18 Months

Our little Miss Tess is 18 months old!!! I cannot believe it! Time has flown by so fast! In an effort to journal my little munchkin I am going to give a brief list of what she's up to these days:

• She's talking up a storm. She says more and more words each day some notable words besides Mom,Dad, and Chase are-- kiki, box (juice box), milk, rella, all of the Mickey Mouse characters, "Oh toodles", bum, book, tons of animals and all their sounds they make, grandma/grandpa, No Way!, cookie, "there she is" (while playing peek-a-boo),


• Her favorite food is macoroni and cheese and noodles, candy/ cookies (I am a lousy mom people)


• She hates being home-- she loves going bye bye-- and insists we go "dad's car bye bye". For some reason she likes dad's car the best. When we are away and on our way home-- when she sees that we have turned onto our street she begins to cry and say "please bye bye".


• She LOVES babies. She has a couple dolls and takes them everywhere but her favorite thing in the world is her baby cousin Mallory! She wants to hold her and hug her and kiss her and feed her and play. It's super cute but you cannot take your eyes off her or there could be trouble.


• She loves being outside--of course.


• She loves attention. Chase would get over stimulated with too much going on or too much commotion-- she thrives on it!


• She's headed for stardom--besides being so darn cute-- she loves to sing and dance. We have an ipod dock in the kitchen and she always wants me to turn it on so she can dance. She loves anything disney but she also loves the song Dynamite like her brother.


• She is little Miss Independent. Has to do everything herself! She will not sit in the high chair anymore-- has to be the bumbo on a chair at the table.


• On a recent trip to Disneyland (blog update possibly to follow) she LOVED it! Loved the characters, loved the rides, loved the food! By the end mom and dad were ready to go home because she was done being pushed and held and insisted we go where she wanted which was the carousel. Her favorite by far! She also loved Winnie the Pooh and Pirates. She will now sing the pirate song if you ask! (HoHoHo shufhjffh fh meeeee)


• Most of her teeth are in now-- we are just having an issue with eczema-- or her "winter skin". It's killing me!!!


• Anyway, she is the bestest! I love her to pieces and am so lucky to have such great kids!

Time Square-- I mean Temple Square

So last week we ventured up to Temple Square-- the city of lights-- at least through December. We went with Deb and her kids (Q stayed home with the baby), and Jim and Ann came along. We had a great time walking around in the cold and just feeling the crisp air, seeing the lights on the temple grounds. It was really nice just to be together and enjoy the holiday spirit. We decided to ride the subway-- I mean trax, which was another treat for the kids.Tess loved the first fifteen minutes then she just wanted to explore and move so it was not much fun trying to contain her. All in all well worth the trip!

Beach Cruisin'!

I've been meaning to blog about our newest family activity. Randy traded in his rarely used race bike for these two sweet beach cruisers and a baby seat for mine. Since getting these new rides we can be seen quite often riding around the neighborhood on a good day. Tess is the biggest fan of all always wanting to go bye bye on the "bah"-- throwing fits if she can't persuade us to take her!

Halloween 2011

We had a great Halloween as usual. This year Chase chose to be a Storm Trooper-- after I talked him out of Darth Mal. Once he saw the storm trooper costume it was easy-- he couldn't wait to put it on! Tess was a Princess Witch! After attempting to borrow my friend Shannon's costume that turned out too big-- my mom offered to make us one! Didn't it turn out so cute? Hopefully it will get more use in the future. She made the perfect witch. I had spent all month long trying to teach her what the witch says-- and wouldn't you know it she came through on Halloween!

This season we went to the Lewis' Trunk-r-Treat, trick-r-treated, and had our 2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. I just love this time of year. We had a wonderful time being silly and spending time together. But now it's on to my next favorite time of year-- Thanksgiving!

Run, Run, and more Running

Team The Grateful Tread
Starting my last leg--hallelujah!

Pumped and ready to start leg 1-- my start song was The Eye of the Tiger!

Van #2

Me, Kristen, and Jenni!

I have always run/ jogged for my choice of exercise. I'll mix it up here and there but after Tess was born I just found it easier to run over anything else. I have also always thought it would be a fun challenge to run a marathon. So this year I talked Randy into running the St. George Marathon with me. So after training nearly all summer we got to see what we were really made of a few weeks ago. Turns out Randy is pretty descent at running and has actually caught the running bug. He ran his marathon in 3:44 and that was after keeping with me the first half. I, however, was disappointed in my time. I know-- it's awesome just to do one (at least that's what everyone says to me) but I had really been hoping for a better time then I got. I was aiming for 4 hours and actually got in with 4:29. I just way over did the first half-- in fact I was around my goal time half way with 1:59 and that was the hard, uphill half. I just had been battling a head cold and cough and couldn't get my breathing normal and started getting the most unbelievable side stitches. It was shooting to my back and almost unbearable. Anyway, needless to say, I had a horrific second half and was to the point that I was happy I even finished. So I guess I will have to run another one to prove to myself I can do better.

There are no pictures of the marathon because we didn't want to carry it with us while we ran and I didn't want to shell out the money for the ones the take of you. However, I did take some of the Ragnar I just ran with friends in Las Vegas this past weekend. This was an unplanned event that my friend Shannon asked me to fill in for one of their runners and I figured since I had been training, now was as good a time as any-- so I did it. I am super glad I did it. It was really fun and our team was super fun, funny, etc and it made it go by so fast. We did have a few snafu's throughout but we figured it out as we went. Jared got really sick and couldn't stop throwing up, I also got sick after my second leg with stomach issues but they subsided long enough for me to get in my third run-- thanks to Jenni for letting me go do her leg! And our other van had someone come down with stress fractures and major blisters! Apparently it's all part of the fun in a Ragnar. Anyway, I had a great time and will hopefully do another one another time!

These are the Moments

I'm falling extremely behind in my blogging-- and one of these days I will catch up, but I'm starting with this...

These moments melt my heart!

I'm Ready

We made the switch! We are now Directv as opposed to Dish Network. Why? The free NFL Sunday Ticket was too good to pass up. You see I am going for three straight championships in my fantasy league-- and was somehow talked into joining my dad's league as well. So with all the individual players that I need to pay attention to I, of course-- it's only natural, need to have the NFL Sunday Ticket! And I am pumped. And to top it off-- we finally upgraded to HDTV-- I mean we've had really nice, big screen tvs for a few years now and have never had the HD upgrade-- well, the regular tv is now a bygone age for us and we have thrust ourselves into the modern world! Now, I can sit back and watch my football in style!!! Wish me luck-- I'm 1-0 in both leagues-- Micheal Vick better keep it up!!!