but that just isn't going to happen.

We redid the old office, I'll show the befores, and if we are really lucky, and the kids are being good, I'll try to look back and find the before befores, of the room when we moved in, when it was not so fondly called the "Grandma Room".

Pretty simple, pretty boring.  Perfect for an office haha.

The only "progress picture" I'll include.  Logan always does this somewhere in a room when we are repainting (I love him).  And this is fun because it didn't get repainted over.  This was a cork board.  A really thin cork board.  And after the stitches, I wasn't sure I wanted Chap having pins in his room.  Just kidding, I had been cooking this up for a couple weeks before that.  I ended up buying the metal from a place in Hurricane.  When I went to pick it up, it was in a storage unit filled with a bunch of chain smoking old men.  I briefly considered that I might get murdered, but when I walked in, they started yelling to get the kids out, and the fact that they were worried about my kids and second hand smoke kind of won me over.  They brought it out and loaded it for me, and even let me pay in the parking lot, so yeah.  Nice, scary old men.  Haha.

The boy wonder even decorated his own shelves, which was a relief, I am no good at stuff like that.
He loves his new room, especially his new bunk beds.  That was his only requirement for the room other than dark blue paint.  Such a funny boy.

And now we'll throw it back to Early 2011 when this room got it's first Logan and Sydney makeover:)

Stitches

It was bound to happen eventually, just not how or to whom I always imagined.

So, do you remember that cute little school bag Chapter and I made?  Apparently while making it, my rotary cutter caught his eye.  I talked to him while we were using it about how it is a mommy tool and it will hurt you and how I have cut myself with it a bunch of times.  I keep it on a high shelf in a room Chap isn't supposed to go in alone.  I thought I was safe.  But one evening, while Logan was out on a test drive trying to sell our Escape, Chap was playing in his tee-pee.  In hindsight I really should have known something was up, the kid never plays in his tee-pee.  Anyway, Merit ran into the tee-pee and about 5 seconds later started to cry.  It wasn't a scary cry, just a normal cry, like she bumped her head, or wanted a toy Chapter was playing with.  So I called to her and told her to come to mommy.  So she ran all the way across the downstairs family room to me and I picked her up and and started asking her if she bumped somewhere.  About 5 seconds later I noticed blood on her foot so I took her into the bathroom.  I washed one foot, no cut.  It was then that I discovered blood gushing from her other foot.  I ran it under the water and immediately realized this was more than a band-aid injury.  I grabbed a bath towel (the hand towels were no where to be found) and wrapped her up and went upstairs to call Logan.  I told him we were headed to the instacare.  I was remarkably calm, and looking back, I am impressed with myself, haha.  I loaded kids in the car and when we got to the corner we saw Logan and he jumped in and came with us.

The receptionist at instacare told us it would be 30 minutes.  I was about to go all momma bear on her, but we had just had a stake conference and the stake president talked about being patient and nice to people who were working at stores, etc.  Luckily, it was probably only 5 minutes.  When the nice old lady nurse started checking to see if her toes worked or if there had been severed tendons I started to panic a little.  That had never even crossed my mind.  Luckily, it was fine.  They took us back into the procedure room and a nice curly haired doctor came in.  Not once did I feel like they were judging me or thinking I was a bad mom (I was doing enough of that myself, thank you very much).  This was honestly the best instacare experience I have ever had.  Usually I feel like I pay the outrageous copay only to be treated like scum, told that I'm stupid and sent home to take some Advil.  It was a little traumatizing, but 7 stitches later we went home, with instructions too keep her off of it for 2 days (that was fun) and to come back in 2 weeks for suture removal.

 First day, I should have taken the picture after I cleaned it up.

 Above and below are the day we took the stitches out 3 days early.  Her body started to get really irritated by the stitches so they opted to remove them early.  She was such a little champ and sat up like a big girl to get her stitches out.  She didn't cry or whine, she just said "tickle tickle", haha.

And here we are this morning, almost 3 weeks out.  Looking good, and feeling much better.  Looking back it wasn't too bad, the worst was definitely the no walking for 2 days and not wearing shoes for so many days.  Just glad that she's okay.  I'm still suffering from a little mommy guilt, but oh well. 

Farewell Escape

I don't really know what to say about selling this car other than it's sad.  But we needed a van.  And the Escape has been amazing to us.

I think Logan has always kind of regretted buying this car.  He traded in the blue Chevy on it, and feels like he payed too much to a dealer he hated.

This is what Logan was driving when we met.  He had had it for just over a year at that point, and I remember being impressed he had such a nice car when my roommates and I froze some granny panties to its windshield in the fall of 2006.

It's the car we dated and fell in love in.  Spinning donuts in the stadium parking lot, sliding into the curb trying to get me to my afternoon Spanish class which turned out to be cancelled due to snow, and listening to country music "if that's what my baby likes".  I remember Gold Digger coming on the radio and laughing hysterically because Logan knew all the words (I still do), I remember making out at the "C" (don't tell anyone, haha).  And driving away with "Just Married" written on the back window in August 2007.

I guess my sadness at selling the Escape stems not only from our history in this car, but also that this car represents so much of my youth.  So many memories, so much laughter and joy.  I guess it's just hard to let that go, but our family has outgrown it, and that's the way life goes.  I sincerely hope the next owner takes care of it, and has just as many good memories as I do in our Ford Escape.

The Mad Hoogie Shirt

Mad Hoogie Horns

 Last summer Anisa took Chap to the Rosenbruch Wildlife museum.  In the museum there is a stuffed bison.  Chap became fixated on this bison and called it a Hoogie.  He has loved hoogies since then.  He has a stuffed animal hoogie, and a carved wooden hoogie.  He was ECSTATIC when Dixie changed their mascot to a "mad hoogie" last February and we immediately took him to the campus store to buy a hoogie shirt.  They didn't have child sizes,  (Are you kidding me????) and we were told to come back in a couple months.  We checked back around May, and we were told the beginning of August.  So we went the beginning of August.  Still no kid hoogie shirts. The day before he started preschool we tried one more time, and lo and behold, they had finally got them in a couple days prior.  Chap may be the only child with a Dixie Mad Hoogie shirt in the whole world, haha! You should have seen his face though.  Totally worth the $13 and the hassle!  

Preschool

We enrolled Chapter in Learn and Grow Preschool in Ivins.  It's taught by the wife of my mentor teacher when I was student teaching, and her brother lives in our ward, so it just made sense.  Today was his second day. I was a little sad when I dropped him off on Tuesday, but when I picked him up he said it was the best day ever ever.  Two evers, it must have been pretty great!  He is so happy, it makes me glad that he gets to do this.  I generally have a problem with at home preschools due to the lack of qualifications, but she's a licensed teacher, and that's important to me.  I know he'll actually learn instead of just be tended.

Anyway, here are his first day pictures.

 He had to have a tote bag for school, so we picked out this fabric and made it together.

This kid has such a fun personality.  He wanted to pose himself on the "secret boulder" (not sure what that's about, haha) and he wanted to try lots of silly faces.  This one is my favorite:)

Lagoon

We ended up getting tickets to Lagoon through Dixie so we all got in for a child's rate, plus they had rented a pavilion so we could ditch our stuff, and they had drinks, ice cream, games and prizes (We both won a shirt!).

Chap was in heaven!  And Merit never napped so it was the longest she has been continually awake in her whole life:)

Chap is 42" tall so he could ride some of the bigger stuff and he loved that!  He talks about Rattlesnake Rapids almost every day.  Logan got to go ride Cannibal, and he said it was awesome. I was surprised at how great Merit did.  She liked the rides a lot, but it she had to sit in a ride for a long time waiting for it to start she'd try to get out.  But she LOVED everything she rode on.  Our kids are funny, they look so serious when they are on a ride.  I think Chap thought he was actually driving:) Not sure if we'll go again with such small kids, but I can see us having a lot of fun when they are a little bit bigger.  Oh, and Lagoon has a Swig.  Best discovery ever!

10 Years

For my 10 year high school reunion, we all voted to go easy.  Party at the bowling alley, unlimited bowling, pizza, drinks and breadsticks for 2 hours for $13/adult and kids were free.  No set up and more importantly, no clean up.  It was perfect!

Plus we found out we have a little bowling fiend on our hands (Grandma Deb would be so proud).

Not a huge turn out, but I would say that all but 2 people I wanted to see were there, and I had seen Erin the day before, so yeah, it was great!  Yay for SSHS class of 2006:)

Pioneer Day Parade and Park

As always, we went to the parade in Monroe.  I was actually thinking before the parade that this might be my last one.  I don't live there anymore, and I was kind of thinking it might be best to start a tradition my kids would keep up after they are grown.  (For example, we go to Kanarraville for the 4th because Logan's mom grew up there, but it's kind of weird now that she's gone, and we aren't from there...) BUT, Monroe really came through for me and made me think that we'll keep it up by putting on the best parade I think I've ever been to.  Whoever was in charge of it this year really hit it out of the park.

 Th

Then we went to the park and Chap played games and we rode on the FFA train.

 And did smoke balls with Grandma.

This is one happy monkey with all of his loot!  The amount we got was unbelievable.  Something along the lines of 6 Frisbees, 2 t-shirts, a water bottle, a ball, a bunch of tattoos and wristbands, and SO MUCH CANDY!  I thought Logan was being optimistic when he brought out the Harmon's bag, but that sucker was probably half full of candy.  We should be good until Halloween;)

Pioneer Day Part 1

Friday, we rode up to Elsinore with my childhood friend Pam, for one of my other childhood best friend's bridal shower (Brittney). 9 high school best friends in the same room 10 years later (including 2 Texans, so that was impressive).  It was AWESOME!

Back Row: Bryanne, Brittney, Pam, Sydney

Front Row: Erin, Mandy, Katie, Julie, Ashley

Between us all we have 17 kids with one on the way.  Wow, if that isn't crazy then I don't know what is!

Logan drove up after work that night, while Grandma and I played at the park with the kiddos.  

 I love her hair and her face:)

 Chap looks so excited to have just kicked his sister off the bottom of the slide, little stinker!

I was so blessed to grow up in such a beautiful place!