Memorial Day Weekend

We had a really fun, full Memorial Day Weekend. Friday night we went camping with two other families in the ward. It was so fun to eat tin foil dinners and smores and to sit around the fire talking until late at night. As we were headed to our tent around 1 am Jeff said, "This has been so fun. We'll have to camp a lot this summer." I agreed.

Well, we had spoken a little too soon, because the next few hours were absolutely miserable!! Jackson and Lexi kept waking up. Every time Jackson woke up, I would have to wiggle my way out of my sleeping bag (Note: there is no way to do this quietly!), grab Jackson, settle back into my sleeping bag with him, and then wiggle back out to put him down once he was sleeping. I must have done that five times in the first two hours. And I swear as soon as I would settle back into my bag and almost fall back to sleep, Lexi would sit up and say, "mom? mom?" I would tell her to lie down and go back to sleep, but she would come lay right by me, then in my bag, then on top of me...changing positions about every 30 seconds. A few hours into the madness, I thought, "the next time one of the kids wakes up, I am going to pack them up and take them home!" Somehow we all finally fell asleep for a few short hours.

Despite the lack of sleep, Lexi did not sit still all morning. She is our little adventurer. And Jackson was content to sit in his chair. (I promise I do still hold him...sometimes! :))

As soon as we got home we put the camping gear away, bathed the kids, cleaned up, threw everything we had worn in the wash and got ready for Jeff's parents and niece to come visit. We spent the afternoon visiting the Hoover Dam. The dam tour was pretty cool. Then we went on the observation deck to take some pictures. My fear of heights + a really low railing + the straight concrete drop off for hundreds of feet below+ mommy danger instincts (you know, how every place you go or every situation you're in, you automatically envision the worst possible things that could happen to your child while you're there) = a very nervous/uncomfortable few minutes for me! I was very relieved once we all went back inside.

The Tews invited us and a bunch of families over for a pool party/BBQ on Monday. We were there all day. It was a lot of fun. So...we had a great weekend, but it was so exhausting that I am still trying to recover from it!

Messy Eaters!!

Today Jackson had his first rice cereal. I think he was more interested in chewing his hands than eating food...


And Lexi is a complete disaster while she eats. Every time we give her a drink in her high chair, she pours it all into the little side bowl and drinks it like this:


And this is what she looks like after a typical meal. Don't even ask about her hair...she always pulls her elastics out, so on this day I threw on a headband to keep her hair out of her food. Seriously, some days I look at her and think, "Is this little scrounge really my child???!!"

(This is the reason I go through a bottle of Shout gel every few weeks. That stuff is amazing - it works on almost any stain.)

Sometimes You Just Need To Get Away....

Last weekend we thought it would be fun to take a little family trip to St. George. My aunt and uncle have a nice house up in Sunbrook that they are very generous with, so we reserved it for a few days. Friday we went to Cafe Rio for dinner and shopped at the outlets (which are pretty lame, but it was nice to walk around). Lexi also spent time exploring the house....and getting stuck on a shelf in the closet!

Saturday we walked around down town in the morning and went to the Jacob Hamblin house (church historical site). There were two missionary couples there, and Lexi loved being the center of their attention. She ended up just walking over and sitting on one of the Elder's laps for a while. She may look shy in this picture, but she's not. It made his day!

While the kids napped I went to the temple. Later we went swimming. That was Jackson's first time in a pool, and he loved it.

Sunday we went to Zions National Park. I love it there. It was a perfect day: sunny and clear, not too hot, and not too crowded. We hiked to Upper Emerald Pools. It's only a few miles, but I had Jackson in the Bjorn and Jeff had Lexi in a pack, so that was enough!

Monday we went swimming and then cleaned the house. After we made the bed, Lexi kept climbing on to it and playing in the pillows. And then we headed home--with me sitting in the back seat between the kids trying to keep them both happy. Luckily after a few rounds of feeding, singing song, reading books, etc., they both fell asleep. Overall, it was a great trip!

Favorite Recent Purchases

Here are a few recent purchases that I have loved:

1. Bumbo Chair. You can get one for around $40, and after just a week, I feel like I've gotten my money's worth! Babies can sit in them as soon as they can hold up their own heads. Jackson is LOVING it! And I'm loving it just as much, because I get a break from holding him! I put him on the counter while I'm cooking or on the table while we're eating. It's so small and light that I just move it wherever I am. What I didn't realize was that Lexi would love it, too. Every time I go to put Jackson in it she says, "My chair. My sit." I'm sure this is the first of many things they'll battle over.

2. Guess black heels. I have wanted some black peek-toe shoes forever! Now that I have them, I'm realizing I need something to wear them with and somewhere to wear them to!

3. Wireless internet. Who knew something so simple could make me so happy! :) For the past two years we've been using a neighbor's wireless connection, and the signal was always really weak and inconsistent. We never knew if we could get on when we wanted to and it was really slow. Today we had a second phone line put in at our house (for my company) and at the same time we got our own internet service and a wireless router. When I turned on the computer I saw the wireless signal strength on my computer and it said "excellent." Now that's a first! And it will make blogging much easier and faster. Yea!

Bye Bye Cable

After years of debating back and forth, Jeff and I recently decided to turn off our cable service. It's been three weeks now with no TV in our house, and I have to say...I LOVE it! I wish we would have done it a long time ago. I'm not saying I'll never have TV again - in fact, Jeff came home last weekend and suggested we get DishTV or some other service that would give us 100 channels! His big selling point to me was that we would get BYUTV. Didn't work. I know there will be a big push to turn it on in the fall when football starts up, too, but hopefully we'll keep it off. I don't think there's anything wrong with TV itself, I just found it was all too easy to turn something on while I was feeding Jackson, or while I was eating lunch, or while we were sitting around in the evening. One show leads to the next and before you know it, you've wasted hours. Now we spend more time reading books, singing songs, playing in the back yard, etc. And in the evenings we go to the park or for a walk or run errands or work on stuff around the house. It's great. I feel like I get so much more done, which is good, because there's always something I need to get done!

It's funny to me how I got so sucked in to different shows and felt like I had to watch them each week to see what was happening. Reality shows: Who is getting kicked off of Idol? Who is still in the running towards becoming ANTM? Celebrity shows: Who was Paris spotted with? What was Brittany's latest breakdown? Who was sporting a baby bump? Drama: are we ever going to figure out what's going on on LOST? And the answer to all of those questions, I've realized, is WHO CARES???