Vacation Day 3

Day 3 was Sunday so we decided to take it easy for the day. We were going to have Martin take us to church, but there wasn't one in English and he had to run a bus somewhere so he couldn't take us. So we just had a relaxing day. I spent a lot of my time reading and doing my cross stitch. Here is a picture of our room, I was pleasantly surprised how nice it was.
They had a fridge full of free beverages that they refilled daily, great spa lotions and potions to use, and a turn down service that put chocolate mints on your pillow and turned on relaxing music in evening. We had a hammock out on our balcony and our balcony overlooked a lagoon full of dolphins.
You could pay to go swim with the dolphins if you wanted. I just enjoyed seeing them everyday.
Here is a picture of part of the resort. The beach is off behind those little grass hut looking things.
Ryan didn't like that the water was pretty shallow and it didn't have big waves. I didn't mind it a bit since I could just sit in the water and stay cool. They even had little rafts that you could lay on in the water and just tan while you float around. So that was day 3, a day of relaxation.

Vacation Day 2

Day 2
On day 2 we started out with the breakfast buffet (we had it everyday) and then went straight out to the beach. I laid out and swam and Ryan went on a catamaran boat, a kayaking tour, and snorkeled (all of the above were provided by the resort for free).
They had waiters come by and bring you whatever kind of drink you wanted so I sipped pina coladas and mango daquaris until they were coming out of my ears (they were virgin of course). This was the view from my chair. I had a chair in the sun and a chair in the shade so I wouldn't burn the living daylights out of my skin.
After a long day at the beach we met up with Martin again and he took us to see his house and meet his family. Martin has 5 kids and some of them know some English so with my little bit of Spanish and their little bit of English we tried to communicate. Luckily Martin translated for us when we couldn't understand.

Martin took us to a great authentic Mexican restraunt in downtown Cancun and we bought them all dinner. They had a mariachi band walk around and they'd sing you a song for money so we had them sing us a song and Ryan had that song in his head for the rest of the trip. Haha.. I have a video of the song so I'll post that one here when I get a chance. After dinner we walked around a souvenir type mall and then we took them to ice cream. It was quite a fun-filled day!

Vacation Day 1

Day 1
Our plane left at 9:30 am so we had a very early start on the day. We drove down to Ry's parents and switched over the car seat and then his mom dropped us off at the airport. Ethan was not too happy when I shut the car door and he knew he wasn't coming. Cheryl quickly distracted him and he did really well while we were gone. Our flight was only 2 1/2 hours and they even served a sandwich (free). Since when has that happened? We got to Cancun around 12:30 and we had our transportation all reserved through our Travelocity reservations so we didn't have to get a taxi. We checked in to our hotel and had to wait for our room to be finished. We stayed at the Dreams Resort and Spa which is an all-inclusive resort. I think that is definitely the way to go when you're going to Mexico.

We got to our room, took a nap, and then checked out one of the restaurants at our resort. It was a steakhouse that overlooked the beach. Check out the view!

After dinner we met up with our family friend, Martin (pronounced Mar-teen). He runs a tour guide business so he knew exactly where we should go for our trip excursions. He drove us all around Cancun and showed us all the different shopping areas. We set up a little schedule of what we wanted to do during the week and he arranged it all for us. So awesome!

We're Back From Cancun!

Hey everyone! We are finally back! The vacation was great, but I was ready to come home. We figured out that 7 days away from Ethan was too long to be away so if we ever get the chance to do this again it will only be a 4-5 day deal. It felt like the vacation that would never end since I wanted to see Ethan so bad. Ry's mom picked us up from the airport yesterday evening and Ethan was happy to see us, but he acted really shy since he was a little tired. It took him a little time to warm up to us, but once we got him home and got him a little dinner, he was happy as can be. We got home to a house that was hotter than hades! We had to call the A/C guy to come take a look. Luckily he came within an hour of us calling and it was just a blown fuse. He was here less then 20 minutes, but $105.00 later...we had a cool house. UGH! I started a million loads of laundry, thank goodness for a huge front loader washing machine. It only took 4 loads to get it all done. My parents were driving home from Branson so they stopped by to see Ethan since my mom is headed out to Utah tomorrow and she had to come see her boy. I even had a chance to go to the grocery store at 9 at night so we're well stocked. Oh, and my garden looks incredible! Toni (our cousin) watered it for us and I swear my tomato plant has turned into a tomato tree. Not even joking, it is taller than me (I'm 5'5"). Thanks Toni! So are you guys ready for my vacation journaling and pictures? I hope you are, I have a lot to tell.

My Little Model

Here are some pictures that my cousin Toni took of Ethan the other day. I love her style and Ethan is so cute! I swear I could just eat him up. Sorry, I'm just a little gushy since I'm going to be leaving the E-man for a week. That's right, a week! Ry and I are headed out of the country for a little R&R and I'm so excited and so nervous. I've only left E overnight twice, once for girls' camp (Ry was with him) and the other time my parents took him just for fun. So we'll see how it goes. Ethan will be staying with Grandma Cheryl, bless her, bless her, bless her. She has made this whole trip totally possible and has put me at ease about leaving E. Right now I'm knee deep in laundry, suitcases, and travel stuff. I'm trying to pack all of us today since Ry will be pulling an all nighter at work before he leaves. So I'm signing off the blog for a week and I'm headed to some fun in the sun!

Cute Craft Idea

I saw this craft on a blog that I found from blog surfing. I thought it looked like fun so I decided to make some hair elastics and maganets for my fridge. Thanks to the wonderful fabric scraps from Aunt Suzy, I was able to put these together last night. I only bought a few button covers from Hobby Lobby yesterday since I didn't know how they'd turn out, but I think it was quite a success and very simple to do. I have a feeling I will be paying Hobby Lobby another visit very soon.

Funny Boy

Currently I am serving as the Relief Society Pianist in our ward and the Chorister that works with me wanted to choose songs together for the upcoming months. So she came over with her two kids. While they were here Ethan dumped out all of the toys from the red bin, pushed it into the living room, and then parked it in front of the TV to watch a movie. There's nothing better than relaxing in a big red toy tub on a hot afternoon.

Movies

I went with Kaitlyn last night to see the new Harry Potter movie. The last time I went to the movies was in California when Ethan was about 6 months old and I took him to "Baby's Day Out." Basically they had a theater reserved for moms with babies so they could watch real movies and not feel bad if you're baby cried or you had to breastfeed in the middle of the movie. So yes, that was the last time I went to the movies...over a year ago. I wouldn't say I'm a Harry Potter fanatic, but I do like the books and movies so I was excited for the movie to come out and I'm a little sad that the last book is coming out the day after we leave for vacation. I was hoping to read it while I was out on the beach, I guess I'll just have to wait. I got tickets early and picked up some yummy treats at the store so we were garunteed a good movie and good snacks. We ended up getting a front parking spot and the best seats in the house. You know, the seats with railing in front so you can put you're feet up. The movie was good, but Harry Potter movies have gotten quite scary though. I would definitely not take a child to it unless you want them sleeping with you for a really long time. I guess that's why it's PG-13. I didn't get home until 12:30 am so everything was dark in our house so I was trying to be quiet and not turn on any lights. Well, after watching a bunch of wizards and weird creatures pop out of every dark corner all the time, I was a little jumpy. Anyway...the movie was great, the company was fun, and I got out for the night...nothing better!

Diaper Bag Prototype

I saw this really cute thing at a baby botique the other day. It's a bag that holds 2-3 diapers and a package of travel wipes. It's great to have so you're diapers don't get scrunched in your diaper bag or purse. It's really convenient to have everything in one little bag so you can just pull it out and go. Plus, the bags come in all sorts of really cute fabrics so it makes it cute to carry around. So I bought the bag and then took it to my mom since she is the master seamstress of the world. She totally made a great pattern and then constructed the prototype so we can start pumping out some great baby shower gifts. The top photos is the one that I bought in the botique and the bottom one is the one we made. Don't pay attention to the fabric, it was some random stuff my mom had laying around. Let me know what you think.

Garden Update

My garden is getting huge and I am loving it! I have turned into Mrs. Greenthumb! I enjoy watching everything grow and be able to actually eat what I'm growing. This is what's up in the garden: I have 19 tomatoes on my Brandywine plant and about 5 on my Bush plant, my other two are being stingy and are just flowering right now. My herbs are delicious and holding strong. I've been cooking with them all the time and they make my recipes so fresh. I did have to pull out all my cilantro since it was basically done and the guy at the nursery said it's mostly a spring time plant. I replaced it with a cucumber plant that my mom got me. It's got one little cucumber on it, so cute. So that is what's up in the garden department. Someday I would love a huge garden that I could spend a lot of time in and grow lots and lots of different things. That would be my dream, but for now I'll enjoy my raised bed garden.

Latest Cross Stitch Project

I've decided to just go ahead and cross stitch all my kids birth records now while I have the time and energy. If you look back in my archives around November you can see the one that I did for Ethan. It took me such a long time to do his since I was working while I was pregnant and towards the end of my pregnancy I had carpel tunnel so bad that I couldn't even hold a pencil, let alone a needle. So I'm going to just go ahead and do them now. I love to cross stitch and I've been doing all sorts of little projects here and there, but they're mostly to relieve stress, not to display so I figured it would be better to actually work on something that I have planned on doing. Here the one I'm working on right now and my progress so far. I've been working on it for about 1 1/2 weeks now. It's quite a large project so it's going to take quite awhile for me to finish so you'll bee seeing my progress throughout the upcoming weeks.

Top of My Cupboards

I found a few things for my cupboards at Hobby Lobby that were on sale and I just couldn't pass them up! I still have to find a few more things to finish the tops of my other cupboards, but one step at a time. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Catch Up

I have been so reclusive when it comes to blogging lately. I've pretty much been on my own everyday for the past 4 weeks (including weekends) because Ry has been working so much. He usually gets home around 10 at night so it's just been Ethan and me all day long, everyday. Needless to say I've been a little frazzled and just haven't been able to blog much. It would end up just being a vent session. So things have been better this week and I've actually seen my husband for more than 30 minutes before he falls asleep. The past 4 weeks have also been full of rain so no pool time! Boring! You can only go to the library, mall, or grocery store so much. So that is my excuse for not blogging very much.

I Rock!

My good friend Hilarytagged me as one of her "rockin" blogs and I so appreciate the compliment. You have to know that Hilary is the one that inspired me to start a blog and totally helped me get everything going. Thanks Hilary, your blog rocks! Now I get to share the love and list a few of my faves:
First off is Carly. She is so creative and very stylish! I love her headers, photos, and projects. She always has great ideas and fun sites to visit.
Second is my best nursing buddy Barbie. She's currently getting her new house put together and working in the ER so she always has great stories. I love her sense of humor and it really comes through on her blog! I love it! Plus, her little guys Dave is super cute!
Next is my friend
Kaitlyn She's a great scrapbooker and I love what she does! Her kids always have something funny going on and her blog is always fun to read.
And last of all my Aunt Nancy's Family blog. I am so happy they started a blog so I can keep up with all their family happenings. My cousins are so cute!
Well, those are a few of my favorites. Of course there are some of my favorite blogs that I lurk on occasionally but I won't share those here since I can't actually admit that I lurk. Well, enjoy some new blogs, you guys rock!

Ethan's First Embarrassing Moment

Ryan had some meetings before church so Ethan and I were solo this morning. As we were walking into church, Ethan saw Ryan and got so excited that he started running down the hallway. Well, as he was running towards Ryan, Ethan's pants fell down all the way to his ankles (just like an old man on America's Funniest Home Videos), he tripped on his pants and then face plants on the floor. He did this in front of me, Ryan, and 3 sister missionaries and we all started busting up. Well, he just laid there with his face on the floor, his diaper totally exposed, his pants around his ankles, and his legs stretched out like a frog. When I bent down to pick him up he was totally crying and he kept hiding his face in my neck. He was totally embarrassed and he didn't want any of the sister missionaries to look at him. It was so funny, cute and sad all at the same time. Poor Ethan!

New Website

I found a cute website called5 minutes for mom. It has great giveaways and fun things to see. Check it out on my sidebar.

Rain Rain Go Away!

I swear we will be floating away with all this rain! It seriously rains every single day and it's always a torrential downpour! Every night we have severe thunderstorms and last night was the loudest. The house was shaking, I was totally freaked, and of course I was having dreams of our house getting struck by lightening and burning to the ground. Our yard is totally squishy and is really really long, but we can't mow it since it's way too wet. My garden loves all the rain though and it is totally growing a ton and all the rain keeps it a little cooler than our usual humid/heat blast. I just wish it would be sunny long enough for us to go swimming. Our neighborhood pool is closed due to flooding and the chemicals are off balance and my parents pool overflowed yesterday! They had to syphon off a ton of water all night long and I think my mom is doing it again this afternoon. This year is the most amount of rain on record and I totally believe it. It has been crazy!

My Friend is a Winner!

My friend Kaitlyn sent in an entry for a scrapbooking website contest and she won! I'm so excited for her so I wanted to give her a little plug on my blog. The page is so cute! If only I could do anything remotely cool like that! Go Kaitlyn!

New Feature

Check my sidebar for my latest feature that I've add to my blog, "What's New On My I Pod." I have a few itunes cards to use so I was surfing for some new music this weekend. I found a few oldies but goodies like Whitney Houston. I totally remember winning her tape during a magazine drive in 1st grade. That song brings back a lot of fun childhood memories like driving around in our blue Aerostar Mini Van. Like the one featured below except ours was two tones of blue. Talk about flashbacks! Any music recommendations? Let me know!

Blackberry Picking!!!

I found an awesome place to go pick blackberries in one of our local magazines and the blackberries are ripening like crazy! My mom and I planned on going on Monday, but with all the rain we've been having, it was too muddy and the berries weren't ripe enough. We rescheduled for this Saturday so Ry could go too, but he ended up having to work (for the 2nd week in a row). Well, my parents came up really early and got E all packed up and we got to the berry patch by 7:30. Almost all of the plants are thorn less so the berries are really easy to pick and the berries practically fell into my bucket. The people there were super nice and are out there to answer any questions and tell you how to pick them properly. They were nice enough to let me take Ethan in the stroller so I didn't have to chase him around the farm. It was only $15 for a heaping gallon of berries or $18 for already picked berries. The weather was perfect, Ethan was really good, and they let you eat as you pick so I was in heaven! We went out for breakfast afterwards and stopped by the grocery store to get our jam supplies. When I got home I spread a bunch of berries on a sheet pan and put those in the freezer and the rest I smashed and made freezer jam. So good! Enjoy the pictures and please realize it was 7:30 in the morning and I have no make up on. Oh, and for any of you guys in the area, if you're interested in going to pick blackberries just post a comment with your e-mail and I can send you all the details. It was really fun!

File Folder Games

Thanks to a tip from my friend Hilary a few months ago, I've started my library of File Folder Games and I'm currently working some new ones. I made a bunch when I first got the book and now Ethan's gotten a little tired of doing the same ones so I'm making some different games to spark his interest. These are really great as quiet games for church or to just play at home. It's a good activity to teach him to sit in a chair and work on something too. The previous games that I did were matching shapes, dressing a teddy bear, and Noah's ark (animals). This time we're doing some that works with colors, fruits and vegetables, and items in "Grandma's Purse." Really cute. It doesn't take too much time and all it entails is getting photcopies, coloring, cuting stuff out, laminating, and attching velcro. Not too strenuous. Plus, I love to color stuff with Ethan so it's fun to do together. And when it's all done, "Voila", quite child. Check it out.

Awesome!

I went over to my friend Jen's house since both of our hubbies were out of town. She made us some delicious mac and cheese (E ate 3 bowls) and then the kids played together. Ethan started splashing in the bird bath out back so Jen snapped a few pictures of him and this is what we got. Jen is an awesome photographer! She's done all kinds of work in photography back in Vegas and it shows. To tell you the truth, I don't think she even used photoshop for any of these either. I'll have to ask her.

Mondays

For the whole month of June, E and I have been going to a toddler class every Monday. They set up all kinds of mats, tunnels, tents, and stuff for the kids to crawl and jump on. Then there are cars to ride on and all sorts of balls. The kids have about 30 minutes of free play where they can just go and do whatever they want. Then we do story/song time and then they do an activity. After that it's stickers and bye byes and I usually give Ethan a snack and drink for the ride home. E loves his toddler class, whenever we get there he always says "play, play, play" over and over. These pictures are some that I took yesterday. The first one is E singing while he's playing with a lego car and the second one is just one of him driving the car.

After the toddler class I always come home and clean. Mondays are always my house cleaning/laundry day and it helps to have E really happy so I can get a lot of work done. I like to get it all done in one day and then I just have to maintain it for the rest of the week. I really feel nice and organized after Monday and it just feels like the rest of the week flows easily. Ever since I've read that Home Comforts book, it's just all made sense. Anyway...gotta love Mondays.

Giving a Talk

I just finished reading through my talk that I'm giving tomorrow in church. The dreaded "new move in speaking assignment" has been handed down and I will speaking with my lovely husband tomorrow. I get kind of nervous before I speak, but I really don't mind the actual speaking part. The part that I don't like is all the awkwardness afterward. A few of you may actually agree with me on this one...I just hate the onset of comments throughout the rest of church, "hey great job", "loved the talk", "you did great", blah blah blah. Sometimes I wonder if people truly feel like you did a good job or they just see you in hallway after and feel obligated to say something. Now I do have to say that I can tell the super sincere comments are real, it's just those other random ones that get me. Anyone else feel this way? I also hate the whole "sit and stew" part of giving talks. You get your little assignment a week, 2 weeks, a few days before you give your talk and then you "sit and stew" about how you'll talk about it, researching with a big pit in your stomach. I always feel tons better once I get it actually written, but it's even better when you sit down and it's over. Anyway...I'm speaking tomorrow so be grateful it's me and not you.

Super Mario

I found this video on You tube tonight and I had to put it up. If only I could be that cool and be able to play sweet songs like Mario Brothers. I do have a funny story that goes along with playing songs from Nintendo... Back when we were living in California, before we even had Ethan, Ryan and I were going out to play games with some of our friends. As we were walking out of our apartment, we heard somebody playing the flute and their apartment just happened to face the parking lot. Well, we listened for a second and figured out they were playing the theme song from Mario Brothers so we stopped and listened for a bit and we started cracking up. Who practices Mario songs with their flute on a Friday night? We thought it was so funny and joked about it that whole next week and would walk by their apartment on purpose just to see if the "flutist" was playing some more renditions of Mario. Well, that next Friday we were going back out again and there was music coming from the flute apartment and this time it was the Zelda theme song! You have to understand that the whole first month of our marriage we spent trying to beat Zelda. Not even joking, we were Nintendo junkies. I'd like to paint a little visual for you...I had printed off the Zelda map from a website so we each took turns navagating and beating level after level, late into the night, night after night. It was so much fun! Thank goodness for 10:00 class, right? So to hear the lovely Zelda music, it took us right back. Anyway...the flutist is still a big joke in our family so finding some Nintendo music on You tube made me think of our favorite apartment music.

Our Little Golfer

Ethan has loved playing with his golf clubs ever since he could pick one up and he loves them even more lately. He carries them around with him all the time. Whenever Ry gets home from work he always runs to get his golf ball and club so Daddy can play with him. Ryan even taught him to make a swish sound when he hits it and then follow through. It is so funny to watch him! I'll have to get a video of it sometime.

My Garden is Growing!!!

Things in the garden have been going quite well these days. I was a little worried for awhile since my parsely looked just the same as when I bought it and something started to eat two of my tomatoes, but things are looking up. I have 3 tomatoes starting to turn red, my basil is huge, my cilantro has been crazy, the parsely looks way better, and my rosemary is turning into a bush. It's awesome. I've used all of my herbs in one way or another in my cooking these past few weeks and it has been so nice. I've even been able to pass some herbs along to friends and even got some fresh salsa in return. Sweet! So yummy! Here is a picture of my lovely little garden.

Fun Day!

Today was quite the day for us! First off we went to cousin Ty Ty's birthday party at their awesome waterpark! Ethan had so much fun running through the fountains/waterfalls and swimming with all his cousins.
This is Ethan and Ty Ty playing in the water/sand area. Ethan totally wore himself out so I had to keep tickling his toes the whole way home so he wouldn't go to sleep. It wasn't easy. He went down for a nap after that and I went off to the grocery store since we have no fresh food or milk. I didn't go before girls camp since I wasn't cooking those days and I put it off after I came back. I usually go during the week with Ethan since it's a fun thing for us to do together, but I decided the brace the weekend crowds so I could have extra pool time this week. Anyway...my parents were in the area so they stopped by with their electric gardening shear things and clippers. They helped us spare our poor, storm torn tree and get us going on our hedge trimming. Ethan really wanted to help so we let him hold it when we were done.

It was my dad's birthday on Tuesday so we went out for dinner to celebrate and afterward we went to the sporting good store so my dad could look for stuff for his new bike. Ethan loved playing with all the balls, golfing, riding bikes, and jumping on the exercise trampolines.
We had to pull him out of the store kicking and screaming. Now he's had a bath and is in bed after a very very fun day.

Girls Camp

I just got back from Girls Camp tonight and I am TIRED! Our stake camp director asked me to go up as the camp nurse for 2 days so I went up yesterday and began my "rotation." I mostly passed out meds and taped up some injuries last night and treated some fire ant bites. A few of the girls ran into some rattlesnakes, but fortunately I didn't have to treat any rattlesnake bites, yikes! Last night one of the leaders had to go home so they needed an extra leader to stay with the 2nd years. I was supposed to sleep in the stake cabin, but I offered to go stay with the girls. I probably slept less than 2 hours, but that's what Girls Camp is all about, right? Today was the big hike so I got morning meds passed and dispensed some band aids and stayed at the dining hall in case of an emergency. While the girls were on the hike I got to do some of the crafts they were doing. So cute! Their theme was "Peace, Love, and Understanding" so they did a vinyl lettering craft to display their theme. Fun fun. The girls did great on their hike and we only had a few falls to treat. We all headed to the "BLOB" after the hike to go swim. The blob is one of those air filled things that goes out on the lake and one person jumps into it and then crawls to the end and then another person jumps and blobs the first person into the water. It was so fun! I set up a "mobile nurse unit" down at the lake so I could go swim with the girls and blob with the leaders. Overall, Girls Camp was really fun and I was so glad that the girls were really safe and we didn't have too much medical drama while I was there.

Ethan and Dad

This is just a cute picture of Ethan and Daddy.

Bowling

I picked up Ethan a bowling set the other day and now it's his favorite toy to play with. Nanny and Papa came up the other day and got to be there for his first bowling experience. It was so cute! He will throw the ball and if it doesn't hit anything he'll say "miss!" and if he gets it he'll say "yipee!" We're trying to get him to say strike, but no luck there yet.

New Sunday Outfit

Macy's had some great sales going on during Memorial day and I picked up this whole outfit for Ethan for $7. Yes, for the ENTIRE outfit. He looks so cute in it and it makes his blue eyes even more blue.

Blog Update

Sorry for my lack of blog posts, what's my problem?! We've been busy with things here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. We had crazy storms come through lately and one storm completely blew over the top of one our trees. You should have seen me out there trying to cut it down with hedge clippers. I swear the Direct TV guy across the street was cracking up. We may have to remove the whole thing if the HOA doesn't approve of our topless tree.
Friday was our ward activity night, Ry and I were on the panel for the "Newlywed game." It was a lot of fun especially since we won! Booyah! Good thing Ryan knows how many purses I own and what's my favorite night time snack.
Saturday was my sister-in-law's birthday. We started the day off with a morning at the spa. We both got one hour massages, that was phenomenal! The lady told us we looked like a bunch of slugs afterwards, which we did. I could have crawled in a hole and stayed there for a week! I got home and counted down the minutes before Ethan took a nap so I could lay down. It was the most restful nap I have ever had in my life! Anyway...later that evening we went to Cheesecake Factory and did a little shopping to complete the big birthday. Quite a fun day!
This week should be a good one. I'm teaching piano lessons now to my niece and nephew so I have my first lesson this week. Wish me luck! Oh, and I'm also headed to Girls Camp for a few days to fill in for the camp nurse. Hopefully I'll only have to deal with some sunburns and slivers. So that's all we've been up to. I'll post some better stuff later.