Pictures from the Tough Mudder and Thanksgiving

Seth participated in his first annual Tough Mudder shortly before Thanksgiving, on a team that included Ben and Tyler. He had a fantastically filthy time and he made it all the way through!

I love having Thanksgiving at our house, just our little family. I love Thanksgiving food, and I love cooking it all myself. That way I know dinner will include everything Thanksgiving dinner should include, and it'll be done the way I like it! And yeah, I know that maternity shirt made me look just like our turkey. Oh well.

Halloween 2013

Our theme for last year's homemade costumes was "sleeper costumes." We ended up with a zebra, an astronaut, and a birthday candle. This was during Hannah's zebra obsession. (She gets a new one every few months or so.) We participated in the ward's trunk-or-treat and also went trick-or-treating at Sea World. And of course, we went to the Fall Festival at PLNU, which we look forward to every year. Hannah surprised us this time by showing a fierce and uncharacteristic determination to climb the rock wall. She had never tried before or even expressed interest in it, but she trie over and over to get up that thing this year! Didn't make it as far as she'd hoped but we were proud of her for trying. They are such cute kiddos!

Horrors of Potty Training: Part 3

I hate potty-training. It's top on my short list of parenting jobs I detest. Sometimes people ask me for potty-training advice, and even with three trained kids, I still don't have any theories on how to get it done. But I do have advice now: just throw them out. (The underpants, not the kids.) I've always felt like you have to salvage and scrub out (or save for daddy to scrub out) the clothes they make messes in. But Eli did it SO often, I finally quit putting myself through that and just...threw them out. I dropped messy underpants in trash cans all over town, and it was a wonderfully liberating feeling.

He finally made it though, and here's a picture of Eli with his "I'm Finally Potty-Trained" Hot Wheels car and celebration cake. It was a pretty amazing cake if I do say so myself - moist, chocolatey, and filled with crushed oreos -  at least we got to enjoy half of it before the ants got to it. Grrr.

Trouble With Ants and Cats, or, Why a Seven-Year-Old Boy is Terrified of Cats

Besides the many projects that occupied tons of time when we moved into our new house (installing pantry shelves and various other shelves all over the house; learning how to/installing three ceiling fans in the house, landscaping, appliance shopping, lawn care/revival, etc), we faced a couple of other majorly time-consuming issues, one of them being constant ant infestations. Almost from the minute we moved in to the minute we moved out (more about that when we get to this year's posts...), we were overrun with ants more often than not, mainly in the kitchen (conveniently). (Yes I mean that sarcastically.) Ants, ants, ants, ants, ants, all the time. And following their trails and baiting them and wiping them down, over and over and over again, is incredibly time consuming and frustrating. It's a good thing I was over my phobia of black ants by this time, because from the time I was about 7 years old til I was twenty-something I was very scared of them because of a dream I had when I was a kid. I remember it vividly, still: I was standing out on the driveway at my (first) childhood house, and for some reason I was covered in tiny, tickling, crawling black ants and it was so awful. My grandpa was out there with me, leaning on a cane and laughing wickedly instead of wiping them off of me. (Sorry Grandpa, no reason that I know of for that!) That was a bad year for dreams, as bad as that ant one was it was nothing compared to the dream I had about the Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka...anyway, I'm not going there. They and Gene Wilder still scare me. But back to the point, ants are awful.

Another event that ended up being very time-consuming, with long-lasting effects, started off rather innocently on a Friday afternoon in late September I believe. Our mini-van has a sometimes-automatic sliding door that apparently didn't get closed after the kids and I returned from school that day. When Seth came home later on, he noticed the door wide open, and closed it. We didn't think anything of it until around ten a.m. the next day when the family was getting in the car to go somewhere. Seth had gone around to the side of the house, but the kids and I had climbed into the car and were fairly settled when all of a sudden out of NOWHERE, this humongous, incredibly fluffy gray cat was wildly bounding around in front of me, back and forth between the driver's seat and all sides of the dashboard, "ROWR! ROWR! ROWR!" claws out, fur flying. I of course was screaming (having never been more surprised by anything, ever, in my entire life) and holding my hands in front of my protruding belly to protect it from frantically digging claws. By some miracle the cat never actually landed on me, and after what seemed like five minutes but was in reality probably around ten seconds, the cat finally jumped out the passenger side door. Thankfully in my awkward pregnant slowness I hadn't gotten comfortable enough to bother closing the door after me yet. Seth missed out on the entire thing, except for hearing the screaming, but once the cat was out the full realization of what had happened set in, along with the terrible, horrible, no good very bad smell that lingered in our car for months. You can imagine what that was from, having a cat locked in the car from 5 p.m. one night til ten a.m. the next day...yeah. Praise be, there was nothing in there that required scooping out, but the wetness was bad enough. It took many shampooings and vacuumings and months of air fresheners before it was mostly back to normal.

Unfortunately it will probably also take many months of therapy before Joshua is back to normal. The poor kids , although completely untouched by the cat, were completely panicked just from watching the chaotic scene and listening to Mommy scream. My kids, the boys especially, were already scared of dogs and wary of animals in general, which I am fine with, but after that, they all hated cats for a long time. I think Hannah and Eli are mostly over their real fear of cats, but I recall a time maybe four or so months back when all three refused to go out in the backyard because there was a cat back there and they instead stood just inside the (tightly closed) sliding glass door in the back quietly discussing the possible danger if they dared to venture outside. Joshua is still extreme in his fear; he absolutely refuses to approach a cat under any circumstances. Not two weeks ago he jumped out of the car at the house, started to go up the sidewalk, then doubled back to the car because there was a cat dozing near the front window. But it wasn't the same cat. I'm pretty sure we have not seen that once since it spent the night in our car. And as a family we have gotten much better at making sure the car doors and windows get closed!

Our New Home

With the anticipated arrival of a new baby came the need to expand our living quarters. It was kind of a hard decision to make, since we loved the apartment complex we lived in and everything that came with it (close neighbors, swimming pool, maintenance guys, etc), and we loved the part of town that we lived in. But alas, we love our babies even more and we needed more room to add another one. So we began a search to purchase our first home at the beginning of the summertime. I don't know if I could really even call it a "search" -- we met with the realtor once, she told us that what we were looking for pretty much did not exist in our price range, and the market was so competitive that we would likely have to make offers on several places before finding anything. So I quit looking. Seth would browse things occasionally, but not me! Finally one day he sent some listings from the realtor to me (this was in July), I got irritated with the kind of places I was seeing, and got on the computer myself to see what I could find. And behold, I found an adorably remodeled house right in our price range, still in San Diego! We called the realtor, said we wanted to go see the house (which had been on the market for five days), we met her at the open house, put together an offer that same afternoon, submitted it on Monday, and voila! we got our house!!!!

The way everything just happened to work out, against all the odds, was amazing. And it wasn't just that we got the first (and only!) house we ever looked at. It was other little things, like Seth suddenly and without warning getting released from his calling as Elders' Quorum President the week before we closed on our house. Like our apartment contract expiring at the exact same time we closed. Everything just fell into place, and we could not deny that this was where the Lord wanted us to be.

It was a good thing we had that reassurance, because life changed in a lot of ways when we moved. A lot of very, very, very difficult and challenging ways. Not all necessarily bad, but all lumped together, it was very discouraging, exhausting, burdensome, and depressing. We should have known things were not going to be easy when the moving truck Seth was driving by himself broke down on the freeway at 8:00 at night and he was stranded for a couple hours waiting for someone to come fix the problem, while I was trapped inside an absolute sweatbox of a house (it was the middle of a heat wave and approximately 95 degrees inside, no exaggeration) packed to the rafters with boxes and tired children, and I was 4 or so months pregnant.

We moved about 20 miles from school and work, and before we got the traffic timing nailed down, it sometimes took Seth and the kids 1.5 hours to get to school. Unbelievable. it also takes him a long time to get home, so he was rarely here when the kids were awake. He was called to be YM President the second week we were here (that was also a miracle, the bishop knew someone was coming to fill that position and recognized Seth as the one as soon as he met him!) Add to Seth's schedule a new volunteer position as the First Lego League Coach at the kids' school, and what do you get? A man who was NEVER HOME. It was exhausting for him, exhausting for me, and I don't know how we lived through those first several months.

The change in locale was also a difficult adjustment. Hannah and Joshua did great. They thrive on change and were perfectly happy going to a new ward and living in a new place. (It was helpful that our friends the Mullens had moved out here just a few months before we did, and Keenan and Joshie are great friends!) Eli had (and still has to some extent) a more difficult time adjusting to the new ward and church building even, and it was also really, really hard on me. Moving to our new neighborhood was unexpectedly like moving back to Ridgecrest - a hot, dry, cockroach-infested desert! not at all like the lovely San Diego coastal area we were used to. It was so hard to be so close to where we had been, and yet feeling worlds away from it. And the busy-ness! For months Seth and I did not have even one night when we could just relax together and watch a movie. We had SO MUCH WORK TO DO. And he had so much work to do. And I was so lonely and disillusioned and so stressed out. There were many many sleepless nights and nights full of tears. I seriously worried over the health of my baby because of all the stress I was under, and that concern brought even more stress!

Thankfully, I was blessed with an awesome visiting teacher, Carmen Walker, who showed so much love to me and my family. She was there to help so many times. She has definitely been an inspired servant of the Lord in regard to what she has done for our family! We were also so thankful for the offers of help we received as we got to know the ward members and they anticipated the arrival of our baby.

In spite of the unbearable heat and the other challenges, we loved our house itself. One of the first things we did was buy ice cream from the ice cream truck and sit outside enjoying it together in our very own front yard. Simple, but it's a treasured memory we all share. One of the main reasons I wanted this house was for the play structure in the back. My dad built a playhouse and swing set for us when I was a child, and when I saw a playhouse and swing set in this yard, I knew I had to have this place for my kids! Despite the difficulties of life during those first many months, I am so thankful to have a family, to have a home, and to just be able to experience life with the ones I love most. And we do the best we can to make the most of each experience and keep trying to achieve all that we have in mind for our family.

Summer 2013 In a Nutshell

Joshua's First Soccer Season

Time for a Padres game!

The kids made $30 on this lemonade stand!

And of course our beloved annual trip to Tahiti Village, which we did not get pictures of this year. But it did happen and we had a great time as always!

PV: The Climax

And now for the highlight of our trip to Puerto Vallarta. It all began as soon as we walked off the airplane, actually. Not being terribly seasoned travelers, and no one having warned us ahead of time, we were not prepared to be swarmed by time-share representatives as we made our way through the airport. I can't remember exactly how this guy snagged our attention, but I'm glad he did despite the time-share thing. For a few reasons. First, being the cheapos that we are, we had been planning on renting a car to avoid a whole week's worth of outrageous taxi fees; thanks to this guy's advice we cancelled that and, instead of spending our whole first day totally lost and trying to drive around those CRAZY streets (they make left turns out of the far right lane!!!!), we paid super cheap cab fare all week and were chauffeured by folks who knew where they were and what they were doing. So it was worth if for that alone. Second, we got to spend a day way on the other side of town, in Nuevo Vallarta, at a happenin' new resort, the Flamingo I think it was called. A totally different experience from where we were staying and a fun drive through "real" Mexico. Third, we got cheap tickets to a Cirque-du-Soleil-type dinner show at a private beach way down from PV, including a thirty minute trip through he** (excuse me, boat ride) and a lovely outdoor buffet dinner.

We reserved our tickets for Friday evening, which was our actual anniversary, June 28. As I mentioned before, we had specifically been trying NOT to conceive during the time frame we did, because of first-trimester-and-beyond-induced agony, so naturally I was ten weeks pregnant. I brought along a bottle of Zofran-type prescription meds to help ward off sickness while we were traveling, and I felt fairly decent the first couple of days. By Friday afternoon though, I was feeling pretty queasy and I just couldn't get on top of it. Still, we didn't want to miss out on our exciting evening (and we definitely didn't; it was still thrilling beyond words, just in a different way than we had planned). So we dressed and took a cab to the departure site and sat and chatted amiably with (or at least, smiled weakly at) the young couple seated with us. And then we got on the boat.

And the boat started moving. Speeding along the choppy waves, with the wind blowing through the hair of all forty passengers (except the bald ones I guess). We were seated in rows, all facing the front of the little ship, and we just kept going...and going....and going.....I thought it would never end. And I felt SO sick. SOOO Sick. SOOOO INCREDIBLY SIIIICK! I tried stumbling my way down the skinny stairwell to see if using the bathroom would help me feel better. It didn't. And the water was so choppy I couldn't even make my way back to my seat, so I plopped down on one of the plastic chairs set up against the railing. So now I wasn't hidden in the crowd anymore, but sitting in the front facing everyone. And they were facing me, drinking their cocktails and giving "the young newlywed couple with the seasick bride" sympathetic looks. (I think it was actually more embarrassing having them think I was just seasick instead of knowing I was just sick from pregnancy. It made me look like a pansy.)

Now, I had had plenty of miserable experiences on this earth up to that point (I mean come on, I'd been through childbirth three times), but NOTHING before or since equals the misery of that boat ride. And finally, after twenty minutes or so of sheer, utter, complete agony, the whole boat knew it. I was up against the railing, vomiting my brains out over the side of the ship. Only it wasn't as peaceful as it sounds. You see, I'm really short, so I couldn't "lean over" the railing. Instead all I could do was bend my chin over the rail, which caused a couple of problems. First, you know that vomiting upwards is even less graceful than vomiting while you're doubled over (and I'm not in any way a graceful vomiter at the best of times). So it was a totally and completely gut-wrenching, violent performance. Second, the combination of 1)not being able to lean over at all and 2)the wind, meant that everything that came out blew totally sideways into my hair. And the side of the boat. Hopefully not on any audience members, I mean passengers.

Once it was over, I just collapsed into my dinky plastic chair and grinned feebly around at everyone. After all, there is an element of humor in most forms of humiliation! And if nothing else I do have a sense of humor. Thankfully there were some very kind people on the boat who brought me everything from cups of water, to limes to suck on, to bags of ice cubes to hold against the inside of my wrist to help the nausea go away.

By the time we F-I-N-A-L-L-Y landed at the beach, I was super shaky and exhausted and still feeling sick. But, I managed to make it over to the buffet and the show, even smiling for a few pictures along the way, and we did enjoy the show, which was pretty amazing. I did not however get to enjoy my dinner much, which was very sad if you know me and how much I love my food. Thankfully, the boat ride back was much more peaceful, since the water had calmed down, it was nice and dark outside, and I just rested my head on Seth's shoulder and watched the cute little dance show/competition performed by the crew members. I still never managed to get quite on top of the morning/seasickness but at least we made it through the rest of the vacation and the flight home without further public humiliation.