California Trip

BJ and I were able to get away to California just the two of us for Memorial Day weekend. As much as we missed Sam and Brodi we had so much fun as we tried to squeeze everything we could in 4 days. Our first day we kind of just bummed around the Sacramento area and watched a late movie, yes my friends it started at 8pm and didn't get out until AFTER 10pm. Gone are the days when we would go to movies that started after 10pm.
Saturday we went to go see Wicked, my Mother's Day gift from BJ. What can I say, it was wicked awesome. We absolutely loved it. We stayed the night with Michael and Mallory and it was so good to get to visit with them.
Sunday we did something we rarely ever do, we went on a whim. We thought Yosemite isn't too far away and neither of us has been there, lets go. The problem with whims to state parks on holiday weekends is that they tend to be crowded. Luckily we stopped to get a map of at Mariposa about 1 hour away from Yosemite. We were informed that nearly everything in the area was booked for the weekend but luckily they found us a room in a vary quaint motel called The Mother Load Lodge. If we thought of it as more staying in a cabin for the night it wasn't too bad, small, but clean and at least we had a roof over our heads. Yosemite was fantastic. It's one of those places that pictures will never do it justice. The other problem with whims is that you don't always have the right gear. We hiked to a waterfall with a bunch of granite boulders in flip flops. I have pretty tough feet from my days in Samoa and living in flip flops in AZ so I found it was actually easier to hike in bare feet. I did get some funny looks.
Monday we were off to Sacramento and saw that they that a Train museum. We just had to go there in honor of Sam so we took a ton of pictures of all sorts of trains. We had so much fun and can't wait to go again sometime. Sam and Brodi had a wonderful time with Nana and Papa while we were gone.

Two cute kids

Here are just a couple of pictures of our cute kids.

Sam with his new sunglasses. You really don't get much cooler than this.

Brodi's bedhead. I love how Brodi has one ponytail sticking straight up. It always reminds me of a little bunny rabbit. Such a cute little girl.

Last Day of School

To commemorate Sam's last day of preschool I had to share this cute video of him reading one of his favorite books. This is a book we read together every night so I know that he has it memorized but not too shabby for a 3 year old. We are so proud of our Sam. He has made so much progress this year. It seemed like just a little while ago that I was posting about his first day of preschool. At that time he still had a speech therapist coming to the house and was picking up a lot of words, but still had a really basic vocabulary, our lover of the alphabet is now quite a talker and reads some sight words. He can also write his name. Such a smart kid. We are so proud of you Sam!!

Fathers and Sons Outing

BJ here. In our church they have an annual event called the Fathers and Sons Outing. It is a camping trip where all the boys go camping for a night. There are many doctrinal reasons for the celebration, suffice it to say that it is a lot of fun each year.



Confession: I haven't been to one since before my mission (circa 1996). Sam did so well on our trip to San Antonio this year that I decided to take him on the campout. I was a little nervous because this is not only his first Fathers and Sons but his first camping trip ever.



He ended up doing great. When we got there we setup the tent and let him sit in his little camp chair and after about a half hour he said he was ready to go home. it was 4:30 in the afternoon. I reminded him that we had to wait and go to sleep first. He was disappointed until he saw several groups start making fires and then I knew that he was all boy. All he wanted to do was walk around and check out the fires. Heaven help his future scoutmaster.

Here are some pics. The first one is him in our tent.

After playing in the tent for a while we ate dinner. He thought it was pretty cool to eat in the back of my truck. I stopped at Wal Mart and got a bunch of candy and decided to let him eat as much as he wanted. He ended up getting a small stomachache at dinner so I had to put it away much earlier than I thought I would.

Then we played with fires for a little while.

Then, after the sun went down and we gobbled down our dutch over cobbler is was time for bed. It was cold up there that night (mid thirties) but Sam did well. He woke up a couple of times and said he was cold (he kept wriggling out of his sleeping bag). I put him back in and kept putting his hat on. This picture is what I woke up to in the morning.

And then in the morning we played with some more fires.

Thanks for coming with me Sam. I'm already looking forward to next year!

Mother's Day

Typically for women who deal with infertility problems Mother's Day can be a pretty touchy subject. We have known now for 5 1/2 years that unless some gigantic miracle happens (we are talking Abraham and Sariah type miracle, hopefully BJ would not be asked to sacrifice that child) we won't be able to naturally have our own children. I think that there always is a little twinge of sadness that accompanies this day for me now. I once read a quote that says "My infertility resides in my heart as an old friend. I do not hear from it for weeks at a time,and then, a moment, a thought, a baby announcement or some such thing, and I will feel the tug-maybe even be sad or shed a few tears. And I will think, 'There's my old friend.' It will always be part of me..." I have always identified with that quote. At the beginning I thought that infertility would never be my friend, but it has, it makes me who I am today. It makes me appreciate and love the 2 wonderful children that I have been blessed with that call me "Mommy" all the more. On mother's day I can't help but reflect on the many mothers and grandmothers in my children's lives. I think my children are the luckiest kids in the world to be so blessed with so many incredible women in their lives. We love you all. We love the women that we may have never met that love our children from afar. Mother's Day has come to mean so much more to me than a reminder of my infertility as I think of all the love and sacrifice that has been shown to my children in making me a mother. Thank you and Happy Mother's Day!!!

Going for a walk

At a yard sale this week I found one of child harnesses shaped liked animals. We have been contemplating getting one for Brodi because we know she would like to get out of the stroller more and walk around but she will often wander off on her own. There just seems something wrong with putting your child on a leash. We got Sam a harness last summer when we went to Yellowstone last summer so that he wouldn't fall into a geyser or something and every time we put it on him he wouldn't walk he would just lay on the ground for the sheer indignity of the whole thing and we ended up carrying him the whole time. I ended up returning it because it had really never been used. I think that's what has kept me from attempting one with Brodi, however, she was the one that discovered it at the yard sale and she loves it. She gets a little irritated when she can't walk away as far as she would like but really doesn't seem to mind it. It is really nice to know that we can let her have a little more freedom, but still keep her safe from getting lost, or stolen, or hit by a car, or whatever else we parents worry about. She knows that someone is suppose to hold the tail of the harness so she is giving her self a little walk around the house in this picture. She did cry when we made her take it off to go to bed, poor baby.

Preschool Day at the Zoo.

This week Sam's preschool class went on a field trip to the Zoo. Sam was so excited to go to the Zoo with Miss Janelle and his school friends. I knew that he liked Miss Janelle, his teacher, but until the zoo trip I didn't realize how much he loved her. He wanted to sit by her on the train instead of me. I'm not sure how I feel about him having this other "woman" in his life. :) He also loves our mother's helper Miranda and most of the time BJ and I come home he says, "No Miranda stay, you go." I guess it sure does beat him crying every time I had to leave. Brodi will still cling to me when I go so at least I get a healthy amount of guilt for leaving from that. We were thinking about finding a preschool that is a little closer next year, but after seeing how much he loves his teacher I think we are going to stick with where we are.

Sam with all of his school friends. Most of his class is made up of girls.

You can't really see him in this picture but behind the zebra that is eating is a baby zebra that had just been born that morning. He was so cute.

What Zoo trip is complete without a train ride.

Sam and Miss Janelle.

What in the heck are these used for? (Heaven knows not for the purpose intended)

Potty training Sam has been a very long, long, long ordeal and still not accomplished. He started being interested in the potty last summer and since he was still pretty young we didn't totally push it yet, then last fall we rocked his world with a new sister and everything went shall we say, down the toilet. We are starting to get closer to accomplishing this feat once again so his underwear has been pretty accessible. Brodi has been fascinated by it, although she can't quite figure out what it is used for.

Are they shirts?

Are they bracelets?

Are they socks?

We'll figure it out someday.
(For all those who may be concerned the underwear shown in these pictures are clean, and quite frankly have probably never even been worn.)

San Antonio Trip

For Spring Break we decided to go on our first road trip with 2 kids. We were pretty anxious about it because we were going to visit my sister Kelli in San Antonio which is a 2 day car ride from us. The kids did so much better than we expected and we had a great time visiting cousins that we don't get to see very often.

Here is Brodi all ready to go.

Sam too is ready to drive 15 hours as evidenced by twisting his hair and sucking his thumb. He's going into his happy place.

We usually don't eat fast food too much except on trips, so here are Sam and Brodi at one of our many fast food stops.



We broke our trip up into 2 days. We stayed in Las Cruses the first night. Sam and Brodi were so glad to get out of the car.

One of the reasons that we kept Sam happy was promising him that at our hotel that night we could go swimming because in the hotel description it said that there was a pool. What we didn't know was that they pool was outside and had been drained for the winter. Sorry kids.

Ok you have too look really closely right under the tree in this picture. There is faint S a m. This is the first time I've ever seen Sam actually write his name. He knew that he could type his name because he loves to use my Blackberry memo app to write his name, but I was quite impressed that he could actually write the letters as well. Smart kid.

Two cute kids on the front porch of Cracker Barrel.

The San Antonio zoo has a really great train that goes around Breckenridge Park. He is in his element. In the words of one of his favorite books, "Trains, trains, trains, I love trains."

Naps are so tough for kids on trips. Believe it or not Brodi will be dead asleep within 5 minutes of when this picture was taken. All it took was the gentle rocking of the train.

This is how Sam took most of his naps during our trip. The poor kid missed the Zoo, the Alamo, and Kalin's baptism.

Here we are on our boat tour of the Boardwalk. Sam was pretty impressed by the boat ride, but not nearly as much as the train ride the day before.

At my sister Kelli's house Brodi found a really cool fort. She and her cousin Adria had a wonderful time shutting each other up in the dog kennel.

We found one of the best ways to entertain Brodi during the driving on the road trip was to hand her a sticker every few minutes. She would then decorate her legs with them.

One of our last fast food stops.

For sometime now I have come to realize that all of the commercials for products to reduce fine lines and wrinkles are geared towards me. How in the heck did I arrive in my mid thirties. Try to ignore my crows feet in this picture (if you can) and look at cute Sam.

Block Party

When BJ and I moved to our house nearly 5 and 1/2 years ago we didn't know that we were lucky enough to move onto one of the best streets in Mesa. We have the friendliest neighbors and every year we have an annual block party. We have our street barricaded off and have an afternoon of not worrying about the kids running into the streets. We set up bouncers and just enjoy getting to know each other. This was Brodi's first year at the block party. She had so much fun. For one thing the twelve year old girls took charge of her and she got to be dolled all afternoon by the big girls.


Here is Brodi's new friend Rachel. One of the mom's did all of the girls hair. I think that Brodi should have gotten an award for the craziest hair style.

Here's our motorcycle babe drinking her sippy cup.

Yummy, yummy cupcake ice cream cones.

Here is Sam with his friend Boston. She is also in his Nursery class.

Sam's Birthday Party

We had originally planned on having a family party for Sam the day after of his birthday, but due to rain storm we postponed it until the next Saturday.

Our little train obsessed boy got a train cake for his birthday. The whole time I was making it I just kept thinking, I only have to impress a 3 year old and he is impressed when we cut sandwiches to kind of resemble a train. He loved the cake and spent a lot of time just staring at it. Three year old don't care that there are crumbs in the frosting.

Sam with Nana and Grandma Kerilyn.

Here are Sam and Brodi with all 4 of their Grandmas in the Valley. We love Grandmas. Who can have too many, really? Grandma Hansen, Grandma Shine, Nana, and Grandma Roth.

I love this. Apparently Sam doesn't like Ding Dongs. He took a bite and put it back on the train.