Odds 'N Ends Day

Jacob is still a little small for this exersaucer, but I think he's getting bored of laying on the floor, ha! He doesn't like to be in his swing or bouncer (Shyla used to love her and fell asleep in them all the time) so we're a little limited on options for where to put him when we aren't holding him. We had to do the same thing with Shyla but we put a pillow underneath their feet and a blanket around their body to hold them steady... and they love it! (He's certainly filling out nicely isn't he?)Long story, but in the "end" I decided that I'm going to pump breastmilk and feed it to Jacob in a bottle. He's happier... he's growing... I'm happier... Shyla is around all the time when I pump so *ahem* I captured this moment (She's proudly saying "I'm pumping mommy!"). She even knows how to put the pieces together, including the tubing, and turn it on. By the evening little Jacob was getting really tired. Shyla enjoys getting to sing him bedtime lullabys. It would be nice though to hear one other than Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. FYI- Shyla know all the words to this song except "up above the". She sings, "up dup dup dup world so high". I'm so PROUD of her!It's been a long and tiring day... it's late... I'm tired... good night folks!

David's 34th Birthday

Today we celebrated David's 34th birthday with dinner at my parents place. Jake wasn't able to make it, but me and kids we able to. There were a few other familiar faces there to celebrate with us. David made dinner for everyone. It was bowtie pasta with broccoli, cheese, and seasoned chicken mixed together (We tried to come up with a catchy name for the pasta dish but couldn't think of one. Maybe American bowtie chicken?), salad, garlic bread, and olives. Mmmm!

After dinner David spent some time playing with his niece lifting her up to touch the ceiling and hiding behind furniture to jup out and scare her. I'm sure she's going to remember her uncle after this!October Update: I tried making the same pasta we had this night... only I didn't have bowtie pasta so I used a long flat-ish kind (it's not a common name but pasta is all the same just different shapes) and I believe I used too much cheese (if there is such a thing). But Shyla and Jake loved it and that's the important part!

Burnt House in Pittsburg

This by far was the worst house for all intents and purposes that we've had to clean out. Apparantly, this house was bought in 2007 and was used as a rental. The renters accidentally started a fire in the back bedroom that destroyed most of the house. It started in the middle of the night around 1:00am. You can tell by the way the stuff was left in the house that there wasn't much time to grab stuff other than a "necessity" or 2. The owner thought it was better to foreclose than to have to fix up the house.

Enter us...it will probably take several long days to finish this job.

This is what you first see when you open the front door. From the outside the house doesn't look too bad. The stucco and framing of walls and ceilings are in suprisingly good condition...considering what happened.

To the left is the kitchen/garage that wasn't too burnt by the fire. Most of the damage in those rooms was smoke and/or water damage. However, to the right down the hall is where the fire started in one of the back bedrooms. The surrounding rooms and bathrooms were destroyed. The ENTIRE ceiling throughout the house was torn down and it had the old blown in insulation. Needless to say it left a bit of a mess.

Fire gets HOT!

No time to pack up, they just had to get what they could and get out. Enter us...it will probably take several long days to finish this job.

UPDATE: It took 4 days, a few extra hands, and a U-haul to complete the job. The garage alone we removed approx. 30 cubic yards of debris. Total from the house there was: 11,100 pounds of debris removed costing $449.00 to dump. We earned on this job alone, after taxes, enough to cover us for half the months expenses. Time for a few days off to spend together...

The Wizard of Oz in Hi-Def

My good friend Tami and I went to watch The Wizard of Oz in Hi-Def tonight at the movie theater in Dublin. This is my favorite childhood movie. It's always my answer when I'm asked what my favorite childhood movie is. I don't know if it's because it was in Hi-Def, because it was on the big screen, or some other reason, but there were many things I noticed in the movie this time around that I've never noticed before or that I noticed were different than other times I've seen it.

I never noticed:

When Dorothy "oils" Tinman there is actually oil (or chocolate or some other dark liquid) that comes out of the can. I always just though there was a sound effect but never saw anything coming out).

When Lion is singing I Am King of the Forest his tail is swishing around all over the place. It's a little distracting once I realized he was doing it. Also, Dorothy trips on the red carpet and she walking towards lion.

When the group is running through the poppies on the way to Emerald City, Dorothy trips on the poppies as she's coming down the hill.

The colors were much more vibrant, especially the greens. The creatures in the talking apple tree orchard are actually REALLY fake, plastic creatures that you see in peoples houses for Halloween with the fake red eyes that are really just tiny red lights... did I mention they looked fake?

Different from other times:

The only thing I really noticed that was different from other times is when they meet the witch on the house and she's throwing fire at Scarecrow... there are big, pretty peacocks that are running around the house, however this time around there were some birds off in the background and not really noticable... but no peacocks.

Before the movie started there was about 20 minutes of informative facts about the movie. I found out that the coloring on Tinman was originally an aluminum paste that got the first actor who was playing Tinman sick, so they had to use another actor and a different way to color him silver.

The lady playing the wicked witch of the West was a single mother who was working "bit parts" to support her 3 kids. She wasn't too thrilled to play the wicked witch, but I'm sure now she's glad she did!

When the movie first opened up there were 15,000 (or perhaps it was 1,500, now I can't remember, but it was still a LOT) people in line to see it. They lined the buildings for many blocks.

It showed Judy Garland accepting at award at the Emmy's. Boy have they changed. It used to be those nominated and the best of the best in attendance only, the awards were sitting on a table in front of the podium where the awards were accepted, and people actually listened to and cared about the acceptance speeches. NOTHING like they are nowadays that's for sure.

While sitting in the audience and hearing people laugh at funny parts and sing along during the songs I felt a little of what I think people felt back when the movie came out. Good camraderie, happy times, innocent cinema, fond memories...

Computer Girl

Shyla LOVES the computer. It's hard to let her play on it because she's usually pushing keys that shouldn't be pushed. And anyone that uses a computer knows how easy it is to make it not work or have things "disappear" by pushing the wrong button!

I sometimes let Shyla use the paint program that comes with Microsoft Office. She gets a little frustrated when she can't use the mouse properly, but she is such a fast learner and amazes me every day with her wealth of knowledge.

Homemade Baby Food

Jacob has recently started eating solid food. I'm sorry but the price you have to pay even at Walmart for a jar of baby food can be 60-ish cents up to about 80 or 90 cents PER JAR! And sometimes it's even more than that! I'm sure I'll buy some pre-made food, but I really enjoyed making baby food for Shyla when she was a baby and was looking forward to doing it again. Some of the foods are canned and I look for "no salt" or "in juice" in stead of "heavy syrup. Other foods are steamed or fresh with nothing else done to them except a rise-off.

I was at a Home Show about 7 or so years ago and I spent wayyy too much on a blender, BUT it's been a FABULOUS blender! It cost about $400 dollars but man, oh man, is it a good blender.

At the time I was making food for Shyla I had bought a bunch of pre-made baby food so I could have jars to put the food in. Then I found that making the food and freezing it in ice cube trays and putting it in a bag worked better. This time around though I first was putting the food in jars until it dawned on me it's better to put it in bags so when it freezes it's flat and can stack better (and take up less room) in the freezer. I'm doing the same thing with my breastmilk. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.



So far I've made: bananas, pears, peaches, carrots, and green beans. There are so many other foods I want to make but I'm trying to only make a couple choices and as Jacob eats them then make more. That way there is some room in the freezer for our food too!

Park Play Day

We're in the middle of a long heat wave as the summer turns to fall. It's been close to and over 100 degrees for a couple weeks now. We had some rare time to spend together as a family so I decided we should head to the park. I thought it would be a fun treat to bring Shy's bike too so she could ride around. I wasn't sure how she was going to react to it, but I was happy with how it turned out. She definitely likes to ride FAST... now if we can just get her to slow down a bit... or maybe a bike with brakes?! I get nervous when she takes off going down a hill, well more of a decline, and then laughs the whole way not wanting to slow down.

Since it was going to be H-O-T that day we headed out spontaneously around 10am so we could get home before it got too hot. In the morning the weather is gorgeous but after 11:30 or so... not so much.
Parents should never loose their desire to be a kid!

A Solid Eater

We started Jacob on solids a couple weeks before the traditional "4 month old" time. It seemed that the bottles of milk alone were just not enough to keep him satisfied. He didn't seem to mind the cereal. We mixed up 1T cereal (We started with oatmeal. Yeah, yeah, "people" say to start with rice cereal, but it's not like there's anything wrong with starting with outmeal.) with 4T breastmilk.

Jake started the feeding and I finished it up. It went better than we thought it was going to go. Shyla enjoyed it too although after a short amount of time she was more happy watching TV.

Jacob's Baby Blessing

Jacob's baby blessing took place today and it was a special day. Both sets of his grandparents were able to attend this happy occasion. This was also the same day as our wards Promary Program. Since Jake is a primary teacher... he got to sit up front and sing with the kids! Shyla wasn't too happy about seeing daddy go up there without her so she made a few trips back and forth sitting between him and I. When she would go up front with her dad, he'd hold her up on his lap so it appeared she was singing with the promary choir. It was SO ADORABLE if I do say so myself!

Jacob was very well behaved during his blessing and very quiet. After Sacrament we came back to the house for some food and friends. Friends trickled in over the course of a couple hours. I'm glad that there are so many people around who support us in our decisions. Those who couldn't attend, I thank you for the prayers!

Labor Day 2009

Well we continued our tradition and made our annual trek up to Oregon for Labor Day weekend. We've smartened up over the years and go up on Thursday and come home on Monday... WAY less traffic that way! (There was a picture that had me in it too for a family shot but I'm not sure what happened to it???) This year we went to Science Works which was about 1 hour away. We started the morning off playing in bubbles. Shyla LOVED this and was so amazed at the big bubble wall. You pull on a cord and it brings up a huge bubble wall. There are all kinds of neat way to play with it, but Shyla enjoyed blowing into it the best.There were lots of fun things to do. I didn't get pictures of it but there was a "scream room" where you could go in and scream as loud as you could and from the outside everyone could see the meter measure how loud it was. Also, there was a play area where you could take tennis balls and put them in different "tubes" and watch them and the come out in another area. This was another favorite for Shyla. We've got a couple "hands on" museums for children in our area and I'm excited to take Shyla to another one (and Jacob too as he gets older).

My face and hands, Jake's arm, and Shyla's little hands at the bottom. So proud she is! Gee, can you guess who is who in the second picture??? It scared her at first to walk "into" this big red thing, but afterwards was very excited about it (although did NOT want to do it again).

This is how Jacob spent most of the day. Hasn't everyone been on one of these? You stand on it and it spins around. You can bend down or stand straight, stick a leg out or keep it in, there are different ways to make yourself spin faster or slower. The bike was fun because there was a train on tracks above us and the faster you peddled, the faster the train went. By peddling the bike you could also power a radio, fan, and light. The more items you turned on the harder it was to peddle. I don't think I was peddling more than a couple minutes at most and I was winded afterwards and almost a little sweaty... can we say "I need more exercise"? (And I thought I was in shape having to chase Shyla around all day, haha.)
I think we've all been diagnosed with "Beetlejuice head" syndrome!After a fun day in the museum we went out to the cars for a picnic in the parking lot. Shyla and Malachi played around and especially liked the big bear and wanted to take their picture on it. It was a fun day full of MUCH MUCH MUCH needed laughter. Shyla was so proud of herself of the things she could do and we loved watching her face light up as she got to experience some things for the first time. Back at the house Shyla spent some time outside cleaning up the property. That's my girl, I guess my "cleaning" gene has transferred successfully! Until next year.......