New Family Pics

On Saturday we got new family pictures taken. Seeing how the last time we had family pictures John was 2 months old I wanted to get some more up-to-date ones on our wall. They turned out ok. We went with a Hawaiian shirt deal because I thought the baby looked super cute in his shirt, but I'm not sold on me in a Hawaiian shirt! It looks fine on Daniel and John but I think I look stupid!! Oh well, I still like them :)

Sunday trip

Yesterday we went to a free concert that one of Daniel's friends was singing in at the Santa Barbara Mission. They were having a sidewalk drawing festival thing at the same time which was WAY cool. We're going to go back in a few days when they are finished with the artwork so I'll post pictures of it later. It was a really good Sunday day! The concert was nice and John stayed quiet for pretty much the whole thing. There was an old couple sitting behind us that thought he was the cutest thing in the world when he would applaud after each song!!

John LOVED riding on Daddy's shoulders the whole time.

I am super impressed at how great these pictures turned out on Daniel's phone camera. The camera on my phone is suppose to be the same megapixels and what-not but they always seem a little fuzzy and low-quality looking. Daniel can get some great looking pictures from his camera. Maybe it's high time I trade in my old grandma of a phone!!!

I turn my back for 2 seconds!

Earlier today I was trying to feed John and he was of course spitting his food all over the place. I decided to wait and try again later hoping he would eat the rest of it. I sat the bowl down on top of my foot rest/cushy coffee table thing (thinking that was a good out of the way place) and left him to play on the floor. Daniel was sleeping and I decided to check my e-mail while he played. I swear I only turned my back long enough to log onto my e-mail when I heard John banging something. I turned to look at him and I found him standing up holding onto the furniture "eating" his food. He must have still been hungry or something!! I grabbed the camera and snapped some shots of him. This is the first time he's ever pulled himself up to a standing position all by himself. He is 7 months 1 week and 3 days old.



I didn't even consider the fact that he could climb up and grab the food and smear it all over the place or I might have moved it to a better/safer location!


I love that Daniel is sound asleep in the background while the baby destroys my furniture!!

I couldn't get annoyed at a face as cute as that even though he managed to smear his food EVERYWHERE!! I was so excited that he stood up for the first time that it didn't even click that he had made such a sticky mess. Whatever...boys will be boys!

Guess Who Can Crawl

Today John not only crawled but he also pulled himself into a sitting position all by himself! We got the crawling on film but not the sitting part. It was really cute watching him make so many new "firsts" today. For the past month or so we've been watching him get around the house by putting his head on the ground and his butt straight up in the air and walking his legs so his head slides across the carpet. We didn't know if he would ever lift his head enough to actually crawl, but today he did!

As of today John is 7 months and 3 days old. Yay!!! Congrats John on another couple of "firsts".

We're moving!!

Yes oh yes we are moving to a downstairs apartment....OH HAPPY DAY!!! For the past few months I've been bugging the housing office to transfer me to a downstairs apartment because I HATE having treacherous and deadly stairs to go up and down all day. I fell down the stairs when I was at the end of my pregnancy and I had a sprained ankle while I was in labor, not fun. I also get so scared to think about if my baby happened to fall down the stairs. They are not carpeted and are steep. We were put on the transfer list and they gave us a call last Monday and offered us a downstairs that is really close to the park and the gardens. I'm also a lot closer to most of the people I know in the area which is a total plus.

So forgive me if it takes me a little while to post stuff but I'll be pretty busy packing up my life and getting ready to take the looonnnnggg journey... down the street... to our new apartment!!

Our Trip to Utah

Last week John and I went to Utah to spend Easter with my family in Utah. The trip was really fun. We were REALLY busy all week to the point where I kept thinking "Man I'm tired...I need a vacation!" A vacation from a vacation?? Anyway, the trip was fun and I'm really glad I went.

Daniel had to stay home because of school and work. There was NO WAY I was going to drive by myself with a baby for 12 hours to Utah so we checked out airplane tickets. We noticed that flights from Santa Barbara Airport were only about $60 more than flying from LA. Since the Santa Barbara Airport is literally 5 minutes from my house and when you think of 2 hours down to LA and 2 hours back plus with gas $60 is not that much more. I am SSSSOOOOO happy I did it. I will always do that from now on. The flight was non-stop to Salt Lake and it was fast and convenient.

When we arrived at the airport I noticed a family from our ward was flying on the same flight as us. They have WAY cute kids and since I'm now their Primary Chorister they know me and were excited to see me. When we very first got on the airplane everyone got situated and we noticed it was really hot. They announced that there was a problem with the engine and they couldn't turn on the air until the problem was fixed. We sat there for 20 min. in a small stuffy space with NO AIR!! John didn't handle that very well at all. He was already tired and hot before we got on the airplane and now things were 10x worse. He started screaming and there's only so much I can do in a small smothering hot space to help calm him down. The question I'm wondering is why did they board everyone onto the airplane when they were having engine problems and couldn't turn on any air? In a small space like that on a hot Santa Barbara day we were all boiling! I was getting death glares from everyone around me but really? Come on!

Once the engines were fixed they turned the air on and John finally calmed down and fell asleep minutes after we were in the air. The rest of the flight was smooth and he stayed sleeping until we arrived in good ol' cold Utah.

My sister Brittanny came and picked me up from the airport with my little nephew Tau. He was sleeping in the back and woke up with John sitting right next to him. He was SO excited and started saying "Baby John" over and over. We went and ate dinner at Golden Corral which is where my mom works so she could show off the baby to everyone!
While we were there the Utah Flash (the Basketball team for UVU) came in to raise money for a charity thing they were doing. Their mascot was going around playing with all the children and Tau thought he was the coolest thing in the world. He wouldn't eat his dinner and kept dragging me around everywhere trying to show me "da fox"!
Tau thought it was pretty cool when da fox came over and helped him eat his dinner. We couldn't get him to eat so as least he got something!

The next day my sister Misty and I got things ready for my older sister Brittanny's baby shower. It was a really fun baby shower if I do say so myself!! (I was the one that threw it so I have to say that!!!) I hope everyone else had fun to. The food was yummy, the games were fun, and my sister got some really great stuff for her little girl.


Thank you Katie for the bows!! She really liked them and we had fun testing them out on the boys since we don't have any girls to dress up yet!!!

On Easter Sunday we ate a huge lunch (mostly left over food from the shower that was really yummy) at my sister's house then I went to stake conference with my dad and afterwards we had a big dinner at my stepmom's sister Judy's house. The picture above is John with Sharon's dad Jack (Sharon's my stepmom). John absolutely loved Jack. Jack started singing and John fell asleep in his arms for a while. It was great for me to be able to visit and eat my dinner without a little boy climbing all over me!
Then my dad had the magic touch and he slept on him all through dessert! I was in heaven!!!

We had strawberry shortcake with fresh plump juicy strawberries and hand whipped cream and also a really yummy circle fruit pie thing that was really good.



After that we went to my sister's house and we made our traditional Easter Chocolate Apples. My nephew Tau decided to give himself a chocolate makeover. Best makeover I've ever seen!

On Tuesday we all went down to my grandparents Ranch up Nine Mile Canyon and spent all of Tuesday hanging out and letting the kids find Easter eggs in their front lawn.


We spent the night, had a great breakfast and hung out until around lunch time and realized it was just starting to snow. My brother-in-law Shane called my sister and told her to be careful because there was a big storm hitting and he didn't want us to get stuck in it. We packed up our stuff and went over to say hi to my Aunt Ravenna and have lunch. She made us a big pizza (one of the best tasting I've ever had!) John liked them A LOT especially since my uncle Hal and aunt Ravenna gave him his first sucker!!

We stayed for only a little bit. (Just long enough for John to eat his entire sucker, poop all over the place and have to get a quick bath!!) I felt bad leaving only after a short visit but we didn't want to get stuck in the snow.....Didn't happen!

We left and got on the freeway and the snow was barely coming down in flakes. It wasn't too bad so we decided to try to make it all the way home hopefully before hitting anything bad. We weren't even half way home and the snow started to dump on us. It was so cold that the windshield wipers completely iced over and Brittanny couldn't see the road at all. She pulled over so we could try to fix them and ended up getting majorly stuck on the side of the road. It was so slick we could NOT move. Any further to the side and we would pretty much fall off the edge and down a big hill. It was snowing like crazy and cars were zooming right past us. Especially some big ol' semi trucks which happened to crash not long after they wizzed by us. So now we were stuck with 2 kids and no way of getting out on our own and the road ahead of us was closed because some people think big trucks are invincible! A very nice couple stopped and let us use their cell phone (none of ours had reception in the canyon) and I called my husband to see if he could call my dad and get us some help. As I was on the phone a truck that had passed us earlier and had seen us trying to push our car out turned around and came back to help us. These two guys were lifesavers!! They had a chain in their truck and managed (after a while of trying) to get our car out of the snow. My mom, Brittanny and I got out of the car so it would be easier to maneuver. We left the boys in the back seat because it was snowing WAY too much and it was way too cold for them to come out and poor little Tau started bawling when a stranger got into his car and started driving! Poor kid had no idea what was going on. John sat oblivious in the back seat but poor Tau had a hard time.

They finally managed to get us out and on our way then we got stuck waiting for over an hour in the same spot while they cleaned up the big semi accident. By the time we got home the trip that was only suppose to take an hour and a half from my aunt house to my sister's house ended up taking over 4 hours!! The kids did surprisingly well being stuck in a car for that long. It was quite the adventure :)

On Thursday I spent the day at my sister Misty's house hanging out and watching movies then Brittanny and my mom went to Cafe Rio for dinner (my favorite restaurant) and we went up to Salt Lake to visit Daniel's dad and step-mom before I went to the airport.

They LOVED playing with him and feeding him.

John's kind of decided on his own that he's too good for a spoon!

And then we came home!!

The Merry Widow

I was looking through my pictures just now and realized that Daniel had taken a few pictures of when he performed in the Opera "The Merry Widow" at the Granada Theater in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago. Why have I never seen these? :)

The show was FANTASTIC!! I went to watch it with a friend from church and we had a ball. (Thanks to my friend Nicole who watched John the whole time we were gone!) The costumes were gorgeous and the set was amazing!

This was Daniel's partner in the show.

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III