Yosemite- May 2015

I had all these ideas of stories I was going to write about our trip to Yosemite, which did indeed happen many months ago back in May. We drove up after Christina's wedding, and traveled with Jonathan's parents. We stayed for a couple of days in their trailer, met up with Jonathan's Dad's biological dad, saw some beautiful trees, waterfalls, and got snowed in for a day...in May. I was going to write all these stories, and share them with you. But, I got distracted and busy and life kept going and it just wasn't happening. Then, I got a code for a free Shutterfly photo book, and I made a photo book instead. I figured instead of rewriting everything for a blog post, I'd just share the photo book! It's so much faster this way! So, here it is, Enjoy!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

Bowling with Peter

Last week, we went to go look at a house. We are looking at moving again...it's been 3 months, so it's about time. We are looking at buying a home, but also looking at renting in a different area. We don't really know what we are doing, but we are doing things.

Anyway, back to the house. It was a duplex in Bountiful, across from a lovely park, cost more money than I want to spend at this point, but we figured it wouldn't hurt to take a look, so we did. We did a tour of the house and were upstairs in one of the bedrooms talking house things. Jonathan was looking around the attic area, and I was talking with the realtor about changes to make to the house to increase property value. Peter was checking out everything- the house was empty, so we let him wander, knowing he couldn't really get into anything...that was our first mistake- never let your guard down.

Peter happened to find, of all possible things, a bowling ball. The house was totally cleaned out, except for a black nine pound bowling ball in one of the closets. Peter rolled it to the edge of the closet, but couldn't pick it up over the closet lip, so I helped him get it out so he could roll it around the room. Again, I thought, "He can't pick it up, so he can't really do any damage, and it will keep him occupied while we talk." Second mistake...never give a small child a bowling ball unless you are keeping a good eye on him.

The realtor saw the bowling ball and laughed, "Where did he find that?" he exclaimed. I told him that Peter fished it out of the closet, and the realtor looked at Peter and jokingly said, "You know what you do with that buddy? You take it to the stairs and push it down! Hahaha!" Third mistake- never joke with a toddler...they don't get your humor.

We continued looking around, talking about removing walls, adding a tub, putting in new windows, and I clearly wasn't paying enough attention to Peter, who I thought was just pushing the bowling ball around the room. Then, I hear the first fateful, "Bump!" followed by many more bumps. The adults all ran to the stairwell, where Peter was sitting peacefully, watching the bowling ball bounce down the stairs. To my horror, I notice a huge window at the bottom of the stairs. I gasped and held my breath as the bowling ball took its last few thumps on its way down. It happened so fast, there was nothing we could do, but watch. There was no way any of us would be able to run down and stop it, so we just watched.

I heard the last "Thud!" but, I couldn't see where the ball had hit because Jonathan was already heading down the stairs and he was blocking my view. I knew the sound wasn't a breaking window, so that was a relief, but I was terrified that I was going to see a bowling ball embedded in the wall, or a hole through the wall or something equally terrible. Jonathan yelled up the stairs, "It's fine! It only left a small dent in the window casing!" Meanwhile, the realtor was laughing and said, "I am so sorry. I didn't think he would actually do that! He did exactly what I told him to do! Haha." I was just glad he wasn't telling us we would have to pay to fix the dent...and I was wishing Peter listened to me as excellently as he did this stranger.

All ended well. We didn't break a window or put a hole in the wall. No on got injured and the realtor thought it was humorous, he still wants to show us more places, so I figure we must not have been too bad. We decided it is a no on the duplex. If I had a couple extra thousand dollars to put into renovations, I'd have considered it. I could see it being a great house, but I'd have to bust out a couple walls, re-carpet, paint/tear off paneling/both, change the bathroom and master bedroom closet. I had too many ideas of things I'd do. So, lack of funds...and being very pregnant with a toddler, put a stop to the duplex. It's a lovely place, but a lovely place for someone else to take on. And it comes with a new slight dent to the left of the window in the stairwell!

Halloween 2015- Trick or Treat!

This year we (read- I) had a tough time deciding on what we should dress up as. I really wanted some kind of costume idea for the family that incorporated Jonathan's beard. We tossed around the idea of a lumberjack family, How to Train Your Dragons cast, Bob Ross and trees, and pirates. But we couldn't settle on any of those. Then, we thought about being robots or dinosaurs. Jonathan and I were dinosaurs many years ago, so I would only have to make a costume for Peter...so that was sounding good. But then Jonathan said we should be robots because we have heaps of boxes from moving and then Peter could help make his own costume- which was a fantastic idea and I was totally behind that. But then it just wasn't happening and wasn't happening, and Halloween was getting closer and closer. 

Then, about a week before Halloween, Jonathan sent me a picture of a guy dressed up as Yukon Cornelius, the miner from the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie. As soon as I saw the Yukon picture, I knew we had to be part of the cast from that movie. Yukon has a great beard. I googled the cast and decided the easiest/most known characters, aside from Yukon, who Jonathan had to be, would be Rudolph, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, or Hermey the Elf who wanted to be a dentist. I didn't narrow it down any more until I found what clothing items we had or could be easily acquired from friends or the thrift store. 

I sent out a quick email to some friends in the area asking for specific colored pants, hat, jacket, etc. I got a response back pretty quick from a friend who had most of what we needed. For the rest, Peter and I ran to Wal-Mart for some felt, then to the thrift store for white pants and shirt for me. We found everything pretty quick and all was well. Peter decided he wanted to be the reindeer (which was great because his costume was by far the easiest, and I was going to be Bumble. 

The finished products!
Robin as Bumble, Peter as Rudolph, and Jonathan as Yukon.

Peter's costume: a pair of brown pants (a size too small, so they were high-waters, but whatever), brown shirt, and the giraffe headband I made for my costume last year, and I just cut the nubs smaller. Red lipstick on his nose. We owned everything for his costume, and it was the fastest to assemble.

Robin's costume: white pants and pajama sweater from thrift store (basically I chose the ones that at least semi-fit,trying to find non-maternity things that fit was near impossible, I think I tried on at least ten pairs of white pants.) We made the hat from cardboard, twine, felt and left over pieces of furry white from Peter's panda costume from last year. Jonathan engineered most of the hat/face, and did a great job. It looks better in pictures, and the glue gun saved the day on that part of the costume.

Jonathan's costume: borrowed red beanie, and used a safety pin to hook a red pom pom on the top. He covered a pair of black earmuffs in white fuzzy material. He made his ax by using cardboard and aluminum foil with a hammer as the base and made the belt buckle out of foil and cardboard. All of his clothing and backpack he already owned. He even thought to stuff the backpack with pillows to make it look full. He's pretty much genius level at making costumes.  

Our living room post costume making. 

Yukon and Rudolph, just hanging out. 

I learned a couple of things from our costume making- first, never wait until Halloween to make your costume...rookie mistake. Second- Jonathan is excellent at engineering things to work and have a good structure, and I can sew/design the outside look...so basically we are unstoppable. Third- Peter is a good helper, and sometimes makes things harder, but is still fun to have around when we make things.

Costumes were finished around 6pm, which was perfect timing for us to set out and gather some candy. We explained to Peter how it worked, and he did great. He would go up to every door, hit it with his bucket and yell, "Trick or treating!" Haha, I think by the end he got "trick or treat" down. Everyone thought he was adorable...because he is, and they loved that we all dressed up. I think most people knew who we were. Peter wasn't scared by any of the decorations or costumes we saw. Although the below house had a pirate skeleton sitting in a corner of their front porch with a sword sticking out of him. Peter said, "Oh no! Skeleton...pirate skeleton. He hurt. Oh no. He sad." He wasn't scared of him, but he did want to help the skeleton. He also would ask almost everyone who answered the door if they had a dog, and then proceed to tell them about our dog (our upstairs neighbor's dog). I'm pretty sure he liked chatting with everyone more than he liked getting candy.

Peter and Robin and the pirate house

We learned that we have a fantastic neighborhood for trick or treat. There was only one house with no one home. There were a few who left candy buckets on their porch. But almost everyone was home handing out candy. We live in a neighborhood with lots of empty nesters, and they were all in love with Peter. Also, you know how as a kid you would always spread the word, "Go to Mr Smith's house on the corner. He's giving out full sized candy bars!" Well, we had at least 4 houses giving out full sized candy bars. Candy for weeks! Peter did great at only taking one piece- although many times the people encouraged him to take a few more, apparently the neighborhood doesn't get a ton of kids, so they all were trying to give it away. Also, there was one house who had a candy bucket with candy and one dollar bills and they let kids pick if they wanted to get candy or money. HA! Peter picked candy...because that is a lot more appealing to a small one than a green and white piece of paper. Although if the choice had been between candy and pennies...he might have picked a penny. He likes the little coins.

There was a cool sunset, but we could either capture faces or sunset...not both.
So here are our cute faces!

We had a great Halloween night. Peter had a blast running to all the houses and looking at their decorations. His favorite adjective for things was "spooky". "Oooo mom, that man spooky." It was fun. We wore him out and got a ton of candy- we still have half a bucket and we only went around a small part of our neighborhood. We also learned where more people we see at church live, which was nice. Happy Belated Halloween, I hope everyone else had a great time!

Pumpkin Carving

A few days before Halloween, we set aside some time to carve our giant pumpkin. Last year, Peter wanted nothing to do with getting his hands dirty with pulling out the pumpkin guts. This year was more of the same. He helped a bit in the very beginning, but was very quickly done with touching the seeds or stringy insides.

Peter helping Jonathan get some of the pumpkin guts out.

After prepping the pumpkin, we looked at some pictures until we found a pumpkin idea we liked. Peter really wanted a sad pumpkin...I'm not sure why. But we convinced him to have a happy/silly face instead. I was in charge of drawing the face on the pumpkin and then Jonathan carved the face.

Robin, pumpkin artist.

Jonathan, pumpkin carver, with Peter, self-appointed photographer.

Peter has recently learned how to take pictures on our phones. Jonathan's phone has hundreds of photos of Peter's feet, close-ups of the ground, random toys, and blurry arms/legs/faces of anyone nearby. It's pretty fantastic. He was all about taking pictures the whole night. Here are two of the clearer ones-

Almost artistic

There were at least 20 of these close-ups

Jonathan finished carving our mustached pumpkin. It seemed fitting for him to make. I think it turned out pretty good. He looks happy and it was fun working on it together. 

Peter, Jonathan and mustached pumpkin