Fun with All My Sisters!

Emily, Jessica (and Mitch), and Sarah all came down from Utah last week! Fun! Now, Mitch is the one with the cool camera, so he took all the pictures, so he has all the pictures. :-/ Which makes it pretty difficult for me to blog about it. But ohhhh well. I'll just use the only ones I have-- from my phone.
So! They all drove down on Wednesday night, stayed in St. George, and then drove the rest of the way Thursday morning. They got to my house just after noon on Thursday. I had been eagerly anticipating their arrival.
A few minutes before they got there I looked at my phone and I had SEVENTEEN new messages! Whoa! Em, Jess, and Sarah all started taking picture messages and bombarding my inbox with pictures of my exit, my street signs, my complex signs, my gate, etc. All to show how close they were getting. :) Before I even had a chance to look at like, three of them--- KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! Hooray!!!
I'll be honest, Nathan was in a bad mood when they got there-- and that was no fun! But Jessica took him with her when they were getting stuff out of the car. Sarah sent me this picture while they were gone. {Shakes head...} Yeah.. that's our fountain in our apartment complex. Sighhhh... But I bet Nathan thoroughly enjoyed it! Then we drove out to my grandparents' house (with a few stops along the way) and we had a Girls' Craft Day to make these blocks! Each of them is slightly different (except Jessica's-- hers are way different because she had a birthday banner that she was trying to match). They're birthday WISH blocks! Fun! This is the order-- from top to bottom-- Jessica's, Stephanie's, Emily's, Tracy's, Sarah's, Mom's. Each one has something that I love how they chose to do it. But the theme of the craft was, "It's your project-- you can do it however you want!" :)

We also took a long hiatus of crafting to attend a performance of Beauty and the Beast put on by the Arcadia Stake. It was very well done, but verrrry long--especially considering that we all had a craft we were waiting to get back to. After the play, at like, 10:30pm, we got back to my Grandma's and decided to just take 20 minutes to finish our crafts and be done, otherwise they'd just sit and be another unfinished project forever. Longest 20 minutes ever. We finally went home just after one-- or got home just after one-- can't remember.. All I remember is how tired I was! But we ended up with a super cute craft and had a great time. That was the first time that all the siblings have been together in a long time!

More to come, because that was just Thursday! :)

Our Little (Half) Ecuadorian Baby

On Thursday night, some of Freddy's cousins came over for dinner! Fun! We had a really great time with them.

Also, Sandra, who's visiting from Ecuador, brought a little gift for Nathan! (how nice..) It was an authentic shirt from Ecuador... in Nathan's size!! How cuuute!

I tried my best to get a good picture of him wearing it, but as you can see, he was not very helpful with that.Finally I gave up and just took it off him to get a better picture. Cute, huh? I love it!

Thanks, Sandra! Enjoy California!

NATHAN LEARNS TO CRAWL!

(This has been a draft waiting to be published for like, over a week and a half. It had a video to go along with it, but it was taking foooorrrrreverrrr to finish loading. And guess what? I got tired of waiting. So here's the post, withOUT the video instead.)

On Wednesday afternoon, Freddy was sitting at the computer and I was on the floor scrapbooking. Nathan was sitting on the floor a few feet from me playing with his toys, but of course all the things that I had looked a lot more interesting (especially since he's never been allowed to play with all my scrapbooking stuff). All the sudden, he started crawling to get to the scrapbooking papers beside me! Whaaaat? When did you learn to crawl?!
He's been able to manuver for a little while... leaning over this way and that, but he couldn't get his knees to follow his arms. All attempts (which were many) looked more like hand, hand, leeeean... collapse-- instead of hand, hand, knee, knee.

But now, oh boy, this kid is everywhere. I was cleaning up yesterday and he was right behind me every step of the way (unless he was distracted by something that looked like fun to play with-- a.k.a. something I didn't realize was still at baby level, that shouldn't be). Oh next project is getting all those little annoying baby proofing things that make doing anything much, much harder. (You can't just use the plug, first you have to figure out a way to get that dumb, little safety plug out of the plug.)

In the mean time, we're in awe of how quickly Nathan's learning to do things. It really is fun and exciting to see him grow and develop. :)

Nathan's Discovery

Nathan has a new discovery... and it's his favorite thing to play with. Who knew that there were built in toys at our house? :)

Indoor Soccer... for Tracy!

I know, it's a surprise even for me... but it's true! I'm playing on an indoor soccer team on Monday nights! Normally, I'm a really good spectator... and just that. Not a player. Ever. But not anymore! :)
Today was our second game (I missed the first one because I just joined a few days ago..) And it is SO MUCH FUN! We won, 7-3, which was such a relief-- I was so worried that I would be the one to make us lose or something, but we did really well! And Freddy and Nathan were on the side lines cheering for me! How nice.. :)
It was also Tiffany's 20th birthday (Happy Birthday, Tiff!) So, afterwards we went back to the car where Maria had a surprise cake for her. Yay! Our team color is purple and I was like, "Uhh... the only purple shirt I have is my Chuck E. Cheese shirt. :/" And Tiny was like, "Oh that's okay! I wear my Princess Jasmine shirt!" Whew! So we looked great out there after all. Yay for Team Crush (that's our name because we crush our opponents... theoretically, anyway). And yay for Maria and Tiny convincing me to play! And yay for Freddy taking the time to teach me some cool moves (or even just the basics...). :D

Freddy and Nathan Together

Freddy's a really good dad... You can see it just by how he acts around Nathan. :)It's obvious that Nathan feels special when Freddy's around... He's just always so excited to see him!

It's exciting to see them interact and it will be fun to see how their friendship grows and develops over time.

They have a very special bond, as father and son, that is unlike anything else.

It's Always Fun When Family Comes, When Family Comes HOORAY!

When Freddy's relatives come from Ecuador, they arrive at LAX at about 12:30 am. Yes, that's late (and feels later when you have a baby to worry about too), but it's so exciting that we always want to be there to welcome them! And of course it's always a hassle to go to the airport-- especially LAX. But let me tell you, there is one thing that makes it all worth it: Quesadillas from Ecuador! Now, these definitely aren't your standard tortilla with cheese in it-- in fact, I don't even know why they're called that because they don't even have cheese in them at all. But they are delicious. Sometimes I talk about maybe moving to Ecuador to get a job with the lady that makes them, just so I would know the secret recipe and I could make them all the time... Someday maybe I will..
Of course I'm so happy to see relatives... (but I'm ecstatic when they remembered to bring quesadillas just for me.) :D Thank you, Joanna!

Apartment Gardening: Not as Easy as it Looks

I've always dreamed of having a thriving garden to rave and rave about. Unfortunately, that probably isn't the case with this year's garden, but it is a step in the right direction. It's not easy having a garden when all you have is a concrete patio, but we're making it work!

First, we have my herb garden:These are complements of Stephanie, my sister. For our Secret Sister exchange from Christmas last year she gave me the herb garden I wanted (or at least promised that we'd make it eventually). So she surprised me a couple months ago with these cute, labeled pots. Some of them are dead, yes. But that's only because they were already dead by the time I realized that outside was too hot for them. I was hoping that once they came into our SecondBedroomOfficeCraftRoomGuestBedroom they would revive, but unfortunately that is not the case. And also, the cilantro, which looks the worst (and really makes me look like a terrible, terrible gardener), is that way because I think I harvested too much at once and it just couldn't recover. And you know, I even used Miracle Grow potting soil hoping that they would GROW instead of just grow, but :/ meh. I'm still learning how to have a green thumb. (And the one that's not in a pot is oregano, which is actually growing quite well, but I still need to pot it in a red pot..) Moving on...

Then we have our tomatoes! (Ta daaaaaaa!)

We'll see how well they grow. :/ Right now my problem is that I have no where to hang them... So they're tied to the fencing part of our patio, but the actual leaves and tomato plants are blocked from the sun. They've been growing every which way, trying to reach some sunlight. Also, they've been growing through the fence, (which is fine-ish for now) but secretly I worry that maybe some neighbors just might harvest my tomatoes if they see delicious, red, ripe tomatoes. Maybe they won't, but I'd rather not tempt them. :/ This weekend maybe we'll go to Lowe's and see if they have any sort of upside-down tomato plant holder type-thing.

But! The middle plant has some sort of growth on it! I say that because it had flowers and now there's this, which you would think it's a tomato-- and it might be-- but up close it sorta looks like it's going to open up into a flower like a pumpkin or squash would have. :/ Being an achieved gardener is harder than it looks. :/

Hopefully soon I'll have tons and tons of delicious tomatoes to rave and rave about. (I should probably go water them about now, actually.)

Fourth of July Weekend

To start off our fun-filled Fourth of July weekend, we got new tires! Obviously those aren't the tires we got, but we were waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting) for them to finish working on the car, we went on a walk and found this monster tire. We found it incredibly blog appropriate and had to take a picture. So that was allll dayyyyy long on Saturday-- new tires, new brakes, same old attitude of "Man, these are way too expensive" from me.

Then, we skip to Sunday! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULYYYYYY! I l-o-v-e the 4th of July and was SO disappointed that it was on a Sunday this year (so was Valentine's Day, Jessica's birthday, my birthday, and so will Sarah's birthday and Halloween/Steph's birthday. Sorry if I missed anyone- just making my point that everything fell on a Sunday this year.. And that's on top of Easter, Mother's and Father's days--which are already on Sundays anyway).

Anyway, we went to church and found out about the COOLEST Pioneer Day camping trip that our stake is having. We are SO excited about that! Less than two weeks away!

After church we had Freddy's mom and grandma over for a small barbeque and Maria and Tiny came too! Yay! (Sorry no pictures :/)

After everyone went home we got ready to go check out the firework display put on by the city. We got to what looked like a good spot and took some pictures while we waited.

Then! We saw them do a test firework and realized that we were RIGHT behind a bunch of trees (boo...) so we had to move to a better spot. As we were driving, the show started! Aaaah! So we hurried into a parking lot that looked like where everyone was supposed to be anyway and found a spot to park. It was perfect!!

We saw some really beautiful fireworks! I tried to take pictures, but my timing was awful so all of mine turned out as just black with like, two sparks in the sky. But Freddy's an amazing photographer and got some perfect shots!

It was a surprisingly long show and they did a great job! But the only problem was that afterward, instead of just clapping, everyone started honking their horns. >:( (I have a very low tolerance level for misuse of car horns.) Seriously, there were like 200 cars that were just laying on their horns repeatedly. That lasted for probably 25 minutes or so as we were trying to leave the parking lot. I was so not happy with those drivers*.

Instead of sitting in traffic, we waiting in the parking lot until it was a little less congested and took some more pictures together. Nathan is very ticklish, especially in one particular spot on the back of his neck. So here we have Nathan getting tickled by Freddy**.

And then here we have our favorite family picture from the firework show***. :) Fun night!

On the drive home I was reminded of a funny family story:

When we were younger, we would be sitting at the dinner table waiting to eat and my dad used to make us say one thing we were grateful for before we could start eating. Standard answers were obvious-- family, friends, our house, blah blah blah. But my little brother Jason (probably about 3 or 4 at the time) used to always say that he was grateful for "fireworks!" I couldn't help but just start laughing at the thought of it. :) Tonight I was grateful for fireworks, too.

*and their dumb kids that kept playing with the car horns. My kid wasn't doing that.
**Note that you can see Nathan's teeth in those pictures! He has FOUR now! Two on top and two on bottom!
***The only problem was that some people driving past would see us taking a picture together and they would honnnnnnnnnnnnnk because it was so cute!!! Which would make the person three cars away honnnnnnnnnnnk and the car next to them honnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk honnnnnk honnnnnk! (Which would only make me madder... >:[ )

An Unwelcome Guest

Yesterday, Nathan and I were cleaning up in the master bedroom and noticed a little friend that had come to hang out with us. A lizard had made it through (or around, or under, or who knows how) the screen door and was just outside the sliding glass door (still, definitely outside though). Later in the day, he had climbed up on the screen door and was showing off his belly, while we were outside watering our tomatoes. What fun we were having together.
Then. At night, (much later, once I'd totally and completely forgotten about our friend) Freddy was hot, so hot he couldn't sleep. I suggested that perhaps he would prefer if the door was open to let some cool air in? He kindly accepted, but just a little bit. We both fell asleep. :)

We'll fast forward to when I was in the shower this morning and Freddy walked into the bathroom. He had come to inform me that our visitor from the previous day had managed to make his way inside our bedroom and had become quite comfortable nestled up with Freddy's clothes from the day before. You see, Freddy didn't need his dirty pants, but they still happened to have Freddy's belt in them, which he did need.

One thought entered my mind: Where are my little brothers when you need them? My brothers used to catch lizards in the backyard and take them (in their pockets) wherever they went (including church-- which led to the ritual of the "Pocket Check" before leaving the van to go into church).

Also as a side note, Freddy isn't scared of anything. He'll kill anything I want him to-- spiders, crickets!!!, and bugs in general. But there is one thing he says he doesn't like, but I have yet to encounter: snakes. And the way I see it, a lizard is just a snake with legs. Thus I was concerned with how he might approach the situation. However, Freddy did not disappoint. Long story short, Freddy kindly led our unwelcome guest back outside where he belongs.

That was our morning adventure today. :)