Camping @ Ensign Ranch

Hey, hey guys, it's Marty doing the post this time! This is my first post EVER so go easy on me...

We went camping on Friday and Saturday and saw a beaver! The beaver's lodge was right next to our campsite! Damian and I were walking around the edge of the lake and all a sudden, this big beaver sees us and does a bellyflop off the edge into the lake and starts swimming around his lodge. Damian thought it was a dog. I told him it was a beaver, and he thought I was saying "baby." Damian was saying, "Baby? Baby?" I said, "No! BEA-VER, not BA-BY!" and then I think he got it but just started teasing me saying, "Baby, baby, baby!" Later, during our s'more-making campfire, Damian was excited to roast an oversized mallow. To Damian, these are called, "offo-meh-woes" so we go along with it. In the picture you'll notice he did not get the offo-meh-woes very roasted...the fire was "too hot!"

In the morning, after a good night's sleep in our tent, Damian pops up from his sleeping bag and says, "I awake! I awake!" at 6:30AM. Albeit there were birds already chirping and the sun was up, it still felt early. Leyah pretended to still be asleep and didn't make a move in her sleeping bag. I got out of my sleeping bag, took Damian on a walk, showed him all the different wildflowers, made a wreath with them for Leyah and then floated blades of grass down a small stream.

After we broke camp, I was the Climbing Tower Director for the climbing tower also at the camp until 1PM. When Damian came over to the tower he said, "Rope? Rope? Rope?" because he's been down the rope with Daddy before and wanted to go down again. I harnessed him up and attached him to me rappelling 40 ft down from the top of the tower with him and he loved it.

We then went out on the lake with a canoe that was really rickety. Damian kept jumping up and down in the middle of the canoe making it feel like we were going to roll over. Water started coming in through the seams in the bottom of the canoe. Damian stopped after he saw that.

Damian is a funny kid. We love him so much, and we are excited to get a little sister for him in a few months! (Due date for our little bambina: November 16th.) Damian points to Leyah's belly and says, "Baby?" then points to his belly and says, "Baby."

A Day At The Beach

Playing catch-up again.  What's new?  I shouldn't even have to announce that. 
So, the Saturday before Easter, April 23rd, was GORGEOUS!!!  And since my Dad has been bribing me to walk a certain number of steps every week, and since I'm so amazingly good at the catch-up game, I had about 12000 steps to step that day.  In case you don't know, that's a lot!  We went to Discovery Park and walked nearly every inch of the trails there.  Okay, maybe not quite.  But it was a lot of walking, and it was a TON of fun. 
Earlier in the day, we bought a child-carrier backpack thing, which Damian immediately fell in love with.  He loves to ride in his "pack-pack."  So he was perfectly happy perched up on Daddy's back for the whole hike.

And we all loved playing on the beach in the SUNSHINE!!!  The winter this year has been long and really hard for me, so this was basically the best day ever.  I thought the texture and pattern of the sand was amazing with the low tide, and Damian thought it was amazing to stomp in the puddles and try to splash me.  Super cute!

And Marty enjoyed sampling the SUPER fresh seafood.  Not really.  But he really wanted to, and he probably would have if I didn't keep telling him how gross that would be. 

Should We Worry?

The shoe saga continues.  There's not much to say beyond this: It's getting worse.

How I Ruined Spring Break

All of a sudden, when Damian turned two, it cost just as much for our little family of three to fly to Utah as it did for my shrinking family to fly here to visit us.  With my brother Chris and my sister Shannon both on missions (in Bolivia and Albania, respectively) and my brother Jared busy with finals at BYU, there were only three people left to entertain during spring break.  So my dad, my mom, and my sister Jessica flew to Seattle to spend a week with us!  We were so excited to have them!  I even cleaned my house!  But then I proceeded to ruin the trip.  Here's how:

DAY 1: Friday

I was anxious to start having fun immediately so we could fit in everything we wanted to do.  So I planned a trip to the San Juan islands for the same day that they arrived!  It sounded perfect.  I would pick them up at 8am, Marty would work a half day, and then by 11am, we'd begin the 1.5 hour drive to Anacortes to catch a ferry to Friday Harbor.  We got a later start than I'd anticipated, but it everything else worked out great!  It was even sunny!  But I'd forgotten to account for one thing: lack of sleep.  My family had stayed up late packing and everything, then woke up at 3:30am to catch their flight.  Marty and I stayed up late cleaning and everything (I was up until 4am!), then woke up early for work and picking up the fam.  We were too tired to even have fun!  But, somehow we had fun anyway.  The ferry ride was beautiful, Friday Harbor was fun to explore, and then we came home and collapsed into bed at 9pm. 

DAY 2: Saturday

Marty had a scout thing, so we decided to hit a movie and go out to eat in Bellevue.  Unfortunately, I insisted that we go to an animated movie so Damian would sit through it like a good boy.  We chose Rango.  Which wasn't a bad movie, but #1, Damian was not entertained by the ugly (though admittedly impressive) animation, and #2, it wasn't quite worth $10.50 per person.  Oops.  Then we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner, at my suggestion.  SEVENTY-FIVE minutes later (that's one hour and fifteen minutes, ladies and gentlemen) we were seated.  But at least the long wait made it so Marty could join us!  And Cheesecake Factory is almost good enough to be worth the wait.  Almost.

DAY 3: Sunday

I suppose there wasn't much for me to screw up on Sunday.  We got to church on time, everyone got where they were supposed to go, and we went to my Uncle Russ and Aunt RaeAnn's for dinner, which was delicious and very fun.  We always play darts and Beatles Rock Band with them, so you can't really go wrong with that.  I guess we could blame Sunday's screw-up on Marty since he couldn't remember what time we were supposed to go over there.  But, food was hot when we got there, so we'll let it slide.  :-)

DAY 4: Monday

Mariner's game!!!  We were all very excited for a healthy dose of baseball.  We brilliantly chose to park at Marty's work, then take a bus to the field since we were within the free-bus-ride district.  The game was FUN!!!  Even though it was cold.  And even though we didn't get a single run... until I went to the bathroom in the 7th inning.  At that point, I had mentioned the fact that we could leave early.  We were frozen, and we were not winning, so we thought it was a good idea.  And we ended up walking almost 2 miles back to Marty's work because #1, the bus was not free after 7pm (which I should have known!) and #2, we're cheap.  Then, we found out that the Mariners scored SIX more runs after we left and actually won the game.  I.  Am.  Stupid.  That's the last time I'll ever leave a game early!!!

DAY 5: Tuesday

Apparently, when people come to visit me, I'm in charge of where we go and what we do.  It probably seems like I knew this, since I had planned everything up to this point.  But I actually did not know this.  Therefore, we sat around the house until forever trying to figure out what we were going to do.  We ended up downtown at Pike Place Market, which is always fun, even when it's so late in the day that half the vendors are closing up shop.  Whoops.  We then toured the high-rise condos that Marty is the facilities manager for, and went out for Thai food.  Due to our late start, we didn't get to the restaurant until we were too hungry to be nice to each other.  Okay, maybe that was just me.  But it was delicious!

DAY 6: Wednesday

We wised up and planned our day the night before.  And we decided to try out the Seattle Underground Tour.  We were very pleased, impressed, and entertained.  We learned stuff too.  This was my crash-course in Seattle history, and now I know why certain streets are named weird things like "Yesler" and such.  (He was the first mayor here, if you didn't know.)  We also saw a really old crapper.  (That's a toilet, if you didn't know.)  You can see it too, in this picture. 

We paused for caramel apples at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, where Damian learned to share.  Or at least how to look like he's sharing for the photo. 

Then we went to the mall and discovered my new favorite store, Alley Kat. Then we had dinner and discovered the largest slice of cake I've ever seen at Claim Jumper. Sounds like a good day, right? Well... It was. I'm trying really hard but I can't think of anything I did to ruin this day. Shoot. So much for consistency.

DAY 7: Thursday

 

This was another day that I had planned way in advance.  We headed up to Leavenworth (a cute little Bavarian-themed town) to spend the night and the next day.  But, even though something kept telling me all week to make sure I checked the road conditions, I didn't.  And we hit quite a bit of snow on the way up over Steven's Pass.  And we crashed the car and we all died.  Okay, so it wasn't that bad.  In fact, besides the stress it caused us as we wondered if the car was going to make it over the hill, it wasn't bad at all.  So we got there and got some pizza and went swimming in the hotel's pool and watched the Disney channel in the hotel room.  Damian was very concerned about getting in the pool, and he clung to me as if his life depended on it.  (Which it would have, if I wasn't holding onto him, which I was.)  But after a while, he warmed up to the idea and had fun riding on everyone's backs. 

 



DAY 8: Friday

 

Leavenworth!  Someone pointed out in the morning, that we could have left our house at 9am and gotten to Leavenworth by 11am, which was the time we were ready to go out anyway.  And let me tell you, I wish I had planned it that way instead of the overnight stay!  Because #1, the mattress was somehow falling off the bed in the hotel room, which made it so I was occasionally falling off the bed all night long.  #2, the pillows were tiny, and I could not keep my head on it for the life of me.  #3, it was too warm in the room for covers, but too cool to not have covers, so I was switching all night long.  #4, someone, whom I won't name, snores.  (Dad.)  I think I got a total of 2 hours of sleep.  And so I felt like crap all day.  I actually ditched everyone after lunch and tried to nap in the car.  I won't expound on the issues I experienced there.  So I suppose I didn't ruin the day for everyone, but it was ruined for me.  Except I had fun anyway, looking at all the fun stuff in the cute little shops and eating bratwurst for lunch. 

 

DAY 9: Saturday

Three words.  Breakfast.  At.  Maltby's.  If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.  If not, just go.  It's amazing.  We met up again with Uncle Russ and Aunt RaeAnn at 9am, which is really early when there's 5 people in your house and only one shower.  We had to wait about an hour to be seated, which is typical on a Saturday at Maltby's, but it was totally worth it.  But, the rest of the day was spoiled.  Since I had been so quick to agree to meet for breakfast at 9am, everyone was dead tired for the rest of the day.  So tired that when I turned on Dumbo for Damian, the rest of us sat there and fell asleep on the couches.  Every single one of us, except Damian, who watched the movie.  Then, when everyone was conscious again, I suggested that we go down towards the airport early, then spend any extra time at Southcenter Mall, which is only 10 minutes from the airport.  But, as anyone who lives close to the Southcenter Mall knows, getting to that mall on a Saturday is flat-out ridiculous.  I think we spent 1.5 hours getting from our apartment to the mall.  Then, we were almost out of time, so we went to Burger King.  What a mess of a day.

If you haven't noticed, even though I tried my best to absolutely ruin spring break for my family, it was actually tons of fun.  We love my family, and as far as I can tell, they love us.  So that makes anything fun!  Even days that were on the verge of being disastrous!  Thanks for coming, family!!!  WE LOVE YOU TONS!!!

Damian's Happy Birthday!

I considered posting this in one week, exactly one entire month since Damian's actual birthday.  It would only be appropriate since that's about how long things take around here.  But I suppose 3 1/2 weeks is a good enough representation of my procrastination.  So...

HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY DAMIAN!!!

Damian turned two on March 24th.  The week before that, we decided to "fwy" to Utah one last time before we have to pay for a seat for Damian and spent a week with my family.  While we were there, we had a pre-birthday party with my family and Marty's sister Marie and her husband Ian.  Marie and Ian gave him a cute ball, which is totally Damian's bread-and-butter.  And my family gave him a Buzz action figure, which can "fwy".  He looks very possessive, doesn't he?

So we returned from Utah on Tuesday the 22nd, so I was obviously not prepared to have a party on his actual birthday two days later.  Instead, we just celebrated as a family.  It's tradition in our family to go out for a birthday dinner, and while Marty and I would have preferred a nice, real restaurant (at least the food at a real restaurant, not the prices), we thought Damian would probably prefer McDonald's.  And he did!!!  We walked in the door, showed him the Happy Meal toys, and told him he was getting one, and it was truly instant happiness.  Then, as we were picking up our food, we mentioned that we were celebrating Damian's birthday, and the worker was all excited and offered to give Damian a free ice cream cone.  All my mom-fibers begged me to protest, but it was his birthday, after all.  So Damian ate his free ice cream for dinner.  And surprisingly, he also ate most of his fries (occasionally dipped in the ice cream), cheeseburger, and apple juice too.  And he absolutely adores his Superman toy, which can also "fwy".

We then made a stop at Goodwill!  Our favorite place to buy toys!  We found a cute little airplane-looking riding toy with Tigger on it, which Damian fell in love with.  Then we came home and discovered, to Damian's elation and my irritation, that it makes all kind of noise when you put batteries in!  (Maybe I can convince him it's "broken" when the batteries run out.)  But he loves to "fwy" on it when he's watching movies, or when he's eating, like in this picture. 

Anyway, one week later, on March 31st, we had a Toy Story party and invited a bunch of Damian's friends.  I have to brag for a minute.  First, the invitation that I created:

I don't know about you, but I think it turned out freakin' AWESOME!!!  I'm very proud of it.  Second, since there weren't really going to be any games since most of the attendees were toddlers, I wanted there to be something Toy Story themed besides just decorations.  So, I got creative with the food.  We had a "Toy Story Potluck" featuring:

• Woody's Best Darn Mac & Cheese in the West
• Jessie's Rootin' Tootin' Fruit
• Buzz's Chips & Queso Con Salsa (Spanish mode!)
• Rex's Mean Green Drinking Thing, and
• Slinky's Wiener Dogs

And finally, the cake!  I've never ever in my life attempted anything beyond a 9x13 inch cake served straight out of the pan, so this cake, while not incredibly impressive, was quite the accomplishment for me!

It's supposed to be Buzz's spaceship, if you couldn't tell.  :-)  Anyway, the party itself was lots of fun.  We love having an excuse to get together with our friends, whom we absolutely love.  And although it might have been a little overwhelming for Damian (mostly just because our little apartment was CROWDED), I think he had fun too.  We had a great time celebrating our adorable, fun Damian, and we love him so so SO much!!!



SDC: Mr. Fix-It

I have a lamp that sits on the dresser next to my bed.  It lights my late-night scripture reading, novel writing, novel reading, and all the other things I do when I should be sleeping.  This is a desperately important lamp.  A few weeks ago, the switch stopped switching.  So I replaced it with another lamp that we don't use as often.  Easy enough.

But Marty decided that he could fix it, and we can always use another lamp.  I mean, it's March in Seattle, where the sun don't shine until at least June-ish.  So one Sunday morning, while I was sleeping off my late-night escapades, Marty began repairs on the lamp, with the help of his assistant, Mr. Damian.

Damian has always been fascinated by tools, like any respectable male, so he was all over this project.  If you look closely, you can see the little screwdriver he was using to fix the lamp.  So.  Dang.  Cute.

The boys had success with the lamp, and I was extremely impressed, proud, and happy to see it functioning again.  But, nevertheless, it has been demoted to the position near our piano.  It failed me, and I'm holding a grudge.  Okay, in reality, it just works better at the piano than the other one did.  But still.

SDC: My Teddy Is A Football

It's been awhile.  Again.  And it is definitely not for a lack of pictures to share.  Damian has been so much fun to watch as he gets older, and I think we have the camera out now more than we did when he was born.  Okay, maybe not quite.  But close!

Here is the first installment in the "So Dang Cute!" series (SDC).

First, I have to admit that I stay up way too late sometimes, usually working on my novel (which is SOOO close to being DONE!!!)  But that also means that I have a hard time waking up in the morning when I hear Damian.  Fortunately, this kid loves his crib.  He jumps around and throws everything he can reach on the floor and sings his own original songs and just lounges around.  Sometimes, though, we will let him go to bed with, oh, say, a football for entertainment purposes in the morning.  On this particular morning, he was having so much fun cuddling his football that he didn't even get up when Marty came to get him. 

After this, I wasn't so worried about the high heels fetish anymore.  As long as he likes the football too, I think we can steer him in the right direction.

Oh Yeah. Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day was last week!  I've been meaning to post about it since BEFORE the actual holiday because that's when we did most of our celebrating.  Marty scored free tickets to the Pacific Northwest Ballet's dress rehearsal of "Cinderella."  Ballet is not my favorite thing in the world, but I absolutely love dance and theatre in general, so it still gets me excited.  When I got downtown to pick up Marty, he surprised me with a THREE POUND box of chocolates!!!  Yeah, see the picture? 

There were two trays completely full of delicious chocolate.  He actually got it for free from one of the residents at his condos, but that just makes the deal even sweeter.  (Pun intended.  Yes, I am funny.)  On the actual day of Valentine's Day, we camped out at home to avoid the crowds.  Actually, I guess we went to Albertson's.  It was deserted.  So romantic, huh?  :-)  We chose to go to dinner on the Saturday after Valentine's.  It was Italian food and there was no wait.  That's what I call romantic. 

Anyway, since we're talking about Valentine's Day, I also wanted to brag a little.  While we were in St. George with Marty's parents for Christmas, his mom helped me to create a Valentine's Day decoration.  It's a gourd that I burned, dremeled, and stained.  She does gourds ten times more beautiful than this all the time, and I was so excited to learn how to do it from a true master.  And I think it turned out pretty good. 

I love it so much that I might leave this Valentine's Day decoration up way beyond February.  It works for St. Patrick's Day, right?

We Heart Sugar Cookies

We have a ward Family Valentine's Dance to go to tonight, and I volunteered to bring some heart-shaped sugar cookies.  When I started on them yesterday, it quickly became a group effort.  Apparently I've never learned how to roll out cookie dough, so Marty had to teach me.  And Damian can smell sugar from a mile away, so he was eager to "help", aka, help eat the cookies at every stage of the process.


Rolling out the dough



Cookie cutter



Sampling the dough

NO clue where he got that idea.  :-)

So, tangent, whenever my mom made cookies, she always gave each of us kids a little ball of dough to eat, which we LOVED.  But if we tried to sneak any more, we got in trouble.  In fact, I got in trouble this past Christmas for taking extra dough when we made sugar cookies at my mom's house!  But I think she was just kidding for old times' sake...  :-)  So now that I'm a grown-up, that's the main reason why I bake.  So I can eat all the dough I want.  And so far, it looks like I'm passing this psychological problem on to Damian.  As we were rolling out the dough, I was like, "Look, you can eat this!"  After that first taste, he kept taking more, even out of the dough that had already been cut into cookie shapes.  But I just laughed.  So basically, if we ever have more kids, I'll have to make a quadruple batch of dough if I want to end up with any baked cookies.

Frosting a cookie (after he'd already eaten half of it)

And survey says...

Looks like he hates it, huh?  But this is the face I got when I asked him to smile.  He's so photogenic!  He actually loved the cookie, which became very obvious when he finished the cookie, asked for more, and sprawled out on the floor sobbing after I told him no.  I should have taken a picture of that!  But overall, he loved all of it.  We've got a baker on our hands!  Or maybe just a sugarholic.  We can blame that one on me too.



Big Shoes To Fill

Lately, Damian absolutely loves shoes.  In fact, he was sitting on my lap when I started typing this, but he just walked away saying, "Shoe?  Shoe?"  He likes his own shoes just fine, but he's been having fun trying on other people's shoes lately.  In fact, I just heard Marty say, "No, those are Mommy and Daddy's shoes.  Let's go find your shoes."  This whole thing started out okay, trying on Daddy's shoes.  That's normal, wanting to be a big man like Daddy, right?

Then, he moved on to Mommy's shoes.  But they look like they could be guy shoes, so we didn't worry about it.

But then he moved on to Mommy's more feminine shoes.  And I must say, I think he walks in them better than I do.

Up until this point, we chalked it up to curiosity, or wanting to be like Mommy and Daddy.  However, a little later in the day...

I know it's kind of hard to see in this picture, but these shoes belong to his little friend Abby.  They are pink with high heels.  And this is one of several poses that he did for me, and this is probably the least girly of them all (but somehow those ones didn't make it onto my camera).  And then, when it was time to go home, he put these shoes on again and totally intended to walk out the door with them.  Under no circumstances would he trade for his own boy shoes.  Now, I have to wonder, was it a mistake to get him a doll for his birthday last year?  This year, we'll get him a nice manly football.  :-)