Wednesday, October 31

Noche de Brujos


We took these pictures before Karen's annual Halloween Party about a week and a half ago. Mack decided to go as Pancho Villa, the Mexican Revolutionary general. I find the resemblance somewhat remarkable. Please note the mustache and bullets.


Mack won the Halloween Bingo contest and the award (puzzle) for "Happiest Pumpkin". Here he is enjoying his plunder, and yes that is my belly on the left.

The rest of these are simply pictures to appease the masses. "The Masses" being my family, both literally and figuratively).

Our little dare devil. Bet you didn't know Little Tikes tricycles could be so 'hard-core'. Don't feel bad, it's sorta an underground sport. Y'know, very minimalist, no brakes, no pedals, that sorta thing.


We've got the "Time Out" thing down. Now how do I convince him it's a bad thing?

Tyler found Mack enjoying the latest edition of U.S. News and World Report (No, we don't really like this magazine, but it's on the recommended reading list for the Foreign Service) with a nice snack of peas. The floor is a mess. Things are a mess in a lot of these pictures, but we refuse to vacuum more than once a day.


These pics are from The Seattle Center when Kassey and Will came to visit. I love these pictures! There really isn't much I can add to that.

And these are from our day in Vancouver, B.C. (not Washington). It is on this day, Mack discovered Seagulls, and the wonderful noise they make. He calls them "Birdy" and mimics them with an "EEEk, EEk!"

Happy Halloween everyone. Consider these pictures my treat to you for visiting our blog. And if you don't consider these pictures a treat, then I'm really not sure why you come to our blog in the first place...

Wednesday, October 24

Can You Believe This?

This just absolutely disgusts me. Literally, these stories put a bad taste in my mouth...

BORDER PATROL PITCHES IN

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SUSPECTED OF STEALING SUPPLIES

Monday, October 22

San Diego Fires

I've been having a hard time finding good up-to-the-minute information about the fires in San Diego County. Maybe other people are too? If so, here are some good local sites I've found to be useful:
My family is currently in the "Estimated Advisory" evacuation area. Their air quality is (as far as I can tell) 6x worse than "bad", all of their schools are currently closed and the hospital my Dad works at is still open. I don't think they're planning on needing to leave the house any time soon and are harboring some evacuated families from the ward for the night. So I guess for now, all is well.
If anyone knows of any other sites or blogs with better or more current information, let me know.

Friday, October 19

5 minutes ago

I'm in the bathroom brushing my teeth (don't worry, I brushed them this morning too) as we're about to head out the door. Tyler had remarked earlier when he got home about how tired I looked, so after I brush my teeth I look into the mirror and say, "Well, at least I don't look as bad as I feel. I feel like garbage." Then I turn and look at Tyler and ask, "So I look like...crap?" Tyler's answer: "What's worse? Crap or garbage?"
Neither, Tyler. The answer is neither.
You look beautiful never hurt anyone.

Thursday, October 18

Innocent Mess

Until yesterday, when Tyler and I asked Mack to go get a diaper he would come back with a diaper about 50% of the time. Not anymore. He's found something much more interesting. The wipes. Now he heads into his room, very obediently, and goes to the bin his under his bed where we keep the diapers and wipes. Pulls the top off the wipes and then, using only one wipe at a time, proceeds to wipe his nose over and over again until I come in and stop him and shove all the wipes back in the box (they only touched his nose, I'll use them again).
And while I was typing this post, Mack decided to pour his milk onto the coffee table (silly name since there has never been coffee on it).

Wednesday, October 10

Scrambled. Like my brain and Mack's breakfast.

It feels as if I haven't posted in forever and I figure with Kassey coming in today I'd better get on the ball before things get even busier (is that even a real word?). Yesterday, we had a Dr.'s appointment and I was finally able to discuss my past history and really get to the bottom of things. For the moment, it looks like I'll be getting an amniocentesis at 38 weeks and hopefully inducing soon after that, as long as everything looks good for Henry. I also had my glucose screening test yesterday and should be getting my results back for that by this afternoon.
On Saturday, while Tyler was gone at the priesthood session I made the traditional "Conference Craft". Actually, the craft per say wasn't traditional, but what would Conference weekend be without some sort of crafty item to show for all this time spent indoors? That's right, just what every apartment NEEDS: a Halloween banner. I've seen these throughout the blogosphere so I can't take any credit for the idea, but I'll certainly be making more in the future. It only took about 2 hours from start to finish and cost about 3 dollars. How can you beat that? Best of all it was a much needed distraction from my real project, making Mack's winter pajamas. (But just in case I ever give one of these away as a gift or something I want you to know that I probably had to work REALLY HARD on that one. wink. wink.)

On Monday I tried making a cake with Diet Coke. I read somewhere on the internet that you can substitute all the eggs, oil and water in a cake mix with a can of Diet Coke, resulting in a cake with less fat and cholesterol etc. I've be absolutely craving cupcakes lately so I thought I'd give it a go and figured one can of Coke spread out through 24 cupcakes can't be that bad for me. I'm happy to report that they turned out WONDERFUL! Super moist, and I had to let them bake a minute or two longer, but they're great! So great in fact, that I had to freeze most of them to keep myself from eating half the batch in two days. Try it I say! For family night on Monday we went over to Martha Lake to try and feed the ducks with some stale bread I'd been saving. Little did we know it would be posted every 10ft "DO NOT FEED THE WATER FOWL". Bummer. But, to Mack's amazement, they did have bouncy cars. He's absolutely obsessed with cars lately and it's starting to drive me crazy. He points out every single car we see on the road, in stores, and in books. He even says "bye ta-car" whenever we leave the car to go into a store or wherever it is we happen to be going. I don't have any idea how this obsession came about. He has exactly ONE little green wooden car. I guess boys will be boys.

As part of my round about way of getting ready for the new baby, we bought Mack a new and better car seat. Here he is in his new Fisher Price Safe Voyage Deluxe. Isn't he handsome? I'm so much happier with this new seat. I've really become a bit of a car seat nut over the past couple weeks. I'm just now learning why it is so important to leave kids in a 5-point harness as long as possible and avoid boosters by any means necessary. Eventually Henry will get Mack's Fisher Price seat and Mack will then go into a high weight harnessed seat (ie: Radian 65). I want to encourage (without sounding preachy) any mom's out there to really research for yourself why extended harnessing is so important for your kid's safety. There are a lot of good resources out there, here's one or two to help get you started.

Weekends around here have been a blur. Last Saturday we decided to check out Salmon Days in Issaquah. Picture Swiss Days, but with fish, more people and a little less calico. We didn't eat any salmon (only two places with out of control lines), but we did spend a fair amount of time at the hatchery watching them climb the ladders. Mack was sufficiently impressed and I was shocked at how rude adults can be to kids who are just trying to get a good look. Relax people.
The Saturday before last was the Autumn Leaf Festival in Leavenworth. It's a cute little Bavarian-ish town about 2 hours away in the Cascades. The drive out was positively breathtaking. The town itself was cute and kitschy, but it did leave a little to be desired. I wish they'd teach the sales people in the stores basic German greetings such as "Guten Tag" instead of "Hey there, try some cheese!" We did get some decent Bratwurst and as we were leaving saw a troupe of what appeared to be middle aged, slightly overweight viking strippers. Looked like some lucky lady's night!
Speaking of Kassey, she set up a blog! Check her out HERE, and be sure to leave a comment to let her know you stopped by.