Monday, May 28, 2012

Road Trippin

 We could not for the life of us get a good picture with my former boss Syrus and his wife Tina. They gave me my first job when I first moved to Cedar City to go to SUU. I worked for them for most of my college career at the the quaint and tasty Pastry Pub. Seriously, if you are ever visiting Cedar and crave fresh food (amazing salads, sandwiches, homemade soups, etc) this is the place to go! If you visit during the Shakespeare Festival, you are likely to bump into several actors from the plays while you are there. I'm so grateful to these people. I would have starved to death had they not hired me out of a 100 applications sitting in a thick pile on their desk. I just kept bugging them until they probably thought they should just hire me since I was going in there everyday anyway. I remember towards the end of Spring semester my first year, I was low on money and I only ate when I worked my shift at "The Pub." When I wasn't working I ate oatmeal because that was all I had left on my tragically bare shelf space allotted to me in my apartment that I shared with 5 other girls. My bare cupboards were a result of my naive foolish spending habits. I went wild with spending, even driving all the way up to Provo to purchase a coat from Gap because the St. George mall didn't have Gap. I guess spending too much money was better than the other "wild" alternatives that a lot of young people indulge in when they leave the home front. ANYWAY, my point is, I must have been looking a little skinny or something because after one of my shifts, Syrus gave me a giant bushel of bananas. He NEVER just gave away food (he's a shrewd Persian business man!). I was very grateful for the gesture, but wondered what in the heck I was going to do with 20+ bananas. I think it was a good thing my roomates liked bananas! I also remember one time when I was having a hard time and he was so concerned about me that he had me go outside and sit in his truck and he played Enya's "Only Time" for me. I was a little freaked out at first, but his intentions were always good. Haha, I still laugh when I think about that. He called me "Meesh" while I worked there and he never let any customer treat me poorly. Working there will forever be burned in my college experience memories. 

 Does anyone know how to get photos to not do this on Blogger? It's so irritating!
 We certainly had a weekend of perfect pictures:)


We were very to glad to see that Nola and her cat "Cat" were still doing well. We always stop by and visit when we are in Cedar. I'm just so grateful she has a wonderful friend that looks after her because she has no family to do that for her. We used to look after her when we lived in her complex and we still worry about her:)

These pictures are from our trip to Cedar City at the beginning of this month. I guess better late than never! We checked out the Iron Mission Museum/State Park (who knew there could be a legit state park right in the middle of Cedar City, UT?) Taj LOVED sitting on all the old tractors and we had quite a time trying to get him out of there. That kid seriously is obsessed with anything that has wheels and a steering wheel. In the five years that Brannon and I actually lived in Cedar City, we had never been to Iron Mission. I definitely think it's a lot more fun with kids. We also caught up with some old friends, no pun intended:), while we were there. You know, it was almost like coming home when we first drove into Cedar City. We sure miss that place, especially the people we left behind! We always get nostalgic and sentimental when we go back there and it's hard to leave. I suppose for now we will just have to settle with visiting.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Ogden Train Museum








Freaking blogger kept flipping these pictures sideways and at the end of a day like today, I have no patience for this!

Today I took Taj to the train museum in Ogden. Brannon is out of town for the week and we were bored out of our gourds, so to the train museum we went! The first thing we had to do was spend nearly an hour in the 90 degree weather getting on and off every single train in the retired train yard. Then we had nice ol' 70+ year old Dave take us for a tour on the hospital car and mail car. I asked Dave if he worked for the railroad and he said "here and there," so I was relieved because then I thought we wouldn't have to have an hour long oration on the history of trains in the 90 degree weather, which felt more like 150 degrees inside those hot train cars. We did get about a 20 min. tour of JUST the medical car and I thought we were all going to die inside there and then I feared that maybe Dave was a little crazy and he would lock us in there and then we'd be dead for sure and nobody would find us until somebody actually requested a tour of the locked car, which nobody probably ever does except senior citizens and overzealous moms like myself and then I thought today was our lucky day because the museum was overflowing with senior citizens on their field trip out of the senior home and maybe we wouldn't die after all....um yeah, heat does that to me--makes me talk crazy talk! Ask anyone that knows me. I turn all Jekyll/Hyde in the heat. After we made it out alive from the tour, I kindly thanked Dave for the tour and he finished the tour off by doing a great big farmer's blow from his nose. I was just thankful we were not downwind. Ew. Gross. We toured the rest of the museum without incident and paid one more visit to the retired train yard, after which I had to drag Taj screaming and kicking to the car because those were "his twains" and by gosh there was no way he was going to part with them. The entire ride home all I heard was, "Tun awound, back up, my twain, I wide a twain, tun awound, etc." He is still talking about it. That boy loves anything with a motor. I'm sure we will be back soon to visit Dave and the trains!

Taj's Angle


















I love to look through the photos on my camera and find that Taj has snuck a few shots in here and there. I really like his pictures because you see everything from a 3-year-old's perspective. Everything must seem huge and exciting. It's no wonder I can hardly keep up with Taj as he explores the world around him!

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Haiven's Stats

This picture was taken by Taj. I'm sure Brannon will love that look on his face and I'm sure that he will especially love that I posted it on the blog:)

I just realized that I forgot to post Haiven's 6 month stats. She is in the 85% percentile for her height, the 67% percentile for her weight, and her head is in the 99% percentile. So basically her head is really huge! We took her to Primary Children's to a neurosurgeon to check it out. She had a c-scan that revealed she has excess fluid around her brain, which is making her head grow large at a fast rate. Not to worry though, apparently this condition is perfectly normal and she should outgrow it by school age. We will definitely keep a close eye on her noggin just in case though. She sure does get A LOT of kisses on that big nog of hers! She is now almost 7 months, so I guess I am staying true to my nature in that I am late for almost everything. I don't think I used to be late for everything until I had kids, but on second thought, I do remember being late almost always for my early morning college classes. Geeze, I must be a major procrastinator or something and throwing kids in the mix definitely did not help this bad habit of mine, but I am giving myself brownie points for trying anyway!

Our Life Lately in Pictures



















Because I am incredibly behind with my posts, I am going to do my classic go-to technique of pictures with captions. Life has been so busy right now, mostly consumed with blowing bubbles, wagon rides, riding bikes, taking walks, reading the same three books over and over again, cutting the tops of millions of "apackacicles" (popsicles), introducing the wonderful world of food to my baby Haivi, working on teething, and generally just everything a mom does. I've tried to limit my time with technology and be a more "in the moment mom" and it's really made a difference so far. I'm going to keep blogging so that I can keep our family journal current, but I don't think Facebook or Pinterest needs me so much anymore....my kids need me, technology doesn't. I can honestly say that life without technology has been a lot less stressful and I've been a lot more clear-headed and organized. As for my newfound love for Netflix, well, we can't conquer all our demons at once, can we?