Beach Day

The other day we went to the beach. It was still a little bit chilly to go in the water (which isn't saying much around here, it has to be in the 90s at the coast for me to want to get in that water) but we found a nice wind block and flew kites.


Nathan is a big kite person. This may have had something to do with living in Wyoming (where small children can get blown away if not held onto - literally) but Kristen said he got started when he was in graduate school in Baltimore. Now his kids all seem to be pros and Nathan was very patient with letting Anna feel like she was doing it.

All of their kites are two stringed ones that are fun but a bit trickier to keep up. By the end of the time we were there, I felt like I had gotten a hold of it and could keep mine in the air for a respectable amount of time. And I didn't even crash my kite into anyone. Go me!


Ironically, I was not looking forward to going and was contemplating staying home. All I could think of was everything I didn't like about the beach (the sand mostly). Then when we got there, it was so nice that I was glad I had gone. If we end up staying here for a long time, I can see needing to be practically dragged to the beach or else we'll never go. My poor kids.

Funny Mommy!

Anna has taken to saying this when she is in trouble. I first noticed it when I was trying to put her to bed at my parent's house. After a difficult time getting her down (lately she has been really wiggly and talkative while I sing to her) she started crying several minutes later. Since it was a new place, I was singing to her again and she said she was poopy. Naturally, I'm not going to leave her in a poopy diaper all night so we left the room to change her. No poop. I was so frustrated and there she was saying it was funny! Grrr!

It has come up several time since then and each time I try to keep my temper as I tell her it is not, in fact, funny but not nice or naughty or rude or whatever it is. I was telling Kristen about this the other day and her son Peter (6) was listening. Now he tells her things are funny when he does something to her that makes her mad. Then I hear the poor girl saying "no, Peter, no funny!"A part of me feels like this isn't nice but the rest of me is all for it. Maybe then she will stop when she sees how annoying it is and it wasn't coming from me. Somehow, if it were from me it would be mean but since it's from him it's ok.

Olympics

I know the Olympics ended a week ago but I only just got around to watching the closing ceremonies so it's got me thinking about them again. I was able to watch a fair amount of them this time (way better than last time when I was in India and didn't know the Indian websites to watch it on). Kristen's family actually got cable for the Olympics once we realized we couldn't watch full events on the internet otherwise.

I LOVE the Olympics. Jason and I spent our date night watching the opening ceremonies at my mom's house. Poor Jason fell asleep on the couch before it was over but I stayed up and enjoyed the whole thing. Then, the first day we had the cable set up, I watched it all afternoon with Christopher and Jonathan. Who knew snowboard cross was so interesting.

By far my favorite events are the figure skating. I stayed up late watching the women's short and long programs on tv. The online coverage was interesting because they showed it as if you were in the arena. All three plus hours of it with Zamboni breaks between the groups (that was harder to get to watch since Anna's naps aren't usually longer than two and a half hours). I find I really like the commentary. It's not as intrusive as it used to be and it gives a lot of good background on the different skaters and how their seasons have been going.

I even got Anna into watching it. She would watch the figure skating with me for little bits of time. She loved to watch them jump and after each one, she would say "more jumps!". One day I was watching the ladies and Anna was sitting on my lap. She held onto her leg in a position that looked just like what the skater had just been doing. Then she got up and started trying to spin on the bed. It was so cute.

Other than the events I knew I wanted to watch, I love how the Olympics gets you watching and interested in the sports that you wouldn't think to watch otherwise. Other than snowboard cross (which was awesome) I also got into bobsled, Nordic combined (we did so great in that one), slalom, pretty much whatever they showed in prime time. The funny thing about me is that I get all caught up in the athletes' stories that I want everyone to win. It seems like they all work so hard and it means so much to everyone that I don't even really care what country they are from. Heck, I was really happy for Canada to win men's hockey and for all the golds they got (this was the first home Olympics that Canada won a gold in and they got 14).

I'm so glad they changed the schedule to every two years. Although, I'm less interested in the summer Olympics, I'm still looking forward to London in 2012.

Is that Strange?

Jason and I don't know, off the top of our heads, how old we are. We were talking about it the other night and had to seriously think about what year it is and the fact that our birthdays haven't happened yet. So is that strange?

Etiquette Dinner

As mentioned, on Saturday before Valentine's Day, Jason and I were the host couple at a youth Etiquette Dinner. Let me explain first what this means. The Stake youth leaders had couples come and put together a table with the settings and decorations and sat with the kids to kind of mediate the conversation and help the kids know how to have good table manners and things like that.

For the week before, Kristen and I were trying to figure out what we should put on the table. Kristen has white on white plates so we kept trying to think of how to add color to the table.

Hilary has white plates with a red stripe around the edge so I used half of each kind and alternated them.


It was a subtle difference but I liked it. Then Kristen has stem water glasses that we used. Jason had the idea of using candles. We put them on a red plate, tied a fun ribbon around them and spread red rose petals and candy around the table.


We were totally stoked when we found some round red place mats on clearance. They were just what we wanted to have color on the table and gave it a subtle polka dot look (with the ribbon on the candles tying it all together).


Once we got everything set up, we looked around and I liked our table best. Poor Jason had to keep hearing me talk about what I liked best about our table and why I preferred it to all the other ones. I find that when I am planning something, I'm not very good about visualizing what the end result is going to look like. So, when I do it and it turns out well, I'm pleasantly surprised.

The dinner part of the evening was fun too. We had a full table with two boys and four girls and the conversation went well. Generally, it flowed through the whole evening. The end was a little bit funny. They passed out conversation starters and they were all about death. Things like: 'if you had one day left to live, what would you do' or 'where would you like to be buried' or 'what do you want on your epitaph' or 'if you could take one thing to heaven, what would it be'. We thought that was pretty funny.

Then the boys were able to collect the balloons and suck helium. They brought so many home and one balloon didn't fit in our trunk and it flapped spun in the wind. Sadly, it didn't make it home but it was fun to see how far it went.

Valentine's Day

One fun thing about having a holiday on the weekend is that you can really drag the celebrations our to last all weekend, starting on Thursday or so. That's what we did with Valentine's Day this year. I feel like I'm just figuring out how to do holidays with kids. I had gotten out of the habit of really celebrating smaller holidays (when in school, holidays totally go on the back burner) and Valentine's Day has never really been a big one for me. But this year I had Anna and she was totally getting into the whole thing.

Anna adding more sprinkles (it was looking a bit bare) with her lollipop on the side for later. I think her favorite part of the holiday is the candy everywhere.

We went to a little party thrown by a friend here with her mom's group. We played with their toys, decorated bags for cards, decorated cupcakes, and exchanged cards. I heard about it kind of last-minute so I didn't think about getting any cards. Fortunately, the mom who hosted it had some extra so we put our names on them and handed them out. Anna was pretty good about putting the cards into the bags. When we were doing the cupcakes, some one handed Anna a bottle of sprinkles that didn't have a shaker top, it was just open. Naturally, on her first try, the little balls spilled all over the table. I tried to clean them up but as I was putting them back in the bottle, they spilled again. It was a bit of a mess but funny.

Eric working on his cookie

Then on Friday we had a little party with the cousins that don't get to go to school. Again we did that cards and decorated bags. It was cute to have Anna choose which cards she wanted to give to which people. I laid out all of the options and ask which one for each person and she would choose. It was fun. Then we decorated cookies. Ironically, this time Anna was all into putting all of the different sprinkles on her cookie but was never interested in eating it. I don't really know what was up with that.

Anna's well-decorated cookie

On Saturday, Jason and I were the host couple at a youth Etiquette Dinner but that will be it's own post. Sunday was pretty low-key after all of that. We had a simple dinner at home with candles and Jason and I gave each other good quality chocolate (which is all I want on Valentine's day). It was a lovely weekend.

Happy Birthday!

Sunday was Anna's 2nd birthday! This year she got much more excited about it than she did last year. I'm thinking this is not only because she is older but also because she has seen a number of birthdays here are Kristen's house and has a better idea of just how exciting they are.

The festivities started on Saturday morning. We woke up to donuts! Kristen has a tradition in her family that when someone has a birthday, they get breakfast in bed. That morning Nathan had to get up early to take the two oldest boys somewhere and decided to get the donuts for Anna's breakfast. It was greatly appreciated, almost more so because it was unexpected.


That night we had a party combined with my Grandpa whose 89th birthday was on Monday. We had pancakes, eggs, sausage and fruit salad for dinner. As you can tell, breakfast is Anna's favorite meal of the day (she has been known to eat it several times with each person as they wake up). It was a hit. I also got balloons.

Singing Happy Birthday

Blowing out the candles.

She got some great presents (it's so nice when other people get things for Anna so I don't have to) and they all were (still are really) a hit.

I have no idea why it has this random strip at the bottom of the picture.

Jason and I got her a little kitchen. I was thinking of getting her dress-up stuff but then we went to the local children's museum and she spent almost all the time playing in the kitchen and wasn't too interested in the dress-ups. We were able to find it on Craigslist for way cheap and it came with a bunch of dishes and food. It's even nice and small so it fits in our bedroom. I could tell the kitchen was a good call when she would rather play with that than eat her cake.

We also got her a Book of Mormon Illustrated Storybook. We read the first chapter which talks about Joseph Smith and where the Book of Mormon came from. She seemed to pay more attention to our family scripture reading after that. Also, this morning when I was reading my scriptures, she got her book out and started looking at the pictures.

Jacob is such a sweet heart. He wanted to get Anna a present and found these bracelets that he paid for with his own money. She thinks they are great.

Anna loves umbrellas, she can even say 'umbrella' pretty well too. This one is especially fun because it has a duck head on the handle. Between this and the galoshes from Grandpa DeMarco, she is totally set for the rain.

I had wanted to get her a stroller for Christmas but it didn't happen. Now she takes it with her all over the place. Yeah for Aunt Kristen.

She also got two different tutus. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of them yet. She likes to wear them and dance and twirl so maybe I can get a video of that.

The next day (her actual birthday) was more low key. It was spent enjoying her toys. In fact, I had to tell her she could play with her kitchen again when she woke up, finished lunch, got home from church, etc. before I could get her to leave it. I had made such a big cake the night before that we were able to have it again the next night, complete with singing and candles. And she got to eat the cake and ice cream this time. It was a very fun birthday.