lily bits of late

While Lily was brushing my hair with her favorite gold barbie brush, she said, "you can be the kid, and I can be the mom okay!"

I was keeping Lily busy by playing the question game.  After about 10 questions already,  I asked what her favorite holiday was and she said, "mom."  I had to explain what holidays were.

Lily thinks she needs a whole sandwich (like the big kids) rather than her usual half.  When we tell her it's too big she always says, ''well, I can just have the butts, that would be okay.''  Funny girl.  In that rare field of loaf end eaters.  I guess it's a good compromise.

Her thanks

Lily says the best prayers.
She is thankful for everything.
Last night was no exception.
"...and fanks for ours grampa give us chrismis tree."
Grandpa John gave them light up Christmas tree ornaments.
"...and fanks for ours can clean ours rooms."
I told her to clean her room in the morning.
"...and fanks for ours Dixie cans go to heaven."
Grandpa's dog had to be put down suddenly last week. She normally says thanks for Dixie, but since she found out this is her replacement.
"...and fanks for DJ and  Sheri and Braxton and Ryker cans have a new house and dinner wiff us."
We are so excited for their new adventure.

Love our little imp.  She is so stubborn and difficult sometimes, but when it comes to prayer time she doesn't miss anything.

shocked

Lily came up to me with her sweet face on and said, "turn the damn TV on!"
I wasn't positive if I heard her right.  She restated her request.  Followed by her sweetest smile.  
Needless to say I was left with my mouth agap and lost for words.
This girl is going to be the end of us.

when i grow up...

Chase:  When I grow up, I want to be a lifeguard at Raging Waters.

Lily:  When I grow up, I want to be an amulet like Sophia!

In other words, Chase wants to be able to hang at the pool all day, and Lily wants to be a princess with a magical necklace.  Who's the realist here?
At least Chase upgraded from his desire to be a garbage man. Oh wait, I guess he downgraded a bit cause at preschool graduation he wanted to be a police officer.  Hmmm....

Chase's Prayers

Chase has started saying his own prayers. At first he wasn't quite on board, he'd whine "I don't know what to say."
We kept telling him to say what ever he was thankful for.

For a while he wanted to say, "thank you for everything." Or, "...all of the things." And would try to finish.  Of course we didn't let him get away with that.

Now he has been coming up with some very Chase-ish things.
"Thank you for the whole Earth."
"Thank you for the Sun to keep me warm."
"Thank you for my new room and Bayli's new room."
"Thank you for my books."
"Thank you for the plants."
"Thank you for the weeds so I can help mommy."
"Thank you for the animals."
"Thank you for all of the planets and stars." (He sometimes gets sidetracked here and pauses to ask some question about space, lava, or how the Sun warms things.)

He cracks me up.  I love that he is so interested in the world around him.  He is so intrigued by space and lava lately.  I don't have all of the answers to his questions and it frustrates him to no end.
Knowing Chase, he'll figure things out for himself.  Just like his dad, a trial and error kind of guy.  I see a bright future for him.

Garbage?

We purchased new chicks yesterday.
Chase's ''orange'' one died today.

While on the way to take Bayli to swimming, we brought up the dead chick.

Bayli started to tear up.

I began the '' its in a better place'' conversation.

Chase said, ''in the garbage?''

Try explaining heaven after a funny comment like that.

Love that kid.

8, where has the time gone?

Bayli has been so excited for her 8th Birthday.  Too bad she was sick for the big day.  Missing school is not her favorite thing.
Since her birthday was at the beginning of January, she had to be very patient in waiting for her baptism day.
Groundhogs Day will have a new meaning for us.  Sorry Bill Murray, you've been replaced with the smiles of a wonderfully beautiful young lady.

Posing in her awesome "jumper"

A very proud dad in said "matching jumper"

 Bayli had so much love and support from wonderful family, friends, and neighbors.  She was beeming all day long.
She told me that when Jed had confirmed her and gave her a blessing, "I kept my eyes closed through his whole prayer!  And it was a really good one!"
I must say it was a really good one.  He seemed to hit all the key areas that are important and meaningful in her life right now. 

Bayli was lucky to share her special day with two of her wonderful friends.  Aren't they lovely?

Afterwards she had a wonderful time celebrating with her family.  She was so grateful for all of the support that she received.  As soon as her company had left, she started working on her thank-you cards.  Love that girl, she is so grown up!

We were so busy with the days events, that we almost forgot to take pictures of her in her special baptism dress (I love it, not your traditional baptism look).  I'm glad that I remembered to put her special wrist-let from her blessing in her hair.  One of those sentimental gifts from her Aunt Katie that we have cherished and been eager to use for this big day.  The next time she'll wear it is on her wedding day, not so eager for that day!

The world is yours to discover and experience, live worthily and make it count little B!

Lily's potty journal, an EPIC journey.

Lily woke up Friday and announced that she finally wanted to be a big girl and wear panties and do her business on the pot.  Of course, only Lily would pick one of the busiest times of the year to make our house turn upside down.  But, knowing her little personality we knew that it was now or never.  So it began.

She did really well the first two days.  Minus the incident on Saturday where she thought it was a good idea to remove her diaper at nap time and pee on her bad. 

She had her first "outing" in panties on Sunday, and asked to take a billion trips to visit the toilet and drain a whole teaspoon of urine.  Then made a puddle on the nursery floor with only 10 minutes before going home.  Pretty successful I would say.
 Then, her demon within decided to have a little fun at naptime again.  But this time it wasn't with pee.  She painted her bed, rails, floor, door handles, arms, hands, and arms (front and back) with poop!  Not cool at all!!!  What a fun family moment playing clean up.

Christmas Eve  (Monday) was MUCH like the day before.  Only she gave the walls, teacups, spoons, rocking chair, and little kitchen sink a visit from the Poop Fairy.  We then decided to call her Poo Bear instead of Bear.  I have an internal vomit from within every time I visualize  her tea cup full of poop with a spoon sticking out of it.  Knowing Lily, one taste wasn't enough!
Needless to say, she received three cold showers at clean up time. 

The threats of cold showers must be working, because the Poop Fairy hasn't visited again. 
And wetting herself 2-3 times when out at family parties was nothing to sweat about.  There is always something worse that our little imp could come up with. 

Special

This is my "special" little lady.  She makes us laugh every day.
Yesterday she decided to sport all of this awesome swim gear to look her best.
She cracks me up.

Today, she decided to break into the fridge to get some cheese.  All while mom was busy bathing big brother.
Well, her plan went awry when she decided that climbing up the fridge shelves was a good idea.  Mainly, the shelf containing all of our fresh eggs (our hens aren't laying so well and Grandma Carol's are so she sent some our way) all in all close to two dozen.  That and the left over pie from Thanksgiving.
One can only imagine the mess that she found herself in, rather that I found her in.
She has never had such a long time out.
Not so special. 

San Diego or bust!!!

Back in July/August we had a fabulous trip to San Diego with the Dixon Family. 

Thank goodness we stopped halfway in Mesquite cause these kids were going nuts!

My parents rented a house right on Mission Beach.  It was in the perfect location.  We didn't have the boardwalk right next to the house. Instead we had a large sandy area, it made little people watching a lot easier.

These two found their favorite thing the second that we got to the house.

Isn't my mom the cutest?!!!  She was so great and planned this trip for the whole lot of us.  I just love her.

Since Jed and I don't care too much for parks and crowds, we planned an every other day outing.  That way the kids would get their park craving taken care of, and we would have the beach or whatever spontaneous destination for the rest of the time.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and after settling in and checking out the beach a few of us headed to the all hectic grocery store to stock up for a few days.  That pretty much took the rest of the evening.

Sunday was our choice, being that it was Lily's birthday.  She is 2, our baby is 2!!!  We chose to stick around and play at the beach all day.

I loved my hat and wore it nearly every day, but it is not very picture friendly.  I looked like the mad hatter much of the time.

I can't take a normal picture, always gotta make a crazy face or pose.

Jed kept his awesome tan lines.

Chalese is always the darling poser.  Must be where Bayli gets it from.

This was our view.

The birthday girl and her first seashell hunt, she could care less about the shells.  All she needed was a shovel and bucket.

Jaren (Saren as Chase refers) was so great, as usual, with our kids.  They LOVE him. 

 We had a barbeque that night for the birthday dinner followed by cupcakes.  Our little imp was in heaven.

Happy Birthday BEAR  We LOVE YOU!!!

Monday we decided to head to Sea World.  We had only planned to spend part of the day there.  But, we purchased the all you can eat pass and decided to make a day of it and get our moneys worth and gorge ourselves a bit.  The food wasn't too bad, especially when I could get as much as I wanted.

 Surprisingly the kids, particularly Lily, did pretty good.  She even was able to take a nap.

I am such a planner and had stroller stress from the get go.  I packed our umbrella and BOB.  We chose to take the umbrella and a backpack because we would have to leave the stroller for the majority of the time anyways.

Majority of the grand-kids (we missed my sister and her family).  Don't you love Chase's scary face?

Grandpa and Grandma and the kids and...Rob (or Robby as Lily lovingly calls him).

We couldn't take the little ones on the first ride, so Rick and I got to go on an adventure with them.  Lily was kind of unsure the first time Rick picked her up.

 Our kids did pretty good at all of the shows.  Jed was disappointed at the dolphin show because we watched people more than dolphins, but the rest of us liked it.  Especially Bayli because the people were dressed up as birds.

The Shamu show was kind of lame.  I hate that the trainers can't get in the water with the whales anymore.  It's just not as amazing as it was when I was a kid. I guess that the night show was better, but we couldn't handle staying there that late.

We also checked out the Pet's Rule show=LAME-O!  By far our favorite was the seal show, it was fun for the kids and entertaining for us.  

Obviously Chase was more excited than Jed.

 The best part of Sea World was that our little Chase, who gets terribly car sick, found his love for roller coasters.  He couldn't get enough of Atlantis.  And, he was nearly in tears when he found out that he was too little for Manta.  So to make up for it, Jed took him on Atlantis a few more times.

Rob and his crew.

Jed and Chase.

Poor Grandma had to ride alone.

Bayli fulfilled her two wishes:  ride Manta and purchase a souvenir.

Chase's first roller coaster ride was just too memorable not to purchase.  I giggle each time I think of his reaction. 

Tuesday was a chill-ax day, and Jed and my anniversary.  14 years!!!  My parents planned to do whatever we wanted them to.  They were there to tend at our beck and call.  We  lounged around the beach and took a walk to the marina.  My parents thought that we would never decide what we wanted to do.  Finally, in the evening, Jed and I went out to dinner at  The Fishery (which was amazing might I say, but expensive).  Then, we went to the Crystal Pier and watched the end of the sunset.  After, we had the most amazing gelato I have ever had, also very pricey. But it was so delicious that we decided to take the kids there a few days later.

Wednesday we headed to the San Diego Zoo to get our animal watching on.  BOB was definitely our choice for attacking the zoo.  Although, the game plan that I had mapped out didn't get played out successfully. I had intended for us to take the tram ride first, but forgot when I had a mishap with my contacts.  By the time I remembered, we had walked around the majority of the park and were not willing to stand in line.
Our favorite part of the zoo was the aviary.  We spent the majority of our time helping Bayli hunt down all of the birds in each exhibit.  I could be content to spend an entire day just in the aviary.

Chase really wanted the already full goat to eat, he even tried feeding it's bum.

the sky ride was a big hit

kitty!!!

Grandpa got worn out every day, the old man ;)

next to the aviary, Bayli was most excited for the pandas

We were lucky to have the little ones fall asleep about this time.  Bayli got to feel like the next hour plus was all about her.  She was in heaven, with all of the attention on her.

their polar bear impressions

her reward for being a big helper

these two are just too sweet when they sleep

The zoo was actually funner than I remember it being when I was a kid...weird.

Thursday was another free day.  We decided to head a little north to La Jolla.  It was beautiful!  We only spent a few hours there then stopped for gelato before heading back to our beach.  Chalese came with our family so we took the opportunity to get some family pics, we love our "nanny!"

I love his wave impression.

Friday we were very reluctant to go anywhere.  It was our last full day in San Diego.  We would have been content to stay at the beach house.  But, we decided to spend half the day at the Safari Park.
It was fun, but we were kind of tired of seeing animals.   Rick had gone the day before and told us what route to take to see the most interesting things and get through the park faster.  We headed straight to the Gorillas to see the baby Gorilla, very cute.  Then headed to the tram ride, which was a hit for the kids and pretty cool.

Jaren joined us for the fast visit. Did I mention just how much Chase LOVES him?

For some reason I love this one of them.

Seriously, mad hatter!

Chase loving the tram ride and being with Jaren.

Bayli wanted to see everything.

Lily loved the tram more than the animals.

Love this one!

Oh, there's that scary face again.

They had a pretty cool carousel  ride which was free with our tickets. The kids rode it twice and were in love.

After the Safari Park we headed back to the house to spend the rest of the day at the beach.  What a great way to end our fun filled week.

We loved surfing (Jed), boogie boarding, running from seaweed (Chase was completely scared of anything in the water), getting stung by a Jelly Fish (ME, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be), playing in the sand, critter hunting, jumping the waves (that's about as far as Bayli would go, strange since she is in the water nearly every day), and just being in the moment with our family. 

I must add that sea level running is amazing! I could totally feel the effects of blood doping, coming from our high Utah elevation.  I put out some pretty good times too, well for me anyways.

I know Jed was wishing that he was sailing instead.  That was one thing that we had intended to do, but never did accomplish.  I guess that we will have to take the catamaran out to get his fix. 

Thanks again Grandma for a great trip!!!