My Trip With My Sissy

My sister finally sent me her pictures. I know it has taken her forever, but she has been a little busy, what with having surgery and all. Anyways, so a couple of weeks ago my sister Kate was in San Francisco on business and so I met up with her and we had a great time.

First, her flight was canceled and so I spent the afternoon driving around, trying to find a parking spot, and then trying to not get a parking ticket. I was a Nervous Nelly trying to navigate around downtown, especially since as I mentioned before, my wonderful navigation system wasn't working. I drove into two parking garages that weren't the right ones for her hotel. Luckily they were the smallest parking garages in all of San Francisco, so they were really easy to navigate my mini-van through. I gave the parking attendants a good laugh though. So I gave up on trying to find her parking garage and just decided to park somewhere. I finally found some street parking a couple of miles away, but then I was really nervous as I watched 3 cars get towed away. Finally my sister arrived and we got all settled.

We headed out to my family's favorite pizza place in the Bay, Toto's Pizza. My aforementioned wonderful navigation system took us way far away to the take-out only location. We finally found the restaurant after driving around for about an hour. When we got there we noticed that they had a special running for the X-Large pizza and a family size salad. It seemed like it would be too much food, but we just couldn't pass up such a good deal. The pizza took up most of the table.

I am not a bit embarrassed to admit that the two of us ate half of it. It was SO good. My mouth is watering as I am looking at the pictures.

We went and got a cooler and I took the rest home to Nick. It was really fun to carry this cooler all around with me. When I was leaving to go home, the lid flew off in the middle of the street. So I was chasing it all around the street with my arms full of my luggage. As soon as I would try and pick it up, it would blow away again. So fun.

I spent the night on her hotel room floor. She was traveling with her co-worker and had two beds. It turns out that they were twin beds, so I slept right in between the two beds. It was quite cozy. The next day we went out to breakfast at a cute little diner and then to Fisherman's Wharf. We had the delicious sourdough bread and Katie rode the carousel.

Katie is quite a bit better at posing than me, she really gets all into it.

Nick (Katie's co-worker), me, Katie and Katie-Jo (co-worker) down at the wharf.

Of course we got some salt water taffy, yum!

All in all it was a great little trip. It was fun to get away. Thanks Nick for watching the kids and letting me get away. Thanks for the great trip Katie. It was so fun to spend some time together!

The Boy Who Refuses To Grow Up

It seems as if Jaxton has a bit of the Peter Pan syndrome. People often ask me how old he is. I reply that he is 9 1/2 months old. They then say, "oh, he must be crawling and getting into everything." I then say, "nope, not even close." He recently has learned how to get up onto his knees, but he doesn't know what to do after that. Plus, I don't think he wants to learn how, he prefers to be carried everywhere.

He also refuses to stand and hold onto things, like the couch. Maybe I don't have very good perspective because all of my girls learned to crawl when they were about 7 months and Hallie was walking by this age. I am not stressed out or worried about this. I think he is just trying to make me feel better about the fact that my last baby is growing up. I can't believe it has gone by so fast. It seems like he was just a tiny baby. So thank you Jaxton, for softening the blow for me.

We tried to let him push this little bike around. He thought it was terrifying.

He wouldn't even put his feet all the way on the ground.
The bike moved a little bit, and then he really got scared.

Post traumatic experience, still a little bit shaken up.

I loved these pictures of Hayden and Jaxton. This one looks like he is giving her a kiss.

This is such a typical Hayden face. She has a hard time looking at the camera long enough for me to get a picture. The smile is there, but we have lost the eye contact.

A Couple Of New Firsts

The last two years I haven't done any gardening. Two years ago we were just moving in to our new house at this time of year and were just trying to get settled. Last year I was pregnant and, um, I just didn't feel like it. This year it was quite a major undertaking to get our yard ready for plant.

When we moved into this house, most of my feelings for the previous homeowner could have been filed under the category, "what were you thinking?" or "what the?" The backyard conjured up these feelings the most. She made 3 foot wide flower beds around the entire parameter of the back yard. And then she filled parts of the flower beds with bark and hideous plants, such as oleanders, which are also poisonous. Then there were other parts of the flower beds that were filled with red and white lava rock, repulsive.

We tore out all of the plants when we moved in, mainly because we didn't want them to poison our children. Two weeks ago, we neglected our children for three days as we did the back-breaking work of removing all of the rocks and bark. We then planted 12 tomato plants and still had quite a bit of room. So we also did 3 kinds of squash, green onions and green beans. Being the cheapskate that I am, I decided to use seeds instead of plants, I found seed packs at Walgreen's for $.20 a piece, you can't beat that. I had never used seeds before, but, most of them have been successful so far.

Me in action. Looking really good I might add.

Poor Jaxton, still in his PJ's, and feeding himself a bottle under the trampoline (it was the only shady spot in the backyard).Avery fending for herself. She was a big help keeping the two little ones entertained while we worked.

Here are some pictures of our beautiful seedlings. These are the green beans. Only about half of them were successful, so I think I will throw some more seeds in.

This is one of the kinds of squash. I didn't see any point in labeling, but now I wish that I would have because two of the spots have not produced any seedlings yet, so we may have spaghetti squash coming out of our ears and no zuchinni. I guess it will just have to be a surprise.

Between the yard work two weeks ago, and my trip to SF last week, I hadn't been grocery shopping in I don't know how long. So today I had the really choice experience of grocery shopping with Avery, Hayden and Jaxton. Hayden has such a hard time not picking up everything and staying with me and then when we hit the bulk foods section, oh my goodness. It really isn't her fault, they have unwrapped candy right at her eye level. Then both girls needed to use the restroom, and just our luck, the bathroom was closed for cleaning. No one was in the mens bathroom and Hayden was doing the pee pee dance, so we used the men's bathroom. It was lovely.

Anyways, I needed hamburger, but I found that it had really jumped up in price. So I was looking at my other options and ground turkey breast, which I had never had before, was actually cheaper, so I thought I would give it a try. I found a recipe for turkey burgers online and made a few adaptations. They were so delicious, plus the ground turkey is way better for you. So it is a win-win. Here is my recipe:

Southwest Turkey Burgers
1.2 lb. ground turkey breast
1 T. chili powder
1 T. grill seasoning
1 T. cumin
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/4 medium bell pepper, chopped (I used an orange bell pepper)

Put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix with your hands. I grilled mine on my indoor grill and they took a little less than 10 minutes.

They were pretty spicy, but my kids really liked them. Hayden, who usually does not eat dinner unless we are having cold cereal, even ate her whole hamburger. I served the burgers with sweet and spicy sweet potato fries that I baked in the oven. I had never made anything with sweet potatoes either, but the kids loved them. The girls even gave me a round of applause for as Hallie said, "the best dinner ever."

Thank You TomTom

I spent the last two days visiting my sister in San Francisco (pictures to come as soon as my sis sends them to me, my camera also did not work at all). She was staying right in downtown SF, which is pretty hard to navigate, so I borrowed Nick's super fancy navigation system. It would have been great except that it didn't work once I got to SF.

Every time that I needed to go somewhere, it lost the signal. Then it would finally find the signal and route me around and around in a circle. Then it got really frazzled and just started spitting directions out at me. At one intersection it told me to go right, and then it said to go left, and then it said to go straight. All of this added up to me trying to find my way home at the peak commuting time in downtown with crazy taxi drivers cutting me off and me trying not to run over any pedestrians. It was delightful. Next time I think that I will just stick to my super un-fancy MAP.

Funniest Family Home Evening

The other day as we were walking home from school, the conversation went like this:

Hallie: Avery, may I please ride your bike?
Avery: No!
Hallie: Please!
Avery: No!
Hallie: Mom, make her let me ride her bike.
Me: No, that is Avery's choice, if she doesn't want to share, than that is her choice.

A few minutes later:

Hallie: Mom, when is it Family Home Evening?
Me: Monday.
Hallie: Is it my turn to do the lesson? I have an idea.

I didn't realize the two conversations were related, but tonight Hallie gave her lecture, er I mean lesson. She had the following visual aid, I know you can't see it very well, but it is a picture of me, Hallie and Avery. Avery is on the left with her bike and yelling "no oh!" On the top it says, "not thinking of others."

This is how her lesson went:

Hallie: We need to think about others instead of ourselves. I mean the other day I wanted to ride Avery's bike and would she let me? NO! I just don't think this is right. We are supposed to think of others and that is just very selfish.

Nick: Well, I don't think we should really single anyone out, maybe we should just think of ways that we can think of others. How can we think of others and not be selfish?

Hallie: What do you mean? Avery was not being grateful for me, that is why I am talking about this.

Nick: I know, but can't we think of good examples instead of bad ones and not pick on anyone?

Hallie: (very annoyed that Nick is hijacking her lesson and all of the work that she put into rebuking Avery) Well, I guess, but what about what Avery did?

She is such a little mother. The other day she told her cousin that she was "not being very grateful," because she didn't say thank you. What seven year old says that?

Funny Little Guy

Jaxton is getting so wiggly. He is still not crawling, this would require that he be put down for more than five minutes, and he is not okay with that. But the whole time I hold him is all over the place. He is getting like this while he sleeps also. I find him in the most interesting places when I wake him up from his naps (poor younger siblings don't ever get uninterrupted naps) he is always in funny positions. This is how I found him yesterday.

He was scrunched all the way up at the bottom corner. He looked so peaceful though.

I think maybe he was trying to escape!

What a funny boy.

My Girl Hallie, The Star of The Show

For nearly all of the seven years of Hallie's life I have been wondering where this girl came from. She loves to be the center of attention, she is fearless, she doesn't get embarrassed, she doesn't mind speaking in front of people, in fact she LIKES it.

When I was her age, I was doing okay in the academic part of school, but in the social behavior part, I was getting all U's. . .unsatisfactory. I was so introverted and timid and embarrassed about everything. I am so glad to see that Hallie does not have these same struggles. Nick must have something to do with this.

Last week Hallie had a dance performance at school. It was hilarious. She knew every move and did each one with great enthusiasm. This video is a little long, but you have to make it through to the end to see her final move, it is the best one. Also notice that they put her next to the two shortest kids in her class, and they barely come up to her elbow. She looks like a giant next to them.




I have watched this video many times and it gets even more funny with each viewing. Go Hallie! She truly embodies the famous Mark Twain quote "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth."She is such an example to me. She lives every moment of life to the fullest, I hope she never loses that.

Spoiler Alert

If you have not read Twilight, you probably don't want to read this post.

I previously mentioned that while Hayden was away on vacation I read the entire book Twilight. I am still not sure how I feel about it. I found the first half very slow, especially if you read the back cover where it plainly tells you that Edward is a vampire. Why didn't the publisher keep that part a secret since Stephenie Meyer didn't reveal that fact until the middle of the book? You have to read a good portion of the book to find out something that is written on the back cover.

I thought the second half was pretty good and mostly pretty enjoyable. Edward is oh so dreamy. However, the practical side of me (which if I am being honest with myself probably makes up 95% of my personality, I pretty much am a pretty practical kind of gal) was like "why would you give up being human and turn into a blood sucking vampire, for someone you just met? Bella, I think you need to think about this a little more." It was all just a little over the top for me. I know that makes me sound old and motherly, but I am sorry, that is who I am.

From what I have heard and read online, everybody pretty much likes Twilight the best out of the series. So I am not feeling very inclined to read the other books. However, it did remind me how much I LOVE to read. I don't read very often, mostly because I don't know what to read. I haven't read much since I left college.

It used to be easy to know what to read. I read what my teachers told me to read, and whatever Jack Weyland book I hadn't already read. (Random side note: I had Dr. Weyland as a professor in college. It was the most interesting Physical Science class. For instance, he came in costume every Friday.)

So, my friends, I need your help, what should I read? If you think I should finish the Twilight series, go ahead and recommend that. Also, my life is complicated enough, I don't want to read anything too deep, and definetly nothing depressing. At this point in my life I am pretty shallow.

Hayden's Vacation

All of our scissors and markers have been safely tucked away, because Hayden arrived home from her vacation last night. My dad brought her home in the back seat of his Porche. She had a great time visiting grandma and grandpa. Grandma says she was a very good girl. She has already tried on every dress up outfit that she owns this morning. I guess that is what she missed the most.

On a walk with grandma

Getting her hair curled for church. Looks like grandma didn't make her put panties on her head though. (My mom used to make us put our panties on our heads after we put our curlers in so that our curlers wouldn't fall out. She also made us watch the Lawrence Welk show while we were getting our curlers in, because that is what she did when she was a little girl.)

This picture is a little blurry, but I posted it anyways because Hayden looks so much like my sister Natalie in this picture.

At one of the five trips to McDonald's.

A squeeze from Auntie Hannah.

I'm not sure what this is all about, but it is pretty cute.

Dressing up like grandma.

She loves to help grandma clean. I don't know why she doesn't have the same enthusiasm at home.

Looks like they took a break from McDonald's one day to go to In-N-Out.

Making cookies with grandma.

It was nice for both Hayden and I to have a little vacation. We are glad that she is home. We have missed her happy (most of the time) little soul.