Alcatraz Report

Hailey has a history report to do about a place in California that has affected our history AND she has had to of visited that place in the last year. I told her to pick somewhere close! Ha ha!

She chose Alcatraz! So we had to look at our very busy schedule and find a weekend that we could get away to Alcatraz so a week ago we headed to prison!

Here we are on the boat ride over. Oh, and I just have to say that the weather was BEAUTIFUL!!!! You never know what you are going to get in San Fran but this day it was amazing!

Gotta fix the hair!

The girls

So if you haven't been to Alcatraz before, they give you headphones and a digital player thingy and you listen to a recorded tour guide all the way through. They do a GREAT job retelling the stories of Alcatraz and the prisoners. You hear voices of prisoners telling stories of things that happened, you hear the slamming of the doors. It is pretty cool.

On the other hand, keeping 4 people synced at the same spot on the recording when everyone wants to stop and ask questions is not so easy.

We tried to lock her up . . .

 but they said they couldn't keep her =)

Little T man was a very good sport.

Hailey and Ev in the library.

 Evan lasted about 1/2 way through before he took off the headphones. They were kind of big for his head and he got tired of them. But then he kept asking questions and we would have to pause our recorders and everyone got really out of sync then.

The kitchen . . . 

and Evan trying to climb the bars again. Stay off the bars Evan! Such a boy - must climb EVERYTHING!

Oh, and then Hailey got to meet a real inmate from Alcatraz. He had been locked up in Alcatraz for 5 years, 12 days for bank robbery.

We were not sure how we felt about him making money off of his crime but it made a good story for the report, which is what we were there for, so okay, cool.

Me and T. He did great until we got on the boat for the ride back. By then he was done being confined to anything! He just wanted to get down and GO!

(Oh, and just so you know, this kid is full on walking now. The last few days he has made it his main form of transportation. Now when he falls, he just stands back up and keeps going. Crazy kid is only 10 months old!)

Good bye Alcatraz!

Now we just need to write a report and make a slideshow presentation. 

Ahhh, homework!

One busy day

Actually I should say it was one busy week leading up to one busy day.

Not last Saturday, like 2 days ago, but the Saturday before that, April 28th I believe, was one busy day. We started off with our garage sale that morning. Once a year a group of realtors sponsor a community wide garage sale and we decided that if we were going to do one, that would be the day to do it. I had a friend that wanted to do it too so we joined forces. She was waaaaaaay more organized than I was. She started marking and pricing her items way in advance. Me? Ya, I waited until the night before.

We had watched her kids while her and her husband went and did the paperwork for buying their new car!!! So  exciting! Her payment back to me was to come back after putting her kids to bed and stay up with me til way late marking and pricing my things. We got done about midnight. Kurt was thrilled to get his boat cleaned out but then it was all over the garage.

We got up super early and started putting our items out. We had a good day; weather was beautiful, traffic was great - thanks to all the advertising done by the realtor group and we made $170. Not bad for spending the day with our friends and getting rid of clutter.

By far the funniest customer was a guy that came by bright and early. We had barely gotten anything out yet and he drives by, stops, gets out of his truck and asks:

"Got any shot guns?"

"Uh, no."

"Any kind of guns?"

"No"

"Any ammo?"

"No."

"How about any gambling stuff?"

I felt like saying "look dude, we have baby stuff, baby stuff and some more baby stuff. Oh ya, and some household stuff too. You've totally got the wrong house!" But I just politely said "Sorry, no." You never know, he could have been a future customer for my waffle maker, or maybe the milkshake maker would have caught his eye. But apparently he was just into guns and gambling and moved along to the next house.

The most amazing customer was a mom that was 16 weeks along with quads. Yes, quads. She was looking at the baby stuff, obviously. What a great family. We are praying for them to have a smooth, healthy pregnancy.

Then after the garage sale we had a combined birthday party for the girls. Yes, Hailey's birthday was back in November and Kayla's was back in January and we just had a party for them. The previous year I was early prego and so sick I couldn't pull off any parties and last year between losing my mom and having a new baby, birthday parties just were not in my realm of thinking. Soooo, very belated but it counts, right?

Kurt had been working in a yard down in Sac and next door had a birthday party going on. Well they had a DJ guy that Kurt said was amazing. He kept the party going, kept the kids moving and laughing and having fun. So we decided to go big for this party and hire a DJ. We had the party at the park right around the corner from our house. The weather was perfect! I watched the forecast all week with my fingers crossed that it would be nice and it was.

Kurt was right. This guy did not disappoint. He is a PE teacher at a school and has an energy level that did not stop. The girls and their friends had so much fun. Plus, not only is he running the whole party, he takes pictures too! These are all shots from him.

He took a group picture of each girl with her friends.

Kayla's posse

Hailey's posse

Then he took individual shots with each girl with each friend. 

(Hailey is eating a green m&m - lovely)

He goes for 1 hour 45 minutes straight. Does. Not. Stop.

He kept those girls dancing, playing games, laughing. It was awesome.

He did a "run way" where they had to come down the run way and strike a pose. He also had them do it in groups.

And individually. I was SHOCKED Kayla did it by herself but here she is stikin' her pose!

Our Hailey

Cousin Sierra came and helped with the baby. She was a life saver! Thank you Sierra!

At one point he had them standing in a group and they were shouting to a song. Again, he snapped pics as he kept them going.

My (belated) birthday girls

Another group dance

And here is the magic man himself. Steve.

 So the party was a huge success. The girls loved it and had an awesome time. The following Monday I had girls coming up to me after school at pick up time thanking me for inviting them and saying it was the best party ever. Makes a mom feel good.

Big R vs. little r

One of my many (heavily exaggerated) talents is a little something I like to call "open mouth, insert foot." Yes, I would say I am very good at this talent =)

So I will admit it - I am socially challenged. I try not to be but for some reason I just am not very conversationally gifted. I try to push myself out of my comfort zone but a lot of the time I end up saying something dumb or say it in a backwards/awkward way. You have probably picked up on that on my blog. Words just are not my thing. I don't mean to say things the way I do but I open my mouth and, bleh, out it comes.

Like the time when Kurt and I were dating and we were eating at his sisters house and Kurt asked me if I wanted any soy sauce. I answered, in front of everyone, "Why? Does it make it taste better?" Obviously, that made it sound like the meal wasn't good but it really was. Very delicious in fact. I think what I was meaning to say was "Does it (soy sauce) taste good on this?" Anyway, I was MORT.I.FIED!!! Luckily she was very understanding when I then turned bright red, apologized and tried to explain that wasn't what I really meant. Oye.

Or the time I was at a church function and we were meeting people in our new ward and I pushed myself to make a comment at the table I was sitting at and said "Ya, and I don't understand why some couples run their finances like "this"?" (Not going to say what "this" was because I don't want to offend anyone on here if they run their finances like that.) And a lady at the table says "Me and my husband do it that way." Awkward!

I am learning to laugh it off or explain what I meant but sometimes you dig the hole deeper so you just have to let it go. I am learning. Always learning. And most of the time, laughing.

So a few weeks ago I had another wonderful conversation with someone. Our school has mentors that come in and meet with the kids. I signed up to be the mentor coordinator for Evan's class so I was in charge of contacting people and getting them on the calendar. I had been going back and forth with this one dad via email trying to get a date that worked for both him and the teacher. I thought I knew who he was but wasn't sure. Well one day I was behind him in the pick up line in the hallway. I thought it would have been rude if I didn't introduce myself to him since we had been emailing recently. So I took a deep breath and asked:

"Excuse me. Are you Rich?"

He turned to me with an odd expression and said "Excuse me?"

"Are you Rich?" This time a little more hesitantly because warning bells were starting to ring in my head as they do every time I start picking up on the sensation that I have once again said something weird.

"No."

"Oh, ok. I have been emailing a dad about mentoring and thought maybe you were him."

"Nope, not me."

So then we wait in line to get our kids and on the way out I get the horrible thought of: what if he thought I said "are you rich?" You know, with a little r. As in "do you have a lot of money?" Oh man! Panic sets in as I wonder: what should I do?

He happened to be behind me as we walked out so I turned to him and said "Um, I just realized how that sounded. I assure you I wasn't asking about your monetary status!"

He started laughing and said "No worries. I'm not rich either way!"

Ha ha ha! What a great sport.

So moral of the story: be very careful with your Big and little r's!

Honey and vinegar

Kids are just so stinkin' funny.

So I have been talking to the kids about the saying "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar." I am trying to instill in them that if they talk to each other nicely (honey), the other ones will want to help or play with them more but if they are whining, yelling or complaining (vinegar), than the others will not want to help or play with them.

So as I hear them talking to each other I will randomly yell out either "honey" or "vinegar" based on how they are speaking to each other. I thought it was helping until I heard this:

Child A: Hey, you just pushed me.
Child B: No I didn't.
A: You did it on purpose.
B: No I didn't.
A: You're vinegar!
B: No, you're vinegar!

Oye.

Funny kids!

Catching up . . . again

Well, the last few weeks have been rough for me. April 6th marked the 1 year anniversary of my mom's passing. In the weeks leading up to it, I was sad . . . a lot. I just missed my mom. It was hard.

Also during those weeks, my dad announced that he is going to get married this summer. I love my dad and I am so happy that he is happy. I love Karen too. She is great and they are really happy together. They have actually known each other for a long time. Karen's husband, Bill, was a parts manager at another dealership and he won the same trips as my dad did every year so my dad and Karen have traveled all over the world together in a GM (General Motors) group. Bill passed away very suddenly about 5 or 6 years ago. It makes it easier that they have known each other for a long time and she is not a total stranger. It just makes me miss my mom even more.

On top of that, I have completely lost control of the house. Staying on top of it when it is already clean is relatively easy but once I get behind, it seems impossible to get caught back up. Then we went camping and that made the laundry load EXPLODE. I'm still not caught up. Things around here are not pretty but whatever. I'll get caught up eventually, right?

Trevor is awesome. We just love him to pieces. He is a very busy and active 9 month old. He is walking along things now and can push a push toy all over. He has discovered that if he wants to be heard, he needs to be loud and LOUD he is. He is probably about 23-24 pounds, has 8 teeth, loves to eat what we are eating, is an amazing sleeper(fingers crossed, knock on wood, throw salt over my shoulder and whatever else I need to do to not jinx myself) and loves his siblings. I love to see him light up when he spots them at school when we pick them up. He is just a happy, fun little guy whose siblings just spoil him. I can't believe his birthday is quickly approaching! Yikes! Time's flying!

As I mentioned before, we went camping last weekend. We had a great time. It was pouring, and I mean POURING, rain when we were leaving. Everyone thought we were nuts! But down at the ocean it was sunny so off we went.

We went to Dillon Beach, which has become our favorite site. Usually you camp anywhere and it is sandy and grassy and wonderful. As of January, the campground has had to start improvements to keep the coastal commission happy and so we could not camp at our usual place. We were bummed. We had to camp down at the sea wall which the ground is more gravel-ly. We were double bummed. BUT it turned out to be great! We backed right up to the sea wall and a pile of sand and been dumped right at the back of the site next to us. Can you see Evan in the sand to the left?

Right at the back of our trailer was a ladder to get down onto the beach so we just had to "hop" over to play. When tide was in it came all the way up to this wall.

When tide was out we had this great beach right in our backyard. The kids played for hours out there.

Tide either going out or coming in, can't remember, but it would go way out.

Cutest little boy:

We took a few hikes and Trevor loved the backpack.

The kids (Kurt included) build this huge "castle." Tide was out and the discussion was what would happen to it as tide came in. So over the next few hours we watched.

Here it comes:

And there it goes:

It was windy while we were there. So windy in fact, that after 2 days it became quite apparent that Evan was due for a hair cut.

Trevor loved the beach. First I held his hands as he walked around but when my back was about to break I decided to just let him go. He had a blast crawling around, trying to pick up handfuls of sand, throwing the sand. He gabbered the whole time - it was so cute. I now realize that we only got video of him crawling in the sand. No pictures. Bummer.

We tried to bury Hailey.

Kurt had the idea to carve out people in the sand. Instead of building up sand to make a person, he had Hailey lay down and he traced her. Then we used shovels to dig out around her. Kurt spent a great deal of time sculpting and smoothing. I finally went out to him and said "you do realize that you are the only one still out here working, right?" He really enjoyed his art work!

Me and T

Oh, here is a picture of tide being in.

This cracked us up. The first day was cool and windy so it was a bit chilly. When we came in Cody laid down like this. Nose on one heater vent and tail on the other. Silly dog!

And camping at Dillon's isn't complete until you are laying in bed and you hear a cow "Moooooo" right by your head. Gotta love Dillon Beach cattle!

Buried Treasure #2 ~ Mexico

This trip was crazy from the very beginning.

In 2006 Kayla was starting kindergarten and Kurt decided that we needed to take a BIG family trip before she did. Of course, he declared this right before she was suppose to start school. Apparently we are nothing if we aren't spontaneous! So on a Thursday afternoon we purchased an all-inclusive Cabo San Lucas resort trip for the whole family that left the following Wednesday. Why we thought taking a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a 10 month old to Mexico was a good idea is beyond me but we did.

The flights left only 6 short days later. Now, when you own your own business you can't just get up and walk away from it. There is a lot of planning, ordering, scheduling and "future-telling" to try to get done before you can just leave, especially in a construction-type business. So technically we had 3 days to get that all taken care of before we left (Friday, Monday and Tuesday).

Well, Friday I went to the bank to get our birth certificates out of the safety deposit box because, at that time, that was all you needed to have with you to get into Mexico. Everyone's was there . . . except mine. So I went home and started looking for it.

Couldn't find it.

Anywhere.

So I started tearing the house apart looking for it. Nothing. So that weekend my mom tore her house apart looking for it. Nada. Oh, great!

So Monday morning I called the county office for where I was born and explained the situation to them. They said the only way to get it in time for the trip was to come in in person. WHAT? I was born in Huntington Beach, Orange County. So within about an hour, Kurt and I decided that we needed to drive to So. Cal. to get my birth certificate, otherwise we wouldn't be able to go. My mom lovingly offered to stay with the kids for the night. So Monday afternoon that is exactly what we did - we drove the 6-7 hours down there, worked all the way down there on office stuff and stayed in a hotel. We were there when the county office opened up the next morning and then we drove the 6-7 hours back home on Tuesday. We spent the rest of the day frantically finishing laundry and packing for the trip which left EARLY the next morning.

But we made it! Whew! I am so glad I was born within driving distance! That would have been a total bummer to lose the trip!

(Again, picture of a picture. Plus I was in our closet and it's 10:30 at night. Not the best lighting. Sorry)

We actually had a pretty good time. It was humid beyond humid. We literally LIVED in the pools and drank piña coladas all day (virgin, of course). Evan was seriously addicted to them. 10 months old and he would start grunting as soon as they set the drinks down. I should dig out a picture of him drinking one - so cute! All-inclusive is totally the way to go with kids. We could eat whenever and however much we wanted any time of day. It was great!

Ok, I went and dug one up. This is a photo of his scrapbook so it's not the best but cute nonetheless. This particular piña colada had strawberries in it.

Well, one late afternoon/early evening we walked down to the beach and there was a guy giving rides in this flying contraption thing. It was like a hang-glider thing but with seats and a motor. Kurt had mentioned that he would like to do that sometime and so when the guy offered, Kurt really wanted to go but we didn't have any cash on us. The guy said "no problem. Just leave it at the front desk for me and I will pick it up later." Sweet! So off Kurt went!

This is the film from the wing of the thing. I didn't have the camera on me so these are the only pictures we have of Kurt flying. Buried treasure for sure!

I realized that as I stood on the beach with my three small children and watched my husband take off in this flying contraption thing that this probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. What if something happened to him? What if he got hurt? What would I do in another country where I don't speak the language and I'm all by myself with my kids? I kind-of had a moment of panic but realized there wasn't much I could do about it at that point. I just prayed he would come back quickly and safely.

Luckily he retuned to us with no problem. Kurt thought it was a blast and was really happy that he had done it. I was just glad he was safely back on the ground again!

So we immediately went and put the cash in an envelope and put it at the front desk. Then off to dinner we went. When we came back to our room after dinner we had a message from the guy saying that he didn't get the money. It wasn't at the front desk when he went to get it.

We went down to the front desk and they said that he had, in fact, picked it up. They then told us that this is what some guys do to scam people out of money. If you can't prove they picked it up, then they say that you didn't pay.

So we called the guy back and told him that the front desk said he picked it up. He kind of got a little upset and freaked us out. I can't remember exactly what happened or what he said but I remember Kurt and I were both worked up about it. I think it was because we were in another country with our 3 small kids and we had heard horror stories about bad things happening to other people. So we locked ourselves in our room for the night.

It seems like he called again the next morning saying that he wanted his money. I told Kurt to just pay him again so he would leave us alone. It wasn't worth the money. That morning we were seriously looking over our shoulders and thinking that we were targets of some scam. We kept death grips on the kids and didn't let them move an inch away from us. It was seriously scary. It totally sounds ridiculous, I know, but we were really freaked out. We jokingly (in a very nervous, freaked out kind of way) said the mafia was after us. Ya, I am sure they were worried about money from a piddly little ride in the air.

So Kurt set up a meeting time at the front desk to repay the guy. That way we would have witnesses to see the payment. It seriously felt like we were doing something illegal, totally crazy.

Luckily though, before the meeting time, the front desk called and explained what happened. Apparently someone at the resort had the same name so the front desk thought it was for him and gave it to him. Luckily he was an honest guy and brought it back when he didn't know what it was for.

So we were both right. Flyer dude honestly didn't get paid and we really did pay it. It was all smoothed over and he got his money but seriously for about 12 hours we were scared!

So then we flew home on Wednesday and Kayla started school the very next day. We had missed her Back to School night and so she didn't know where her class was, who her teacher was or where to go. They had a strict policy that parents were not allowed on campus the first week of school. I explained to the lady at the gate that she was a kindergartener and that she had no idea where to go.

"To bad mom, you're not getting in."

So I sent my first baby through the gate having no idea where she was going. I cried. She did great but I cried.

Those were the craziest 2 weeks ever!

Buried Treasure #1 ~ Hawaii style

When I was cleaning out the kitchen a few months ago, I stumbled across some old film. You know, the archaic kind that you had to load into your camera, use a whole roll, take it out, take it to the store, wait for it to be developed, and pick it up before you could actually SEE how the pictures turned out. We are talking ancient stuff here!

Well, I found 5 rolls. F-I-V-E. And we had NO idea what was on them. They had been up on that top kitchen shelf for quite awhile. So then I had to decide if I wanted to go through the trouble to develop them, which, of course, I did, and then I had to hope that they would still develop. So off to Walmart I went.

Did you know that you can no longer do one hour photo for old-school film? They don't even develop it there anymore. Talk about times changing! I had to send it out the really old fashioned way. Then I had to wait 6 days for it to come back. I seriously forgot about it. This really showed me how I have become use to "instant" things in our society. Luckily I kept the little tags from the envelopes in the car and I found them one day. So back to Walmart I went to get my buried treasure.

3 of the 5 rolls didn't develop. We will never know what was on those. Kind-of sad BUT we did get some good stuff from the others.

One roll had pictures from our trip to Hawaii we took with my parents in 2007. When I saw the first picture and realized it was from that trip, I was praying that there were some pictures of my mom with the kids. That would have been so awesome but there weren't. Bummer.

But there were pictures of this adventure in Hawaii:

Kurt and I did a trail ride on these ATV's. To this day Kurt still wants one. And wants one BAD.

Here is me being the "cool" wife that I am. Those goggles were HOT! And by HOT I mean they completely covered my whole face. Look at the size of those compared to the size of my face. Crazy!

Like our "dirt" apparel? They were clothes loaned to us by the company so that our regular clothes didn't get dirty. Mine were about a billion sizes too big. I felt completely ridiculous but we had a great time. And, I am proud to say, that my husband was not the husband that rolled the ATV.

So fun to find buried treasure!

Stay tuned for more buried treasure reveals.

Including the one about the time the Mexican Mafia was after us!