Fuh-flies

Rich has the week off and we've done a whole lot of nothing till today. We headed to Santa Cruz to see the monarch butterflies that hibernate there during the winter. Macie calls them fuh-flies.
Here's the crew on a perfect climbing tree.

After a brief walk we found the butterflies. There's an unusually low number of butterflies there right now but it was still fun seeing some.


Here's a tree someone decorated with Christmas ornaments. The monarchs looked like little decorations, too.


Butterflies were darting all around above our heads. Ryan pointed out every single solitary butterfly he saw. Every single one. All of them. He couldn't stop.


Here's how the monarchs look when they're hibernating. See those clumps of what appears to be dead leaves? Those are monarchs all huddling together. In years past I've seen them in huge strings of clumps that were several feet long.

We stumbled upon lots of other flora and fauna while there:

Like this cute ground squirrel, cleaning out its hole.


And this mushroom, which I believe, is the CUTEST mushroom I've ever seen.

Ok, then we headed across the street to watch surfers and visit the surfing museum, which is inside of a lighthouse.

Here's Ryan in front of the lighthouse. Nice floods and pajama shirt, kid.Who let you out of the house wearing that? :) The museum was interesting and the kids had a blast watching the surfers fall off their surfboards.

And finally, my favorite picture from the whole outing--the rail alongside the beach. I love the rust.

P Town

For Thanksgiving we headed to Portland. We have a bunch of kids now and a minivan so it felt like our first "real" family roadtrip. All of you people who are contemplating getting a family car any time soon--GET THE DVD PLAYER. Best decision we ever made. Well, one of the best. Here are some highlights from the trip:


This is Annette's (Rich's sister) backyard. The kids loved it. There's even a little creek at the bottom of the hill.


Ryan spotted this deer in their yard. So cool. All we spot in our "yard" is dirty squirrels and feral cats.


Rich was SO one with nature.


We took the kids to the Portland zoo. Very fun. Macie found her window friend, Marcie.


I've seen sea lions a hundred times but I never realized how big they were until I took this picture of Ryan standing in front of one. Huge!


I love feeding lorakeets and I dragged everyone to the lorakeet exhibit. The $1 for Rich's cup of sugar water was the best buck we spent that day. First, there were 2 lorakeets on him.


Then three.


Number four came along.


Number five couldn't resist.


This one wanted to be closer to his charming smile.


This one loved Rich's magnetic personality.


This one gave him a special gift.

Seriously, the birds were freakishly attracted to him. Call him The Lorakeet Whisperer. People were even trying to lure the birds away from him but it wouldn't work. He has a gift people.


Juliet was a trooper in the cold. She had about 5 layers of clothing on.


Rich's brother in law got fancy suite tickets to the Trailblazers game. Ryan had so much fun but was disappointed that he couldn't play in the game.


Juliet got lots of attention from people in the suite.


On to the Portland Children's Museum. Here's Macie working on some clay.


In case you didn't get a look at her lovely locks, here's a close up. Please don't call CPS on me.


Here's Rich's piece of art. He's so practical.


Here's Ryan and his Uncle Keith (yep, he's single and available ladies!!) with their creations. Ryan luuuuuuuuuvs his Uncle Keith. He drove all the way from SLC to hang out with the rest of us.


Here's Rich, Keith and Annette. Her family was so sweet to host us.

Awesome trip.

You gotta love preschool art projects. . .

and band-aids in strange places.

This ain't yo mama's mommy blog

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of criticisms about mommy blogs. That all we mommy bloggers do is write about our perfectly happy lives, perfect children, perfect marriages and perfect homes. All that's done is thrown me into a conniption and has made me want to write about it on my mommy blog. What I say to that is eew. I've seen plenty of awesome mommy blogs and plenty of lame non-mommy blogs. I'd post some links but that would be mean. I'll just send them to you via email. The truth is that I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with 4 other people and sometimes that can really suck. And my kids are mostly great but sometimes they're so whiny I just want to peel my ears off. And my marriage is wonderful but we've had our fair share of issues and, um, tiffs. And I'm a mostly happy person but I have to work at having a positive attitude, not being a giant stress case, a worrier, an impatient witch, and a complete slob. And I love therapy. So buyyya you mommy blog critics.

note: it's kind of funny I'm even writing about this because I'm pretty sure 99.9% of my readers are mommy bloggers, too.

Now, back to my perfect children. . .

We thought the perfect mohawk deserved the perfect outfit and tattoo.

This is Ryan impersonating a ticked-off me. He's got it all wrong. Ok, ok, he's actually right.

This is what our perfect, precious, angelic Macie did after I asked her to lie down so I could put a diaper on her. Who knew that the bladder in a tiny 2 year old could be so big?

Spooky Spookerton

Halloween kind of lasted forever this year (in a good way). First, Ryan went to his buddy Bennett's Halloween birthday party. Then we went to the Pumpkin Patch for our park day group. Then Ryan had a preschool Halloween party. Then we went to the pumpkin patch as a family, picked out pumpkins and carved them. Then we had the ward's Halloween party and trunk-or-treat. Finally, on Halloween night we went to a Halloween party at our friends' house and trick-or-treated in their neighborhood. Needless to say we are DONE with Halloween. Except for the candy. But we'll be done with that soon, too. Here are some highlights:

Here's Macie at the pumpkin patch's little petting zoo. She was like, "And what do you want me to do with this thing?"

Macie was so speedy at picking out her pumpkin. She fell in love the the 2nd one she found. She doesn't call them pumpkins, though. She calls them all "pumpkin patches".

Happy as can be--pumpkins AND a wagon ride.

Here's Ryan's pumpkin that he carved. It's pretty impressive considering he's only 4 and he carved it all by himself. The only part Rich helped with was cutting the top off and scooping out the guts. But Ryan carved the eyes, nose, and mouth all by himself and didn't even cut off any fingers.

Here's Ryan in his Obi Wan Kenobi costume (and the light saber he borrowed from Darth Vader). He's using the "forrest" on me. We think it's so cute that he calls "the Force" "the forrest" that we don't correct him. Poor kid will probably figure it out when he's like 12.

'

Here he is trick-or-treating. He was always ahead of our group, getting to the door first, knocking, stepping INSIDE the house and saying "trick or treat!". He was hilarious. Sugar really drives this kid. Macie didn't really care for trick or treating. She gave up after like 5 doors.

Here's Macie dressed up as Abby Caddabi from Sesame Street. Since I accidentally bought a costume without wings, we had to buy some separate ones. So she's a butterfly/Abby Cadabbi. Or as I like to call her "Crabby Caddabi".

And finally, the cutest red hot chili pepper you've ever seen.

Swimming with the Sharks

Last night we went on our first really real, actual, genuine, official date in a LONG time (ahem, Rich). My parents graciously watched our 3 kids and we headed to the Shark Tank to watch the Sharks vs. the Minnesota Wild. Rich scored some awesome penthouse suite tickets from his work. It was fun to recline on leather couches while eating complimentary hot wings and yogurt-dipped raspberries and watching the game. But, I think if I were to actually pay $182 for a hockey ticket I'd actually prefer to sit right behind the glass. You'd get a much better view of the fights. I've never been to a Sharks game where the Sharks actually won and not only did they win last night but they scored 4 big ones. And that means ticket holders can head to Roundtable Pizza and get free personal pizzas. Who can guess what we're doing for FHE tomorrow?

This is the face of a happy, happy man.

Us in the glorified nosebleed section.

Macie Moo

Macie Moo just turned two. I thought she deserved her own post. Here's why we like her:

I like her because I invested 9 months of pregnancy to get her. She's also worth the wild delivery--including being born just 35 minutes after arriving at the hospital.

She pretty much has Rich wrapped around her little finger. They're great friends. Every time she sees him walk through the door she bolts towards him yelling "Daddy!!!" as if she hasn't seen him for years. She loves his guts.

She likes me, too (at least for now:). Until Juliet was born, Macie sat on my lap and stayed by my side at all times. It was convenient for me because I didn't really have to keep an eye on her at the park. Sometimes I miss her wanting to sit on my lap.

She and Ryan are usually pretty good friends. I love watching them take care of each other. Ryan protects her. She shares with him. Macie hollers "Hi Ryan!!" every time we pick him up from preschool as if she hasn't seen him for years. She loves his guts. Sometimes even their fights are cute. Sometimes.

She has great enthusiasm. Seeing cats, birds, airplanes, and squirrels is an event for her. Fun times with this girl.

She's super silly. Rich says she's like the 3 Stooges in one little girl. It's true. She's hilarious. When she gets extra silly, she does this Wario laugh (you know, from Mario Brothers) and it cracks me up.

She's a monkey. This freaks us out but it also kind of amazes us and a lot of strangers at the park. I actually looked into rock climbing classes for her but they won't let in 2 year olds.

I think she's beautiful. And not just because she's my baby girl, either:). Photo courtesy of my friend, Meghan.

She's also a chatterbox but it's hard to take a picture of that. Imagine a lot of talking. And some whining. But you probably don't want to imagine that.

Happy Birthday Macie!