Thanksgiving in Arizona

As I mentioned last week, this year we spent Thanksgiving in AZ with our AZ family.  The time there was nice, the two day drive each way was not.  The kids, my mom, and I left the Friday before Thanksgiving.  We drove to San Francisco on the first day, spent Saturday out of the car in San Fran, and then powered down to Arizona on Sunday. Overall the kids were real troopers.  Every once in a while CC would cry that her "bun hurt" and that she wanted to go home but it could have been much worse.

The week that followed went by in a blur.  The kids stayed up late every night and got up early every morning and we all got very little sleep.  We spent our days cramming as much fun and family time in as we could.  We divided our time between Jeremy's family (who we were staying with), my grandma, aunts, uncle, cousins, Emily, and Kai.  The hardest part of the week was trying to make sure that everyone felt we had spent enough time with them and that meant a lot of long days running around.

One of the main activities that was going down during the week was clearing out my grandma's house to get it ready to go on the market.  I spent a fair amount of time sorting, cleaning, and removing wall paper.  Probably the highlight of this endeavor was going through my grandma's jewelry and the fun pieces I ended up with to remind me of her and this adorable dress CC ended up with.

In addition to that huge project, we went to the park, went to the arcade, went paintball shooting, rode go-carts, played soccer, and kickball and who could forget wrestling.  In full disclosure some of those activities were just the kids and grandpa, but in any case it was a busy week.

On Wednesday (technically Thursday when they landed) Jeremy and my dad flew down.  They were supposed to get in about 1am, but their flight was delayed and they didn't arrive until about 2:30am.  After a few hours of sleep we were up and at it for the Thanksgiving festivities.  We had three houses to at least make an appearance at, with our main dinner with Grandpa and Lollie and the Bunker side of the family.  The day was wonderful, with the exception of the "turkey not being cooked" debacle, but we won't talk about that.

On Saturday we started our trek back, now with my dad and Jeremy in tow.  Unfortunately they drive back was not as smooth as the drive down.  The traffic was terrible and over the course of the two days it added about 4 hours to our travel time.  By the time we made it home we were all ready to be out of the car (understatement of the century).

All in all it was a fun week.  I just hope, wish, pray that they next time we go to AZ we get to fly.

Jeremy's Birthday

Dear Blogosphere,
We just pulled in from a very long two day drive from Arizona and I am exhausted.  The last thing I want to do right now is sit down and write out this post, but as I was in the same predicament last Sunday and opted not to blog, I am now so far behind that I am now forcing myself to sit here and write something.  So here we go...

We spent the last week in Arizona with family for Thanksgiving, but that is going to be the subject of another blog.  Instead, let's go even farther back to the almost two weeks ago when we celebrated Jeremy's birthday.  We were fortunate that my dad was in town the weekend before and offered to watch the kids so we could go to dinner and a movie.  We saw the latest James Bond movie and had a blast.

As for presents, those came two days later on Jeremy's actual birthday.  Okay, I know this is silly but one thing that Jeremy has been asking for is a new shoe horn (maybe to go with his new shoes that were technically a b-day present even though he got them a week or so early).  The kids gave him one and we decided to celebrate his advancing age by giving him a long-handled one.  As for me, in addition to the shoes, I went with an indoor skydiving session.  We are going next weekend so once I am caught up I am sure I will have more to say on that subject.

That's all for tonight.   My bed is calling.

Veteran's Day at the Children's Museum

On Wednesday this week was Veteran's Day.  I am so grateful for all those who have fought to protect the freedoms I hold dear and I am so thankful that in having a day to honor them, I also get to have a day to spend with my family, enjoying the freedom that many paid for with their lives.

This year I knew Jeremy was going to be out of town for work so I had been trying to think of something to do with the kids since I would be off work and there would be no school.  I thought it would be fun to go to the children's museum and when I presented the idea to the kids, Carrigan picked up a toy phone and proceeded to call and invite her friend Anna.  Anna and Carrigan have become close since attending preschool together and her older brother, Porter, and Merrick are good friends too.  I decided that CC's idea was a good one and invited their family to come along with us.

We ended up spending most of the day at the museum together and having a truly wonderful time.  The museum was a little crowded since it was a rainy day with no school, but the kids were enjoying being together so much that they didn't seem to mind.  The hit of the day was definitely the face painting.  No one was shy about getting into it and Anna even helped to make sure CC got full coverage.

So I guess today I am grateful for the three F's: freedom, friends, and face paint

Soccer and Lost Teeth

When Merrick was little there were often times when things would come up and I would sit down and blog about them right away and so it was not uncommon for me to write more then one blog post each week.  Unfortunately, now with two kids, a job, and three callings, I am lucky to get one blog squeezed in on Sunday.  The consequence of this is that sometimes really important events get buried under even more important events and get lost in the shuffle.  Merrick has had a couple of such events over the last few weeks.

Last weekend (Halloween) was Merrick's last soccer game.  He and his whole team worked really hard this season and the improvement was evident.  Most games he scored at least one goal and learned to play both offense and defense.  We had an experience the last game that really impressed me.  The weather was terrible.  I am talking bitter, gale-force winds and we were about half way through the game when Merrick came over to us saying that his shoe had broken.  It turns out that the sole of his cleat had separated from his shoe on about half the shoe.  In a truly Macgyver like move, Jeremy took off his own shoe lace and used it to tie the sole of Merrick's cleat back on.  What really impressed me is that Merrick got right back into the game, despite the weather and his broken shoe.  I was surprised by his ability to overcome adversity and still have a good time.  At the awards ceremony after the game Merrick's coach talked about him having a big future with soccer and I am sure that will be the case.

The other big thing that has happened for Merrick is that he has lost not one, but two teeth over the last month.  I know I already blogged about our discovery of his permanent tooth growing in behind his baby tooth, but eventually it did push out both of his two front teeth.  The story of the first one coming out was a bit traumatic.  It had been loose for several days and we had tried to pull it with no success.  One night, after talking to his dad, Jeremy decided to tie thread (he had tried floss, but had not gotten it low enough).  This time he got the thread nice and low and tried to pull, but it still was not coming out (the problem was that the tooth behind had pushed the tooth forward and separated the roots in the back, but not in the front).  Jeremy ultimately decided to leave it once again only to discover that the thread was stuck.  The tooth did not want to come out, but neither did the thread.  At this point Merrick flipped out and Jeremy really had no choice but to yank both the tooth and thread out.

Once the trauma was done, Merrick was really proud of his new smile.  I think he particularly liked that later that night the tooth fairly came and brought him a certificate for his tooth and some origami money.  It was only a day or two later that he discovered his other front tooth was loose and Merrick got to work on wiggling it right away.

And now that I have finally gotten these memories in writing I can ramp my mommy guilt down a couple of notches.

Halloween 2015

Yesterday was Halloween and for the first time since my parents moved here (13 years ago), it rained on Halloween during trick or treating hours.  No only did it rain yesterday, but it poured.  Despite the weather, our kids were undaunted and decided it was worth braving the rain to gain the spoils of trick or treating.  As tradition, all the Oregon cousins who are of trick or treating age headed out together.  We met at Brendon and Rachel's and took off from there.  Ben and Becca's family were all characters from Peter Pan, Lauren was some combo football player/ballerina, and Maude was a creepy doll.  As for our family, Merrick was Iron Man, Carrigan was Minnie Mouse, Jeremy was Spiderman, and I was supposed to be Mary Jane.

We lasted about an hour before everyone decided to call it quits and head to Ben and Becca's for hot chocolate.  It was not our best Halloween, but hopefully it will get to be remember as the only Halloween it rained.

P.S. Jeremy came home Wednesday night saying he needed a pumpkin carved by Friday morning for a work contest.  This is what I whipped up (I am pretty proud of it and he tied for first place in the contest)

Pumpkin Patch 2015 (and Sarah has a birthday)

This week was my birthday...this is not really the highlight of the blog, but I thought I should at least mention it.  I ended up watching my friend's daughter during the day, but my mom still took me out to lunch to celebrate.  Later that afternoon I picked my mom up downtown (she had been at a meeting down there) and she took my kids home while I stayed downtown to have a little alone time shopping and then met Jeremy for dinner.  It was a great day with lots of gifts and well-wishes from family and friends.  As I mentioned though, my birthday it not really what I wanted to talk about today and you will be relieved to know I don't have any pictures to go with this section of the blog.

Yesterday was the last Saturday before Halloween and our last weekend to squeak in a pumpkin patch trip this year.  Thankfully the weather was cooperative and we has such a good time.  We had purchased unlimited ride bracelets and the kids did slides, cow train, hay rides, bounce pillow, and "go-carts" (they were more like recumbent bikes) to their hearts' content.  Merrick was particularly loving the bounce pillow and he and I spent about an hour and a half in there together (about an hour longer than C.C. lasted).  I really need to figure out how to get one of those in our backyard. And, since no trip to the pumpkin patch would be complete without apple cider doughnuts, we made sure to gorge on those.  The real interesting part about that is that we let C.C. eat them, despite the fact that they contain egg.  Thankfully she didn't have a reaction and we are really thinking/hoping/praying she has outgrown her egg allergy.

Also, as a side note, we also finally got around to decorating our pumpkins today.  Those pumpkin push-ins are the best invention ever.