For the Grandmas.... I love love love hearing my sweet little Wesley sing. I've got to get one more; his favorite carol is Winter Wonderland it's just SO PRECIOUS when he says "conspire" and "as we stroll along" and "Parson Brown" .... LOVE him.
Big news on the blog coming soon... I am behind on sleep and basically everything else in my life, so all you get for now are these videos...
Merry Christmas!
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
testing the new camera on santa
Got a Canon A2200. I felt good about it when I tested it at Best Buy, but now not so sure. Sigh. Just hoping for something that catches my son's smiles before it's too late. (That was the big big big reason I hated the Nikon. The delay was too much. I missed everything.)
The best pic here is blurry... darn indoor lighting.
Wesley has officially asked Santa for a "big long firetruck." Shane and I are milking the Santa thing for all it's worth, as in "Wesley you need to listen to Mom and Dad; Santa doesn't bring firetrucks to little boys who don't listen," and "Wesley, make a good choice, so you can be a good boy and Santa will bring you a firetruck," etc. We have stooped to a new low. It only marginally works.
Christmas is here!
PS in case you're wondering.... the green turtleneck was a bad idea. Wesley TOTALLY has an oral fixation right now. It is INSANE and I cannot handle it. Toys, hands, clothes, everything goes into his mouth. Urgh. He has even bitten us -- both me and Shane. It hurts like heck. He doesn't do it to be vengeful, he just gets so darn excited he can't contain himself and then BAM, bites us. Sheesh. We're worried. Any advice is welcome. So that is why the shirt is soaked from being sucked on.
The best pic here is blurry... darn indoor lighting.
Wesley has officially asked Santa for a "big long firetruck." Shane and I are milking the Santa thing for all it's worth, as in "Wesley you need to listen to Mom and Dad; Santa doesn't bring firetrucks to little boys who don't listen," and "Wesley, make a good choice, so you can be a good boy and Santa will bring you a firetruck," etc. We have stooped to a new low. It only marginally works.
Christmas is here!
PS in case you're wondering.... the green turtleneck was a bad idea. Wesley TOTALLY has an oral fixation right now. It is INSANE and I cannot handle it. Toys, hands, clothes, everything goes into his mouth. Urgh. He has even bitten us -- both me and Shane. It hurts like heck. He doesn't do it to be vengeful, he just gets so darn excited he can't contain himself and then BAM, bites us. Sheesh. We're worried. Any advice is welcome. So that is why the shirt is soaked from being sucked on.
Friday, December 2, 2011
"new house with the garage"
Well, I did not do so well with my promise last week. Oops. My life is just so complicated and busy these days!
But, in keeping with the promised posts, here is an update on our housing situation:
As many of you know, we bought a third-floor condo at the end of 2005. We thought it would be a good "investment."
Ha.
As the real estate market continued to tank, and our family continued to grow, we realized we needed to get out. The condo was a fine place to live -- it was roof over our heads. The Association was well managed (I was President of the Board!), and things were taken care of to our satisfaction. I mean, there was a roof leak and the Association paid every penny. We took care of our little home and enjoyed our time there.
But there just came a moment, sometime recently, when we realized we were absolutely done with multi-family living. Done.
Maybe it was the pile of bath towels sometime left outside the Dumpster in the rain. (They were towels. Why not put them *IN* the Dumpster?). Maybe it was the annoying dog belonging to a new neighbor in the apartment complex next door. Maybe it was the ugly abandoned vehicle with the flat tire parked on the street, which I personally called and reported, that got tagged for towing, but the owner scraped the stickers off and yet didn't bother to move the car. Seriously? Maybe it was the jerks who attended a party at my neighbor's place at the beginning of October and smashed my pumpkins (to which there was an eye witness).
I'm just so done.
We put our place on the market at the end of June. We put EVERYTHING in storage. The place was pristine. But yet we couldn't give it away. Our price dropped... and dropped... and dropped. Our realtor has been patient with us. We initially thought if we couldn't sell it we'd keep it and rent it out, but when we crunched the numbers it was too scary and risky. Then, we thought we'd just move out and have it vacant until it sold, but when it started to look like maybe no one would buy it. We had to accept we may have had to stay there for the time being. Very scary.
With my belly burgeoning with a baby, we set Halloween as our deadline. If we didn't have an offer by then, we'd take it off the market, suck it up, have a baby, and decide what to do later. The timing was so bad.
Our offer came on October 24. Seriously. We went back and forth a few times, and settled on a rock-bottom price. We are getting nothing out of this folks. Our place (a regular sale) was competing with two short sales in the complex, and we got the first offer of the bunch. Lucky us. I'm glad someone realized that even though a regular sale does come at a premium, it's worth it. I'm really grateful for this single guy who is buying our place. I hope he's really happy there.
We were set to close today, but because of Thanksgiving it has been extended to next Friday.
So there we were, finally with an offer but with no plans on where to go. I was 8 months pregnant. We went to all the potential houses in our price range and we didn't completely love any of them. Sure, a handful of them could work, but did we want them? Did we want those neighborhoods, those square footages, those schools?
We gave up and decided to find a place to rent. I had a couple leads from some friends from Church about rental properties, and we checked into a few of them. There was one family that was here, renting a fabulous house, on a 6-month Boeing contract. In November (the week of my birthday), the contract was up and they were headed back to Montana for 6 months. BUT, they wanted to come back to this very same rental property after that contract was over, as they had another contract here that starts in April. It's all very precise. Enter us -- we only want a temporary place to live, 6 months tops. We wanted to move in Thanksgiving weekend (the very next week after they had to leave). It was like the stars aligned.
The funky thing is that this house is furnished. The owners moved in with some family in a mansion somewhere to save money, and they kept all sorts of everything in this house. They are willing to rent it to someone they trust. When we were talking about renting it, they asked us to meet them for dinner so they could get to know us. Of course the previous tenants put in a good word for us. I think we are so lucky it all worked out the way it did. We were able to negotiate a rent price that worked for both of us, it has all the space we need for our family for now, and it's not like we had to compete with dozens of other renters. It was handed right to us.
So, I am sitting in their chair at their computer desk. Shane is watching a movie on their big-screen TV while lounging on one of their couches. I used their skillet to make quesidillas for dinner and Wesley likes to jump off their cushy ottoman and play on their backyard swings.
It's kinda wild. They have really nice stuff, some of which I'll never use. I've been stashing things in the deep corners of cupboards so I don't have to deal with them. Trying to work the ergonomics out has been challenging.
We love not having stairs. LOVE it. We love the garage! WOW! I've never lived in a house with a garage. (Not that I remember.) We have Gabby's kitty box in the garage and it's awesome. I love that we have our own four walls and if I hear a noise, I know it's coming from my house.
But, not all things are rosy. Some things are in strange shape, like the dishwasher that makes crazy noises or the nightstand that is missing handles. The second day I tried to draw the blinds up in the master bedroom and blinds completely fell down. Whoops. Although the washer and dryer are in the upstairs hallway, when we do laundry at night (or during a nap), the spin cycle makes the bed shake. Weird. And although we're in a quiet cul-de-sac, one of the neighbors has like 15 cars, including one really annoying suped-up car which he "warms up" every morning at 6 AM for 15 minutes. Once he woke up Wesley who came out of his room screaming, "Smoke! I see smoke!" I literally thought a house was on fire, but it was just the car's exhaust. Seriously!
It's funny how living in this house hasn't been 100% perfect. It's really made me think more about what I thought living in a house meant. We are still dealing with neighbors that bug us, still dealing with quirky things about where we live, etc. It's strange to reconcile that in my mind.
Our newest family secret is wondering if maybe we should move somewhere else. Frankly, I am terrified of living in another state. I really like it here. I've made such good friends. But Shane is right when he says I'm done with my job, his makes him crazy, the weather here isn't wonderful, and we're having a heck of a time finding a house we like. Maybe the reason things aren't working out if that we're not supposed to be here. I hadn't considered that. Should we be in Utah to be next to Shane's sister, Denver to be next to my brother, South Carolina to work at the Boeing 787 plant, TriCities to be closer to grandparents?
Who knows. All I know is we have to figure out something, since I can't handle all this transition. I cannot physically handle another change now. My job, my home, a new baby girl... so much has changed. SO MUCH.
Anyway, for right now, we have place to live. Wesley calls it our "new house with the garage," and our old place is "our old house with no garage." We still go there every once in awhile to clean and get stuff done... I'm kinda looking forward to the last time I go up those stairs. The place treated us well, but we're happy to have something different. I just wish we could space things out a bit. I guess that's not our style. Go big or go home, right?
But, in keeping with the promised posts, here is an update on our housing situation:
As many of you know, we bought a third-floor condo at the end of 2005. We thought it would be a good "investment."
Ha.
As the real estate market continued to tank, and our family continued to grow, we realized we needed to get out. The condo was a fine place to live -- it was roof over our heads. The Association was well managed (I was President of the Board!), and things were taken care of to our satisfaction. I mean, there was a roof leak and the Association paid every penny. We took care of our little home and enjoyed our time there.
But there just came a moment, sometime recently, when we realized we were absolutely done with multi-family living. Done.
Maybe it was the pile of bath towels sometime left outside the Dumpster in the rain. (They were towels. Why not put them *IN* the Dumpster?). Maybe it was the annoying dog belonging to a new neighbor in the apartment complex next door. Maybe it was the ugly abandoned vehicle with the flat tire parked on the street, which I personally called and reported, that got tagged for towing, but the owner scraped the stickers off and yet didn't bother to move the car. Seriously? Maybe it was the jerks who attended a party at my neighbor's place at the beginning of October and smashed my pumpkins (to which there was an eye witness).
I'm just so done.
We put our place on the market at the end of June. We put EVERYTHING in storage. The place was pristine. But yet we couldn't give it away. Our price dropped... and dropped... and dropped. Our realtor has been patient with us. We initially thought if we couldn't sell it we'd keep it and rent it out, but when we crunched the numbers it was too scary and risky. Then, we thought we'd just move out and have it vacant until it sold, but when it started to look like maybe no one would buy it. We had to accept we may have had to stay there for the time being. Very scary.
With my belly burgeoning with a baby, we set Halloween as our deadline. If we didn't have an offer by then, we'd take it off the market, suck it up, have a baby, and decide what to do later. The timing was so bad.
Our offer came on October 24. Seriously. We went back and forth a few times, and settled on a rock-bottom price. We are getting nothing out of this folks. Our place (a regular sale) was competing with two short sales in the complex, and we got the first offer of the bunch. Lucky us. I'm glad someone realized that even though a regular sale does come at a premium, it's worth it. I'm really grateful for this single guy who is buying our place. I hope he's really happy there.
We were set to close today, but because of Thanksgiving it has been extended to next Friday.
So there we were, finally with an offer but with no plans on where to go. I was 8 months pregnant. We went to all the potential houses in our price range and we didn't completely love any of them. Sure, a handful of them could work, but did we want them? Did we want those neighborhoods, those square footages, those schools?
We gave up and decided to find a place to rent. I had a couple leads from some friends from Church about rental properties, and we checked into a few of them. There was one family that was here, renting a fabulous house, on a 6-month Boeing contract. In November (the week of my birthday), the contract was up and they were headed back to Montana for 6 months. BUT, they wanted to come back to this very same rental property after that contract was over, as they had another contract here that starts in April. It's all very precise. Enter us -- we only want a temporary place to live, 6 months tops. We wanted to move in Thanksgiving weekend (the very next week after they had to leave). It was like the stars aligned.
The funky thing is that this house is furnished. The owners moved in with some family in a mansion somewhere to save money, and they kept all sorts of everything in this house. They are willing to rent it to someone they trust. When we were talking about renting it, they asked us to meet them for dinner so they could get to know us. Of course the previous tenants put in a good word for us. I think we are so lucky it all worked out the way it did. We were able to negotiate a rent price that worked for both of us, it has all the space we need for our family for now, and it's not like we had to compete with dozens of other renters. It was handed right to us.
So, I am sitting in their chair at their computer desk. Shane is watching a movie on their big-screen TV while lounging on one of their couches. I used their skillet to make quesidillas for dinner and Wesley likes to jump off their cushy ottoman and play on their backyard swings.
It's kinda wild. They have really nice stuff, some of which I'll never use. I've been stashing things in the deep corners of cupboards so I don't have to deal with them. Trying to work the ergonomics out has been challenging.
We love not having stairs. LOVE it. We love the garage! WOW! I've never lived in a house with a garage. (Not that I remember.) We have Gabby's kitty box in the garage and it's awesome. I love that we have our own four walls and if I hear a noise, I know it's coming from my house.
But, not all things are rosy. Some things are in strange shape, like the dishwasher that makes crazy noises or the nightstand that is missing handles. The second day I tried to draw the blinds up in the master bedroom and blinds completely fell down. Whoops. Although the washer and dryer are in the upstairs hallway, when we do laundry at night (or during a nap), the spin cycle makes the bed shake. Weird. And although we're in a quiet cul-de-sac, one of the neighbors has like 15 cars, including one really annoying suped-up car which he "warms up" every morning at 6 AM for 15 minutes. Once he woke up Wesley who came out of his room screaming, "Smoke! I see smoke!" I literally thought a house was on fire, but it was just the car's exhaust. Seriously!
It's funny how living in this house hasn't been 100% perfect. It's really made me think more about what I thought living in a house meant. We are still dealing with neighbors that bug us, still dealing with quirky things about where we live, etc. It's strange to reconcile that in my mind.
Our newest family secret is wondering if maybe we should move somewhere else. Frankly, I am terrified of living in another state. I really like it here. I've made such good friends. But Shane is right when he says I'm done with my job, his makes him crazy, the weather here isn't wonderful, and we're having a heck of a time finding a house we like. Maybe the reason things aren't working out if that we're not supposed to be here. I hadn't considered that. Should we be in Utah to be next to Shane's sister, Denver to be next to my brother, South Carolina to work at the Boeing 787 plant, TriCities to be closer to grandparents?
Who knows. All I know is we have to figure out something, since I can't handle all this transition. I cannot physically handle another change now. My job, my home, a new baby girl... so much has changed. SO MUCH.
Anyway, for right now, we have place to live. Wesley calls it our "new house with the garage," and our old place is "our old house with no garage." We still go there every once in awhile to clean and get stuff done... I'm kinda looking forward to the last time I go up those stairs. The place treated us well, but we're happy to have something different. I just wish we could space things out a bit. I guess that's not our style. Go big or go home, right?
Sunday, November 20, 2011
being 'with child'
Today, I am 35 weeks along in my second pregnancy. Things have not been all rosy this time around, boy howdy.
My doctor was first "concerned" about me at maybe 12-15 weeks, when my blood pressure was creeping higher at my OB visits. I think the truth is that I was eating waaaaaay too many potato chips. (All I wanted was salt! salt! salt!) She actually sent me to a maternal specialist at the University of Washington at the end of July, but interestingly enough, my blood pressure (and all the other numbers they took on me, something called "cardiac output") was normal.
I had some other issues since before I was pregnant, after Wesley was born, having to do with my kidneys. But basically, when you're pregnant and have kidney issues plus high blood pressure they really worry about preeclampsia. I did some research. It is BAD NEWS. I was uber freaked out for awhile. I tried to eat really healthy (um, I should be doing that all the time), and my OB continued to "watch" me. Better to be overcautious about a preeclampsia candidate than ignore it and regret it.
The UW doctor said that although my numbers were normal, he "fully expected" they would be abnormal 6 weeks later. Boo. But, joke's on you, since at my return visit 6 weeks later my numbers were again totally normal. Go me! He said he didn't think I needed to come back, and he gave me a clean bill of health. Yay!
BUT (there's always a BUT) my regular OB continued to be concerned since my blood pressure was always high in her office. Never high at the UW, always high in her office. Maybe I worry about traffic before my OB visits? Maybe she scares me? Maybe Wesley was throwing his M&Ms in my hair so I was stressed when they took my blood pressure? (I try to leave him with a sitter but for the quick 15-minute visits it's better to take him so I can use the carpool lane down to Seattle! And then I have to bribe him with M&Ms while we're there so he's calm.)
Anyway, the end of the story is that she put me on blood pressure meds. I'm on a teeeensy dose of a drug that was the "be all end all" of blood pressure meds a decade ago, until they realized it didn't work all that great and there were better ones. But in her words, "We don't need it to work a lot. We just need it to work a little bit." And work a little bit, it has. My blood pressure is super normal, she is totally thrilled, and I'm almost done with this pregnancy and hopefully it won't be an issue afterwards.
Interestingly though, the "fun" part of doctors being worried about you is that you get a lot more glimpses of the baby. I've had not one, not two, but three ultrasounds, all of which were fun (the standard at 19 weeks, one at 26 weeks where baby was really active, and another at 32 weeks). Great news -- baby is head down, growing marvelously, and looking really healthy. With blood pressure issues they worry about the baby being too small; well take that, naysayers, my little lady is measuring 63% for gestational age as of 32 weeks. Woot woot!
I've also been doing nonstress tests at the hospital for the last few weeks. Those are bizarre. They hook you up to some machine which measures baby movement, uterine contractions, and who knows what else. Brain waves, maybe. Anyway, baby has to be awake and moving, so if she's snoozing they make me drink orange juice and eat graham crackers to wake her up. Once I was in and out in 30 minutes, but once it took over an hour for her to get going. Crazy little lady on her own schedule. Anyway, it's kinda fun to sit there and watch my belly move around due to its own internal lifeforce.
Did I mention during October it was Halloween/Stephen King week on AMC and Shane and I watched this movie about parasitic aliens? I SHOULD NOT HAVE WATCHED THAT MOVIE. Now I think about it every time she moves. Bad news. Creepy movie. Alien in my belly.
Anyway, so that is my story. I am finally to the point now where I know I am healthy, whew, but I am super uncomfortable. I can usually fall asleep OK, but I wake up a couple times a night to pee, plus I have to switch sides often. Then my hands fall asleep faster than my body and they hurt hurt hurt. The other night I came out and sat upright on the couch to fall asleep, since it wasn't happening while lying down. That was the worst night. I've been tired.
Plus, Wesley is being a pill (more on that in another post), and it's just hard to keep up with him. I think I've probably gained... gulp... 35 pounds?, so I definitely feel like a different person and it's harder to control a busy toddler in my "condition." It'll be interesting to see how much I lose as soon as the baby is born, and then how much comes off in the first 6 weeks of exclusive nursing. Then I'll log my "before" numbers and start my weight loss journey. All that Halloween candy better be gone by then, huh!?
It's been crazy to recognize the differences this time around. I feel like Wesley moved a lot, at all hours of the day. This little gal is much more reserved. She really only kicks in the late afternoon, evening, or at night. She does wake up after I eat, but it's not for very long. I think she's really more chill. I tell Shane that, and he says, "thank goodness; I couldn't handle another Wesley." Ha!
The heartburn has been about the same (awful), the other slower-digestive issues have been worse in some ways and better in others, and I suppose the tiredness has been about the same. The emotions are probably worse this time around, since I'm sooooo stressed with all kinds of things in my life. Pregnancy is pregnancy. It's a wild ride. I think we'll have our boy and girl and we should be happy, so I don't imagine I'll do it again. I am grateful for every second I've had to carry my sweet children, although it does take quite a toll on the mind and body.
But indeed, I am so glad to have this baby on the way. I can't wait to meet her.
My doctor was first "concerned" about me at maybe 12-15 weeks, when my blood pressure was creeping higher at my OB visits. I think the truth is that I was eating waaaaaay too many potato chips. (All I wanted was salt! salt! salt!) She actually sent me to a maternal specialist at the University of Washington at the end of July, but interestingly enough, my blood pressure (and all the other numbers they took on me, something called "cardiac output") was normal.
I had some other issues since before I was pregnant, after Wesley was born, having to do with my kidneys. But basically, when you're pregnant and have kidney issues plus high blood pressure they really worry about preeclampsia. I did some research. It is BAD NEWS. I was uber freaked out for awhile. I tried to eat really healthy (um, I should be doing that all the time), and my OB continued to "watch" me. Better to be overcautious about a preeclampsia candidate than ignore it and regret it.
The UW doctor said that although my numbers were normal, he "fully expected" they would be abnormal 6 weeks later. Boo. But, joke's on you, since at my return visit 6 weeks later my numbers were again totally normal. Go me! He said he didn't think I needed to come back, and he gave me a clean bill of health. Yay!
BUT (there's always a BUT) my regular OB continued to be concerned since my blood pressure was always high in her office. Never high at the UW, always high in her office. Maybe I worry about traffic before my OB visits? Maybe she scares me? Maybe Wesley was throwing his M&Ms in my hair so I was stressed when they took my blood pressure? (I try to leave him with a sitter but for the quick 15-minute visits it's better to take him so I can use the carpool lane down to Seattle! And then I have to bribe him with M&Ms while we're there so he's calm.)
Anyway, the end of the story is that she put me on blood pressure meds. I'm on a teeeensy dose of a drug that was the "be all end all" of blood pressure meds a decade ago, until they realized it didn't work all that great and there were better ones. But in her words, "We don't need it to work a lot. We just need it to work a little bit." And work a little bit, it has. My blood pressure is super normal, she is totally thrilled, and I'm almost done with this pregnancy and hopefully it won't be an issue afterwards.
Interestingly though, the "fun" part of doctors being worried about you is that you get a lot more glimpses of the baby. I've had not one, not two, but three ultrasounds, all of which were fun (the standard at 19 weeks, one at 26 weeks where baby was really active, and another at 32 weeks). Great news -- baby is head down, growing marvelously, and looking really healthy. With blood pressure issues they worry about the baby being too small; well take that, naysayers, my little lady is measuring 63% for gestational age as of 32 weeks. Woot woot!
I've also been doing nonstress tests at the hospital for the last few weeks. Those are bizarre. They hook you up to some machine which measures baby movement, uterine contractions, and who knows what else. Brain waves, maybe. Anyway, baby has to be awake and moving, so if she's snoozing they make me drink orange juice and eat graham crackers to wake her up. Once I was in and out in 30 minutes, but once it took over an hour for her to get going. Crazy little lady on her own schedule. Anyway, it's kinda fun to sit there and watch my belly move around due to its own internal lifeforce.
Did I mention during October it was Halloween/Stephen King week on AMC and Shane and I watched this movie about parasitic aliens? I SHOULD NOT HAVE WATCHED THAT MOVIE. Now I think about it every time she moves. Bad news. Creepy movie. Alien in my belly.
Anyway, so that is my story. I am finally to the point now where I know I am healthy, whew, but I am super uncomfortable. I can usually fall asleep OK, but I wake up a couple times a night to pee, plus I have to switch sides often. Then my hands fall asleep faster than my body and they hurt hurt hurt. The other night I came out and sat upright on the couch to fall asleep, since it wasn't happening while lying down. That was the worst night. I've been tired.
Plus, Wesley is being a pill (more on that in another post), and it's just hard to keep up with him. I think I've probably gained... gulp... 35 pounds?, so I definitely feel like a different person and it's harder to control a busy toddler in my "condition." It'll be interesting to see how much I lose as soon as the baby is born, and then how much comes off in the first 6 weeks of exclusive nursing. Then I'll log my "before" numbers and start my weight loss journey. All that Halloween candy better be gone by then, huh!?
It's been crazy to recognize the differences this time around. I feel like Wesley moved a lot, at all hours of the day. This little gal is much more reserved. She really only kicks in the late afternoon, evening, or at night. She does wake up after I eat, but it's not for very long. I think she's really more chill. I tell Shane that, and he says, "thank goodness; I couldn't handle another Wesley." Ha!
The heartburn has been about the same (awful), the other slower-digestive issues have been worse in some ways and better in others, and I suppose the tiredness has been about the same. The emotions are probably worse this time around, since I'm sooooo stressed with all kinds of things in my life. Pregnancy is pregnancy. It's a wild ride. I think we'll have our boy and girl and we should be happy, so I don't imagine I'll do it again. I am grateful for every second I've had to carry my sweet children, although it does take quite a toll on the mind and body.
But indeed, I am so glad to have this baby on the way. I can't wait to meet her.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
what have i been doing?
YES the month of November is HALF WAY OVER and this is my first post. I vow that next week, I will blog EVERY DAY to catch you up on some of the great things happening in my life.
Blog topics forthcoming include:
Blog topics forthcoming include:
- how I celebrated my birthday (tomorrow, by the way. feel free to make me feel special on Facebook.)
- Recent trips, including the pre-baby getaway
- an update on our real estate situation
- an update on the pregnancy situation
- an update on the Wesley situation
- a thoughtful post on Thanksgiving
- a surprise post. Let it marinate.
There you go, 7 posts before the end of the month. Promise.
Monday, October 31, 2011
happy halloween
Much candy in our house!
Wesley is a caterpillar/stinkbug... but I was pretty excited about my shirt, too :-)
Wesley is a caterpillar/stinkbug... but I was pretty excited about my shirt, too :-)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
overheard in our house....
(Wesley is being crazy, and we are trying to get him in his bed for good)
Shane: You sure you want another one of these?
Me: Yes. I genuinely enjoy Wesley for at least 22 hours out of every 24.
Shane: So you enjoy him when he's sleeping?
Me: Definitely!
Bedtime has been a struggle since Wesley now skips his nap more often than not and is just toast by 6 PM... although he isn't interested in going to bed at 6 PM. It's weird since he's tired, but he's not one of those kids that will find a corner and fall asleep. No no, he gets more and more wound up, and goes absolutely berserk all around the house. We get frustrated, although it's a small murky drop in the big bucket of wonderful happy times with my little boy. I can't believe I get another one in just a few short weeks! 32 weeks today!
Apologies for the neglected blog... I'll be sure to post adorable Halloween pictures tomorrow!
Shane: You sure you want another one of these?
Me: Yes. I genuinely enjoy Wesley for at least 22 hours out of every 24.
Shane: So you enjoy him when he's sleeping?
Me: Definitely!
Bedtime has been a struggle since Wesley now skips his nap more often than not and is just toast by 6 PM... although he isn't interested in going to bed at 6 PM. It's weird since he's tired, but he's not one of those kids that will find a corner and fall asleep. No no, he gets more and more wound up, and goes absolutely berserk all around the house. We get frustrated, although it's a small murky drop in the big bucket of wonderful happy times with my little boy. I can't believe I get another one in just a few short weeks! 32 weeks today!
Apologies for the neglected blog... I'll be sure to post adorable Halloween pictures tomorrow!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
let the preparations begin....
I've really been missing my camera. I need to just break down and buy a new one or invade that storage unit of ours for our backup camera, pronto.
Today I took 6+ bags of sweet baby girl clothes (CLOTHES!) and sorted them by size all over our bed. The little piles of cute pink butterfly onesies and purple flower pants and red ladybug dresses were just to die for. It would have been fun to document. Thank goodness for my dear friends who have handed clothes down so generously. I need to get Wesley's boy clothes out of storage and go through them for gender neutral things that I could keep, and then return the favor to my friends who have their new baby boys. We all help each other out!
I am 30 weeks today. GAH! Welcome to the homestretch. I am really starting to get more excited about meeting our sweet baby girl. Next to the computer here is a list of 23 names (NAMES!) that Shane and I both "like" from about 4 different name books. I have one more name book (of 60,000+ names!), and when I go through that we'll really have to buckle down and cross some more off. I have my favorite handful, and I'm really thinking she'll be one of those 4 or 5 names. Shane's favorite is a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie so NO I have vetoed that name. But he still brings it up. Kinda like how he wanted Wesley named Ozzy. Seriously.
This past Friday we took Wesley to a "sibiling preparation" class (WESLEY!) at Northwest Hospital, where I'll deliver. There was an instructor who basically held a little "playgroup" for a group of 5 or 6 kids, with all of us expectant parents sitting in the back, watching. They did some cute things:
I've been chatting with some other girlfriends about "sibling preparation," and I think some of my strategies for the next two months will be:
We started furniture shopping yesterday (NURSERY!). We'll chuck Wesley's toddler bed and buy him a real bed set, then give his crib mattress to baby girl. So we need to buy him a real twin bed, wow how he is growing up.
My "theme" for baby girl is ladybugs. RED ladybugs. (So, for the rest of their lives, Wesley is my stinkbug and she is my ladybug, haha.) There are several different bed sets out there and I like different things from each one. I need to buckle down and work on getting what I really need. Like, crib sheets and a mobile. I guess if I get nothing else we'll be OK. But I literally made a list and here are all things I will try to collect from Craigslist and eBay between now and then:
Anything I'm forgetting? Let me know if you have any ideas. There's a baby coming!
Today I took 6+ bags of sweet baby girl clothes (CLOTHES!) and sorted them by size all over our bed. The little piles of cute pink butterfly onesies and purple flower pants and red ladybug dresses were just to die for. It would have been fun to document. Thank goodness for my dear friends who have handed clothes down so generously. I need to get Wesley's boy clothes out of storage and go through them for gender neutral things that I could keep, and then return the favor to my friends who have their new baby boys. We all help each other out!
I am 30 weeks today. GAH! Welcome to the homestretch. I am really starting to get more excited about meeting our sweet baby girl. Next to the computer here is a list of 23 names (NAMES!) that Shane and I both "like" from about 4 different name books. I have one more name book (of 60,000+ names!), and when I go through that we'll really have to buckle down and cross some more off. I have my favorite handful, and I'm really thinking she'll be one of those 4 or 5 names. Shane's favorite is a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie so NO I have vetoed that name. But he still brings it up. Kinda like how he wanted Wesley named Ozzy. Seriously.
This past Friday we took Wesley to a "sibiling preparation" class (WESLEY!) at Northwest Hospital, where I'll deliver. There was an instructor who basically held a little "playgroup" for a group of 5 or 6 kids, with all of us expectant parents sitting in the back, watching. They did some cute things:
- She had these teeeeeny little water balloons with tiny plastic babies floating around inside of them, and each kid got to hold one. It was to teach them that the baby is in mommy's tummy right now and is floating around in water, growing until it's ready to be born. Um adorable. They did use some anatomical words, which I'm sure went right over Wesley's head, but there was one little boy (probably age 4?) who knew what a "uterus" was. Yeah, I've never taught my child that.
- She had little baby dolls and she taught the kids five steps to holding a baby. Step 1: Tell a grown up when you want to hold a baby. Step 2: Make a lap. (Criss cross applesauce!) Step 3: Set up your arms to hold the baby. Step 4: Hold the baby. Don't forget to support its head. You can also sway or sing (they sung the ABCs to the little baby dolls), and be quiet and gentle with the baby. Step 5: Tell a grown up when you're all done. The instructor had little blankets so they could wrap up the babies and stuff; it was so cute to watch Wesley hold this little baby. What a cute big brother. He took it very seriously. Although at one point he grabbed the baby by the neck and was toting it around the room.
- She had books about siblings that we could read or look at pictures.
- She had a little 3-minute video about a brother and sister who went to visit a new baby with their mom.
- When the kids all came in, they could decorate a piece of paper with stickers. Then she let them roll the paper up into a little megaphone so they could "talk to" the baby in mommy's tummy.
I've been chatting with some other girlfriends about "sibling preparation," and I think some of my strategies for the next two months will be:
- Get a few books from the library about babies.
- Buy a baby doll from a second-hand store for Wesley to care for. We'll practice holding it, rocking it, putting it to sleep... we'll see how that goes.
- Have Wesley pick out a "present" for the baby and wrap it up. I'm thinking maybe some pacifiers or something? Or a new toy? Some friends also said that they had the baby "give" a present to the toddler, so the two kids essentially exchange gifts. I'm leaning towards something my friend Abby did; her new baby boy "bought" her toddler a digital camera! Yea, a cute little toddler one that is essentially unbreakable. And the toddler can then take pictures of the baby. Such a cute idea. They're only like $20 online, so I think we'll definitely spring for that.
We started furniture shopping yesterday (NURSERY!). We'll chuck Wesley's toddler bed and buy him a real bed set, then give his crib mattress to baby girl. So we need to buy him a real twin bed, wow how he is growing up.
My "theme" for baby girl is ladybugs. RED ladybugs. (So, for the rest of their lives, Wesley is my stinkbug and she is my ladybug, haha.) There are several different bed sets out there and I like different things from each one. I need to buckle down and work on getting what I really need. Like, crib sheets and a mobile. I guess if I get nothing else we'll be OK. But I literally made a list and here are all things I will try to collect from Craigslist and eBay between now and then:
- Sheets
- Dust ruffle
- Rug
- Diaper stacker
- Mobile
- Light switch/plug covers (maybe. If Wesley and baby girl share a room I guess I won't need these. He has his Looney Tunes ones still up.)
- Throw pillow?
- Photo board? or other wall decorations
- Shelf and picture frames (I may make these myself; I made them for Wesley)
Anything I'm forgetting? Let me know if you have any ideas. There's a baby coming!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
vegas, baby!
Every couple years my mom and I take a girls trip. Our first trip was in 2005 and we went to Waikiki Beach on Oahu in Hawaii. It was awesome! Seeing as how my days as a mom of one are numbered, she suggested we take another girls trip. Yahoo! We went to Las Vegas last week for some fun in the sun.
Ahhh Vegas. It's 50 degrees in Seattle and it's close to 90 there. It was great!
You may be thinking, "Angela darling, you are a silly little Mormon girl, whatever do you do in Vegas?"
PLENTY!
Tuesday
We checked in and ate some lunch, then went to the pool for a little bit. Mom thought it was funny that while we were checking in, we were just chat chat chatting away and lots of other people in line were quiet and stoic. Weren't they on vacation, too!?! I was so happy to see my mom :-)
The view from our room at the Flamingo...
That night I got together with one of my old BYU roommates, Audra, who lives in Henderson with her husband Ben and two kids. SO FUN. We talked about old friends and bad dates and crazy roommates and more. It was great! Her kids are darling and it was wonderful to see her again. I'm so happy things are going well for her. She cooked me dinner at her place, while Mom relaxed at the hotel with our lunch leftovers.
Welcome to Las Vegas...
Wednesday
Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for breakfast... yum... even though it's Jimmy Buffet's it is not a "buffet," so remember that.
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #1: Mom told me about this hilarious thing called the "Buffet of Buffets" or something. It's $45, which you may think is steep, BUT... it's 24 hours of buffets at a bunch of participating buffets around the city. Mom said if you price it just right you can get a late breakfast one day and an early breakfast the next day. All you can eat food for $45! Not bad!! I found that in general, food in Vegas isn't as cheap as it used to be. It's pretty standard now... the way of the "$4.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp and steak" days are over. We didn't do this crazy buffet, but it's a wild and exciting idea, huh?
Since the Flamingo has Donnie and Marie performing, there were lots of Donnie and Marie photo ops :-) Mom loved it. Here she is with Donnie!
We walked to the new Fashion Show Mall which is just a big mall. I suppose I basically wanted to see the crazy architecture up close. I didn't take a picture; not sure why. It has this wild moon roof thing. Along the way we stopped at McDonald's for the free WiFi. That's right, we managed to go the whole time without Internet! I was on vacation! I did have my smartphone, though, whew.
Waterfalls at the Mirage...
Lunch was at the Venetian... we were going to meet a friend of mine and her mom; we were friends growing up in Salisbury and our moms both knew each other. But it didn't work out because she had some scheduling difficulties at the last minute. Bummer! But that didn't stop us from enjoying the views at the Venetian and some great tomato basil pizza at Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, which a friend recommended. And then some gelato. (I liked the gelato, don't get me wrong... but it could have been better! Really! Maybe I am a gelato snob??)
After enough walking we relaxed in our room. We wanted to be well rested because we were nervous about getting down to Mandalay Bay for The Lion King that night.
Mandalay Bay is all the way at the end of the strip, and we were frankly nervous about transportation. Do we walk? Do we take a hybrid of three free trams? Do we try the bus? I convinced Mom to do the bus! We couldn't find the closest stop so we walked for a little bit until we came to one. We bought two 24-hour passes and crammed ourselves on the bottom of the double-decker city transit bus.
On this particular bus trip a woman (who I felt was maybe drunk?) commented on my pregnant self. She at first remarked that it looked like I was about to pop... and I told her I had until December. She was surprised and asked -- literally, I kid you not -- how much weight I had gained. Ummm yeah. I dodged the question with a funny, "Haha, I really try not to think about it!" but boy, it was awkward. Then she was going on about how big the baby would be and blah blah... I was glad when we finally got to our stop. I waited until I was in an elevator alone with my mom to say, "wow, that lady really made me uncomfortable." And Mom said I handled it very well and some people are just loons. Whew.
The Lion King was awesome. Awesome. The guy who played Scar was so good. The costumes for the animals (like the big elephant, the giraffes, the birds) were excellent. It was cool that the songs matched the movie so well; I knew most of them! There was one part, remember how Timone and Pumbaa make a "diversion" at one point and sing a song about "are you aching, yup yup yup, for some bacon, yup yup yup...," etc.? They didn't do that song! They did another one! It was less cool. But there were a few funny lines added to the script relating to Las Vegas that made me laugh.
Afterwards I had to pretend to be buff by the sign. Then we ate at Red, White, and Blue, an American restaurant another friend recommended, and I'll remember those potato skins for the rest of my life. Good choice!
One of my artsy fartsy pictures of the Luxor...
The main crazy (scary?) part of our trip comes here. We needed to take the bus home. The double-decker bus had announced -- when we got off, a few hours earlier -- that Mandalay Bay was its last stop on the strip and it would do a U-Turn and head back in the other direction. So we tried to catch one of those. But the first bus that came was NOT a double-decker bus, but we thought they were the same transit system, right? Wrong. Evidently we took a REGULAR bus which took us to some transit station MILES AWAY at MIDNIGHT. Seriously. We had to get off the bus and head to the other side of the transit station and hope and pray another one of those buses came by to rescue us. We waited about 15 minutes before one came. Plenty of interesting characters were at this bus terminal. I frankly was a little nervous. But it was well lit and we survived to tell the tale. Whew. Thanks for sticking by me Mom! Glad we can laugh about it now! We made it back to the hotel, where we promptly fell asleep, around 1!
Thursday
Thursday we slept in! We went right to the pool, around maybe 11, and had some breakfast at the cafe there. When we were done we went to find somewhere to sit AND THE PLACE WAS PACKED. We couldn't find any lounge chairs. Gee! I was astonished at how busy it was. So, we found a nice little spot and hid our bags and jumped in the water!! We hung out in the pool, kept an eye on our stuff, chatted like silly ladies, and got all wrinkly. It was awesome. Relaxing. Sunny.
We had tickets for Cirque du Soleil's KA at MGM that night, but they were vouchers we needed to exchange for actual seats at the MGM box office. We decided to get down there early, I think we got there at 4:30 PM or something.
I arranged to meet another friend I hadn't seen in awhile at MGM, a guy from high school named Stuart. There was a group of 4 or so of us that were really close, and Stuart and I were both in that group in high school. It was good to see him! He's in the Air Force now, stationed outside of Las Vegas. He looks great -- buff! The years haven't treated everyone from high school as kindly, haha.
We checked out the Lion Habitat and got some beverages from Starbucks...
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #2: They are closing the Lion Habitat soon, which I think is lame. It's a really cool attraction. There was a narrator sharing some info about the habitat; evidently, there is a rich guy who owns some land a few miles from the Strip and he has 30+ lions on the land. The lions in the Habitat are his lions, which they rotate daily. There are always two on site, but generally never the same two! Interesting. I wish I was a kabillionaire that had my own lion zoo. Could be fun.
Next up was KA. Um, KA was AWESOME. The show was only an hour and a half, and in the first 10 minutes I was like, "well, what else can they do? I've already been incredibly amazed!" Well, yeah, it got even better. The most incredible part, I thought, was this guy like, running and jumping and jump-roping on the outside of a HUGE human-sized double hamster wheel. I wish I could explain it better. It was incredible.
There were incredible daredevil stunts, fire fights on a vertical stage, bad guys and good guys, love, humor... it was a great show. Cirque du Soleil is not cheap, but I definitely recommend it. (The last time I went to Vegas with Shane and my folks we all saw O at the Bellagio, which is also very cool.)
So of course, they make it look easy, and I had to pretend to be all limber afterwards...check out my belly...haha...
The show ended early so we decided to take our time walking back to the Flamingo. I had to stop at every gift shop to find the perfect shirts for my family. I found a great one for Wesley, but gave up finding one I thought Shane would like in his size. So much for 4 for $10!
When we got back it still wasn't too late, and Mom had joined the Flamingo's "rewards club" to save a few bucks at the gift shop (not even sure we used the card, did we Mom?), so she had 5 free bucks to spend at the casino. Haha! We found a good slot machine and she earned herself 4 real dollars from her fake 5 bucks! GO MOM!
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #3: Unlike the rest of the human world, you can smoke inside buildings in Las Vegas. I was surprised at how yucky it made me feel. There are rules that you can only smoke in the casino, like not in the restaurants and lobbies and other public places (I think), but since the wayfinding in Vegas always always always takes you directly through the casinos in order for you to spend your money, this got super uncomfortable. Sigh. I am glad I live in a city where there is no smoking in buildings. I was thinking about it, and by the amount of people you see smoking in Vegas you may assume that like, everyone in the world smokes. But if I think about all of my friends, I don't think I know anyone who smokes. OK I know one guy at work. That's it. I used to know two people at work, but the girl quit when she got pregnant with her first baby. So there. Pregnant ladies do not like smoke.
Friday
We left pretty early. Sigh. Girls week was over. We laughed lots, saw really cool things, shopped until we dropped, walked a marathon (it felt like), had loads of fun, and ate excellent amounts of good food. (This one was in the display case for the breakfast/cookie shop near the elevators... Mom says they have lots of stuff like this on cruise ships...)
Mom, I can't wait to do it again in 5 years! It was just what I needed to de-stress. Thank you for planning this adventure and letting me come along.
Ahhh Vegas. It's 50 degrees in Seattle and it's close to 90 there. It was great!
You may be thinking, "Angela darling, you are a silly little Mormon girl, whatever do you do in Vegas?"
PLENTY!
Tuesday
We checked in and ate some lunch, then went to the pool for a little bit. Mom thought it was funny that while we were checking in, we were just chat chat chatting away and lots of other people in line were quiet and stoic. Weren't they on vacation, too!?! I was so happy to see my mom :-)
The view from our room at the Flamingo...
That night I got together with one of my old BYU roommates, Audra, who lives in Henderson with her husband Ben and two kids. SO FUN. We talked about old friends and bad dates and crazy roommates and more. It was great! Her kids are darling and it was wonderful to see her again. I'm so happy things are going well for her. She cooked me dinner at her place, while Mom relaxed at the hotel with our lunch leftovers.
Welcome to Las Vegas...
Wednesday
Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for breakfast... yum... even though it's Jimmy Buffet's it is not a "buffet," so remember that.
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #1: Mom told me about this hilarious thing called the "Buffet of Buffets" or something. It's $45, which you may think is steep, BUT... it's 24 hours of buffets at a bunch of participating buffets around the city. Mom said if you price it just right you can get a late breakfast one day and an early breakfast the next day. All you can eat food for $45! Not bad!! I found that in general, food in Vegas isn't as cheap as it used to be. It's pretty standard now... the way of the "$4.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp and steak" days are over. We didn't do this crazy buffet, but it's a wild and exciting idea, huh?
Since the Flamingo has Donnie and Marie performing, there were lots of Donnie and Marie photo ops :-) Mom loved it. Here she is with Donnie!
We walked to the new Fashion Show Mall which is just a big mall. I suppose I basically wanted to see the crazy architecture up close. I didn't take a picture; not sure why. It has this wild moon roof thing. Along the way we stopped at McDonald's for the free WiFi. That's right, we managed to go the whole time without Internet! I was on vacation! I did have my smartphone, though, whew.
Waterfalls at the Mirage...
Lunch was at the Venetian... we were going to meet a friend of mine and her mom; we were friends growing up in Salisbury and our moms both knew each other. But it didn't work out because she had some scheduling difficulties at the last minute. Bummer! But that didn't stop us from enjoying the views at the Venetian and some great tomato basil pizza at Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, which a friend recommended. And then some gelato. (I liked the gelato, don't get me wrong... but it could have been better! Really! Maybe I am a gelato snob??)
After enough walking we relaxed in our room. We wanted to be well rested because we were nervous about getting down to Mandalay Bay for The Lion King that night.
Mandalay Bay is all the way at the end of the strip, and we were frankly nervous about transportation. Do we walk? Do we take a hybrid of three free trams? Do we try the bus? I convinced Mom to do the bus! We couldn't find the closest stop so we walked for a little bit until we came to one. We bought two 24-hour passes and crammed ourselves on the bottom of the double-decker city transit bus.
On this particular bus trip a woman (who I felt was maybe drunk?) commented on my pregnant self. She at first remarked that it looked like I was about to pop... and I told her I had until December. She was surprised and asked -- literally, I kid you not -- how much weight I had gained. Ummm yeah. I dodged the question with a funny, "Haha, I really try not to think about it!" but boy, it was awkward. Then she was going on about how big the baby would be and blah blah... I was glad when we finally got to our stop. I waited until I was in an elevator alone with my mom to say, "wow, that lady really made me uncomfortable." And Mom said I handled it very well and some people are just loons. Whew.
The Lion King was awesome. Awesome. The guy who played Scar was so good. The costumes for the animals (like the big elephant, the giraffes, the birds) were excellent. It was cool that the songs matched the movie so well; I knew most of them! There was one part, remember how Timone and Pumbaa make a "diversion" at one point and sing a song about "are you aching, yup yup yup, for some bacon, yup yup yup...," etc.? They didn't do that song! They did another one! It was less cool. But there were a few funny lines added to the script relating to Las Vegas that made me laugh.
Afterwards I had to pretend to be buff by the sign. Then we ate at Red, White, and Blue, an American restaurant another friend recommended, and I'll remember those potato skins for the rest of my life. Good choice!
One of my artsy fartsy pictures of the Luxor...
The main crazy (scary?) part of our trip comes here. We needed to take the bus home. The double-decker bus had announced -- when we got off, a few hours earlier -- that Mandalay Bay was its last stop on the strip and it would do a U-Turn and head back in the other direction. So we tried to catch one of those. But the first bus that came was NOT a double-decker bus, but we thought they were the same transit system, right? Wrong. Evidently we took a REGULAR bus which took us to some transit station MILES AWAY at MIDNIGHT. Seriously. We had to get off the bus and head to the other side of the transit station and hope and pray another one of those buses came by to rescue us. We waited about 15 minutes before one came. Plenty of interesting characters were at this bus terminal. I frankly was a little nervous. But it was well lit and we survived to tell the tale. Whew. Thanks for sticking by me Mom! Glad we can laugh about it now! We made it back to the hotel, where we promptly fell asleep, around 1!
Thursday
Thursday we slept in! We went right to the pool, around maybe 11, and had some breakfast at the cafe there. When we were done we went to find somewhere to sit AND THE PLACE WAS PACKED. We couldn't find any lounge chairs. Gee! I was astonished at how busy it was. So, we found a nice little spot and hid our bags and jumped in the water!! We hung out in the pool, kept an eye on our stuff, chatted like silly ladies, and got all wrinkly. It was awesome. Relaxing. Sunny.
We had tickets for Cirque du Soleil's KA at MGM that night, but they were vouchers we needed to exchange for actual seats at the MGM box office. We decided to get down there early, I think we got there at 4:30 PM or something.
I arranged to meet another friend I hadn't seen in awhile at MGM, a guy from high school named Stuart. There was a group of 4 or so of us that were really close, and Stuart and I were both in that group in high school. It was good to see him! He's in the Air Force now, stationed outside of Las Vegas. He looks great -- buff! The years haven't treated everyone from high school as kindly, haha.
We checked out the Lion Habitat and got some beverages from Starbucks...
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #2: They are closing the Lion Habitat soon, which I think is lame. It's a really cool attraction. There was a narrator sharing some info about the habitat; evidently, there is a rich guy who owns some land a few miles from the Strip and he has 30+ lions on the land. The lions in the Habitat are his lions, which they rotate daily. There are always two on site, but generally never the same two! Interesting. I wish I was a kabillionaire that had my own lion zoo. Could be fun.
Next up was KA. Um, KA was AWESOME. The show was only an hour and a half, and in the first 10 minutes I was like, "well, what else can they do? I've already been incredibly amazed!" Well, yeah, it got even better. The most incredible part, I thought, was this guy like, running and jumping and jump-roping on the outside of a HUGE human-sized double hamster wheel. I wish I could explain it better. It was incredible.
There were incredible daredevil stunts, fire fights on a vertical stage, bad guys and good guys, love, humor... it was a great show. Cirque du Soleil is not cheap, but I definitely recommend it. (The last time I went to Vegas with Shane and my folks we all saw O at the Bellagio, which is also very cool.)
So of course, they make it look easy, and I had to pretend to be all limber afterwards...check out my belly...haha...
The show ended early so we decided to take our time walking back to the Flamingo. I had to stop at every gift shop to find the perfect shirts for my family. I found a great one for Wesley, but gave up finding one I thought Shane would like in his size. So much for 4 for $10!
When we got back it still wasn't too late, and Mom had joined the Flamingo's "rewards club" to save a few bucks at the gift shop (not even sure we used the card, did we Mom?), so she had 5 free bucks to spend at the casino. Haha! We found a good slot machine and she earned herself 4 real dollars from her fake 5 bucks! GO MOM!
Las Vegas Interesting Fact #3: Unlike the rest of the human world, you can smoke inside buildings in Las Vegas. I was surprised at how yucky it made me feel. There are rules that you can only smoke in the casino, like not in the restaurants and lobbies and other public places (I think), but since the wayfinding in Vegas always always always takes you directly through the casinos in order for you to spend your money, this got super uncomfortable. Sigh. I am glad I live in a city where there is no smoking in buildings. I was thinking about it, and by the amount of people you see smoking in Vegas you may assume that like, everyone in the world smokes. But if I think about all of my friends, I don't think I know anyone who smokes. OK I know one guy at work. That's it. I used to know two people at work, but the girl quit when she got pregnant with her first baby. So there. Pregnant ladies do not like smoke.
Friday
We left pretty early. Sigh. Girls week was over. We laughed lots, saw really cool things, shopped until we dropped, walked a marathon (it felt like), had loads of fun, and ate excellent amounts of good food. (This one was in the display case for the breakfast/cookie shop near the elevators... Mom says they have lots of stuff like this on cruise ships...)
Mom, I can't wait to do it again in 5 years! It was just what I needed to de-stress. Thank you for planning this adventure and letting me come along.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
shame on you, seattle
Enough time has officially passed for me to talk about these things without fuming.
Seattle Sounders
For Shane's birthday in March, I bought him tickets to the Seattle Sounders. We were really excited! They are an MLS team. We have been to a game before, but Wesley was younger. I thought it would be really fun; we had good seats and it was an afternoon game against the Chicago Fire on a sunny Saturday in April.
I noticed something interesting when we were walking to our seats. All around the stadium were huge billboard-ish signs saying things like "Keep it PG-13" or similar. There were several of these advertisements, encouraging everyone to be good sports, be respectful, etc. I noticed them but didn't think much of them until later.
We were at the game with our 2-year-old son. He was happy sitting in his seat, eating a hot dog, watching the guys run around kicking a ball.
We were sitting next to what they call the "Emerald City Supporters," a spirit club of 2,000 enthusiastic, chanting fans. Enthusiasm and chanting don't bother me, mind you. It was the crudeness of this particular group that got to me.
Repeatedly when they didn't agree with the referee, they'd yell something (as a group), like "Go home ***hole!" (yes, the actual word). Then there was this song about how "we came to drink, we came to sing," and "can you hear the Fire sing, we can't hear a f****** thing!" SERIOUSLY. F bombs! During the entire game!
I couldn't believe it. It was so disrespectful. It was rude, and it seriously bothered me. I don't know if I'll go to another Sounders game, and if I do I won't sit anywhere near those guys. Although since there are 2,000 of them in a single section, they're pretty loud. I think the thing that was the craziest is that the whole stadium had this "keep it PG-13" message, and yet the game was nothing like that. It was the complete opposite! It was so weird to feel completely contradicted as I sat in my seat.
Seattle Seahawks
Our tale begins when a friend posted on Facebook not too long ago about how the Seahawks were doing an exhibition game on a Saturday night -- and the tickets were cheap. Hot dog the tickets were cheap. I've wanted to go to a Seahawks game for years (mostly for the experience, and since Shane likes football), but 1) the games are mostly on Sundays, except for Monday Night Football games which are really popular, and 2) the tickets are expensive. Like, hundreds of dollars expensive.
So, when I found out about this Saturday game where tickets literally started at $8, I was thrilled. I splurged and bought three $15 tickets!
The game started at 7, so we left our place around 6 PM. We live about 20 miles away, but we knew we had to factor in traffic. We didn't know how bad it would be.
By the time we hit Seattle (Northgate area on the freeway), traffic was getting really heavy. The stadiums can be accessed from the freeway, but we have always had better luck exiting early and taking Route 99 south to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which has a direct exit right to the stadiums. This has always worked for us.
It took some time to exit and get on the 99, but once we did we had smooth sailing -- until we were got closer to Seattle. Traffic was stalling, fast, and one of those electronic signs alerted us that "Alaskan Way Viaduct Closed. Expect Delays." WHAT???? We had no idea! Now we were STUCK on the 99, with no other clear way to get to the stadium.
OK. Shane was fed up so he took the first exit we came to, which was Broad. OK, I thought, Broad goes west to the waterfront. We'll just get on the waterfront, turn south, and somehow get to the stadiums. This isn't rocket science. It's just navigating Seattle.
We were in traffic for what seemed like FOREVER before we hit the waterfront. Kickoff time, 7 PM, came and went. When the waterfront was finally in view, we realized we were in BIG trouble: It was Hempfest weekend. They hold Hempfest at this park along the waterfront, and streets were closed, police officers were directing traffic, people were EVERYWHERE. It was awful. I cried. We were still stuck, and going nowhere.
I think at this point Shane looked at me and asked if we should just turn around and go home. I was tempted. I really was... but I said no, let's keep going.
We turned left on First and started toward the stadium. By the time we got to the Central Business District I was begging Shane just to park somewhere so we could walk the rest of the way. He said it was too far. He didn't want to park yet. We passed Pioneer Square. Finally, we were at the stadium.
And we looked for parking. We looked. And looked. And looked. By this time, it was at least 8 PM, and all the "pay to park" lots had closed. Not because they were full, but because the attendants had given up and gone to the game. There was no place to park.
I was exasperated. I finally saw a place and told Shane to just park there. He said he was sure it was illegal. I said there are dozens of other people parked illegally, and there was no way they would ticket us. They'd ticket everyone else with the grosser crimes. He relented, we parked.
We got out. A woman drove up next to us and called out her window that she had parked in a similar place recently and gotten a ticket. She was sure we were parked illegally, and they were tough here enforcing the parking laws. We nodded; she drove off. I looked and Shane and just wanted to give up. At this point, after all that traffic, is when I wanted to go home. Sigh. But, we kept going.
We walked a long, long ways to the stadium.
Let me recap:
We were starving. We got some overpriced, disgusting cheeseburgers, sat in our seats for an hour, watched the Seahawks lose, and walked back to our car. Where a $42 parking ticket was waiting for us. Yup. Icing on the cake.
Many, many, many things bothered me about this experience:
I was grateful for ONE PIECE of comic relief during this whole thing. Bless Shane for noticing this: in front of us, while stuck in traffic, was this beat-up white hatchback car. I can't remember what it was, like a Fiero or an old Honda or something. Anyway, the windshield wiper on the back window was snapped off -- broken -- but it was on. The little stub was moving back and forth, with no wiper attached. It was hilarious. It was good for just a second to laugh my heart out. I really laughed. I needed that beat-up goof car. Stuck in traffic, alongside me.
Who would have thought I'd have to endure two Seattle sports debacles this year?
Seattle Sounders
For Shane's birthday in March, I bought him tickets to the Seattle Sounders. We were really excited! They are an MLS team. We have been to a game before, but Wesley was younger. I thought it would be really fun; we had good seats and it was an afternoon game against the Chicago Fire on a sunny Saturday in April.
I noticed something interesting when we were walking to our seats. All around the stadium were huge billboard-ish signs saying things like "Keep it PG-13" or similar. There were several of these advertisements, encouraging everyone to be good sports, be respectful, etc. I noticed them but didn't think much of them until later.
We were at the game with our 2-year-old son. He was happy sitting in his seat, eating a hot dog, watching the guys run around kicking a ball.
We were sitting next to what they call the "Emerald City Supporters," a spirit club of 2,000 enthusiastic, chanting fans. Enthusiasm and chanting don't bother me, mind you. It was the crudeness of this particular group that got to me.
Repeatedly when they didn't agree with the referee, they'd yell something (as a group), like "Go home ***hole!" (yes, the actual word). Then there was this song about how "we came to drink, we came to sing," and "can you hear the Fire sing, we can't hear a f****** thing!" SERIOUSLY. F bombs! During the entire game!
I couldn't believe it. It was so disrespectful. It was rude, and it seriously bothered me. I don't know if I'll go to another Sounders game, and if I do I won't sit anywhere near those guys. Although since there are 2,000 of them in a single section, they're pretty loud. I think the thing that was the craziest is that the whole stadium had this "keep it PG-13" message, and yet the game was nothing like that. It was the complete opposite! It was so weird to feel completely contradicted as I sat in my seat.
Seattle Seahawks
Our tale begins when a friend posted on Facebook not too long ago about how the Seahawks were doing an exhibition game on a Saturday night -- and the tickets were cheap. Hot dog the tickets were cheap. I've wanted to go to a Seahawks game for years (mostly for the experience, and since Shane likes football), but 1) the games are mostly on Sundays, except for Monday Night Football games which are really popular, and 2) the tickets are expensive. Like, hundreds of dollars expensive.
So, when I found out about this Saturday game where tickets literally started at $8, I was thrilled. I splurged and bought three $15 tickets!
The game started at 7, so we left our place around 6 PM. We live about 20 miles away, but we knew we had to factor in traffic. We didn't know how bad it would be.
By the time we hit Seattle (Northgate area on the freeway), traffic was getting really heavy. The stadiums can be accessed from the freeway, but we have always had better luck exiting early and taking Route 99 south to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which has a direct exit right to the stadiums. This has always worked for us.
It took some time to exit and get on the 99, but once we did we had smooth sailing -- until we were got closer to Seattle. Traffic was stalling, fast, and one of those electronic signs alerted us that "Alaskan Way Viaduct Closed. Expect Delays." WHAT???? We had no idea! Now we were STUCK on the 99, with no other clear way to get to the stadium.
OK. Shane was fed up so he took the first exit we came to, which was Broad. OK, I thought, Broad goes west to the waterfront. We'll just get on the waterfront, turn south, and somehow get to the stadiums. This isn't rocket science. It's just navigating Seattle.
We were in traffic for what seemed like FOREVER before we hit the waterfront. Kickoff time, 7 PM, came and went. When the waterfront was finally in view, we realized we were in BIG trouble: It was Hempfest weekend. They hold Hempfest at this park along the waterfront, and streets were closed, police officers were directing traffic, people were EVERYWHERE. It was awful. I cried. We were still stuck, and going nowhere.
I think at this point Shane looked at me and asked if we should just turn around and go home. I was tempted. I really was... but I said no, let's keep going.
We turned left on First and started toward the stadium. By the time we got to the Central Business District I was begging Shane just to park somewhere so we could walk the rest of the way. He said it was too far. He didn't want to park yet. We passed Pioneer Square. Finally, we were at the stadium.
And we looked for parking. We looked. And looked. And looked. By this time, it was at least 8 PM, and all the "pay to park" lots had closed. Not because they were full, but because the attendants had given up and gone to the game. There was no place to park.
I was exasperated. I finally saw a place and told Shane to just park there. He said he was sure it was illegal. I said there are dozens of other people parked illegally, and there was no way they would ticket us. They'd ticket everyone else with the grosser crimes. He relented, we parked.
We got out. A woman drove up next to us and called out her window that she had parked in a similar place recently and gotten a ticket. She was sure we were parked illegally, and they were tough here enforcing the parking laws. We nodded; she drove off. I looked and Shane and just wanted to give up. At this point, after all that traffic, is when I wanted to go home. Sigh. But, we kept going.
We walked a long, long ways to the stadium.
Let me recap:
- We left our place at 6 PM.
- The game started at 7 PM.
- We sat in our seats at 8:50 PM. EIGHT FIFTY. The third quarter had just begun. We missed HALF of the game.
We were starving. We got some overpriced, disgusting cheeseburgers, sat in our seats for an hour, watched the Seahawks lose, and walked back to our car. Where a $42 parking ticket was waiting for us. Yup. Icing on the cake.
Many, many, many things bothered me about this experience:
- The viaduct was closed for a "scheduled inspection" or something stupid. WHAT CITY IN THE WORLD WOULD CLOSE ONE OF ITS MAJOR HIGHWAYS -- ON PURPOSE -- ON A WEEKEND WITH A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL GAME, MARIJUANA-FUELED PEOPLE FEST, AND DOZENS OF OTHER DOWNTOWN ACTIVITIES GOING ON? Can you tell I was mad? MAD.
- The Seattle Sounder Train is an Amtrak service for commuters that usually runs during Mariners, Seahawks, and Sounders games. We looked into that. Wesley would have LOVED the train. But, on their Web site the Sounder train indicated it did not serve "preseason" games. Lovely.
- We physically had no other way to get to the game. We didn't want to take three different buses. Buses wouldn't have traveled any faster than our cars. We had to drive. And we were rewarded with awful traffic and absolutely nowhere to park. NOWHERE. The parking situation in SoDo is ridiculous. Cars everywhere, parked on top of each other, and STILL nowhere to park. The one official QwestField garage charges $50 to park during a game. FIFTY DOLLARS. We probably should have parked there and just paid $8 more than our parking ticket.
I was grateful for ONE PIECE of comic relief during this whole thing. Bless Shane for noticing this: in front of us, while stuck in traffic, was this beat-up white hatchback car. I can't remember what it was, like a Fiero or an old Honda or something. Anyway, the windshield wiper on the back window was snapped off -- broken -- but it was on. The little stub was moving back and forth, with no wiper attached. It was hilarious. It was good for just a second to laugh my heart out. I really laughed. I needed that beat-up goof car. Stuck in traffic, alongside me.
Who would have thought I'd have to endure two Seattle sports debacles this year?
Monday, September 5, 2011
adventures in play doh
We don't do a lot of art projects in this house, and we really should. I am trying to be better. I have some paints I want to buy Wesley for Christmas (already thinking about it!!), and I'm trying to do more coloring and creating.
Our main medium: Play-doh.
However, our play-doh activities consist mainly of Wesley squishing it, ripping it, putting it in his hair, dropping it on the floor, and then commanding ME to make stuff. Like such:
I am pretty darn good if I have a model. I've made airplanes and turtles and "big buildings" and who knows what else.
This week, Wesley was bossing me around, as usual, and somehow it came up that I would make a temple. I'm not sure if I suggested it, or he did, but I decided to take the challenge.
The cutest part was that we had purple, blue, and yellow play-doh out, and I asked Wesley if the temple should be purple, blue, or yellow. He just looked at me and ever so sweetly said, "Mommy, temple is white."
How cute is that!?!?!?! Luckily we have white play-doh, so I went to work. I used a magazine for inspiration, and I did pretty well if I do say so myself. Check out my little Moronis. Wesley would pick them off, show them to me, and accidentally squish them. Yeah.
Cochabamba, Bolivia:
Bern, Switzerland:
Panama City, Panama:
There you go! True adventures in play-doh! Wesley asked for Salt Lake City but I balked. Too many spires! I think this is hilarious so we'll probably do more. You can submit your own challenges for me :-) Or do some yourself!
Our main medium: Play-doh.
However, our play-doh activities consist mainly of Wesley squishing it, ripping it, putting it in his hair, dropping it on the floor, and then commanding ME to make stuff. Like such:
I am pretty darn good if I have a model. I've made airplanes and turtles and "big buildings" and who knows what else.
This week, Wesley was bossing me around, as usual, and somehow it came up that I would make a temple. I'm not sure if I suggested it, or he did, but I decided to take the challenge.
The cutest part was that we had purple, blue, and yellow play-doh out, and I asked Wesley if the temple should be purple, blue, or yellow. He just looked at me and ever so sweetly said, "Mommy, temple is white."
How cute is that!?!?!?! Luckily we have white play-doh, so I went to work. I used a magazine for inspiration, and I did pretty well if I do say so myself. Check out my little Moronis. Wesley would pick them off, show them to me, and accidentally squish them. Yeah.
Cochabamba, Bolivia:
Bern, Switzerland:
Panama City, Panama:
There you go! True adventures in play-doh! Wesley asked for Salt Lake City but I balked. Too many spires! I think this is hilarious so we'll probably do more. You can submit your own challenges for me :-) Or do some yourself!
Sunday, September 4, 2011
first harvest
It's been a better summer. Look at this monster:
Friday night I picked four red tomatoes to add to my salad for dinner. Seeing as how last year I only got ONE red tomato and a handful of green ones, I've already quadrupled my yield. Woo hoo! And there are LOTS of green tomatoes left on that plant that I hope will turn red soon.
Yay! I feel successful!
(PS my camera died. Anyone have an old one sitting around they want to let me borrow until I can convince my husband to let me buy a new one? We also have an old one I'd just whip out but it's in storage!!)
Friday night I picked four red tomatoes to add to my salad for dinner. Seeing as how last year I only got ONE red tomato and a handful of green ones, I've already quadrupled my yield. Woo hoo! And there are LOTS of green tomatoes left on that plant that I hope will turn red soon.
Yay! I feel successful!
(PS my camera died. Anyone have an old one sitting around they want to let me borrow until I can convince my husband to let me buy a new one? We also have an old one I'd just whip out but it's in storage!!)
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
my message
I had an incredible "mothering" experience on Sunday that moved me to tears.
There is a hymn we sing at Church, "I am a Child of God." It's probably the first song everyone learns or hears. It's a beautiful message about how I am a child of God, He sent me here to a family, they can teach me, and one day we can all live together forever in heaven.
Wesley loves this song. I tend to separate "regular songs" (like Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, or Green Speckled Frogs) from "Church songs" or "Primary songs" by calling the latter "snuggle songs" (which essentially means they are quiet songs we sing to calm down or at bedtime). Wesley has started calling this particular song, "I am a Child of God A Snuggle Song." Funny. I know he knows all the words, and we sing it often. Although I have never been lucky enough to get him to sing it on video.
Sunday, when we got to Church, the prelude music was playing and I asked Wesley what we should do at Church that day. (I was going for "be reverent" or "think of Jesus".) He said, "sing I am a Child of God A Snuggle Song." I told him that was a great idea, but I looked in the program and didn't see it. I said we might not sing it that day.
Imagine my surprise when they announced the Opening Hymn, and it was "I am a Child of God" !! I had totally missed it in the program, even though I had looked for it. I told Wesley how excited I was and that everyone in the whole Church would sing it with us. As the music started, he looked at me with his big beautiful blue eyes and recognition crossed his face. He knew that he knew this song! As everyone started singing, so did he. He didn't miss a beat. He sung the entire first verse along with the congregation. He stood next to me on the pew, and I had my arm wrapped around him, and we sung this beautiful hymn together.
Needless to say I was a complete emotional basketcase by the second verse.
He doesn't know the second or third verses as well (I do sing them to him), but he chimed back in for the chorus. Having the whole ward sing beside us was a magical experience for him. He was beaming. I was so touched.
(In fact, a woman came up to me after Church and asked if I was "all right," meaning that she saw the tears streaming down my face and assumed, you know, my dog had died or something. Fortunately, they were tears of joy, I assured her.)
There is a movie out right now, based on a best-selling book of the same title, "The Help." I read the book and loved it loved it loved it, and I saw the movie and loved it loved it loved it. It's very much a drama -- not much of a comedy, even if the previews make it out to be. It deals with some serious issues: the 1960s South, where black maids raise white children and run white households, but aren't respected enough to be able to use the toilet in the white houses. Civil rights and civil equality is a hot subject. It's a very touching book, and makes the readers really think about what is right and wrong in the world, especially in how we treat other people.
Well, in the story, the main maid character Abileen tends a 3-year-old named Mae Mobley. Every morning when Mae Mobley wakes up, she recites a phrase with her: You is smart. You is kind. You is important.
In the book, I remember Abileen remarking that she only has so much time with the children, and she just hopes that what she says will get through to them, so they don't grow up to be like "they mamas." Although time and time again (Abileen had tended 17 children before Mae Mobley), they do grow up to be like their mothers -- bigoted, selfish, disrespectful. She just continues to hope that what she teaches sticks with them and changes them eventually.
I love this thought. Not necessarily because I don't want Wesley to grow up like me, but because I know the world is tough and crazy and I fervently pray that something I say will stick with him. Something I say will be heard above the madness he is sure to face. He is smart. He is kind. He is important.
He is a child of God.
That is my message. I sing that song to him almost every night before bed. Every single time I put him to bed I make sure he hears those words. And sometimes during the day, whenever he wants to hear it. Anytime he asks for a primary song, whether it is (his words) "Beautiful World" or "Walk in the Light" or "The Temple Song" I sing them to him. I will never miss an opportunity to teach my son about the gospel through music. It amazes me sometimes how much he loves those primary songs. I am so blessed that his little spirit at this tender young age recognizes them as truth.
The other week the temple was closed, but since I had to do something in Bellevue we drove down there and brought a picnic lunch. The whole way down (about 30 minutes), we sung primary songs. And when we got there, Wesley got to see the temple in person. He was in awe! It was a sweet moment, and I'm sure we'll do it again.
He is a child of God. I hope the same recognition that crossed his face Sunday when he heard the organ playing the music of that hymn strikes him when he is confused or scared or alone. He is a child of God, and no one or no thing can take that from him. I am grateful to my mother for teaching me that, because in the hard times it really helped me. I hope my son feels it, too. It's the truth, and it's the best message out there. Never forget it.
There is a hymn we sing at Church, "I am a Child of God." It's probably the first song everyone learns or hears. It's a beautiful message about how I am a child of God, He sent me here to a family, they can teach me, and one day we can all live together forever in heaven.
Wesley loves this song. I tend to separate "regular songs" (like Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, or Green Speckled Frogs) from "Church songs" or "Primary songs" by calling the latter "snuggle songs" (which essentially means they are quiet songs we sing to calm down or at bedtime). Wesley has started calling this particular song, "I am a Child of God A Snuggle Song." Funny. I know he knows all the words, and we sing it often. Although I have never been lucky enough to get him to sing it on video.
Sunday, when we got to Church, the prelude music was playing and I asked Wesley what we should do at Church that day. (I was going for "be reverent" or "think of Jesus".) He said, "sing I am a Child of God A Snuggle Song." I told him that was a great idea, but I looked in the program and didn't see it. I said we might not sing it that day.
Imagine my surprise when they announced the Opening Hymn, and it was "I am a Child of God" !! I had totally missed it in the program, even though I had looked for it. I told Wesley how excited I was and that everyone in the whole Church would sing it with us. As the music started, he looked at me with his big beautiful blue eyes and recognition crossed his face. He knew that he knew this song! As everyone started singing, so did he. He didn't miss a beat. He sung the entire first verse along with the congregation. He stood next to me on the pew, and I had my arm wrapped around him, and we sung this beautiful hymn together.
Needless to say I was a complete emotional basketcase by the second verse.
He doesn't know the second or third verses as well (I do sing them to him), but he chimed back in for the chorus. Having the whole ward sing beside us was a magical experience for him. He was beaming. I was so touched.
(In fact, a woman came up to me after Church and asked if I was "all right," meaning that she saw the tears streaming down my face and assumed, you know, my dog had died or something. Fortunately, they were tears of joy, I assured her.)
There is a movie out right now, based on a best-selling book of the same title, "The Help." I read the book and loved it loved it loved it, and I saw the movie and loved it loved it loved it. It's very much a drama -- not much of a comedy, even if the previews make it out to be. It deals with some serious issues: the 1960s South, where black maids raise white children and run white households, but aren't respected enough to be able to use the toilet in the white houses. Civil rights and civil equality is a hot subject. It's a very touching book, and makes the readers really think about what is right and wrong in the world, especially in how we treat other people.
Well, in the story, the main maid character Abileen tends a 3-year-old named Mae Mobley. Every morning when Mae Mobley wakes up, she recites a phrase with her: You is smart. You is kind. You is important.
In the book, I remember Abileen remarking that she only has so much time with the children, and she just hopes that what she says will get through to them, so they don't grow up to be like "they mamas." Although time and time again (Abileen had tended 17 children before Mae Mobley), they do grow up to be like their mothers -- bigoted, selfish, disrespectful. She just continues to hope that what she teaches sticks with them and changes them eventually.
I love this thought. Not necessarily because I don't want Wesley to grow up like me, but because I know the world is tough and crazy and I fervently pray that something I say will stick with him. Something I say will be heard above the madness he is sure to face. He is smart. He is kind. He is important.
He is a child of God.
That is my message. I sing that song to him almost every night before bed. Every single time I put him to bed I make sure he hears those words. And sometimes during the day, whenever he wants to hear it. Anytime he asks for a primary song, whether it is (his words) "Beautiful World" or "Walk in the Light" or "The Temple Song" I sing them to him. I will never miss an opportunity to teach my son about the gospel through music. It amazes me sometimes how much he loves those primary songs. I am so blessed that his little spirit at this tender young age recognizes them as truth.
The other week the temple was closed, but since I had to do something in Bellevue we drove down there and brought a picnic lunch. The whole way down (about 30 minutes), we sung primary songs. And when we got there, Wesley got to see the temple in person. He was in awe! It was a sweet moment, and I'm sure we'll do it again.
He is a child of God. I hope the same recognition that crossed his face Sunday when he heard the organ playing the music of that hymn strikes him when he is confused or scared or alone. He is a child of God, and no one or no thing can take that from him. I am grateful to my mother for teaching me that, because in the hard times it really helped me. I hope my son feels it, too. It's the truth, and it's the best message out there. Never forget it.
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