Magic Mountain

The Tuesday before we moved we finally made the trip to Magic Mountain. I have wanted to go there since we were first married and every time we planned on going something would happen to make us postpone (pregnancy, sickness, etc.). This time the stars aligned just right and our wonderful friends Ryan and Nicole took the boys for the day and we headed off. We met a couple of friends there Sean and Ayla and arrived just after opening. Unfortunately Sean was banned from the park that day (he he he funny story!) so he wasn't able to go in with us. We had a lot of fun together and Daniel finally got to introduce me to what a "real" roller coaster is like. We went on Viper first which was great then we went and stood in line for Dejavu. I was so scared on that ride that I was shaking so bad when it was over. I don't think I was expecting it to be like that so I was scared out of my mind. We tamed things down a bit after that and went on a small water canoe ride thing that was fun then Ninja, The Riddler's Revenge, and Scream (by far my favorite ride of the day. I could have gone on that one 10 more times). Then Daniel's brother brought us some lunch and we ate a delicious funnel cake that was so expensive but well worth it :)

After we ate we were all really tired and decided to wait in line for X2. It's one of the biggest (and best) roller coasters in the park and it was definitely worth the hour plus wait. It was nice to take a breather and let our lunch digest before going on another ride. I don't think I've screamed so hard in my life on that ride. Daniel was laughing at me the entire time and I literally lost my voice by the end. There were huge fireballs at one point...aaaahhhhh! After that we decided to call it quits on the roller coasters because that one was so intense and great that we wanted to leave the park ending on the best ride. Plus it was almost time to close so we went and played one of those silly games where you hit the big hammer on the thing and the the thingy goes up to the top. Ayla did pretty good, I made it about 80% of the way but Daniel was the best he made it all the way to the top. We all got cool capes to take home (I got a Batman cape, Daniel got the Superman cape, and Ayla got the Wonderwoman cape). We hit up the Wendy's before heading back home and were completely exhausted. We tried everything to keep each other awake but we did get safely home....thank goodness!

On Viper right before we lowered the harness things.

This was on the little boat water ride thing. I realized after looking at this picture that Daniel and I don't really have that many pictures of just the two of us. Once the kids came we just don't take many pictures of us together anymore.

Ayla is a huge time surfer girl so when we saw this sign we had to be dorks for a second and take a surfing picture together!

I loved posing with Wonder Woman and Batman!

This is us going down the awesome boat-canoe ride!

Packing and Moving

Our packing experience can be summed up in one word...CRAZY! I thought I was so smart and clever by starting to pack 2 weeks prior to our move. Don't get me wrong it did help A LOT but even though I had promised myself I would label every box and make lists of everything in each box (that way we could find it easy enough in our storage unit) by the end I was throwing random things into random boxes and not labeling anything at all! I got to the point where I just wanted to throw everything away and start fresh (which would have been really annoying so I'm glad my sensible husband calmed me down and talked me out of it!). I'm glad to say that eventually everything did get packed up and onto the moving van. We had plenty of room to fix a junk load of stuff and after moving it all into our storage unit we even have a pathway down the middle so we can get to things easy enough....finding things is a different story!

Here are some pictures of the kids during their last week in SB. I have a million more but I wanted to show how much they put up with from me and the craziness of moving!

It rained one of the days and even though it was cold John LOVES splashing around in it.

Many a time I would find John and Josh getting into things they weren't suppose to. Every time I would start to clean one room and feel really accomplished getting things done and 2 seconds later I would walk into another room and find a similar situation like this....my two little tornadoes doing what they do best!I can't even keep a roll of TP intact! He would unroll the entire thing and spread it all over the house.

Poor John got really mad at me one day because I forgot to give him breakfast (I know I know, Mother of the Year right?!) so he tried to pour a glass of orange juice for himself and ended up spilling it all over his pants (which he discarded immediately).

John had to take up the post of "provider" while I was busy doing stuff and tried many times to feed Joshua. It usually ended up being a bigger mess to clean up than anything else but it was really thoughtful and cute. In this picture he actually had on his Mickey Mouse ears and was trying to feed Joshua but right when I snapped the picture the Mickey Mouse ears feel backward and you can't even tell. It was really cute though.

This whole process made all of us really REALLY tired!

Here's Daniel and my dad Allen getting everything into our moving van. Of course I was so busy that I didn't take many pictures of the moving process (which I regret now) but at least it's done and over with!

Happenings...

Ok I know it's been a long time but with all the craziness that has been happening and now we don't have internet anymore it's a little difficult to get online. However, this will all be fixed soon once I move into my moms house next week. Unlimited internet access= much time to catch up! Until then here's a summary of our happenings...

-Packing, packing, packing
-My first trip to Magic Mountain
- "Naucho Goodbye/Birthday Party"
-Daniel graduated with his Masters ...hurray!!
-The move
-The drive
-The amazing amounts of fun John and Josh are having with their cousins

and finally, today we entered Joshua into the Freedom Festival Baby Contest and guess what?...

He won 1st place!

More pictures and explanations to come about all of the other awesome stuff that's been going on in our lives...soon!

Busy Busy Busy

Life is really busy for us right now. It seems like once I finish something 10 more things creep up and my "to do" list keeps getting longer and longer! As kind of an overview this is what is up with us right now...

Our parking lot is getting re-paved. It will be nice to have a new pot-hole-free parking lot but it has come with some inconveniences. 1- We have to park in a field that's quite a walk away from our apartment (I'm use to coming out of my door and having my car right there in front of me!) and 2- They have put up fences around the entire project so we have to walk all the way around in order to get to the parking lot. It adds on at least an extra 10-15 min to get anywhere. I'm happy I have a double stroller so I can push the kids to the car because when I try to get John to walk on his own he gets distracted by the big trucks and just wants to stand at the fence and watch the bulldozers all day!
This past weekend the Tenants Association hosted a Cowboy Hoedown for Family Student Housing (for those of you who don't know I am the current President of the Tenants Association). It turned out to be a GREAT party. We had great food, awesome raffle prizes, a pie baking contest (which my friend Esther won 1st place with a banana coconut cream pie!), a tie dye station, lots of crafts, face painting, and an old fashioned photo booth that I was in charge of. It was a lot of work but I really think it was a success....or at least I hope it was ;)

This is my favorite picture of the day!

Joshua was taking a nap when I had time to take John and his picture so I ended up just getting John but I did take this cute one earlier that day of him in my cowboy hat!

I had my last class for the Fondant and Gumpaste Cake Decorating class last night. It was SO much fun. I've decided that I REALLY like working with fondant and making flowers from gumpaste. I loved this class and had a blast making this awesome looking present cake.

I made a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting in the middle and chocolate frosting on top before putting the fondant on. Daniel and I decided to give it to a friend who so kindly watched our boys for us while I was in the class and Daniel was in choir rehearsal.

The rest of my time lately has been spent cleaning, organizing and packing up life that we have established over the past 3 years. It's amazing how much stuff we have acquired. I spent 6 hours scrubbing my stove today! It took that long mostly because I kept having to stop every 5 minutes to stop the kids from destroying one of the other rooms of the house because for some reason my boys seem to think that when mommy is busy doing something they have free reign and can do whatever they want. Including getting into the pizza box that was up on top of the entertainment center...

I can always bank on something going on when they get quiet! If for some reason I can't hear them I know they are getting into something they shouldn't be. This was definitely one of those times.

We have 20 days left in Santa Barbara. One more week of not seeing my husband because of classes and rehearsals and projects. About a thousand more boxes needing to be filled with all of our stuff. A well deserved trip to Magic Mountain (for my first time) coming up right before we go. And what I'm sure will be many more days where I feel like this...

Mothers Day

I know....it's been a while! Once sickness entered our house it had to run through the ENTIRE household. Daniel managed to escape it for the most part but I was overcome for a few days by a sore throat, body aches, and no energy to get me through my day. I'm all better now thank goodness!

Last week was Mothers Day, and Daniel's Master Recital. Mothers Day was great this year. That happened to be one of the days I wasn't feeling very well so I ended up staying home from Church with the kids while Daniel went by himself. While the kids took a nap I was able to take long shower and curl my hair (all without 2 little boys running amok of my house!!). When Daniel came home we spent the rest of the evening getting things ready for the recital. As a Mothers Day gift this year Daniel sent me on a little scavenger hunt. He left a note saying "To find your present, you have to go n a scavenger hunt. First clue: Where do you go to ride a bike?" I immediately went outside to the bike rack and found a wrapped box with another note saying "Here is your present....I'm not that great at scavenger hunts!" It was really funny! When I opened the box I found this...
I have a small collection of these statue things. This by far is my favorite one. What a perfect Mothers Day present. Daniel is so thoughtful and always seems to know exactly the right thing to say or do. I was joking later that I should chip off the hair of the smallest boy because Joshua is still bald!!

Later on that evening we had Daniel's Master Recital. He had to sing for 1 hour in 4 different languages. He has been working SO hard and for so long on these pieces. He did a fantastic job and I am so proud of him.At some point I will try to put up a little video of one of the songs he sang for everyone to see. Unfortunately when I set up the video camera to film his recital I didn't realize that the focus was set to manual instead of auto. I kept looking at the screen and thinking "why does he look so fuzzy?" but I had no idea how to fix it and so I just let it. The entire thing is fuzzy but at least we have some sort of record of his performance.

After the recital we had a food table set up. Usually for these type of recitals people have cheese and crackers and wine as an after-recital reception. Daniel decided he wanted to do a nacho bar and root-beer floats! It was so much fun. We bought a lot of our stuff at Smart n Final in bulk so we had a lot of food but we managed to go through most of it.It turned out to be a great day. Now that Daniel is finished with his recital the fact that we are moving is starting to hit me more. One month from today people....weird...

Joshua's first ER visit

On Saturday Joshua had his first ER visit.
Friday afternoon Josh woke up from a nap coughing and not feeling well. That night he was up most of the night with a bad croupy cough and low-grade fever. I was hoping it would all just blow over but the next day he was having trouble breathing and since it was the weekend we had no choice but to take him to the emergency room.
My wonderful friend Kaitlin watched John for me and Daniel had to go to work so I went over there with Josh myself. We arrived at 5:00 in the evening and waited until 7:30 to be taken back. Good thing it wasn't a REAL emergency or I would have been so annoyed waiting that long. Thank goodness I had my MP3 player to keep me company (Harry Potter....gotta love it!)When we finally went back everything happened pretty quick. The doctor came through and checked him out and said he had Bronchiolitis and suspected RSV. They did a chest x-ray to make sure his lungs were clear, a breathing treatment, and they gave him a shot. He did really well for everything until they gave him a breathing treatment and the nurse gave him the shot. He did not like that one little bit.

We left the ER at about 8:15 and that night he was still up most of the night crying and coughing but it wasn't nearly as bad as the night before. The next day we stayed home from church and tried to rest up. Its now Tuesday and he is doing great. He's a tough little kid and I'm so happy he's feeling better. It's nice for Mommy to get some sleep again!!

9 Months Old

I can't believe my little boy is already 9 months old. At his last Dr. appointment a few days ago he weighed in at 20lbs and he was in the 50% for weight, 25% for height, and 90% for head size! Besides getting over his sickness he's had over the weekend he is healthy and strong.

I really do think this is the perfect age! He is so much fun to hang out with and I LOVE spending every day with him. On Easter he decided to start "for real" crawling which he has kept up but if he wants to get somewhere fast he goes back to army crawling which he's much faster at. Later on that night he started pushing himself up into a sitting position from a crawling position for the first time. On April 28 he started to pull himself up on the furniture and walk around it. He's been trying to pull himself up for a while now but he hasn't had the balance. The bad thing is we don't have carpet so he acquired MANY bumps and bruises from his attempts. The good news is he is much sturdier now and has no problems keeping his balance and walking around things. This has opened a whole new chapter in my attempts to baby-proof the house.He is really talkative and has said "Da-Da" "Ga-Ga" and "Ya-Ya". He likes to have conversations with himself or whatever toy is playing with at the time. He loves playing with John even though John steals just about EVERYTHING that Joshua puts his hands on. One day Joshua took a really long nap and I think John got bored without him because next thing I know I can hear John screaming "Wash-wa" and I go through and he climbed into his crib and was yelling at him to wake up! It was pretty cute now that I look back on it.