Ithaca is a fun place when you have a husband

When Joe finished school for the semester, we had one week before needing to frantically pack up our apartment in preparation for our sublettees and two weeks before our flights to Seattle. Therefore, we had one whole week to play hard. I tried to take advantage of every minute of having Joe around.

We started with  a little kayaking exersion. I have been dying to get out on Cayuga Lake. As beautiful as water is, looking at it makes me restless. The more I look, the more I want to go play. Just like the mountains. We were sans kids on this little adventure, and it was quite nice. I was reminded of our courtship and the early years of our marriage when this kind of activity wasn't such a rarity. If I had it with me here in Seattle, I would post a picture of the last time Joe and I were in a tandem kayak. We (or mostly me) looked a lot younger or maybe just a lot less tired. However, our years of marriage have made me more trusting of Joe's ability to correctly steer a kayak which  is probably a good thing. Plus, just this weekend someone told me that Joe and I didn't look old enough to have been married 8 years. Ha ha. Take that gray hairs and wrinkles!

 Also on our activity list for our week was a hike (or perhaps it was a leisurely stroll) to Taughannock Falls.

Kids are so cooky. Just when you think they are starting to get some judgement they prove you seriously wrong. I turned my head for one minute (pulling out my camera I think) and Maggie was on top of the wall.

Cooky and cute

Also, not during this week, but somehow fittingly for this post, we visited Ithaca Falls (a bit earlier in the season as evidenced by it's icyness). I just had to share Joe's happy moment when he is standing inside a culvert with his two kids. Maggie even recognized it as a culvert. What a proud daddy and check out Maggie'e cute muddy bum. 

Just call me sticker face and other stuff

Maggie LOVES Jack. Tonight she demonstrated her love by putting stickers all over his face. Later when I was putting Maggie to bed, Jack was snuggled next to her (a nightly tradition) when he demonstrated his love for her by grabbing a handful of hair yanking. As he started pulling he started laughing, and the longer it took me to get the hair from his hand and as Maggie's panic grew, he started laughing harder. You would have thought that he knew exactly what he was doing, and I had a vision of him as a 2 year old, then as a 5 year old, then as a 16 year old still yanking on Maggie's hair and laughing. And he looks so innocent.

It's okay though--I kinda laughed too.

It wasn't more than a couple days ago when I snapped these pictures (below) and all of a sudden Maggie was biting Jack's finger. In her defense (not that I am defending her but . . .), she is usually NOT a biter and she felt really bad when she realized what she had done. She has totally been teething (who knew 2.5 year old's did that?). She has been biting EVERYTHING, (including her own fingers). She has also been cranky and waking up at night. Drooling a little. Yep, snotty nose too. Slobbery fingers in her mouth ALL THE TIME. This teething phase can end anytime. The rest of it? Please slow down!

Little stinker. This was the last picture that I got.

Maggie is always telling me that she needs to do her "work" or that she is going to school. Wonder where she gets that from? I don't do any work :)

The toe grabbing phase is one of my favorites. I find those chubby little legs irresistible.

Ceiling fan. 

In case you were wondering, we still like each other. I needed to find a picture of Joe and I together from the last year and I couldn't find one. NOT ONE. This is seriously the best I could do, and I am blurry. He is kinda cute though, right? Anyway, our love doesn't need to be rekindled but our my taking photos of anything but the kids does need some work. So does my writing about anything else. I'll work on that next year :)

Here are a couple more things to remember (about the kids, of course).

Maggie has a few dyslexic phrases that she uses:

• "all for my blessings" when praying instead of "for all my blessings"
• she recently called a cowboy a "boy-cow" I thought she had actually figured out gender and was talking about a cow. Oh no, she was talking about the boy-cow.
• Finally, (this one I hear a lot). "I can do it all my byself!

Jack has a couple funny little quirks that I love.

• When he is excited, he smiles with his whole body. His face lights up, his mouth smiles, and his arms and legs spasm. This especially happens when I walk back into a room and say hi to him. Talk about a heart warmer! 
• He spits up a lot (don't love that) but it often comes in three's. Weird. This is how it goes. He spits up and you start wiping. Just then he spits up again, all over your hand and the cloth you were using to wipe. You scramble to stop the flow from his mouth when number 3 hits you. I wash lots of laundry. 
• Finally, he has lately been fighting sleep big time. When he is finally to the point that the battle is lost, he starts making this noise. It is kind of talking, whining, moaning, sighing all while sucking on his binky. It can go on for 10 minutes at a time before he really gives up and goes to sleep. Funny. But when I hear the noise, I know that I, and sleep, have won.

As a team they're unbeatable

Just watch.

Okay an explanation. This is a video application that Joe's team created for a marketing competition at Wake Forest. The grand prize (for winning the entire competition, not just getting accepted) is $75,000, so I guess I kinda hope they win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjijriEw1tU&t=120s

San Simeon

Los Angeles is great. I love living here. Don't get me wrong; I love the beach, the weather, the traffic. Ahem, I mean . . . did I mention the traffic?

So, back in November when we had the rare chance to escape, we headed up the coast to San Simeon where we met my sister Jenni and her family.

Camping + toddlers + cold + family + bubbles + elephant seals (hundreds, literally) + the beach = vacation (hopefully deserved), fun, and not quite enough sleep. Luckily Maggie is a cuddle bug, so sleeping in a tent is not too much of a problem.

We visited Hearst Castle, an incredibly fascinating place, built by eccentric billionaire William Randolph Hearst in the 1920-1930's. Hearst imported art from Rome, Italy, France, etc; some dating back as far as 230 A.D. In the creation of his castle, he was inspired by his childhood tours of Europe, and if you were to erase the palm trees in the picture below, you would probably be more likely to think that the picture was taken, well certainly not in California. One of the pools, styled after a Roman bath house, is mosaic'd with tiles including some made of clear glass fused with gold.

Maggie kind of adored her cousin Lydia. Once, she managed to catch Lydia in a hug. Meanwhile, Lydia called out for help, "Momma, stuck! Stuck!"

A rare family photo. We slipped tube socks on Maggie arms to keep her little hands warm while we were hiking.

I like these two.

The little girls started their lunch (the part that the seagulls did not fly away with) while sitting on rocks that would never have reasonably seemed seat sized. They have such tiny bums. So cute.

Watching a toddler eat a sandwich at the beach is painful.

Maggie is past putting handfuls of sand in her mouth just for the heck of it (at least mostly; she has been going through an dirt eating phase that I have not entirely figured out).

Still, I just turned my head when she used her sandwich to dig in the sand at a beach birthday picnic. I am not sure that she did any sandwich-sand digging on this day, but she has definitely brought a new definition to sand-wich. Ha Ha Ha.

I just want to kiss those wind-burned cheeks.

Best Fans Ever (or at least the best looking and most loved by me)

One great thing about my job in the ER is that while I am gone, Joe has the opportunity to really be a dad. He has time with Maggie all to himself, without me around to boss him around. Come Saturday afternoon, when I finally wake up after having checked out for two days, I pop back into their lives, catching them mid-activity and this is one of my favorite things; I always wish that I could have been a part of their lives for the last two days, but then again, me being gone is what makes the daddy daughter days so sweet. Well, on my last working Saturday I woke not too long before kick off for the UT football game and I found this:

Yep, Joe had gotten them both ready the big game in full UT fan apparel, complete with matching shirts, jeans, and shoes. Kind of melted my heart. So, naturally I threw on my own UT shirt and then demanded that Joe let me take some pictures.

This picture makes me really happy

The Beach and Stuff

Here is another really long post, so watch out folks . . . as always, I waited way too long to post anything, so now I have too much stuff to write about (or at least I have been taking too many pictures, which really is my favorite part about blogging anyway), so here it goes . . .

It is really fun to live by the beach. Jenni and Dustin came down and spent Nov 20-22 with us; really, they were just missing the beach because they lived on it for 2 years in Costa Rica, but we were more than happy to fill their beach void and enjoy their company. We spent Saturday at the beach during the lowest of low tides. There were scour holes in the sand because the water was so low; one minute you could be walking on solid sand, the next you could be up to your knees in salt water. I have never seen such a low tide before; it was pretty cool. Cute Jenni is also about ready to pop as you might have noticed. Her baby is due on December 21, and I can't wait to meet the newest member of the family.

It is critical that I mention that a couple of weeks ago I saw dolphins (at least 4, maybe more) at this same beach, swimming just offshore. Since I was there for a run anyway, I chased them about a mile down the shore before they finally headed off to deeper water. I was obviously the newbie on the beach because as I pointed them out to everybody that I passed nobody seemed to really share my excitement. I got a couple of acknowledgments, a couple of strange looks, and one little boy that sprinted in the opposite direction as fast as he could; really though, I lived in Hawaii for 4 months and never saw dolphins nearly so close to shore. I was surprised that the water they were swimming in was even deep enough for them. It was so amazing; I love dolphins.

A couple of weeks ago, my new neighbor Jenna invited me over to her house, and we made about 3000 of the most beautiful Christmas cookies you could possibly imagine. I want to do everything Christmas that I possibly can, because I feel like the holidays are just going to sneak away from me this year; I keep waiting for the leaves to change, for snow to fall, . . . (people tell me that it's happening elsewhere . . . I'll believe it when I see it :-)

We also had a bonfire on the beach . . .we roasted brats (Joe doesn't believe in eating hot dogs) and marshmallows. It was so nice and relaxing; we have been so lucky to meet so many nice and fun people in the time that we have been here in Santa Monica.

I still don't have a job, so on the days that I lose motivation to perfect resumes and cover letters (this happens a lot), I end up with a lot more free time than I am used to. One day I decided to ride my bike on this little path that runs along the beach. I rode until the path ended before finally turning around to ride home. I took a few pictures along the way, so I thought that I would include them. It was another beautiful Southern Cali type of day.

Okay; here is the last thing that I will mention for this post. Joe and I attended an educational volunteer opportunity on Back Bay in Newport. The Department of Fish and Game taught us about the health of the local ecosystem; then we helped them with a few basic studies that they perform weekly in the bay. We evaluated the mud critters, water salinity, fish count, measurements, and type, etc. It was very interesting and informative (although I still have no more scientific name for critters that live in the mud). I really enjoyed it because I don't really know anything about coastal ecosystems; it was really good to learn more about the world that now surrounds me.

Here we are fishing for some mud . . .

The catch . . .

Rinsing out my mud to find out what little critters I caught

Learning about a sponge . . . (this one was not caught in the mud traps).

I love this boy!

2 months and lots of stuff later

Wow, time flies. I will try to briefly summarize our last 2 months, but they have been fun and busy, so this post may turn out to be a short novel, with the chapters somewhat in or out of order and TONS of pictures.

Chapter 1: Shingle Springs
I drove out to Shingle Springs, CA (near Sacramento) with my parents to visit my sister Jenni and her husband Dustin. The area is beautiful and peaceful, dense with trees and past
ure land for horses. We went horseback riding, hiking by the river, had a hot dog roast over a bonfire, and most importantly, . . . Jenni is pregnant. She is scheduled to have a baby girl on Dec 21. I can't wait! Jenni and Dustin will be awesome parents!

Chapter 2: Good Old Friends.
My old buddy Kris was in town for work. It is to Kris that I owe my love for mountain biking because he is the one who convinced me to take a mountain biking class when I had never even contemplated the sport before. Appropriately, we attempted to go biking on the Ridge Trail, my favorite trail of all time. Unfortunately the road to the trail head was still closed, my bike decided to brake (meaning that I rode with the brakes on for the entire hour and a half ride), and our ride ended up somewhat in shambles. Luckily we were still able to bike up the canyon road and enjoy the beauty of the mountains in the spring.

Chapter 3: Congratulations Joe!
Joe finished and defended his thesis. After ridiculous amounts of ridiculous formatting changes, Joe was finally given the okay . . . you can be done now. Although he technically doesn't graduate until August, he has received his letter of completion and has been on the job hunt ever since. We had a fun dinner and ice cream with family and friends celebrating the completion of his work.

Chapter 4: American Fork Canyon
We had a weinee/mallow roast up AF canyon with Joe's family. His parents, brother, sister, and their families (including 9 nieces and nephews) were all there. It is always fun to enjoy the beauty and peace of the mountains. The proximity of the mountains is absolutely my favorite thing about living in Utah.

Chapter 5: Happy Anniversary!
Joe and I have been happily married now for 4 years. I love you babe!!!

Chapter 6: Havasupai
We made a last minute decision to go to Havasupai with our friends Jared and Rachel. I think pictures speak louder than words in describing this trip. It was a beautiful and exhausting hike, followed by the great reward of beautiful waterfalls, swimming, cliff jumping and camping out in what we somewhat affectionately named hobo village.

Chapter 7: Happy Independence Day!
We traveled to Idaho Falls for the biggest fire work display west of the Mississippi. We ran the customary Fireworks 5K, watched the oh so impressive IF parade, and then really enjoyed the fireworks, all the while looking forward to the next week because . . .

Chapter 8: Welcome Home Jeffrey!!

My little bro returned from his mission to Brisbane Australia. We met him at the airport, teased him about his Aussie accent, and spent a wonderful week in Idaho with my family, playing frisbee golf, eating good food, listening to Jeff play his didgeridoo, and staying up all night talking. One evening we drove to Jackson, WY and ate at Bar J Wranglers. Basically, it was just awesome to have everyone together for a week (I guess the last time that happened, was oh, about 2 years ago).

Chapter 9: Kayaking
Jenni and Dustin brought 8 kayaks to Idaho with them from California; we had a couple of fun kayaking trips while we were up in Idaho. The first was out to Rirey Reservoir to shore up our kayaking skills. We were able to find some rocks to jump from had a fun, relaxing day, soaking up some sun (which was very much needed as you may surmise from our overly white bodies) and practicing with the paddles.

For the second trip, we paddled 10 miles of the Snake River, found more jumping rocks, and had some more fun, still practicing for the real trip (which I will just have to write about next time, because this novel is coming to a close).

Finally, after tons of fun (with more yet to come, of course) and for better or worse, we are back in Provo with life continuing pretty much as normal.