hawaii and ding ding ding ding

brady is currently in the stage where he's like a foreigner that's been living in the states for several years even though he's currently a U.S. citizen that's been living in the states for about two years and two months.  he has virtually perfect comprehension of every day english language but when he speaks, most people can't understand what he's saying.  i mean, i can.  because i'm a genius.  and because i spend his whole life with him so i typically have all the context i could possibly hope for, but without that... it'd be tricky.  sometimes i like to text honey videos and ask him to guess what brady is saying.  this happened wednesday night and is my new favorite.  and in case you can't figure it out, which is 99% likely... he's talking about the library and visiting teaching.  ; )  he's so adorable.

no training wheels

this week, abigail's friend, lucy, learned how to ride a bike without training wheels.  it literally took her two or three days to learn and abigail thought it was pretty cool.  so friday night, i borrowed a pedal-less bike from a friend so abigail could practice her balance.  well, she rode it for 20 or 30 minutes friday night and then maybe another 20 minutes this afternoon before i told christopher to take the training wheels off of abigail's pink bike. 

now we just need to fine tune her starting and stopping skills.

for anyone looking to teach their kid how to ride a bike without training wheels, look into a balance bike like strider or wee ride that doesn't have pedals.  it literally took abigail less than 24 hours to go from zero experience without training wheels to riding all up and down our street.  i've heard people swear by these bikes.  now i'm a believer too.

my kid is turning into a real girl.

driving home

a snowstorm decided to blow through the rockies on sunday/monday, so our drive home took several hours longer than anticipated.  but have no fear, there was never a dull moment.  

we'd been on the road about four minutes before everyone decided they needed to break out their zollinger fruit leather.  you can only see jon and sara's.  but you better believe daniel and i had ours out too.

i'd forgotten about the primary kids singing a mother's day song.  my first time ever to see a kid sing to me in sacrament meeting and i missed it!  glad christopher snuck this shot.  i love it.

we knew that colorado would be bad (i mean, it was snowing when we drove through silverthorne on friday so of course it would be terrible driving back during a snowstorm.  but we thought utah would be free and clear.  it was not.

the pictures weren't capturing how bad the weather was so i thought i'd take a little video.  but then the commentary in the car was just it's typical entertaining mess so i kept recording.  and no one knew it because they all had to keep their eyes on the road (even though we ended up being completely stopped for a full 45 minutes with just that one accident).  we'd been trying to scope out cars that would be helpful to us if we all got stranded.  we didn't have warm blankets but we had a lot of food that would come in handy if we needed to barter.

roads were really bad and semi's weren't handling it well at all.  especially because the wind was also really bad.

this wreck was insane.  two crazy long semis were somehow entangled together and both on their sides.

have you ever seen the underside of an enormous tractor trailer?  i hadn't.

look how long it was!

despite the accidents, the views were spectacular.

and the entertainment was top notch.  since everyone had to look at the road, we all relied on conversation and occasionally some jim gaffigan, brian regan, jeff foxworthy, and jerry seinfeld.  the running commentary about nothing in particular?  that's a little slice of heaven for me.

and then we dropped in elevation and got to drive the speed limit for a while through the no snow areas.  somewhere along our drive we got taco bell... and then later got subway.  both were delicious and neither had beef products smelling like fish... which is more than we can say for the wendy's in beaver that we stopped at on our drive down.

back to the snow.  we'd been checking weather and news and facebook and anything we could get ahold of to try to guess the weather before we actually hit it.  vail pass was closed for five or so hours earlier in the day but opened up by the time we stopped to get gas.  great news!  except that we were terrified it would close again and that we'd be stranded in vail all night.

luckily, the temperature in vail hovered right above freezing and the roads stayed open.

silverthorne, not so much.  the conditions were bad but jon did an excellent job driving and we all laughed and made speculations about the little sports cars that zoomed past us that we would find later down the road going a very humbled 30 sometime mph.

sara and i... happy to have arrived!

and then i drove home.  it took me an hour because the weather and roads kept getting worse as i drove south and parker was way worse than the city.  and i was driving chris's car which is terrible in the snow.  i texted chris when i pulled into the neighborhood.  he texted me five or so minutes later and asked if i'd turned around.

after at least 10 attempts to get up the driveway, i'd had to give up.  the snow on the driveway was so slick that my wheels would skid and then my car would slide back down.  i was soooo close.

but alas.  i had to park on the street and carry my rolling suitcase as i tiptoed up our driveway in my flipflops.

after 15 hours, i was home!  it was a great weekend.

we're that family now with a whole lot of sick

poor brady.  poor all of us actually.

last week, brady was fussy... i was thinking it was teething.  he also had a diaper rash so raw and terrible and bloody.  thursday morning, he woke up with a crib full of vomit.  and puked a little during his afternoon nap, just for good measure.  but then seemed fine.  friday though, he woke up again with a whole crib full of vomit.  what the heck brady?!  saturday, you could tell he was drooling and had a runny nose.  he wasn't a really happy guy.  sunday morning, he woke up with this horrible (but really cute in a sad sort of way) barking cough.  i told christopher it was like he was darth vader* because when i went to get him up, it was super dark in the room, and the fan was still on really loud, and yet i could still hear this deep darth vader sort of... i dunno... breathing?  sighing?  huffing?  something.  and don't even get me started on how bad his nose was.  so much snot.  such a sad brady.  anyways, he's still got it.  and he coughs all night long.  and even his talking and crying during the day is low and manly.  even more manly than usual.

and poor me because i felt super sick going to bed friday night and finally threw up at 5am saturday morning.  not sure why my body hates me... why do i feel like i'm always throwing up?  i don't even get the benefit of being pregnant.  i'm just throwing up with zero benefit.  who invented this crap?!  anyways, somehow, while i was throwing up, i also threw out my neck.  like i have never ever ever had such extreme neck pain ever.  there is sleeping on it wrong and having neck pain for a few days sort of pain and then there's multiplying that by a thousand and that's what i was experiencing.  i laid in bed and then seriously couldn't move.  i can't even begin to describe it.  and all day saturday i basically had to lay in bed.  the pain was so severe that it also imparied my ability to use my arms (because shoulder muscles connect to neck muscles blah blah blah) so i couldn't hold my kid, i almost killed myself putting a shirt on, i couldn't brush my hair, and i couldn't reach anything that was higher than my head because i literally didn't have the ability to lift my arm that high.  that means i had to have christopher reach the oats and flax seed and brown sugar from the top shelf just so i could make myself a simple bowl of oatmeal.  and moving at all hurt.  not moving also hurt.  laying hurt.  deep breaths hurt. swallowing even kind of hurt.  it's late monday night and i'm still having terrible pain.  although thankfully by sunday morning i could at least function.  i kept thinking how grateful i was that it happened on a saturday when i had my honey home to help.  if it was a weekday i for sure would have had to call a friend to take my kids for 8 hours until christopher could get home.  has anyone else experienced this?!  why does my neck still hurt so bad?!  and i didn't even feel anything at the time...  i was just laying in bed feeling like i was going to vomit, i finally got up and went to the bathroom for the inevitable, and when i laid back down to go to sleep... searing pain.  anyways, i was also still feeling weak and crappy from throwing up and by saturday night i was also getting a sore throat.  monday morning i woke up feeling terrible... congestion and headache.  body, come on!

christopher?  well he started getting a sore throat saturday night too.  sunday morning woke up definitely sick.  and monday he said was absolutely miserable like he wanted to die.  and he had a million meetings all day and combine that with traveling and i just feel really bad for him.

abigail?  she's just a bundle of non-sick energy suffering from a lack of attention and playdates.  but mostly playdates.  the most social girl (i just mistyped "gift"... freud would say that's because i'm a loving mother... freud doesn't know i started my kids' bedtime routine tonight in the 6 o clock hour tonight because i just needed them asleeeeeeeep) in the world can't take two seconds without a friend elle and so she is struggling.  luckily though, she's not actually sick.  just inflicting her high energy on the rest of us.  but we do love her anyways.  also, she woke up at 7:30 this morning and i wanted to die.  luckily though, she was as sweet and delightful as could be (until maybe 4:00 or something when brady woke up from his nap) and i didn't have to pull myself from bed until after 9.  she woke up and played and then went potty and got herself dressed again (although she brought me her pj's to untangle) and then put a sticker on her potty chart and got herself a treat (and then brought me the ziploc bag so i could seal it again) and even returned the chair (because the treats are kept in a higher cabinet so she has to push a chair over and then climb on the counter and stand up to reach them) back to the table.  if it wasn't so creepy, i would install cameras in all parts of my house to record this sort of stuff.

anyways, somehow, i survive without my honey... one day at a time.

but let's cross our fingers for the boys of the family... they're just real sick.

video: john 3:16

as i mentioned before, abigail was assigned to give the scripture and prayer in primary on sunday.  since honey and i were kind of slackers about it, we didn't start practicing with abigail until friday night... i think.  so when sunday rolled around, she had it mostly memorized, but not all of the way.  so for whatever reason, sunday, we kept working on it with her.  and in the days following.  well, she got it down pat, and we taught her 2 nephi 2:25, which she has about 90%.  it is surprisingly fun and addicting.  i think christopher and i were both shocked about that.  as soon as she mastered john 3:16, we were instantly brainstorming all the scripture mastery verses and articles of faith we could teach her.  and i want to teach her the young women theme too.  kids learn so fast, the sky's the limit on what we can plant in that little brain.

does this redeem me just a little bit from "crap" and ummm, everything else she's learned from me in her little lifetime?  

and because it's just that adorable, here it is again...

also, thanks again for the bluetooth, mom!  i used it three times today!

and abigail used it once...  obviously.

primary video

normally, when i ask abigail what she learned at church, her response includes something like "i don't know" or "pretzels."  so i wasn't really expecting much on the way home from church when i asked her about her lesson.  

well, she surprised me.

persistence pays off.  also, is this not the most adorable thing ever?!

video: sleepy slap happy

not the best video, but it gets the idea across.  the best laughs are accompanied by a whole lot of sleepy eye rubbing.

video: strawberry shortcake

i'm pretty sure i could replay "can i watch strawberry shortcake" for three days straight and not get sick of it.  her stories keep getting better and better.  like when she came back from the golf tournament and told me all about her bus ride (school busses used to shuttle people from the various parking lots to the event) and how she wanted to ride on the purple bus but it was going to the wrong place so they rode on the yellow bus.  it's one of my favorite things now... hearing her tell me all about things that happened when i wasn't around.

also, baby girl is loving strawberry shortcake.  and tonight when she was going to the bathroom i heard her singing a loud rendition of the barney "i love you" song.  and yesterday we went on a bike ride around the neighborhood.  as we were about to cross the street i heard her say "look both ways before you go, hold a hand of a grownup you know... like that!"  ha.  i love that she's reciting barney now.  tv is so educational.  barney has the street cred that i don't.  stuff like wearing a helmet and looking both ways and only crossing the street with an adult?  i've been trying to get her to do that ever since she could walk and she didn't really care that much.  but with barney, all things are possible because this girl refuses to ride her bikes without her helmet on and buckled and now she recites that saying before she crosses the street!  when we went to costa vida a few weeks ago, we were walking to our car and abigail grabbed me forcefully.  we were still six feet from the sidewalk to cross the street but she heard this big truck and pulled me back anyways.  so precious.

brady's first food

we actually had to stop after a few minutes because he was gagging so hard it looked like he was having trouble breathing and i thought he was going to throw up.

torturing my kid.  one spoonful at a time.

disobedient

like most two and a half year olds, my child frequently has trouble listening and following through with my requests.  like this afternoon when i said "i'm going to put this laundry away.  go find a book to take upstairs and we can read it before nap."  less than a minute later i heard the music from the thomas cd we just got from the library this morning and came out to find this...

i'm not gonna lie... much of my difficulty in parenting comes from trying not to smile when i know i need to put forth my most "i'm disappointed in your actions and i disapprove of this choice you're making right now" face.

i couldn't resist.  i let her keep dancing.  and i have no idea why that second video is so weird.

shake your sillies and other videos

here's a video from last night.  it's a song they sing at story time at the library and baby girl always goes crazy dancing to it.  so i thought i'd try it at home and see if she went crazy if i sang it.  we had a good time.

and these are from the day after christmas.

ps- that last video really sums up the whole first two weeks of my life with two kids.  now it involves a lot more crying from kid number two.  but i'll spare you a video of that mess and you can thank me later.

"cranky's dancin' too!"

my heart just bursts for this little girl.

goes in noses?!

not the best video of it but it's proved more difficult than anticipated to get a candid shot of this.  you get the idea though... she's pretty cute.

hillier birthday celebration - part 1

black friday night, we had an awesome fondue dinner to celebrate my birthday.  enjoy a few videos, lots of pictures, and plenty of awkward outtakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my sweet friends

i SAY they're my sweet friends but really they're just baby girl's most adoring fans.  and they must have been truly inspired because baby girl got TWO packages last friday... the very day she woke up with that terrible cough.  let me just say that these PRESENTS! (we know what that word means now) were just the thing to help baby girl through a weekend of isolation (i think she's still sad she missed out on nursery... every single day this week she's asked about it).

first up from lynell...

 

 

 

she put her shirt right on and then immediately grabbed a thomas book for me to read to her.  and then she wore the shirt at least part of all of the day for the next three days.  and she was so excited to tell chris about her thomas shirt present when he got home from work.  i think it's safe to say this girl is obsessed with thomas.  

and then baby girl got a package from sarah and i made her open it as soon as she got up from nap.  that explains why she's a little groggy in the video.  and why it's pitch black in our great room.

and do you like how she recognized the books?  we've read new baby before and obviously she loves it and remembers it and how could you not get excited about fancy nancy?!  which ps- the pictures are to die for.  like definitely my favorite of any fancy nancy book and i've seen a LOT!  so yeah... we read these two books for umm i can't even tell you how long or how many times before we had to coax baby girl to the kitchen to get some dinner.  ha.  the life of a toddler.

hugs with elle

we meet elle at the park at least once a week and one of my favorite parts is that the girls always come running to give each other a hug.  these are really bad clips that don't really catch it but it's enough to preserve the memory.

they're so sweet.

playdate with lucy

this is old news...  from friday.  i told you i was behind on my blogging.  also, for the record.  baby girl woke up yesterday and when i asked her what she wanted to do she said "i don't want to go bye bye" (the typical request... she's always happier to be out and about) "i want to play with lucy... i want lucy come to abigail's house!"  ha.

pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

videos:

explanation/narration for the videos to be added later...