Crazy Eights Tag

I've been tagged with the Crazy Eights. The rules are: Name who tagged you - Cathy W. got me. Fill in the eights, and tag eight others.
Here are the eights.

Eight things I look forward to:
1. A day in which there are more than 24 hours.
2. Vacations.
3. Having the dining room in a condition that we can actually eat in it. (I've been eating sitting on the kitchen floor.)
4. Getting published.
5. Emma walking more than 10 steps at a time.
6. The completion of the Vancouver, B.C. Temple.
7. Nathan being done with dental school.
8. Going to Macey's next time we're in Logan so we can remember what customer service is supposed to be like.

Eight things I did yesterday:
1. Paint.
2. Weed.
3. Plant a few flowers.
4. Babysit.
5. Ate a yummy dinner of grilled hamburgers, guacamole and chips, and ice cream..
6. Gave a couple kids baths.
7. Tried to sleep, but couldn't (not well, anyway).
8. Changed Emma's clothes a few times.

Eight things I wish I could do.
1. Fly.
2. Have more time.
3. Make chocolate appear by snapping my fingers.
4. Read as much as I want.
5. Write as much as I want.
6. Snap my fingers and have all the daily house work done (a la Mary Poppins).
7. Have time for sports and working out.
8. Eat the results of #3 without consequences.

Eight Shows I watch
1. House
2. Prison Break, but it's over now :(
3. Arrested Development
4. The Office
5.
6. I like to watch What Not to Wear, but we don't get that station and we don't really watch anything other than the top 4
7.
8.

I'm not really up to tagging 8 people right now, so if you want to play along, play. Just let me know so I can check out your 8s.

The Retro House Updated

I know it's been about a week since I blogged, but hey, I warned you that it would be a while, right? Things have been crazy here with trying to get the house in order and out of its 1950s shell. For example:

Here's me trying to get the linoleum off the floor in Jeremy and Emma's room.

Jeremy's been sleeping on his mattress in the living room or on our bed (it just has depended on where we've been working while they're asleep). Emma's been sleeping in the portable crib. Megan is the lucky one who has a bed and who's room isn't really covered in boxes.

We've also been taking down wallpaper. Lots of it. Here's the living room wallpaper coming down and you can kinda get a peek at a dining room wall in its new bareness. We almost finished painting last night. As we were off to bed Nathan noticed two or three little spots near the ceiling that need touch ups, so we should be done with this sometime this morning.
And here's me mowing our yard. This is my very first time EVER mowing a yard. We decided against the traditional mower that uses gas since it's so expensive, stinky, and loud and opted for the old school push mower. It was actually a lot of fun and did a good job cutting the grass. I had my doubts, but it worked well.
We've also been hard at play.

I loved this shot of the tricycle next to Nathan's bike. But here you see we've done sidewalk chalk, something we weren't allowed to do at the apartment complex.
Water gun fights while waiting for the Memorial Day Parade to begin.

This one's for you, Leanne! There were two bagpipe bands in the parade and this one was really good (in my I-know-nothing-about-pipe-bands opinion).
And Dad, this one's for you. There were a bunch of these little "Korvettes" (sorry if the "" are unnecessary, I don't know if that's the real name or not). These guys were really cool. They drove around really fast and did all kinds of formation work.


I've also started working on the front yard, pulling out weeds and the wild plants that were growing around the trees in front and planting new ones. I've been working on the front yard for three days and I'm nowhere near done with the area around just one of the trees. Some of our good friends gave us a flat of flowers after they bought too many and that sparked my drive to get it done. So at our tri-weekly trip to Home Depot we bought a few more flats and now I'm hard at work on another project.

So in addition to those things we've been trying to put away everything, get the basement in a condition ready for the kids to take over (it's going to be a play room for them), ripping up carpet in the dining room to reveal beautiful hardwood floors that need only a little bit of help to make them ready, and I'm still babysitting among all this mess and craziness. Fun times!

We love being in a house, we are extremely grateful to have it, to have our own space, and have a chance to make it our own. Even if it means things aren't being put away immediately.

We're Moving!

We get the keys to our house at 10AM Friday morning.


Can I tell you how excited I am?


To take a page out of Megan's measuring things book . . .

I am 90 86 22 78 excited. Give or take 300. Probably the give.

Our internet and phone will be turned off on Saturday, so this may be my last post for a while.

And if you call me I won't answer.

Because we be having a new phone number.

One which Megan has already memorized.

Not fair. I just barely got the one we have memorized.

I still have to sing the phone number song to remember it.

I had Jeremy sing the song to me when I was filling out all of Megan's preschool forms and they needed our phone number on 50 different papers.

And now, I have to learn a new one.

But still. It is worth it. Because the new phone number comes with a backyard and a basement and a clothes washer and dryer. It comes with a garage and neighbors who don't live above or below me. It comes with some really cute furniture and extras that the previous owner is leaving for us, too.

Did I mention I'm excited? Like about 67 35 92 excited?

Yeah. I am.

Happy Birthday, Emma!!

One Year Ago

And Today

The Caterpillar Cake

Yum! No shyness about eating from this girl! Both Megan and Jeremy were squeamish with their first birthday cakes, not wanting to get their hands messy.
Emma had no problem with this.

Emma beat her old record of 5 steps as she walked toward her presents.
Her new record: 8 steps!


She knew just what to do!



All the loot!
(Except the new car seat which will be picked up tomorrow!)

Happy Birthday, Emma! We love you very much and are so glad that you are part of our family. On your blessing day when Papa said you'd be a peacemaker in our home, it was true. You've been a great blessing to us and a source of great peace and happiness in our family.

D.C. in Pictures

I meant to blog earlier about our trip, but to be honest,

I was tired and wanted to watch the last two episodes of Prison Break (which were terrific and maddening at the same time by the way). Also, Nathan won't let me do the vacation post until he is finished PhotoShopping every single picture we took. And we took A LOT of pictures. So here is a feeble attempt that will consist mostly of pictures (all of which are PhotoShopped) to alleviate the need for much writing. Plus, I've uploaded some of these pictures five times and written captions for them, and Blogger keeps deleting them.

Our trip was with three other dental school students: one single with no kids, one single with his 7 year old daughter (who Megan and Jeremy love), one married and brought his newly returned missionary sister as well, and one married with 4 kids. It was a blast having so many friends with us. I had to not use some of my favorite pictures and substitute others because I didn't get permission from everyone to post pictures of their kids, so sorry, you're not getting all of the coolest pictures.

The first stop was the Maryland Statehouse in Annapolis. This is where George Washington resigned his commission as commander of the army since he was elected president. If he hadn't resigned, he would have been considered a dictator.

We started our first full day riding the Metro. We parked the van in a lot ($4 a day!) and then rode the Metro into D.C. Seriously, this is the nicest public transportation I've ever used or seen. Here are the kids waiting for the Metro to arrive.

We began at the Washington Monument, or in Megan and Jeremy's words,
The Big Elevator.
It was really cool up there. We rode the elevator up and were able to see
the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and lots of other cool stuff from the top.
Here are a few pictures of us waiting to go in.

We also went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and got to see some twenties and one hundreds being printed. While we were there they actually had to halt production because when they were randomly checking one of the bills, they couldn't find the security strip in it. It got passed around to four people and none of them could find it.

Here we are at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Natural History. This display is for what salt would look like if you could do something cool with it, I just don't remember what. I assume it wouldn't actually be blue and red.

Megan posing with a huge amethyst.
The Smithsonian The Museum of American History. This is Lincoln's hat. They had a huge display on him and his wife and it. was. cool.



Arlington National Cemetery.
It doesn't really hit you until you're there looking at how many graves there are and how far you walk only to see more graves the entire time.

The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I couldn't help but wonder what was going through their minds at this time. It is a very mechanical and precise ceremony they go through. One of my first thoughts was, this is so cool. But then I thought, all this for one guy whose name we don't know? Why? And then I realized that this one fallen soldier is a symbol of each and every American, soldier or not. Those who take the time to protect this grave symbolize the dedication and responsibility associated with our Armed Forces.


I pointed this grave stone out to the kids because I thought it was special.
A Jewish soldier in the U.S. who went to fight in WWII.

This is as close as we got to the White House. Megan was all kinds of excited even though she can't stand Obama. She has her own political views that have been only mildly shaped by my constant mouthing off during talk radio, watching the news, or reading the news. She will tell anyone willing to listen how she feels about Obama.

Ford's Theatre. A National Park Ranger gave us a history of the theatre and then shared Lincoln's assassination story. It was really cool to sit in the theatre and hear the story. We had to wait outside for almost an hour before going in and it was worth it.

Here is Megan at The Library of Congress. This was a bit of a bust. Our tour didn't work out, so we bummed a little on another tour, but didn't stick out the whole thing. I was ticked that we couldn't actually go on a real tour (not that we would have learned anything, the kids were so loud and my ears were popping since I was really sick this day).

This is a picture Nathan took of the roof/ceiling in the Library of Congress. He had to take two pictures with two completely different exposures to get it and then put the pictures together on PhotoShop. Click on it and check it out bigger, it's really cool.


The National Botanical Gardens, the Children's Garden. By the time we left, both Megan and Jeremy were drenched. And we weren't even there very long. They loved being able to water the flowers and plants.



The Capitol Building. Very cool tour with a great video the Supreme Court should watch. I've noticed lately they've been a bit confused on what their job is, this video could help.


Megan and me with good ol' Sam Houston.

The National Archives. This is what I was most looking forward to, beside the Lincoln Memorial, and I hope not because I worked at the Utah State Archives for a few years. You can kind of see the print mark of a hand in the bottom left corner where everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence rested their left hands as they signed.

The family outside the Jefferson Memorial. The walk to get here was l-o-n-g but gorgeous! On the way we saw other memorials as well.

WWII Memorial. Every star represents 100 Americans who died in the war.


The Lincoln Memorial. I loved this. I loved being able to read his words all around the memorial and look up at his massive statue thinking about how difficult his presidency was and how he handled everything even though some of his decisions weren't popular for the most part and definately would have been considered illegal today.


Friday we made a little trip to see the Washington D.C. temple. Gorgeous!! Jeremy was asleep and Emma fussy, so I stayed in the car with them while Nathan and Megan got out to take some pictures. I was surprised by the number of people I saw turning into the parking lot just to take pictures of the temple.

Then on the way back to the hotel we stopped for something to eat. We punched into the GPS that we wanted Mexican and found a Pupusaria!!! And it was dang good! Nathan said they were the best pupusas since he was in the mission.


Saturday we started the long drive home, but not without a sweet surprise from Nathan.


Since we didn't have a lot of time to spend we did the automated tour/ride which was free and ended in a free Hershey's Bar for each of us (the little ones).


Here are the kids enjoying the singing cows who take such great pride in the fact that their milk goes into Hershey's Milk Chocolate.


We let Megan and Jeremy each pick one candy. Jeremy picked a package of Twizzlers that is almost as big as he is and probalby weights as much, while Megan picked York Peppermint Patties, which will be no surprise to anyone who knew us in Logan from the 27th Ward.


And is this not the funniest thing? I love it!

There were a couple things we did that we didn't get pictures of, an awesome tour of the Pentagon (we have no pictures of this for obvious reasons) and eating at Jimmy Cantler's Riverside Inn with almost everyone one who joined us for the trip (the couple with the missionary sister couldn't find the place and ended up going elsewhere). Nathan and Jeremy got all you can eat crab, and eat they did. Megan got a "cod-dog" while I stuck to a good ol' hamburger.