Newport/Huntington Beaches 2012

About a month ago we went on a road trip with Micah and Rachel to Newport Beach, CA. I'm stealing this excerpt from an email Eric sent to his brother Dan who is on a mission, because I think he summed it up nicely.

"Last week they (Micah and Rachel) invited us to come on a Road trip to California. I got back from Casper Wyoming Friday afternoon and Nakita had already packed our stuff...20 minutes later we were headed down to Provo to meet up with them. Rachel had borrowed her Mom's SUV so we all packed in and headed for the coast. We arrived in Newport Beach on Saturday at around 6am. We parked on the side of the beach and watched the sun come up. Ivan and I went on a walk when it came up and I got to see a Dolphin swimming near the shore as a fisherman was meandering down the beach periodically casting out into the surf trying to catch something. It was a great switch from the frigid coldness that I had just been experiencing out in Casper! 

We stayed in Newport at a nice Hotel and boogie boarded near the pier in Huntington Beach while a surf competition was going on."

The part Eric kindly left out was the fact that he hadn't slept in over 24 hours and had been putting in long days of hard manual labor in the freezing cold for the few days prior to the trip so I was SUPER impressed that when Ivan started squealing as soon as we stopped the car for Eric to sleep a bit when we arrived in Newport Beach, he took Ivan out of the car to go on a walk, so everyone else could get some sleep. I will never forget that. What love!

This girl....

Reese turned 3 at the beginning of the year! She is such a lover doll! I don't know if it is because she spends every waking moment with me, or because she is my blood, but I see so much of my younger, more innocent and naive self in her. This assists me in parenting her because I know what would and wouldn't work for me when being punished, being taught, and being loved. 

She is such a sweet older sister, I'm so glad she is my oldest! She is so motherly, so intuitive, and so responsible and yet only three years old!!

We had lots of family in town over her birthday so we had a big party!

 Reese sang the happy birthday song along with everyone else, since it is one of her all time favorites! She sang it for a few consecutive days making sure to say "dear Reesey" instead of Ivan like she had been prior to her birthday week.

 She was spoiled!!

Last week when we had the first accumulating snow of January, we went outside and built a snowman, with a parsnip for a nose and chocolate chips for eyes and the mouth. Ivan HATED the whole experience. He did not want to be outside! I think it may have been nap time. Anyway, we made the snowman, sang "frosty the snowman" to it, per Reese's request. It was darling, and I decided I ought to get a pic of Reese by it. I told Reese to keep singing to the snowman while I ran inside to get the camera. When I came back out she was frowning and the snowman was toppled over with her hat laying next to it. Supposedly she had gotten to the part of the song that talks about placing a hat on his head and he began to dance around, took her hat off and tried to put it on the snowman's head and knocked him over in doing so. So we quickly re-built him while Ivan screamed with anger at being out there yet again.

 Reese loves dressing up in her princess dress-ups. And although she usually ends up with them on backwards (I actually think she thinks this pink dress is supposed to go like this), she is adorable! She also LOVES her baby dolls, the baby doll pictured is her "chubby baby".

 Reese now picks out her clothes and gets dressed on her own! HOLY MAKE MY LIFE SO MUCH EASIER! I can tell her to get dressed while I get Ivan dressed and we're ready to go in half the time. Sometimes I have to veto outfits, like shorts and tank tops when it is snowing, but most the time she does a good enough job.

I had to snap some pics of this outfit because she pulled the shorts up high AND they were on backwards.

 We babysat Micah & Rachel's baby Kaylyn the other night. As mentioned above, Reese is so motherly! She talked sweetly to Kaylyn the entire time and made sure all her needs were met. She even held the bottle the majority of the time Kaylyn was eating. I'm sure these two will be great friends despite the age difference.

Holidays

Reese likes to bathe in the sink, she'll stay entertained for long periods of time in here.

I am SO beyond lame, I took zero, yes zero! pictures of Christmas and New Years! I keep thinking pictures are going to show up somewhere because that is so unlike me to fail to take any pictures of fun events like these. I could kick myself. So a summary:

Christmas Eve:
- Went to my grandparents' annual German breakfast and gift exchange.
- Annual Messick shepherds' meal.
- Opened PJs: Reese was in LOVE with her Yo Gabba Gabba jammies.
- Spoke to Daniel over video skype; was kind of weird because it was all of the families and no one seemed to want to say anything in front of everyone else maybe, he looked good though and it was fun nonetheless.

Christmas:
- Reese wanted to open everyone's presents. Loved that this year!
- We opened 1/2 the presents, went to Christmas sacrament service, opened the other 1/2 (except Ivan who wanted to nap instead and opened the rest of his presents a few days later).
- Reese woke up at 2 in the morning and stayed a wake for over 2 hours, she was that excited.
- Headed down to Provo for a prime rib dinner with my family and gift exchange.

New Years Eve: 
- Showed up at mom's while Eric finished working at Emily's house. Mom gets tight chested feeling and calls Dad (who is at work), Dad tells me to call 911 and have paramedics come. They come, dad and mom head to the hospital where they find out mom's gallbladder is filled to the brim with stones and the pain is radiating into her chest and shoulders. Surgery follows a couple days later.
- Met up with friends for dinner at Cafe Rio, which was a bad idea considering that we had planned for a lot of food at the party that would follow, and no one was hungry.
- Had our annual friends New Years party, this time at Lindsay Graulings house, the majority of the attendees were our family members (Emily, Jacob, Rachel, Brian, Kristen, and all their kids, David & Nicole,+ Micah and Rachel).
- Played XBOX Kinect, which is so totally fun.
- Missing the countdown like EVERY year but luckily (like every year) having DVR so we could rewind and pause while we filled the glasses with Martinelli's in preparation for the countdown :)

New Years Day:
- Attended Lindsay's sacrament meeting in our jeans, because we weren't originally planning on going to her ward.

Our holidays were FILLED with family, which was SO fantastic! Everyone was in town helping out on Emily's house, and thankfully that time overlapped with all the holidays, so not only did we get to spend a lot of time with my family but also with Eric's side of the family! We feel blessed for such good family, for good health, for the gospel, our Savior Jesus Christ, and for the many blessings we experience constantly!

A Christmas Picture

I was looking through the pics on my other camera and found that I DID take a picture on Christmas. One picture (below) and a video of Reese opening a present. So I'm not quite the loser I thought I was, still bad, but a little better :) Reese in her cute princess dress backwards by our Christmas tree that has be re-decorated multiple times by both my kids (mostly Reese putting ornaments higher when Ivan knocks them to the ground and Ivan pulling the tinsel stuff down.)

Dream

My kids make me seriously happy! Yes, things are a bit crazy around here, but that's what I love about my life. I'm living the life of a wife to a wonderful husband and a mom to 2 youngsters and I don't wish for anything different. This is what I've always wanted. I'm living my dream.

This year I am BEYOND excited for Christmas. It is so fun to see Reese start to grasp ideas. We went to Temple Square last weekend and Reese could see the Christus through the window (the building was locked because it was getting late). She told me what she remembered from last time we visited, "Jesus has spots, they're owies, he died, he's alive, he's wearing his jammies (the robe he has on - haha)". We had a little talk about Christ again and a couple days later I heard her telling my dad, "Jesus died for me, now he's alive."

My thoughts have been turned to the Savior more this holiday season then I feel they have been in past years. I'm grateful for that. I feel my heart growing with love for others, finding love in my heart that I didn't know would or could ever exist.

On a 'worldly' note :)...When I ask Reese what she wants for Christmas from Santa she tells me, "a mermaid toothbrush". I think Reese is going to be really into opening gifts this year. I have butterflies thinking about Christmas morning, I'm so excited for her to have her first "exciting" Christmas morning.

 Ivan's a charmer! He MELTS me with his sweet personality, quick smiles, and the way he instantly starts playing with my hair when I pick him up. These days he looks so much like his daddy I can hardly stand it!!

update

Lately my schedule has been so skewompous (sp??). This is by my own choosing. Eric is working in Orem, so many days of the week I'll go down with him and go to families' houses to hang out, help out, or whatever else. Lots of evenings, especially when Eric gets off late, we end up bunking up at my parents house since it doesn't seem worth driving all the way back to SLC just to go to sleep and head back the next morning. I spend at least 1/2 my time at our house, but since it isn't 95% I feel like I'm so crazy with cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, etc on those days that I don't get around to blogging and such. I probably ought to figure out a better schedule.

I'm excited to be at home today. I'm excited to take the kids to the "fish place" (Living Planet Aquarium), switch out our books and DVDs at the library, and get some Christmas presents wrapped. Ah, I love being a mom!!

Ivan is 1!!

Today my baby turned 1!! When I woke up this morning and saw that the clock said 6:30 am I was FILLED to the brim with sweet memories. I remembered the 4 am birth of my sweet boy. It was so rewarding having to work so hard for a brief time to bring my little guy into this world. The thought makes me want to give birth over and over and over again. Seriously, it was such a rewarding, spiritual, and connecting experience. I remember being full of energy for about an hour after his birth and looking at him thinking "I cannot believe I just did that. I just did that!" I was in love with that little guy from the time I found out I was pregnant with him, and the love just grows exponentially. There is something about a mother's love for their sons. It is truly indescribable. I recalled having an extreme amount of fatigue come over my body after that first hour postpartum. I laid in bed, with Eric next to me, Ivan squeezed in between. We all slept deeply and I felt so fulfilled, thinking of my wonderful husband and beautiful children.

We had a combined birthday party. My dad's birthday was the day before, and Amber's birthday is the same day as Ivan's. It was fun and COZY with all the family at our place for soups, cake, and ice cream.

Benson

Our friends, Brad and Shanda, came up for dinner the other night with their 2 cute kids. Reese and Benson had a fun time watching Monster's Inc., drinking LOTS of chocolate milk, and building blanket forts.

Best pals

These two are the best of pals. They definitely know how to push each other's buttons, but for the most part play good. It makes my heart SO happy when I see them playing and giggling. I am excited to see these two grow up together, being so close in age.

FYI: Reese is feeding Ivan nerds in this pic. She loves to feed him things, and is learning to quickly remove her fingers from his mouth since he now has 4 top teeth and 2 bottom teeth. Ivan also likes to feed Reese, when she'll let him. That blue dress Reese is wearing is her "dancing dress". She insists on wearing it the most part of every day. I need to get that girl in dance lessons!

moto ride

Near the end of October, Eric and my dad went on a long motorcycle ride. They said they froze the majority of the time but still had a good time. Crazy.

They went to quite a lot of cool places and saw many neat things.

Halloween 2011

Ivan = Shark

Eric = Shark Fisherman

Reese = Sheep

Nakita = Shepherd

 You should have seen me sewing Reese's costume. It was pretty hilarious. I made it the shape and size I thought it would need to be, then I tried it on Reese and cut and sewed different places multiple times to make it fit right. It still wasn't fantastic, but it worked.

Our ward Trunk or Treat was fun, except when they had the kids all line up and go outside together, and by the time I got out to the parking lot I found Reese wandering around trying to find me. One of the parents was dressed as Darth Vader and was next to us as we trick-or-treated through the parking lot. Reese was a little freaked of him and kept squealing and saying "aaah, scary guy!" every time he came near her. Someone had a bubble machine that blew fog filled bubbles - AWESOME!

We went trick-or-treating, on actual Halloween, around my parents' neighborhood. Reese was wiped, tripped before we even got to the first house and then continued to trip periodically and freak out when both Eli and Chelsea weren't holding her hands. She kept saying "I want to go back to papa's house". Next time we'll make sure she's well rested for trick-or-treating so she can enjoy it a little more. Ivan was totally happy about being outside walking around, but then again, he had 2 naps before we went out.