What happened?

 I can't believe how different they are. Even Elsie has grown in the last six months. This is one of those moments where I realize my sweet babies aren't going to be babies forever...

Seven Months

Little sweetie pie. Alice has mastered sitting up and loves to sit on the floor and play with Elsie and steal her toys. She seems so glad that she can finally play along instead of just watch from the sidelines. She will eat just about anything we give her and is learning how to pick up small pieces of food. She still hasn't mastered crawling, but Elsie is determined to teach her so it probably won't be long before she gets going. Alice loves to babble, and so far is favoring the bababa sound. Every once in a while she throws in a mamama, but I think she just does it to mess with my head. I'm trying to teach her to say "Mama", but every time I do Elsie comes up and says "Alice! Say Elsie! Elsie!". I guess we'll just have to wait and see who wins out.

Cuteness Overload

Uh-oh...

It won't be long now, especially with a big sister showing her the way...

Alice hasn't quite figured out the whole forward motion yet. She has gone backwards, but I don't think it was deliberate. She is, however, very good at turning in circles. Won't be too much longer until she figures it out.

What happened to August?

Where did this month go? It seems like I blinked and all of a sudden it is almost September.

This is a weird time of year for me. We have always moved for the summer following Alan's summer jobs, but we always moved back home at the start of fall. It feels like we should be packing up and driving back to Utah any day now. I have to keep reminding myself that this is home now.

This is also the first time since I went to kindergarten that I won't be preparing myself or my husband to go back to school. It is weird to think that the only thing that will change in September is the weather. No new schedules, no books to buy, no grades to worry about. The next time we will deal with "back to school" is when Elsie starts kindergarten. Yikes. Not sure I'm ready for that... 

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean

Read aloud by Elsie

Borrowed Chariot

Another fun thing that happened while Alan was gone on his business trip... We were involved in a hit-and-run. Someone backed into our car in the parking lot, got out and surveyed the damage, then got back in and drove away. Luckily for us, we had neighbors outside who saw the incident and reported it.

Not only did the driver of the other car not have any insurance, but he didn't even have a driver's license. The whole thing has been a huge hassle dealing with the police and our insurance company. Everything is filed now and it is out of our hands, so that is a relief. Our car is in the shop now being repaired, and we have been driving around a rental car.

It is a KIA Soul. It looks pretty ridiculous in my opinion. Like a box on wheels. But... I have to say it has been growing on me. It is a lot more... zoom-y than our car. It has been really fun to drive around a new, clean car and play with all of it's features. I find myself making excuses to drive it around more.

In other news, isn't this a cute picture of me and the girls at the zoo? Thanks again, Vanessa!

Man of Steel

 Alan and I enjoy watching TV series together. We watch a few current series, like House and Chuck, but our favorite way to watch them is after the series is over. We watched Lost after it was over, and we made it through the whole series in about 3 months. I don't think I would have survived if we had to wait the whole six years like the rest of the world did...

Lately we have been on a Superman kick. Since it is done airing, we have started watching Smallville. We have been enjoying watching it and shouting out advice to the characters. Oh, Clark Kent, for someone who has had to lie about who he is his whole life, he is not very good at it. Don't just stand there with a pained expression on your face! What does that say about Alan and I when we can come up with feasible alibis for him every episode? And isn't it so convenient how everyone seems to loose their memories at the end of the episodes? There is more amnesia than any day time soap opera!

We also checked out the old Christopher Reeve Superman movies from the library. We have only watched the first two so far, and they are hilarious with how ridiculous they are. Really, Superman? You can hold up a fault line in California, but you get smashed by a bus that the super dudes throw at you? It takes you less than 60 seconds to fly a hydrogen bomb into outer space, but it took you 5 minutes to fly to Paris? Not to mention the fact that you flew around the world so fast that you reversed time. And really? You now have magical kissing powers to erase Lois's memory? Where did that come from? And what do you even see in Lois anyway? I think my all time favorite part is every time he changes into Superman, all he has to do is rip open his shirt and the rest of his clothes magically disappear.

Like I said, we've been having a lot of fun with them. One side effect of so much Superman; I go to bed with the Theme Song stuck in my head and then I have Superman dreams. Some of them have been pretty cool...

5K take two

Remember my first 5K? It wasn't my best run. I was sick with a bug that left me throwing up the day before and I was secretly 6 weeks pregnant with Alice. I was committed to doing it and I finished it, but I always thought that I could have done better...

Today I redeemed myself with the Mama Goose Run. It was a small 5K in my local town; there were probably no more than 80 to 100 people that ran with me. I was very intimidated walking up to the starting line. Everyone was young and spry and looked like they were current track runners in high school/college. There were a few older folks, but even they looked in way better running shape than me. I tried not to think about all of that as we started running and it felt like everyone was passing me. I just focused on my goals and put one foot in front of the other.

Before the race with Elsie wearing my new race shirt.

 Alice and Elsie had a fun time with Alan waiting for me. There was a playground that they played on until...

 ...the rain came. Luckily, I had thought to bring the umbrellas. Alan ran back to the pavilion with Alice under the big umbrella while Elsie walked back under her own umbrella. At least they stayed somewhat dry-ish. I can't say the same for me.

 I don't think I could have gotten wetter if I had jumped in a pool. It was coming down really, really hard. I have to say though, I think I would prefer running in a torrential downpour than running in blistering heat. At least it kept me nice and cool.

I set out with two goals: beat my previous time and don't come in last. I am happy to say that I accomplished both of my goals, and as of right now I have no more desire to run anymore races.

...Then of course, that is what I said last year too. I guess we'll see what happens next summer.

Lack of Motivation

I have had these pictures sitting on an untitled post for about a week now. I've been meaning to hop on and type something up about last week, but I've been having a lack of blogging motivation. Even Alan has commented how I haven't posted in over a week. Not sure when the last time that happened...

So here we go. Trying to get back on the blogging horse.

Alan had his first business trip last week. I probably could have talked more about it while it was happening; it was a little bit of a rough week and I could have used an outlet. But I didn't really want to advertise the fact that I was home alone with my girls to who ever might be lurking on my blog, so... yeah.

I sometimes feel very weak admitting that I had a hard time being alone with the kids for a few days. My respect has grown for those who do it on a regular basis. There are plenty of women in my ward who's husbands are gone a lot more than Alan. They have got to be made out of stronger stuff that I am...

"Choo Choo!" says the train at the zoo

We mostly just stayed really busy. We left the house every morning after eating breakfast, came home for a nap, then went out again until dinner time. By the time dinner was over, it was time to start getting ready for bed. I put Alice down while Elsie watched an episode or two of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, then Elsie went to bed. I usually crawled in bed with a book until I fell asleep an hour or so later.

It was a tiring routine, but it made the time pass. Elsie loved getting out and going places. Every time she woke up (in the morning and from her nap) she came out and asked "where us going tonight, Mommy?" We went to the zoo (twice), played with friends, went to the library, the store, Costco (love their double seat shopping carts...) and anywhere else we could think of. Once we even we to the store, not because we actually needed to buy anything, but because Elsie loves pushing the little kid shopping carts. We walked laps around the store with Elsie leading the way for a good hour or so.

We all missed Alan a lot. My plan was to wear the kids out enough during the day so they would crash at bedtime. It worked a few times, but a couple nights it just made things worse. Elsie didn't really understand why we weren't just picking Daddy up from work. Alan normally does the bed time routine. One night she was so distraught that he wasn't there... having me get her ready for bed was the last straw. She threw a tantrum like I've never seen from her before. It took an hour to calm her down and she eventually was so exhausted that she fell asleep in my arms.

I'm glad that Alan is home. I'm glad that his job only requires him to travel a few times a year. As exhausting as it was to have him gone, it is exhilaration to know that I was able to handle the challenge. It feels good to know that I can do hard things.

Zoo trip

We are lucky enough to live in an area that has a zoo. I guess the story behind it is there once was a rich guy that donated a big plot of land to the city with the stipulation that anything built on it had to be free for the public to enjoy. The city decided to build a zoo, so we can go and see all the animals anytime we want completely free of charge. That is my kind of zoo.

 We have a lot of free time this week, so I decided to take the girls and check it out. Elsie was so excited. When we pulled into the parking lot, she starting jumping up and down in her car seat and said "The zoo! Yay! Thanks Mom! You're the best mom ever!"

 We picked a good day to go. It was warm and overcast; a little more humid than I would have liked, but we survived. The animals were all very active, walking around and playing. It was fun to watch them.

 I think this is one of my favorite pictures of the day.

 Alice looks bored in this picture, but that was just because we hadn't gone into the monkey house yet...

 Alice loved the orangutans. They were being very silly and she just laughed and laughed at them. The bigger one had a sheet of fabric that he kept hiding under while the smaller one swung around above him trying to pull it off.

 The giraffes were outside when we passed by. Elsie called out to them. "Hi Giraffes!" Surprisingly, one of them ambled over to say hello back. He just stared and stared at her while she carried on a conversation with him.

 A second one came over too. They tried to eat the tall tree by Elsie so we got to see their super long tongues. Elsie thought it was pretty cool. She should probably get a job as a giraffe tamer.

 The ostrich was very loud and kept trying to eat the fence.

 So small...

 The brown bear was out and pacing around. They had a sprinkler hanging down over the rocks and he liked to stand in the water.

 The zoo had a really big playground/children's area. There is also a petting zoo area where the kids can feed the animals, but it was already closed by the time we got there. The play structure is huge! Elsie couldn't climb all the way to the top slide and I couldn't help her with Alice in the backpack. She could still climb pretty high all by herself and there was plenty to keep her occupied.

 Alice wished she could get out and play too...

 It is a fun zoo. I haven't been to a wide variety of zoos to compare it to, but it seems very nice to me. It had a good diversity of animals, wasn't too huge, and had a lot of activities for the kids. I think we will be going back a lot.