I'm so glad when Daddy comes home

I don't think Hunt has let go of Chris since we picked him up. It makes my heart melt watching them. I love this family of mine.

One of those days

Yesterday was not a good day. In fact it was the kind that was no good horrible makes you want to move to Australia, or in my case Monterey, kind of days. Life after vacation usually is like that and I should have known it would be that way when they confiscated my precious chowder going through security at the airport. Anyone with me on thinking chowder is not a liquid, it's chowder! Things didn't get much better upon landing on Utah soil.

The day we left for California the city was working on our water lines so the water was shut off. One of our sinks was in the on position and since we weren't around when the water was turned back on it ran for the whole week and a half. Luckily I'll be able to use the money I saved by turning the AC off to pay for the water bill. The downside of having the AC off was our house was hotter than the Sahara desert and it took until 2 before it was cool enough to sleep in.

The dogs must have really missed us because they woke up at 6 and wanted to play. I wasn't in the mood for that so I just let them roam the backyard while I did some last minute lesson prep. They entertained themselves by making a bed out of my corn stalks. Around 10 Huntley woke up and wanted to play with her puppies. I let her outside to discover Maze was missing. I loaded both girls up and drove around looking for her with out any luck.

We attempted church but didn't last long. I was in the hallway with Hunt before the opening hymn was even finished. She wouldn't calm down for anything so by the time sacrament was over all three of us left in tears. We drove around for a few more hours before I went and had a pity party for myself at my moms and drowned my sorrows in nibs.

Before dark we took one last drive and then gave up and came home to put the girls in bed. Chris actually got to call that night and boy did I need some reinforcement from him. We talked about all the places I should look in the morning for the dog when he said he had a dumb idea and wanted to know if I'd checked the garage. I told him that was dumb but checked anyways and found Maze chilling in the bike stroller. I wasted half a tank of gas looking for a dog who was in my garage the whole time.

Luckily at this time a friend showed up with the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever eaten and I was able to have a nice chat and get happy again. Today went much better and if we are lucky Colorado might release our daddy and let us see him tomorrow. It can't get any better than that.

Now for a few more Va-cay pics. Oh how I miss California!

Thoughts at the park

"April has Huntley, how nice. Andres has Pais even better."

"I'm bored what am I supposed to do without kids to take care of."

"I should have really brought a book."

"Look at all these cute little girls. Huntley always looks homeless."

"I'm bored. Really really bored."

Ever been to a park without kids? Bring something to do! Thanks April for loving my girlies!

Winner Winner

Jessica Harvey you just lost 20 pounds and won $300 in an 8 week challenge weight loss competition, what are you going to do next?

Yeah, baby!

Nini's Big Big Tub

Whenever we talk about Nini's house her tub always makes the list. Huntley could spend hours in the magical world of tub land if I would let her. This visit she throws a fit when I make her take a bath because she doesn't want to leave April and Andres for one second but as soon as I get her up there she immediately changes her mind and ends up iceskating on the river. At least that is where last nights tubland adventure took place.

Apparently the tub also has the same affect on Paisley. She's always been neutral towards baths. Hasn't cried but hasn't really gotten excited towards them either. Last night that all changed. I had her in the tub, cleaned her up, and was about to take her out when she flipped over, sat up, and started splashing and screeching. She proceeded to do this for half an hour and when I finally made her get out she sat around with a face of utter bliss for the next hour. She must have still been in her tubland happy place.

My Daddy

by Huntley; age 3

My daddy's name is Kissy Harey, just like me.

He is 2 feet 5 inches tall.

He weighs 13 pounds.

His hair is black and his eyes are blue.

His favorite show is daddy movies.

He likes to go hiking.

His favorite food is vegetables.

His favorite drink is pink juice.

For fun he likes to play with us.

I love it when my daddy gives me hugs.

My favorite thing about my daddy is he gives lots of big hugs.

Happy Fathers Day Daddy! We love and miss you!

Down on the Boardwalk

Today we had the same idea as everyone else on the central coast and headed to Santa Cruz. It was crrrazzzyyyy!!!! Nini tried to spoil Hunt by letting her ride anything she wanted but the only thing she would get on was the carousel and she rode it sitting on Nini's lap. What happened to the little girl who was fearless at Disneyland and was ticked about not being able to ride splash mountain? Nini had to settle for buying her the biggest ice cream cone she's ever had in her life in order to make her day. Paisley was her usual happy self and lucky for me the prunes I've been feeding her to help out her stomach issues finally kicked in. Those were some good times, let me tell you.

Out-and-About

The girls and I have had some really nice relaxing days at Nini's house. Everyone has had to work so we've been able to hang out and enjoy the sun.

Yesterday I told Huntley we could go for a walk to the park. My original plan was to walk up to Chris's old elementary school but then I got sidetracked by Jacks Peak. It's a county park with hiking trails that I've always wanted to go to but Chris won't take me because of the poison oak. The man is super sensitive to poison oak and gets it if he looks at it. I figured it was the perfect time to go check it out. Well even though we were at sea level the walk to even get to the toll booth made my walks up 1100 look like strolls in the park. It kicked my trash but never seeing it before I kept going around a corner and thinking we almost had to be there. Hunt was less then amused when we reached the top and it wasn't her idea of a park so we turned around and walked down which was even harder than going up. Trying to hold back 60 lbs in a stroller down a steep vertical grade isn't easy.

We finally made it to the "real" park where again Hunt went crazy in the sand and turned it into her own drive through. She fed me hamburgers, fries, ice cream, and spaghetti that didn't even effect my weight loss. Paisley loved the swings but wasn't a big fan of the slide. Auntie April arrived late last night and the girlies haven't seen her yet. It will be like Christmas morning for them. If they ever wake up. My girls now how to sleep in. Which kind of concerns me for when they are older and really learn how to sleep in. I may never see them in daylight.

Sand

Leave your shoes on! This phrase is heard all day long our house. I guess I should say outside our house because who wants to wear shoes in the house. Honestly I wouldn't care if Hunt ran around barefoot outside either but since she is such a drama queen when she gets slivers it's much better to just constantly nag about shoes.

She probably gets really sick of being reminded to wear her shoes all day long. Today when we went to the park I told her to take her shoes off. She looked at me funny, took them off, and then ran and started making sand angels. Heaven, I tell you, heaven. Can someone convince my husband we need to move to California!

How I feel about bicycles

I used to hate bikes. Passionately. When I went to USU everybody rode a bike and would ride past us walking pedestrians at lightning speed. Apparently I also walked around with a sign on my back that said "hit me" because I was ran over several times. I used to hear the sound of a bike approaching and I would cringe and try and make myself as small as possible in order to avoid injury. I hate bicycles.

Fast forward a few years later and I'm married with a 2 year old and my husband thinks it would be a great idea to get bikes. We could take them camping and it would save us tons of money because we can ride them everywhere. I wasn't to keen on the idea but after much persuasion I found myself in the bike shop trying not to look like an idiot testing out bikes. It had been years since I'd been on a bike and the saying is true you never forget how to ride a bicycle. You may not forget but your opinion sure changes. When I was younger a bike meant freedom to go anywhere I wanted. Now that I'm older I honestly just worried how big my butt looked hanging over the sides of that little seat. The funny thing is I bought that bike and the next summer the main thing it was used for was Saturday morning rides to Daylight Doughnuts.

Now a few more years have passed and I'm a stay at home mom to two girlies and we only own one vehicle. I survive just fine without a car and actually enjoy walking everywhere. The one problem with walking is the stroller doesn't have much storage space. Today I really needed to go grocery shopping so I faced my fears of my large behind hanging over the seat for all to see and rode my bike to the grocery store. It was actually quite fun and from the occasional "wheeee" I heard coming from the trailer I think the girls liked it too. Since we didn't drive Paisley had to actually sit in the shopping cart which leads us to today's picture. Long story for a picture, eh!

Best bit of our Weekend

This weekend was perfect and hard to pick out one thing that was the best. Nothing extra special happened it was just nice. It was full of playing at the park, Pais becoming mobile, stuffing as many shirts as I could into a tiny sack at the mod bod sale, daddy daughter date at Cabelas, killer workouts, Rubio's tacos, losing 3 pounds, cleaning the house, hiking with the dogs and picking wild flowers, picking peas out of our garden, and we ended it all off with a fire call. Can't get any better than that!

Paisley's view.....

has officially changed forever!!! She is now a mobile member of the community and crawling around the house like crazy. Life is now over for poor Hunt. All balloons, flowers, and gloves have been moved to high places and can only be played with during nap time. Wish us luck since all the big girls favorite things are considered choking hazards.

Hats

Today was a little shocking when we walked outside and it wasn't the nice summer weather we had been experiencing lately. We hightailed it back inside and had a wardrobe change. Instead of rocking her normal sunhat Pais got to sport the camp hat under her jacket.

The camo hat is the first thing I ever bought for a baby, a few years before we even thought about having kids. One date night we were wandering around Cabelas and I saw it and had to have it. At the time I envisioned a little boy wearing it but both my girls have looked pretty darn cute in it.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Cookies

Disclaimer: This may be my last blog post ever. Once the subject matter reads this I may be banned from the blogosphere.

Some of my favorite books growing up where the Amelia Bedelia series by Peggy Parish. Amelia took everything literally for what had been said. She would actually draw pictures of the drapes and put leaves from trees on the table instead of the actual wooden table leaf. It used to crack me up. Lets be honest, I still laugh when I read them to my girls. Little did I know my husband has taken cooking lessons from Amelia.

Chris is actually a really good cook. When it comes to dinner we always cook it together and he can make a mean stir fry. Last night I discovered baking is a whole different story when he said he really wanted some sugar cookies. Being the awesome wife I am I said "here's the recipe have at it". In my defense I'm still in a weight loss competition and knew I didn't have enough will power yesterday to make them with out tasting. Chris looked a little lost reading the recipe so I got Huntley to help him since before the weight loss competition we made cookies on a daily basis.

Sitting in the other room listening to them was hilarious. Huntley patiently tried to explain how to assemble and use the kitchenaid. After ten minutes it was finally working and she let out a sigh of relief and said "otay, let's do dis". The first few ingredients went well, I thought, sugar, butter, eggs. At this point Chris reads "cream them together" and states "we don't have any cream so we'll have to use milk".

Time for an intervention.

I got in the kitchen in time to explain what "cream" really means but found half a bowl of butter on the counter. Apparently Chris didn't know there is a handy dandy measurement system printed on the side of the butter wrapper and had melted butter until he got exactly half a cup. I pretty much changed his butter measuring life forever.

After this point I decided to stay out of their way. When adding the vanilla he decided to add extra because it smelled good. Towards the end things weren't looking right so he had Hunt adding extra flower and milk until it looked normal. Finally to fix the whole thing he added extra sugar and then the two sat down to just eat the dough.

Cookies never were actually baked but the dough must have tasted okay because he gained two pounds this morning. As for me I didn't touch it and I also gained two pounds so not only do I have to go to the extreme of cutting all carbs from my diet, I also can't even look at them.

In other news we also went for a walk in the gravel pit last night and Paisley had carrots for dinner. Of course I can't do a post without a pic of the girls.

Cotton

Tonight we went for a walk along the Jordan River Parkway. We saw millions of people cat-fishing, some more flying model airplanes, a few long horn cattle, and cotton. Huntley loved picking it up and playing with it like snow, warm snow. Good thing she doesn't have allergies.