Night Soup and Playgroup

Logan got a gift card to Toys R' Us for his birthday and we went one Saturday and he picked out a couple of things. Then we went running around doing other errands the rest of the day and I totally forgot about his new toys. When we got home hours later he kept asking for "night soup" and I had NO idea what he was talking about! I finally remembered, and knew that he was really asking for his knight suit!

He loves this thing and it comes with a sword & shield, battle ax and hand guard thing so there is enough for his brother to play along...every mother's dream - her two young sons battling it out with swords and axes!

Our church's playgroup is back on a regular schedule and we are so happy to be getting out of the house and spending time with other kids (and moms). This past week we met at the Lilliput Play Center. They sell little miniature playhouses, but you can pay to get in and play on their display village. The boys absolutely loved it! Everyone else in our group left around 1:30 to go home for naps or pick up older siblings from school, but my kids were happy and still having a good time so we stayed and got our money's worth until they closed at 3! And Tolan didn't even want to leave then.

I think the firehouse was their favorite.

Across from the firehouse there was a gas station/mechanic's shop. Tolan used the gas pump as a firehose, pretending to spray it all over the place & put out fires. We will have to make sure he knows this is not a good way to put out fires in real life!

Tolan fixing things in the mechanic shop

The boys liked the firehouse, but the ice cream shop was my favorite. Here's Logan hard at work scooping some ice cream.

All ready for a customer

They did spend a good bit of time in this one, so they must have liked it.

Logan played doctor for a while too

They also had a little grocery store and a barber shop/salon which I don't think they really played in at all. I didn't take any pictures but they had a train in the middle of the "village" which they spent a lot of time on too. We will have to go back there another time, I think it was a hit!

Logan's Birthday, Parts I, II & III

Logan just turned 4 and he got a whole birthday weekend.

Part I

We spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day at my parents' house, so we celebrated his bday while we were there. We went to see Alvin & the Chipmunks, the Squeakuel and then had cake & presents. After the movie, my brother was playing around with Logan and Logan apparently hurt his arm. His elbow in particular. He was okay, but he was very tired and milked it for all it was worth, so it took a bit of coersing to get him into the party mood. (That's why he's not looking so excited in these pictures.) My mom was "the chosen one" and he didn't want anyone else to hold him or touch his arm. At first he liked the idea of Dr. Grandpa checking out his arm, but when he found out that Grandpa doesn't keep his white doctor's coat at home, he no longer wanted my dad to look at his arm.

He managed a little smile for his presents

My dad rigged up a little sling for his arm, but the cake seemed to do the trick and was the magical medicine that brought him back to his normal self and he was playing with his new toys in no time.

Part II

The next day we had to run a few errands in Robinson, so while we were out in the bitter cold and wind and snow we took Logan out for a birthday dinner. He said he wanted McDonald's, but we knew anywhere with a cheeseburger on the kids menu would be just fine, so for Justin's and my sake we went to Joe's Crab Shack instead. We let him pick a dessert off the kids menu after he ate his cheeseburger and he picked the build your own ice cream sandwich sundae.

He loved it!

If Logan had a dessert, we knew Tolan would have to have one too. So he got a rice krispie treat that you get to paint with sundae toppings.

He loved it too. These were very cute ideas that I may have to use sometime in the future.

Part III

On Sunday we celebrated Logan's birthday with Justin's side of the family. Justin wanted to do a fancy cheese tray, so he picked all the cheeses at the store the day before and planned a great cheese tray. I love Costco's cakes. Our membership is about to expire and we aren't going to renew it b/c eventhough I prefer it over Sam's, it just is not in a convenient location and we just end up going to Sam's all the time. Anyway, so I wanted to get a cake before it expired.

very nice. It's huge, I know. Our freezer is stocked even after sending some home with people...

Logan was in a bit of a better mood this time, but he covered his ears when we sang to him!

After lots of tries and at least one nice spitball on the cake, he got all the candles blown out.

He also got lots of presents!

Happy Birthday Logan! We sure love you!

Happy (5th) Anniversary!

Justin and I hit the five year mark this New Year's Eve. We've had 5 really great and blessed years. Since we were back in Pittsburgh, with the nearest temple being the one we got married in and free babysitters close-by we thought we would take advantage of it and make a trip out of it. We left the boys with my mom and dad for a few days and headed to Washington D.C. to relive our wedding experience.

The only thing we really changed was our hotel. For our wedding we stayed in the Mayflower Renaissance downtown, but we were okay with saving a few bucks and not going back to that particular hotel. Instead we stayed at the Westin at Tyson's corner so we could go to Maggiano's when we got there. We had our wedding luncheon here and Maggiano's has remained one of our favorite restaurants ever since. We've never really lived close to one, so we were excited to go back.

Warning: we did not get ANY good pictures on this trip, but I really made an effort to actually take them, so I'll post them anyway...

My eyes are closed. Nice. Our server took this for us and then we told him we were there for our anniversary and that we'd come there after our wedding, etc. A few minutes later he came back with 2 glasses of champagne. After an awkward moment, we thanked him but explained that we don't drink and anyway, I was pregnant. His manager happened to see all this too and we had all had a good laugh. But the food was good and we had a great dinner. They have the best lasagna - we get it every time!

After dinner we went to see Avatar. We had to wait in a line before they opened the doors to the theater, but they made that line about 5 miles from the actual door the theater. So by the time they let people through all the dorks went into stampede mode. It was crazy! Seriously, no need to run down a pregnant lady for a seat in a stupid movie. I was very annoyed, but oh well. Here we are in our 3D glasses, and yes, another lovely picture of me with at least one of my eyes closed:

After this we got in trouble for using a camera in a movie theater. Shame on us! And btw, Justin and I both agreed that we could do without the 3D. They still need to work on the technology a little bit - they are just trying to make an extra buck right now. So don't bother paying the extra $$ to see it in 3D - we thought it actually took away from the movie.

The next morning, on our actual anniversary, Justin scraped our car out from under a layer of ice and we headed to the temple where we were married. Since there had been freezing rain the night before the temple was pretty empty and even quieter than usual.

No fancy photographer or posed pictures this time, just the arm-reach-self portrait! There was plenty of snow there this time and even though I had really wanted snow for our wedding day pictures, I realized that with all that snow would have been all that slush - and my dress would have been a mess!

After the temple we headed for home, but made one more stop for what my memory had deemed the most delicious chicken tenders ever. The night before our wedding we took all the wedding party to a restaurant near the hotel we were staying in. Bugaboo Creek. None of us had ever eaten there before, and I got the chicken tenders and have wanted to have them again ever since. But Bugaboo Creek is an east coast chain, so we hadn't come across it since. Here they are, the Snowbird Chicken Tenders:

So good. The breading is so light and crispy and the chicken underneath so tender. And the BBQ sauce and honey mustard so good! Okay so I'm sounding like the chicken tenders were the best part of our little anniversary getaway. They weren't. We had a really great time. I'm glad we were able to go (thank you mom & dad!). And I'm glad we've made it so easily through the first five years of married life. We have truly been so blessed and we look forward to the next five and beyond!

Christmas

Every year Justin's family all gets together Christmas Eve for thie r version of the traditional Italian feast of the 7 fishes. After eating the fish and loads of other food we have a gift exchange, which the boys waited anxiously for all day long.

Not the greatest picture of Logan, but he's excited that the moment has arrived.

Here's Tolan "Waa Hoo"ing over his present before he even had it unwrapped.

Later that night, at our house, Santa dropped by and left a few things:

The boys didn't need any help this year. They knew exactly what to do!

They were very excited. They liked each present they opened and we had to remind them that they had more to open even though they wanted to play with the one they had in hand.

We got Tolan a little drum set. We thought that Logan liked music when he was little, but Tolan seems to like it even more and we knew he would love to have a drum set. For Logan, this was the year for Legos.

Justin took the "after" picture of all the loot.

Then he tried to get one with the boys in it.

Come on Dad, we just want to play!

After that we had a yummy breakfast with Justin's parents and then later that day we headed up to my parents' where the boys opened more presents, but I guess I didn't take any pictures. Overall we had a great Christmas and the boys have been busy ever since with all their new toys.

Goodbye 2009!

2009 seems to have gone out with a gluttonous bang. The holidays have been so crazy this year that gluttonous seems to be a good word to describe the "glutton" of activities, parties, things to do, things to get done, new toys for the boys and of course, the gluttony of food we've had over the past 5 or so weeks. We had Justin's birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, our anniversary, New Years, Logan's birthday and a multitude of family gatherings, church and work and friends' parties and all the loads of food and running around and everything goes along with all those things. (Not to mention I still need to upload pictures and blog about all those things). I'm not complaining though, I know we are blessed to have so much and have so much to do, but I'm exhausted. I'm so ready for normal life to resume and to move on from 2009.

Justin and I celebrated our 5th anniversary this New Year's Eve and I think I can say 2009 was the hardest year out of our 5 years. In the grand scheme of things and the grand scale of hardships you can experience, ours really haven't been that bad. But for our little family and our own little scale, this year was probably the hardest. January started out with me going to Utah for my grandmother's funeral. I didn't live near her for most of my life and when I finally did, she had Alzheimer's and didn't really know who I was anyway. But going to her funeral affected me alot more than I expected as I learned things about her and her life I had never known. We followed up in February with a completely unexpected miscarriage which is one of those things you hear about and sympathize with, but never really understand the emotional and physical toll it takes on someone until you go through it. The miscarriage also happened to start its process on the same day Tolan was having surgery on the inside of his upper lip. So that was all very hard, but we had some great friends help us through it with meals and tons of support.



We knew it was coming on the horizon, but not long after all that we came to the decision that it was now time for a change in Justin's job. There are lots of "fun" things that go along with working for a large company in corporate America that I won't go into, and those things along with just the normal progression of a career and the guidance of the Lord in our lives, we knew it was time for change and we felt strongly that we needed to get back to Pittsburgh. We didn't know how or why, but we were going. This was just the beginning of a very long and stressful process - finding a job in Pittsburgh, figuring out how financially and logistically we were going to move to Pittsburgh, getting our house on the market, trying to sell it, preparing to move & packing up everything on our own this time, then the move itself. Moving is so stressful on so many levels and all the processes of this move just seemed to drag on for most of the year.



Once we actually packed up and tearfully drove out of our driveway and across the country, we stayed with my parents for a few months. That was truly a blessing, but also a trial. It's hard to move back in with your parents after living on your own with your own family. And while we were there we were still stressing about our house sitting empty and unsold in Texas. We were also trying to figure out where we were going to live here amidst a very unpromising and discouraging hunt for a rental. But after many prayers and lots of faith, it did all work out. We unexpectedly found out I was pregnant in July and eventually our house rented out in Texas, we found a great house to rent here for a really great price and moved in the week I would have been having the baby that I miscarried in February. So after all the stress and trial everything did work out.



We are so glad that whole ordeal is over with. Moving gets harder every time and I never want to move again unless the company pays for it and hires a moving company! So we shall see. We are settled in here and really enjoying having family close-by. I only had one living grandparent growing up, and she lived far away, so it's been really fun to see my kids get to have all four grandparents here, healthy, close-by and eager to be with their grandchildren.



We do miss Texas a lot though, and that has been hard. We lived in Austin for 2 1/2 years - the longest we have ever lived anywhere and long enough to establish good friendships and have it feel like home. I'm not the most outgoing and social person, so it's not easy for me to just make new friends. Making friends when you are married (for me anyway) has been different from making friends in high school or college, and then different all over again when you have kids. I was just establishing those good friends that I could call up anytime just to talk and not feel like I was interrupting her day or just to say, "my kids are driving me crazy, why don't you come over with your kids and we'll hang out while they play." It was also nice that our husbands were friends too. Justin has made some friends at church here, but they aren't married, so I'm a little jealous and still missing having that kind of friend here.



I guess the only other hard thing we've gone through this year was Tolan's little adventure to the Emergency Room and all the weeks of bandaging and doctor's appointments that followed. But he's fine and it definitely could have been worse!



I know our trials this year really haven't been that great and I know we have grown from them and many have even turned out to be blessings in disguise, but goodbye 2009 and welcome 2010! Who knows what 2010 has in store for us. I know it has at least one thing in store for us and that's what I need to focus on now that the busy holiday season is over....



There are only about 10 or 11 weeks until this baby could realistically come. I am due April 7, but Logan came 14 days early and Tolan 7 days early. So we could be seeing this baby in 10 or 11 weeks. And are we ready???



This picture pretty much sums it up:
That's her room. We are so not ready. See that little pile of pink there on the floor? That's about all this little girl has. A carseat cover. A few onesies and her designated "blanky." No crib set up. No baby paraphernalia unpacked. No girly wardrobe purchased. Oh, and no name. We are totally clueless on the name. Her middle name will either be Celest (mine and my mom's middle name) or Whitney (my ancestor's last name). So do not ask. We do not have a name for this poor girl and I need to get into the nesting mode!