Pumpkin Patch

We drove up over Chapter's fall break from preschool to go to the pumpkin patch in my hometown.  Unfortunately, Daddy didn't come with us, but we had a good time anyway.

Chap turned 4!

All Chapter really wanted for his birthday this year was to go bowling with his cousins and a Pokemon cake.  And we made that happen.  And it was AWESOME being able to haul 7 kids to Fiesta Fun all by myself in the van:)  Chap is blurry in most of the pictures, which is fine, because I want to remember him like he was, so excited he was bouncing all over the place!

 Then we went back to our house for cake and ice cream.

 He got more Lego Duplo's for his birthday.  And he has been Mr. Lego almost daily since then. He mostly builds hotels.  Watch out world, this one might be a structural engineer:)

Las Vegas

After picking me up in Vegas, we went to Trader Joe's and then to the Mandalay Bay Shark Exhibit. The kids (and us) were mesmerized!  What a cool place.  We wanted to go there on our honeymoon, but the line was INSANE!  Now, 9 years later, it was much better and we had a leisurely trip through.  

Then we finished off the night by eating "in the castle".  We had a very happy boy!

San Antonio Days 3 and 4

Sunday we pretty much just hung out and went to church.  I also found out that I am definitely a Utah mormon in the sense that I really love wards with a variety of ages.  Mandy's ward felt like a young married ward with 10,000 kids.  Don't get me wrong, I loved that sacrament meeting with almost deafening, but I really like the perspective of many age groups in lessons.  It adds depth and experience that I as a person who is still (barely) in my 20s, lack.

On Monday, Britt left around 6 for her 8 o'clock flight.  Mandy and I wend to a thrift store that is only for kids stuff.  It was SO FUN!  I'm such a mom/nerd:)  I stuffed my carry-on just as full as I could, haha.  Then she dropped me off at the airport.  I was SO EXCITED to see La Gloria at the airport.  Sadly, it is a sit down restaurant, and I was paranoid about being late for my flight so I ate at a chicken place called Raising Cane's and it was pretty good.  But then my flight was delayed, and the gates switched and we ended up leaving late.  I totally could have had a tamale for the road.  My one regret about Texas.  I'm still sad about it.

To make up time we took a "bumpy shortcut" back to Vegas.  Who knew?  And I sat by a really nice girl on the way back, it was really fun to chat with her. We arrived only about 20 minutes delayed and my family picked me up.  I was so happy to see my kiddies and my Logan!  It had been a long, tiring, fun and memorable 4 days.  There has been talk that this needs to happen yearly, I'm not so sure about that, but please, let's not wait another 9 years to all get together!

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!