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.

Easter 2011

This year Easter was really laid-back for us.... (get it? "laid"? like an egg? HAHA I "crack" myself up!) But seriously we had a lot of fun not really doing much at all. On Saturday afternoon Family Student Housing hosted an Easter party complete with an Easter Egg hunt. John STILL doesn't care in the slightest about stuff like that (and frankly I don't really care about Easter egg hunts either) and Josh was just excited to be outside. I, however, wanted my token picture of my kids with a basket and Easter eggs around them (don't ask me why, I just do!).

I got one....

John on the other hand wanted to be the one taking the pictures the whole time and enjoyed eating all of the candy from Joshua's eggs.
Joshua decided to choose this moment to start to crawl "for real". He has been army scooting everywhere for the past ever and while I was taking pictures of him on the grass he decided he didn't like the feel of it and pushed himself up and started to crawl away!All three of my boys had a blast running around the field playing tag. Daniel would make Josh "get" John and they would both start scream laughing and chase each other. It was so cute to watch.

John ended up winning one of the raffle prizes: a CARS book. He was so excited when he got it he came right over to me, sat on my lap and had me read it to him 3 or 4 times in a row. He read it all the way home until he was so exhausted he fell right asleep. We keep it in the car now so he has something fun to look at whenever we go anywhere. Plus this way it will be a novelty for longer and it's also a good bribing tool!

On Easter Sunday we went to church and I sat outside in the hall with screaming children while Daniel sang with the choir. Daniel actually took Joshua up on stage with him for a few songs while I wrestled John but then Joshua started getting a little squirmy and fussy so I took them both out in the hall. The rest of church was great and even John enjoyed the second half of nursery. When we got in the car to go home our battery had completely died! Thank goodness for Jeannie and Colin who came to our rescue and helped us break in our brand new set of jumper cables :) We watched movies and ate delicious burritos and caramel apples the rest of the night.

Hope everyone had a great Easter like we did!!

Flowers and Cake Design...Check

I finished my second cake decorating course...Flowers and Cake design. It was a great course and I had a lot of fun learning all of the different flowers. For our final project we learned to do the basket weave and our assignment was to make our flowers at home then bring them to put on the cake. Easier said than done! I spent all morning making Lilies and Daisies (the reason it took me all morning was because every time I would start to make a flower my boys demanded my attention. I had to keep stopping and starting over and over so yes it took ALL morning!) and took everything to my class still not sure what to do with my cake.

I started out making the basket weave...
When that was done I put a border on it...
Then the flowers...
I think it turned out pretty. I gave this cake to my good friends the Poland's because they were kind enough to watch John and Josh for me during my classes. John had a blast playing with Eli and I got my very needed cake/girl time!!

P.S- My friend Jo told me about this website called Cake Wrecks. If you haven't seen it yet you seriously need to check it out. This lady does a post a day about cakes (funny, ugly, etc) and on Sundays she posts "Sunday Sweets" and highlights gorgeous cakes. I really like this site!

Ayla's Visit

This is Ayla....She is one of our most favorite people on the planet....Last week she came out for a quick visit....

We had dinner at Kmart (Little Ceasars Pizza and breadsticks) and then spent a little bit of time trying to fly our new Buzz Lightyear kite.

The boys and their Auntie Ayla!

The wind was being really weird on us and kept going away then coming back strong suddenly then going away again. It made it hard to actually fly the kite for more than a minute but each time we got it up in the air John would exclaim. "Oh Wooooooooooow!" "Aaaaaahhh WOW!"

Ayla and I had a grand old time playing in the grass. It was the perfect length to roll around in and get lost.

...Joshua didn't seem to enjoy it as much as we did!Ayla brought out her fancy smancy kite but the wind was so unpredictable that we had a rough time getting that one in the air as well. Maybe next time we'll try flying them at the beach...

We love it when Ayla comes to visit!! :)