Californ-I-Ay

Dale and I found a new love.  We love the beautiful state of California!  We loved everything about it (minus the crazy driving...but we would gladly take it just to visit again soon!)  We spent the last week soaking up the sun (on most days), meeting Disney characters, and just plain having the time of our lives.  No cares in the world, just the beautiful California landscape and the salty breeze in our hair.  It couldn't have been a better vacation!  We spent the week at Grandma Gigi's (our Brother in law's grandmother) and were spoiled with home cooked meals and a beautiful home to stay in.  Trey loved playing with his cousins (and hitting his little cousin Spencer...poor kid took a lot of bullying from Trey this weekend).  We are so glad Dale's family invited us along on this trip!

The Alien Jerky place in Bakers CA.

Disneyland

 Doesn't he look super excited to be on this ride?  He didn't smile on any ride except for the teacups.  Most of them scared him.

 Lunch at Ariel's Grotto in California Adventure.  It was not fantastic.  We missed our breakfast time, so we had to do lunch instead...and I'm not gonna lie...definitely not worth the money.  I think it would've been more fun for us if Trey cared at all about princesses.  But, he doesn't.  In fact, the only think that kept us sane during this whole ordeal were the stickers they gave him.  

 Belle was very sweet talking to Trey :).  

Then he attacked her.

 So these next few pics are super bright...my sis in law gave me a mini lesson on how to use my camera  without just using auto.  So, I ventured out into the scary world of using manual for most of my pics.  I learned a very important lesson.  Don't wear your sunglasses while taking pics...they make them all look dark :).  I couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I just kept making them brighter :).  So, don't mind the pics where Trey's hair blends in with the sand/sidewalk...lesson learned :).  

 In a lot of the pics we're pointing because it's the only way we could get Trey to look at the camera :)

 My niece Faith buried my legs :)

 All week there was a long line to see Mickey Mouse, and we weren't about to wait in it seeing how Trey doesn't even know who he is.  But on Thursday we hung out in Toon Town for awhile and I thought it'd just be fun to check out his house.  There was hardly anyone there, so I figured he wasn't around anymore.  When we got to the back, there was a security guard waiting, and I asked him how to get out.  He said to wait just a few minutes, but didn't say anything more.  Then it dawned on me that Mickey was still here and we were first in line :).  We didn't get a great pic (Trey kept trying to touch him and the lighting was horrible), but it was fun to see him!

 Trey has discovered dumdum suckers.  He thinks they are fabulous.  I loved all of the pics of him eating his sucker, so here they are :).

35 Years of Service

Last weekend we took a trip to Parowan for my dad's retirement ceremony.  My dad retired from the National Guard as a Major after 35 years of service.  He joined when he was 18 years old and was still in High School.  At this point he's been in for more years than he hasn't been in.  He's done 2 tours of duty, once in Kuwait, and once in Iraq.  He's gone to his once a month drill, yearly summer camps, and other trainings for as long as I can remember.  It's been a huge part of his life.  At the ceremony they presented him with all sorts of awards, and gave my mom one too.  I love that they recognize the wives- they play a huge role in this!  They had my dad say a few words, and he mentioned how much he appreciates my mom and her support- He said he missed their first 14 wedding anniversaries! (mostly because he was at Summer Camp I think).  What a woman for not complaining about that :).  After doing this for 35 years, I think it still seems surreal to him to think that he's done with his service.  I am glad I got to witness first hand what it means to be part of a military family.  I have such respect for these men and women who choose to serve!

It's Official...

I've been teaching the 2nd grade at the same school for the last 7 years.  I LOVE the ladies I teach with, and have loved teaching the 2nd grade...but it's official- I'm quitting at the end of the school year!  Yesterday I went in and told my principal.  The last step will be signing the resignation paper, which I'm doing at the end of this month (you get a bonus if you do it early :).  As much as I have enjoyed teaching, I am SO EXCITED to be at home with my little one!  Thank you so much to my sweetheart for making this possible...it's been a long time in the making, and I'm so grateful the time has come! :)  

I love my boys!  

  

Sledding Fun

Trey got a new sled for Christmas.  He LOVES sitting in it...and playing with his blocks in it.  We decided it was time to take him out in the snow and show him how to really use it.  Other than Dale throwing snowballs at him (which he loves), Trey hasn't had much experience with snow.  We were pretty excited to take him out.

He loved sledding, but he couldn't walk in the snow at all (it was up past his knees), which really frustrated him.  He just kept falling over.  He only lasted for about 20 minutes, and then he'd had enough.  Fun times!

Cookie Monster

Trey is definitely my child.  He has an undying love of anything sweet.  He'll hear us opening a treat from a different room, and he'll come running and say "Bite!  Bite!"  I made cookies a couple of days ago and all day he kept trying to get me to give him more.  I think the only words I heard come out his mouth all day were "Cookie cookie!" and "Bite" with an occasional "baba" thrown in the mix.  He got upset at me after a while and decided to try getting them himself :).

 Recognizing defeat :)

Merry Christmas!

I LOVE the month of December!  Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that I have the ENTIRE month off of work :).  I love getting to spend the month with my Trey man and my sweet hubby :).  I love all of the fun holiday preparation, and I even love having the time to clean our apartment!  Though I'm sure that last one will get old quickly once I'm a stay at home mom for good :). We spent the month doing the usual fun holiday celebrations...made gingerbread nativities/Santa's sleigh, went to our ward Christmas party, got together with friends, listened to tons of Christmas music, and of course ate way too many delicious treats.  We also went to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point.  That trip is the reason this post has no pictures :).  We definitely took some, though not many due the huge downpour of snow.  We thought it would be fun to take the wagon ride through the lights instead of driving in our car, and that the snow would make it so much more magical :).  It was magical for about the first 5 minutes, then we started to freeze and Trey started to get antsy.  Another 5 minutes into it and we didn't care much about the lights, just getting back into our warm car!  The snow was coming down quicker, and we were getting more soaked by the second.  As soon as it was over we booked it back to our car.  It was quite the ordeal getting Trey in.  We had to unearth him from his piles of clothing so he wouldn't suffer from heat stroke once we blasted the heat.  In our rush I wasn't exactly thorough enough with checking to make sure we didn't lose anything in the process.  When we pulled out of the parking lot, we ran over a large lump...which turned out to be our camera.  It was surprisingly not smashed like I thought, but still completely broken and unusable.  So, no pictures from this month :(.  But on the upside, we got a new camera!  And let's face it, it was time.  The one we had been using I'd gotten in college...8 years ago.  Technology has come a long way in those 8 years!

We didn't get our camera until after Christmas, so once again, we didn't get pics of Trey at Christmas...guess we won't be voted Parents of the Year any time soon :).  But we did of course get it on video.  We were so super excited for Trey to open his presents this year now that he actually has complete control over his hands!  He had been practicing all month (we've been letting him unwrap Christmas books to read at night...he won't sit still for the stories, but he's one terrific unwrapper).  He was pretty excited too that we were actually letting him unwrap the presents instead of saying "No" every time he got close to the tree :).  Earlier in the month he started touching the end of a tree branch and would look at us and say "No." :).  He got some pretty fun presents, but lost interest half way through unwrapping.  He wanted to play with his loot!  Santa sure spoiled him this year :).  Another great Christmas enjoying time with family, eating dinner with my Grandma, and of course, relaxing in our Christmas Pjs.     

Honeymoon and Beyond

4 1/2 years ago Dale and I spent the first night of our honeymoon at The Little America in SLC.  We had everything planned out, and our honeymoon was going to be perfect!  We would eat breakfast at the hotel, then catch our flight to Florida and enjoy a beautiful week of sunshine and bliss :).  Well, we did make it to Florida...eventually...but the week was far from sunshiney...though still somewhat blissful.  The hotel was perfect, and we were just sitting down to enjoy our delightful (and expensive) breakfast when I asked Dale what time our flight was.  He was SURE it was at 2:00...but I wasn't so sure, so I kept bugging him to look it up.  He finally listened, and of course our flight was NOT at 2:00.  It was at 11:00, which was in 15 minutes.  We abandoned our hardly touched breakfast and booked it out of there hoping to miraculously make our flight.  But even Dale's speed demon driving couldn't get us through security in 5 minutes, which is all the time we had by the time we made it to the airport.  Needless to say, we missed our flight.  I remember one of the ladies who was helping us getting really mad at Dale for me.  She was more upset than I was :).  All they could do for us was give us standby tickets for 6 a.m. the next morning.  We spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do if we couldn't get on.  We ended up eating lunch at a park, and spending quite a bit of time there.  Then we stayed the night on the pull-out couch at my sweet grandparent's house :).  Not sure why we didn't stay in the hotel again...a little too expensive for our newlywed budget, I guess.  Luckily we did make our flight, though we didn't even get to sit together.  I was squished between 2 large men, and Dale was 2 rows up.  Awesome.  We finally made it, and thankfully had a BEAUTIFUL place to stay thanks to our awesome and generous friends, the Millers.  They gave us their timeshare in Florida for a week for our wedding gift!  We were incredibly grateful, especially since it rained 90% of the time we were there, so we were indoors a lot.  And the other 10% of the time?  We were at Time Share presentations, of course.  Who doesn't spend their honeymoon going to 3 presentations?  Dale signed us up for 2 to get cheap tickets to Disney World and something else equally alluring I'm sure.  And the 3rd?  To be fair, that one wasn't our fault.  They told us they just wanted to hear what we thought about our stay at the condo...and being naive and completely blinded by the love bubble we were in, we believed it.  I guess we did get an $80 Visa gift card out of it.  We did learn that we never wanted to go to another presentation again though :).  We also did get to hit up Disney World for a day or two, and the Pirate Dinner Adventure we went on was pretty amazing.  Dale had some other (pre-paid, of course) activities planned for us, but they got rained out.  We also got to sit by each other on the flight home...which is a definite plus in my book :).  All in all our honeymoon wasn't exactly what we had planned, but definitely full of fun memories.  One day we've decided to do it all again...minus missing our flight, the rain, and the time share presentations...which brings me to this weekend.  We've been talking for a while (4 1/2 years to be exact) about at least staying at The Little America again since flying all the way to Florida isn't exactly in our budget right now. So this weekend we made that happen.  We booked the Weekend Getaway Package and spent a super fun low key weekend in good ol Salt Lake City at the Little America.  We ate dinner at their steakhouse, and had an awesome night just hanging out with our "midget human" as Trey is often called in our household :).  It's amazing that even though we were barely 30 miles away from our home, we felt like we were tourists in a faraway place.  We've decided to make this our tradition.  Every December we'll take a step back and stay in a hotel and enjoy just being together.

Trey was not thrilled with the sleeping arrangements.  We put him in the pack n play in the little room between our room and the bathroom.

Trey and Daddy in the hotel room.

Beautiful trees in the lobby!