Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Twin Fun

My friend Amy and I have a lot of the same tastes in clothing! I can't even remember how many times I see her little girl Brooklyn in an outfit and realize that I have the same outfit for Ellie. Yes we are dorks but we like to get our girls together in their matching outfits and take pictures! Here is a little slide show of our little photo session tonight at the ward Pioneer Party. Our church building has a huge section of grass but Ellie wasn't in a good mood and didn't feel like sitting up on her own! Brooklyn is always such a great smiler - it's so fun to see her because she always lights up when anyone gives her attention. There is a link to Amy's page under my Arizona friends and I'm sure we'll be having identical posts. :)

Cabinets

I think I'm done boring everyone with my pictures of our trip to Seattle! I've been working on refinishing my kitchen cabinets for the last few weeks. These are what the cabinets looked liked when we first moved into the house (so ugly):






Although we did paint them when we first moved into the house . . they weren't really painted the right way (I didn't do them) and so I finally got around to refinishing them and adding hardware and now I'm pretty happy with the result. And yes they are red . . the same shade as my accent wall in the other room. I just need to get my new countertops put on in August and our kitchen will be finished and ready to sell next year. Rob thinks I watch too many shows on HGTV because I keep telling him that we'll get at least 90% return on whatever we do in the kitchen. And I want to enjoy the new countertops for at least a year before we move!




Monday, July 23, 2007

Grass

Grass is a foreign concept to many Arizonans so I thought that Ellie needed to try out my dad's front lawn and see what she thought while we were in Washington. She liked it at first (and even sat up by herself for 30 seconds in it) but didn't really like laying down in it.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Visiting Family

My Uncle Dale (my mom's youngest brother) and his family live in Vancouver, WA about 2 hours away from my parents home. My cousins Tinay and Tyler were both born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and so many times have to deal with health complications and problems. Unfortunately Sunday was one of those days for Tinay!! So Uncle Dale and Tyler came up for the farewell talk and for Sunday dinner. I don't know when I'll make it up to Washington again though - so I decided that the next day I would make the drive down to Vancouver and visit with my Aunt Kelley and cousin Tinay and Tyler. It was fun to drive down there and see them! And Ellie slept the whole way down there and most of the way back (on the way back I got an arm kink from trying to put her pacifier back in her mouth so many times).


Aunt Kelley with Ellie


Kelley, Ellie, and Tyler


Kelley, Ellie and Tinay


Uncle Dale with Ellie

Farewell Talk and Setting Apart

Last Sunday, my brother Kevin gave his farewell talk before he left on his mission. It was a great talk about teaching repentence, which I am sure he will learn even more about as he serves!





The following night we went to President Call's home for Kevin to be set apart as a missionary to serve in the Seoul Korea West Mission. It was a very special blessing and a great experience for me to witness. He is my 4th brother to go on a mission but I've never been able to attend the actual setting apart. He entered the MTC on Wednesday the 18th (his 19th birthday) and I'm waiting to hear how the Korean language is going so far!

Friday, July 20, 2007

Chambers Bay

My hometown of University Place, WA recently opened up the Chambers Bay Golf Club and walkway. It's an area that is owned by the county and so they built a really expensive golf course but also they have a 3 mile walking loop and paved trail that goes through the golf course and has a beach front walkway. Although it is very steep to walk down to the beach - it is an amazing view! And it has become a very popular place for it seems like everyone in the city to walk on. One of the days that I went with my dad, Rob and Ellie - we ran into one of my best friends Laura and her husband Sean. There is such a difference from living in a small, close knit suburb like University Place where there are only 35,000 people versus Mesa where there are 400,000 people in our suburb! The whole time I was walking on the trail I was jealous that they didn't have this when I was growing up there because it would have been the best for all of our cross country runs in high school.




Baseball

We took Ellie to her first baseball game last weekend! Of course it had to be my favorite team - the Seattle Mariners. My dad got us fabulous seats about 11 rows back from home plate. And it was a great game with the Mariners and the Detroit Tigers. The M's hit a grand slam and won the game that night. Ellie slept for the first 45 minutes of the game but when she woke up - she would burst into tears every time the crowd was really loud and cheering. She fooled everyone since she would calm down by the time the crowd noise died down so we kept getting compliments on what a good baby she was! She stayed up way past her bedtime that night but not much you can do about it when you are traveling.








Thursday, July 19, 2007

Seattle Ferry






Since Rob has never been up with me to Washington in the summer time - I really wanted to have him experience the Seattle ferry. I just think it's so amazing to be able to see the Seattle skyline from the water perspective! Luckily my dad and Kevin were willing to go along for the experience. It was super windy on the deck as usual but the skies were relatively clear and we had great views of the mountains and of Seattle as we headed that direction.

Family Picture outside on the windy ferry deck


Much warmer inside the ferry!


Ellie pretending she is a big girl in her own chair


Rob and Ellie in the sweater jacket I had to buy when we got to Washington and realized the summer nights are a lot colder than Arizona


Ellie and Uncle Kevin


Grandpa White and Ellie


Family Picture

Spending Time with Uncle Kevin

One of the main reasons we went up to Washington was to spend time with Uncle Kevin before he went on his mission to Seoul Korea. I was a little worried about how Ellie would be in Washington since she hasn't seen any of my family since she was a couple months old. But she did great! (I tell Rob it's because my mom told her about us in heaven) Ellie loved staring at her Uncle Kevin. I think Kevin enjoyed the attention too - although he was a little disgusted by her drooling and spitting up all the time! :) Excuse the red eyes . .. I still need to invest in a Photoshop type program to fix that problem since the red eye reducer on my camera obviously doesn't work.




We're Back


I am going to have quite a few posts over the next few days! We just returned from our little vacation to Washington and had a fabulous time. The weather was absolutely beautiful and it was a much needed break from the norm! Flying by myself with Ellie went much better than I thought it would but I did learn a few things:

- The Phoenix Skycap people were much nicer than the Seattle ones.
- Just beacause you didn't need the birth certificate in one airport, it doesn't mean that another airport won't ask for it. (I had Ellie's but packed it away in a hard to reach spot after Phoenix didn't check on it)
- Nursing on an airplane isn't that big of a deal.
- I packed more than enough diapers . . but not enough burp rags
- There are tons of nice people in this world still. I was so grateful for those people that sat next to me on the plane and offered to help me out and those that helped me out in line with folding up my car seat, etc.
- Just because you've been thrown up on 5 times, it doesn't mean that your child is done yet.
- Trying to eat the snack and drink on the plane is hard while holding a child that wants to put it in her mouth!
- Packing an extra shirt for myself was a smart idea.
- Disposable diaper changing pads are great to lay down on the airport floor and let your baby play on. Then you can just throw them away when you are done and you don't have to worry about all the germs!!
- Layovers are not fun.
- 5 month old babies can throw far (sorry to the person sitting behind me on the flight from Seattle to Oakland!)
- There is a special security check line in the Seattle airport for Southwest Rapid Rewards members. Thanks to my dad for helping me with that one or I would have missed my flight coming back to Phoenix!

Overall though - it wasn't so bad. And on every flight I was complimented on what a great baby I had. We'll see how she does when we fly to Utah in a couple of weeks . ..

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Singing Bee


I think I have found my new favorite show. It's on NBC and called "The Singing Bee". Rob and I were flipping through the channels tonight and started watching it a little late but both of us loved it and were singing along and trying to see how good we were at remembering lyrics (not very good!). I know FOX has another similar show that premieres on Wednesday night (I think - Don't Forget the Lyrics?) so I'm hoping it will be just as fun.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Batteries, Transformers, Birth Certificates

I have to preface that this is going to be a really random post!! :)

On Saturday, Rob and I had a date afternoon and left Ellie with his sister Brett and went and saw the movie Transformers. I wasn't really too excited to see the movie but was surprised at how much I liked it! And I also realized how many little "boyfriends" I had growing up because I remembered all these different things about Transformers from my younger days and all these games we used to play with our transformers.




Unfortunately, we went back to pick up Ellie to discover that once again she had cried the entire time we were gone. She is definitely a mommy's girl (which is nice to be so loved) but I feel bad that others don't get to see the happy side of her that I see all day long. And we're going to quickly lose our family babysitters at this rate. ha ha. It just makes it hard on me to leave her - although Rob and I have a goal of at least 2 official date nights a month where we actually get out of the house. I didn't think separation anxiety hit this young . . .but maybe so? It's just strange when these are people that she has seen pretty much every week since she was born and she was totally fine with them until this last month.



Ellie when she gets mad


We have a few trips this month and it dawned on me this weekend that I never sent away for Eliza's official birth certificate. And you have to have one to fly with a child under 2. Oops! I woke up in the middle of the night suddenly remembering the words of someone in the hospital after I filled out the birth certificate form that they would give me an unoffical copy and I needed to send away for the real one. Not good. I wasn't sure if I was going to have enough time to mail away for the birth certificate - so I figured out where I had to go to get one printed out and braved the blistering heat and headed to downtown Phoenix. It was an interesting place. A great one for people watching if that tells you anything! I was stuck at this place for an hour and the air conditioning was not working. Not a fun place for me to be while trying to entertain Ellie. Luckily she loves watching other kids/babies and there were lots of them! I had a huge headache after leaving that place.

And then my funny story for the day. This morning Rob called me and asked if I could run over to his sister Brett's house and give her a jumpstart. She was borrowing their parents car while Rob's parents took her mini-van to Utah. Well Brett and I couldn't for the life of us find the battery in her parents car. We had a good laugh over that one because I think that is the one part of a car that I can normally find. It turns out it was in the corner and underneath a cap that we would have never looked under. Thank goodness mine is in plain sight!