Baby Dada

A belated Happy Fathers' Day post. There are a lot of wonderful father's in my life. My dad, my father in law, my Heavenly Father, Great Grandpa Austin, Bob Remund, Greg Roberts, Greg Moffat, uncles, grandfathers, and others that have made impacts in my life as I've grown up. Happy Father's day to all the wonderful men out their who are fathers or have had fatherly impacts in others' lives.

I've always been really close to my dad, I always looked up and still look up to him and his example, and because of that I searched for a husband who I felt would also be a great father. I definitely succeeded!

To celebrate the love I have for my baby's (ies') daddy we left the wee one behind and went out on a date, just the 2 of us. We ate Macaroni Grill take-out at the park and then went dirtbiking up Hobble Creek. Romantic right? I'd say so. For some reason I always forget how much I love dirtbiking, I mean I remember that I like it, but I forget that I love it. Our ride was shorter than I thought it might be (seeing as one night we spent hours and hours up Hobble Creek canyon making our way towards Daniel's Summit unknowingly.) But it was great. Eric said, "I cut it a little short because I know it hurts you when you are pregnant." I said, "No, only near the end of my pregnancy." Well, his memory is better than mine, my tailbone and butt bones were so sore the next day. What a thoughtful man he is. Afterwards, we drove our sweaty and dirty little selves to Spoon It Up to enjoy some Peach Mango Tart frozen yogurt. Delish! I love making memories with Eric.

Eric, I'm so glad our kids have such a cool dad and because of that will get to experience a lot of things they may not have otherwise. There lives are going to be filled with fun and adventure, lots of love, wisdom, and a whole lot of loyalty because of you. I'm glad Reese calls out for you and searches the house for you a crazy amount of times everyday, it is quite the expression of her adoration for you. She adores you, I adore you, and I'm sure it won't be long until the bun in the oven adores you. Happy Father's Day to you!

Cascade Springs

While Eric's family was all in town we had a "family day" up at my family's cabin near Sundance. In the morning we went to Cascade Springs and walked around. It is so pretty up there. Reese wanted to touch all the water, and with help from Eric got to touch it in quite a few places. Reese and her cousin Lily. Reese loved having tons of cousins around all week and I liked watching them all get to know each other.

Happy to be free, like always!
More water touching.

Group shot of those who made it to Cascade Springs. Kristen and Rachel stayed behind with their little babies.

Reese loves to hold hands with 2 people and then jump and drag.Again, free = happy Reese. Now you may understand why church can be a bit of a challenge.You can't really tell in this picture but Eric was teaching Reese how to spread her wings and fly in the wind. She thought it was pretty funny.
We love having Camla around to hang out. She is always a hoot.

Reese on the drive back to the cabin.

Summer Sand

Reese LOVES (I wish I could emphasize this word more) the sand. She would play in sand/dirt all day long if I'd let her. My parents put up a pool in a portion of their backyard every Summer. Underneath where the pool goes is a ton of sand. Eric took the tarp off of the sand and raked the sand to get it ready for the pool and the kids were in heaven for the few days it wasn't covered in a pool.

Now that that sand pit is gone Reese sits herself down in a little dirt hole by the side of my parents shed and digs with her shovel. She loves that just the same.

Giving the kids cups and plastic utensils to play with was a great idea, except that Reese loves sand (maybe the grit, like me, but who knows maybe she likes the taste too) and MANY times I'd catch her putting full spoonfuls of sand in her mouth. Needless to say the sand that when in her mouth had to come out, so she had sand filled diapers quite often.

iI love living so close to my sister Aubrey. We get to hang out while our kids play. Even with the age gap, Chelsea and Reese play well together.

Can you tell...

Can you tell that Eric is gone (horseback riding with Jeremiah actually) and Reese is asleep?? I finally have a little time to catch up on blogging. I still have SO many more things to catch up on, but right now.... a little update.

I'm 17 weeks pregnant. Feeling good, but huge. Supposed to go swimming tomorrow and wish my body looked like it did a couple months ago, but oh well, it is all for a fantastic cause. Looking pregnant, not just chubs. Feeling baby move around, mostly at night while going to bed when I'm actually lying still for more than 1 second and don't have distractions all around me. Keep being reminded that soon Eric and I will have 2 children together. Weird, but totally cool. I love that guy and couldn't be more excited to grow a family with such a cool person. And it is weird to think that Reese is gonna be a big sister. She is really good at playing with other kids and I found out this past week that she is adorably sweet with little babies, so it should go smoothly.

Anxious to find out what I'm having and bugged that I don't get to find out for another month. I'm going to a midwife that has an ultrasound machine at her office but the ultrasound tech only comes in every other week and prefers not to do them before 20 weeks so I have to wait until 21 weeks unless I want to pay extra mula for a gender check elsewhere, which isn't gonna happen.

Spent all last week with Eric's family. They were in town for Eric's brother's wedding. First time in 7 years that the whole family has been together. Glad I married into such a fun family, and it is fun to see Eric interact with them. Shows me more and more why he is the way he is and makes me continually more grateful for the man he is.

My family rocks. They are overly cool. I am loving living with them, they are the easiest people to get along with and help me out with Reese so much.

Memorial Day 2010 continued

On Sunday night we headed up Hobble Creek to camp with our friends. We had tinfoil dinners at the usual time when camping with this group of friends - 10 or 11 pm. We enjoyed stories and songs by B-Money and Willy - our cowboy friend. Willy showed us how cowboys sleep on logs, but fell off after a few seconds and decided he'd sleep on the ground instead. He also told us how he grew up on coffee and beans and that he learned the hard way not to wash cats' heads under the water tap or else they'll bite your fingernail off. He was a hoot and the evening was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone. It was FREEZING cold. Eric and I brought our tent but most people set out their gear on the ground before evening set. When we all decided to head to bed, the bedding that wasn't in tents was covered in frost. Micah and Rachel ended up in our tent with us. We were glad, we always enjoy the company, but I'm not sure how glad they were after Reese decided she needed to run around the tent for an hour at 4:30 in the morning, eat a granola bar, and then go back to bed for a couple hours.

In the morning Jeremiah made us some delicious brown sugar and vanilla oatmeal. It was delish!We shot guns and then Eric, Jeremiah, and Dallas rode the dirtbikes to the beginning of the asphalt road, while the rest of us drove the cars and met them at the road. It was a very enjoyable little camping trip.

Memorial Day 2010

For Memorial Day we spent time up at my family's cabin. It was so relaxing. We all loved the JUMBO marshmallows my parents bought. They were humongous.

We hiked to Stewart's Falls and then attempted hiking to the upper falls. It was quite the hike. SO steep! We almost made it but it was honestly straight up and down and Reese was hating it at the end. Eric had her in the belly pouch and she didn't like being right up against the rocks and sticks - can't say I blame her, I was starting to hate it too. So Eric and I turned around right near the end, and Eric's brother Daniel finished the last few minutes worth of hiking to get to the upper falls.

The L-O-N-G but beautiful drive home

Our trip home began at 4:30 am one day and ended at 6:00 am the next day. SUCH a long day and actually stayed awake for all of it. I felt so sick. We decided to drive through the Cascades which adds on 4 hours to the trip, but I'm so glad we did because honestly when else will we want to do it? I'm guessing the desire will decrease the more kids we have, especially as they get older and can say over and over "are we there yet?" It was BEAUTIFUL!

The Cascades are known as the American Alps. They were pretty awesome!

We made lots of fun stops to "sight see".

One town we drove through, Winthrop, was completely done up in old western style. I'm thinking it may have been used as a set for some country western movies.
So there was one of these funny things to stick your heads through and take your picture. Well, the span between where I had to stand to have my face in one hole and the hole where Reese's head was supposed to go was pretty far, so a friendly construction worker came behind the thing and helped hold Reese up for the picture. She FREAKED, I felt bad that she got so scared by the guy. But it did make for kind of a funny picture.
At one point on our drive home I was freaked out because we were pretty much out of gas and forever away from any big cities. Luckily we found a little town that had a "gas station". It was actually just a tank of gas with gas pumps connected to it. While we were filling up we saw a cool little wind storm thing that looked like a mini tornado. We were also STARVING at this point and enjoyed a yummy Snickers and a couple Sobe's.

Reese was a little more restless on the drive home but was still really good. What a little princess.

Searching for rocks and sea glass

One day we went and hung out at a beach in Victoria and searched for cool rocks and sea glass. I love pebble beaches. The pebbles just fall off of your skin when you rub them - much easier cleanup than sand.Victoria, maybe Canada in general, is very liberal. It is kind of odd, those who have same sex tendencies fight to get married but heterosexuals would rather just be "life partners". The reason we went to Canada was for Eric's friend's wedding. I had a few awkward moments at the wedding and wedding dinner when I suspected certain people as someone else's husband/wife but then was told that they weren't husband and wife, but rather "life partners". I don't understand that mentality, if you are wanting to be together for life, what is wrong with the committment of marriage? After so many experiences with this mentality within a couple of days I was feeling bitter about the idea of maybe one day living there. Then Rachel, my sister in law, told me that the government supports having children because Canada is underpopulated so they pay you for having children. Ok, I guess there are some perks to living there?

Anyway, at this beach there were like a billion couples with their dogs. It seemed that the majority of couples have dogs, not children. Once again - I don't understand this, unless you can't have kids and don't have the means to adopt, but whatever. Luckily the dogs were all friendly.

I love this little peanut. She really is the easiest kid and just so much fun.

We loved getting to hang out with Jacob and Rachel and getting to know their cute kiddos again. Oliver and Ava (the twins) are so grown up it is crazy!

Searching for rocks.

Victoria

The day we took Micah and Rachel to the clipper in Victoria, we spent some time walking around and enjoyed the entertainment that Victoria Day brought to the city.

Reese loved the Raggae music being played at the bay.

On our way back to Duncan we stopped at a sweet park where Eric used to play all the time with his friends. He said they used to dress in camo and wear gas masks and spy on park visitors :) I love little kids' imaginations.