New York at Christmas

NEW YORK REPORT!
I got to tag along with Chris on a "business trip" to NY. He really only had one day of business, but we extended and stayed 5 nights. It was my first time staying in the city and his first time to really get to sight see although he's been a few times. We've been dream-planning this trip for awhile.

What we did:
EXPLORED! We saw mummies and antique furniture at the MET and saw the whole city from the top of the Empire State Building. We traveled all over the subway and loved watching the street performers and the people in general. We even saw a couple with horns -- real implanted horns! A whole bunch of people tried to convert me to judaism. I guess I looked like I needed some religion. We went to church though, and loved how it's the same everywhere. Except they say "Good morning" when each speaker gets up and greets the audience. We in California always assume it's kind of a rhetorical greeting, but it sure felt friendly. We even heard Wilson Phillips perform at a tree lighting ceremony in Bryant Park(even though I begged, they didn't sing "Hold on", so sad!). We shopped in Times Square and bartered in China town. It's kind of scary how that place actually feels (and smells!) like China. Then you step across the street to little Italy and you're surrounded my mafia speaking Italian and using the hand gestures (not the bad ones, the Italian ones).

EAT! We found a heavenly gluten free restaurant -- Risotteria (they give you GF breadsticks as you sit down to order! Chris still loves me even though he watched me enhale them like an animal!). I didn't stop eating because I could actually eat everything! The pizza, the risotto, the black and white cookie....so delicious!
I also hit the Shake Shack during Chris' meetings and never wanted to leave, but felt bad sitting too long because so many people wanted my spot! I'm still dreaming about their special sauce....Wendy's even tasted good there. All that trekking makes a girl hungry!

Walked and Ran....a lot! I LOVED jogging through central park because I got to run past all the crowds and go wherever I wanted. You can still see the city but you feel like you're protected from it somehow. And walking across brooklyn bridge at dusk is like magic! So beautiful!

There's so much to do there it's actually really exhausting! The whole city kind of sucks you in with all of its excitement and energy. But we left snow flurries to come home to 75 degree sunshine and thought....there's no place like home!

Here's the magical moment on Brooklyn Bridge. The sun broke through the clouds, warmed us up, and set the skyline on fire!
The Staten Island Ferry -- it's free and offers a great view of the Statue of Liberty.
Here she is -- that Lady of Freedom in all of her glory. This is the best shot we could get.
Times Square feels kind of like the great and spacious building in real life. At the same time you can't help but like it at the same time. My favorite moment -- a group of young adult Jewish men singing and dancing spontaneously around a giant menorah.
Here's a picture of Chris and I...I mean Chris' friend "the bull" and I in the financial district. He was riveted by all of the business going on down there. I liked the old cemetary next to the Trinity church.

Halloween and the big 3-0

First things first -- Halloween pics!

Sam was Harry Potter (we've been reading the books together). He kept saying "Wouldn't it be cool (how most of his sentences start) if I could just ride my broom and meet you at the trunk or treat?" Ben was a pirate since he can't decide yet and we had the stuff. He liked it and played the part well. Lucy was Pinkalicious this year (a book character who eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink -- it's a cute book. You should look it up!)
We went to Sam's school's carnival. They had like a 20-foot long path that was the "Scare Zone." Sam went through five or six times. Lucy started going through more times than that and kept chickening out. She peeked her head down the alley once and said "I did it!" And ran away. She wants to be so brave (and really is brave).

We met our cousins at our trunk-or-treat. Here's Gabbi (as a pirate) and Luke (as none other than THE Michael Jackson. And he even perfected his moonwalk).

Here's Ben, Afton (as Purplicious -- the sister book) and Lucy. Ben I think wouldn't mind wearing that hat everywhere he goes, especially if it meant he could bring a sword along too! He felt a little more confident when he was armed, even if it was with flexi-soft-plastic.

So I turned the big 30. The "no spring chicken anymore" 30. The "I think she's in her thirties" 30.

Lucy asked me how old I am. "30," I said. "Foaty," she repeated. Lucy can't say her "th" sound (or her r's either). Sam couldn't at her age so it's never bothered me too much, until she just now said that I'm "foaty." That's not OK.

But being 30 isn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I'm actually quite enjoying telling people my age. I feel as if I'm in a whole new club now. It's not as traditionally fun maybe as the 20's, but it has a lot of promise. I feel like I have at least accepted the fact that when it comes to life in general, I have a lot to learn. At 20 I thought I knew everything. But you know what? I guess now that I know I don't know anything, I have also learned to deal with all of the less-than-perfect stuff life throws at me a little better. So I guess I have a few more tools in my belt that will help me this decade. I am really excited for a few things in the next 10:

1) All of my kids will get baptized. And by the time I'm 40 almost all of my current children will be teenagers. Woah!

2) I'll see how long my joints will hold together as I continue my saga of running.

3) All of my siblings will be married, so I'm sure Grandma Kristi will be redefining Grandmotherhood as the numbers will most likely begin growing exponentially. It will be fun to get together and have it be absolute mayhem. Up until now, it's just been mayhem.

4) I'll probably get Ben's baby book finished sometime this decade.

5) Chris and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary. And even our 15th! That's like the hay and pewter anniversaries or something really rivetting, right? But I'm looking forward to us as we increase in wisdom and love through our thirties. I have an awesome husband to weather the storms of life with.

How did I celebrate? I ran the Las Vegas Ragnar Relay. It's a 195 mile relay where me and 11 others on my team took turns running three legs each varying in distance from 3-10 miles per leg. I came, I ran, I survived. Here are my favorite sayings I saw on the vans we competed with:

Ragnar -- what happens in Vegas, still hurts your shins.

It's a 200 mile relay, what could go wrong?

There are a lot of sayings I can't repeat. Maybe it went along with the Vegas crowd or something, but most of them were cool and creative. There was a Dexter van (some of my family might have appreciated that) and an Antoine Dodson van, a monty python themed car, a "running from the law" van where they dressed in stripes, and of course the mullets. They knew how to do a ragnar. They really ran with mullet wigs and cut-off flannel shirts! They had pasta salad in a cooler attached to the bag of their van. And they were all about the spirit of the run. They would drive ahead of the runners and write encouraging chalk messages on the sidewalk like "Mullets love you" or "You rock".

It was fun in a weird "let's run all night and hang out in a van for 30 hours" way. Our van of runners (6 total) was an awesome mix of people who didn't know each other well, and we really came together as we supported one another through the running and other challenges. We nicknamed our van the Chrysler Town and Stinky. It lived up to its name. We made good friends with some other vans, too. Chris asked an older guy in my ward (he was going out there since his daughter-in-law was competing in it) to meet me for my night run since I was scared to run in the dark alone. It was a good thing, too, because it followed a trail that was pretty isolated. He's in his 60's and I could hardly keep up with him! We finished a 5K distance in like 24 minutes. He's tough as nails! People really came together and helped make the whole thing interesting. And the scenery made my early morning sunrise run spectacular even if I'd only slept 3 hours. I loved doing the whole thing with my good friend Sarah! Even though we've known each other for years, you get to know someone in a whole different way when you're totally sleep deprived and getting ready to run at 4 am. Sarah was tough and optimistic through it all. Go Team Hang Tender Toes!!!

Here's where my last fun ended. It really was out in the middle of nowhere and it was beautiful.

Me and Sarah at teh finish line. We'd been woken up to meet our other van at the end and we were really delirious.

The team -- Angela, Barrett, Shannon, Tyler, Shannon, Joel, Angela, and Sarah (missing a few)

Here's our van -- Sarah, Eric, Angela, Me, Matt, and Nichole.

Here's Tyler -- I thought this shot looked like a sponsor pic.

Fun with Fritz

Amy's back in CA! Yeah! It's kind of our routine to do an after dinner dance party. This night Uncle Fritz (Chris' nickname) pumped up the tunes with the kids while Amy and I were cleaning up dinner dishes. We ditched the dishes once we heard all the fun we were missing.

Bubba Got Married

This is a make-up post -- this all happened a few months ago, but it's too memorable to skip over.

Bubba is my little bro. He's great and he married Emily who is at least equally as great. Don't they just look like they both made out like bandits in the deal? I love it. The whole family made it for the event making it even more memorable.

My Aunties and Mom master-minded the reception decor. Fancy, eh?

Every time there's a photographer around, I give a family picture a go. It always turns out kind of like this.

And now we're getting ready for the last of the siblings to join the ranks of the espoused. Courtney's engaged to Greg -- the date is set for December. YEAH COURTEY!
She came out to visit a few weeks ago and updated me on all things hip. I learned about Antoine Dodson, Maroon 5, and played a lot of "What NOT to wear." Courtney helped me teach my kids a lot of lessons, like when she told them "When you get to college you can eat Oreos for breakfast!" and when I told them "Look kids, this is what happens when you don't put sunscreen on at the beach!" She got fried.

The kids LOVE having Auntie Courtney here. Lucy even suggested they play beauty parlor and allowed Court to put her hair in pigtails!

We're finally in the swing of things now that it's about the first day of fall. Something about those long summer days makes me want to throw all responsibility and care to the wind, but the cool (it's only 72 right now at 2:44 pm) weather somehow grounds me again. Now we're planning Halloween costumes, looking forward to a last hurrah boating trip with cousins in a few weeks, and I'm training to run the Las Vegas Ragnar relay with my girlfriend Sarah (and 10 others as our team). It's my turning 30 "coming of age" adventure. I'm going to celebrate by spending that many hours relaying across the desert. Courtney, who can't understand my need to run, said "But you can run here for free and spend that money on a nice dress for my wedding!" A dress or exhaustion and blisters for a cause? It's an obvious choice.

And then there was the time we dressed up like cows...

If I were really cool, I would have posted something a week ago so you too could have sported cow costumes and eaten for free. Put it on your calendar for next year. July 9th: Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A. At first I felt a little apprehensive to go out in public dressed like a cow not on Halloween. But, my good friend Sheri was totally down with sporting the spots and really it's always fun to dress up, isn't it! The free food made the late-night spot pinning worth it!

Can you guess what they're saying?

This is just one of the ways we're having the rockin'est summer ever.

Actually, though, I'm just trying to stay afloat with all three kids home. I know I only had one less during the school year and that was only for 6 hours most days, but it makes a difference. We're settling in to our schedule a bit more and also enjoying not having to stay in the schedule. A few things that define our summer:

It's a good day when we only wear PJ's and swimsuits throughout the entire day.

Popsicles count as a snack anytime (rewards for Benny's potty training right now)

We try to keep up daily quiet time and chore charts (some days better than others...).

We took the whole fam to the beach for a few nights of enjoying nature. Once we got used to the idea that Ben would be a ball of dirt for the entire 3 days, our camping trip improved dramatically! Really, though, we had ourselves a nice couple of days together -- just the family and the sand (and dirt).

To stay entertained while not at the beach, we frequented the camp store, antagonizing the sales person by playing with all of the toys and pulling candy away from Ben.

We explored the caves in the morning at low tide and found lots of cool anemones, muscles, and crabs.

Check out Ben's curls. Oooh, I just love 'em!

Chris likes digging big holes. The kids like playing in big holes. The only downside -- the lifeguard made him break it down because I guess big holes are dangerous. Shyah!

Finally! A break from the daily grind.

Next time I'll give the kids their lollipops after the picture.

We also got a visit from Grandma and helped watch cousin Kate while her parents went on a cruise. Let me tell ya-- adding one kid and a grandma to the mix required adding a Dr. Pepper to your breakfast milk. Actually I think that Grandma might have really been spiking her breakfast milk with Dr. Pepper. Maybe Kate's too. I'm not sure. But we had fun. Mom and I even got a girls night out complete with a Tom Cruise flick and shopping. Love ya, Mom!!! We had so much fun having you out!

Show me your eyes Ben! (that's what I said and that's what I got).

Grandma even made cleaning the windows fun! How does she do it?

Free Mercer Lane Frames

So you know how my aunts make really amazingly gorgeous frames? Well, I've been helping my aunts get a blog to help them market those frames (mercerlane.blogspot.com if you want to check it out). Someone girl who has a product review blog found the frames blog and asked for some frames to do a review. She LOVED them (of course) and is now running a FREE FRAME GIVEAWAY through her blog (and supported graciously by my loving aunties). Here's the link. It only runs through Memorial Day at midnight (the link tells you how to enter the contest):

Go here to enter http://takeitfrom-me.blogspot.com/2010/05/mercer-lane-review-giveaway.html

And here are a couple of my favorites!

There's a Lizard on my Head

We had Chris' parents and sister Theresa visit this week for spring break. We had a great visit with them. I love when family comes to town because then we actually get out and enjoy all thing So-Californian, like In-N-Out.

And what trip down here would be complete without paying homage to the happiest place on earth? (Thanks, Doris, for tying quilts to earn our "Give a Day, Get a Day" Tickets).

We let the kids pick out some souvenirs--their very own mustard packets! Included in the price of admission, I might add. Our poor, poor children.

We visited a few museums locally as well. One of them had a reptile room with snakes, lizards, spiders and other things that make your skin crawl. Benny has been quite afraid of lizards. We have them all over our yard. I heard him screaming one day while they were playing back there. I found him on some stairs in the very back of the yard paralyzed with fear, a 3-inch lizard clinging to some bricks a few feet from where he sat. He's a pretty thick-skinned kid usually, so I'm trying to help him get over it. We looked at all of the caged specimens at the museum. He clung to me, but seemed interested. I set him down for a few minutes after he got comfortable. I turned to look at something, inadvertently brushing his glamorous blond curls that extend quite beyond the edges of his head. He let out some screams that made me think one of the tarantulas had escaped and was gnawing on his scalp! We ran him out of the room, calmed him down, and after a thorough check of his head determined he just thought a lizard was on his head. The next few days confirmed our theory. He kept one hand on his head most of the time. Upon awakening, he would grab his head and ask "Li-yo?" (Lizard?). "No, Benny. All of the lizards are locked up in their cages. You are safe." We ate our Easter dinner outside. The breeze kept blowing his curls. He wouldn't eat. He kept looking around, one hand holding his head, saying "Li-yo, li-yo." I finally grabbed one of Lucy's hairties and pulled his hair back in a pony tail. That helped. I thought it looked dope. Chris said "No. It looks white-trash."

Later that night.

I love Ben's curls. Do I really need to cut them? Will this be the straw that broke the camel's back (or the needle that cracked the donkey's back, right Amy?)? Someone told me my little girl was cute the other day, too. He doesn't look girly. Really. He's husky and looks boylish if you ask Sam (his made up word). But maybe it's time.

V-Day and the B-Fam

I haven't posted in awhile. Oi! I was so excited when the new year came -- I felt motivated to clean up Christmas and get jumping on my resolutions. I've been going full steam ahead organizing junk drawers, getting back on the running bandwagon (it's on between Chris and I for a half in May -- he thinks he actually has a shot at beating me), finishing projects...I even learned how to prune my roses! As wonderful and magical as Christmas is, the post-Christmas detox has really left me feeling good. The rain down here has turned our normal desert landscape green and lush. It's only the second time since we've lived here that we've seen this kind of greenery. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Cupid's arrow has hit a few of us here in Barneyville. Sam says the girls at school organized a "crew" and chase him and two other boys around trying to kiss them. Lucy got her first non-family-boy Valentine and it was from our neighbor, a 1st grader -- he laid the carnation on her pillow during her nap! And Ben, well, Ben started acting like a puppy and licks everyone all the time. I guess that ties in with my love theme in the puppy love category. Chris loves me, too. He watched the kids after dinner so I could go get a haircut and do some errands. Of course we're going on a classy Valentine's date to our ward dinner dance. I told him we could leave early and hit a movie to sweeten the deal. Any suggestions on good flicks out right now?

I hope you all have a fantastic Valentine's Day. We send you our love (and licks!).

XOXOXOXOXOXO