Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

Boo at the Zoo

Well, all the fliers in the mail finally worked; we decided to go to "Boo at the Zoo". Jamie, Kaiya & I went with Jen, Hannah & Haylee and it was pretty fun. It was soooo cold, (that was my favorite part) and the girls all wore their costumes. Haylee was Tinkerbell, Kaiya was a 50's girl & Hannah was a cheerleader.

We didn't really know what to expect, so I think we would do it differently next time, but there are shows (some with animals, some with people), some carnival games, and "treat stations" where you can trade in your tickets for yummy goodies (they give everyone 6 tickets when you come in). There are also little vignettes set up around the zoo, so of course we had to pop a pose every time we passed one.

Kaiya got to have some bonding time with Daddy.

But my favorite moment of the night was this one.

I am working on a scrapbook page that I got the idea for out of my "Creating Keepsakes" Magazine. They suggested taking a picture of something you are grateful for, every day for a month before Thanksgiving. So I decided to give it a try. Monday was the first day, and that is what I am thankful for... sweet sisterfriends. I am so grateful that even though Kaiya is our first baby, she has two sisters that look out for her. I love you girls!

Squirrel Crazy!

Our dog pepper thinks that she is a mighty tracker. When she goes outside her nose goes directly into the grass and she follows invisible trails all over our backyard. She can sit as still as a statue on our bed looking out the window for hours, waiting for some hapless creature to wander into her domain; just so she can bark menacingly at it.

One summer we had a few doves visit our yard on a regular basis. Now, I personally think doves are some of the most stupid animals on earth and here is why. These doves would come and land on the grass in our yard and just kind of stand around. Pepper would see them out the window and whine and cry like a puppy possessed until we let her outside. Then Pepper would run at top speed, barking at the top of her lungs aaaaaall the way around 2 sides of the house until she got to the side of the yard where the dove was. All this time the dove is just standing in the grass kind of looking around thinking little dovey thoughts like maybe "hey, I wonder where all that barking is coming from, oh, look a dog coming straight at me...hmmm..." So Pepper is coming at top speed at this dove which is just chillin in the grass and she gets all the way up to it barking like a ferocious beast and the dove doesn't fly off, it just stands there! Well Pepper has never caught anything in her life, so she gets about 6 inches away from it and stops, and looks at the dove like "uhh...psst...Mr. Dove, now is the part where you fly away..." So Pepper and the dove stand there looking at each other for a full 10 or 15 seconds before the dove finally realizes, "OH NO! It's a dog" and flies away.

So keep that in mind while I tell you about the squirrels. This time of year the squirrels are going crazy collecting food for the winter, and they run accross our back fence all the time, so when Pepper sees one, she runs crazy back and forth in front of the window crying and barking to be let out, if we dont let her out she hops up on her back legs and stares out the window. Well as you can imagne all this is absolutely facinating for Kaiya, who now loves to look for squirrels too! We keep the curtains in her room open alot and she will look out there and if she sees one she shouts "Squirrel!!!" (Which actually sounds more like "skirls"). Well now she and Pepper have joined together in the great squirrel hunt and now when Kaiya yells squirrel, Pepper comes running!


By the way, this is the closest Pepper ever gets to Kaiya of her own volition.

YAY! VACATION!

We had sooooooo much fun on our Cruise! It was the first time Jamie & I have ever had a weeks vacation together and it was worth every penny! We went to Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel, and left Kaiya with my parents. I wasn't sure how we would do without our sweet baby for a week, but we did fine, until I heard her voice in the background of the phone when we got into port at the end of our trip. Then all I wanted to do was go home. But I am getting ahead of myself! Here is our basic itinerary.

Day One: At Sea
Having a day at sea is the perfect way to start a cruise, we just laid by the pool and did nothing. Then that night we met the people we would be sharing our dinner table with, and they were fabulous. We all got along very well, and got to know each other over the course of the week. There were Nick & Justine from Indiana, who were our resident cruise & wine experts (on the right in the picture). Kai and John are from San Diego (on the left), Kai is so nice, and has a talent for drawing people out of their shells, and John who will soon be a police officer is a "magician" with the goofiest tricks ever. Everyone was so much fun to get to know!

Day Two: Labadee, Haiti
Haiti is probably the most beautiful place we visited. It was so lush, and the water was as clear as bathwater. There we went snorkeling out at a reef, and saw phenomenal coral & tropical fish, as well as squid, giant crab, jellyfish and sea urchins. We saw the remnants of an 80 foot boat that was destroyed by hurricane Hannah, and then dragged around the bay by hurricane Ike. You could see the exact path the boat took when it was moved around by hurricane Ike, because it destroyed all the vegetation it was dragged over.

Day Three: Ocho Rios, Jamaica
In Jamaica we went inner tubing down the white river. The river went mostly through a beautiful rain forest, although we did go through a few areas where the road came near the river and we could see people selling fish and things. It was wonderful. The crazy part was walking around the tourist areas, where about every 10 feet someone would stop you and ask if you what you were smokin' or if you wanted any "mountain herb". One guy even asked us if we had everything we needed for our party...I have never heard so many euphemisms for marijuana, and I never hope to again!

Day Four: Grand Cayman, British West Indies
Here we went snorkeling again at a beautiful barrier reef and saw a TON of fish, including a moray eel. Then we went swimming with sting rays. I think that was my favorite part of the trip. The boat took us out to a natural sand bar a few miles out from shore, where the water was about up to my rib cage. The water was again, as clear as bathwater, and before we even jumped off the boat, we could see these ENORMOUS rays swimming all over. They ranged in size from 18 inches all the way to 5 feet across. And MAN were these things FRIENDLY. At first they were a little too friendly for me, and I freaked out a little at first. I mean these are the animals that killed the Crocodile Hunter after all! Jamie just jumped right in and started petting them and feeding them, but it took me a little while to get used to them just swimming up on you. A few would swarm you at a time, and they were so big and strong they would push you right over! Jamie fed them squid and the custom is that if you kiss a sting ray on the nose, you will have 7 years of good luck; so Jamie just leaned right over and kissed one. I waited for our guide to hold one steady for me before I kissed one. But I did it and that is the important part, right???

Day Five: Cozumel, Mexico
Here we forwent the beach for something a little more meaningful. We went to the Mayan Ruins at Tulum. It was an amazing experience, and a total testimony builder. We had a tour guide, who showed us around, but eventually we met a tour guide with a BYU hat on, who gave us more LDS related information. I wish we had been able to stay with him the whole time, because when we walked through the gate and looked down over the beautiful structures, I felt like I was transported back to the Book of Mormon times. I guess that there really has never been an official church stance about the relationship between Mezzo-American ruins and the Book of Mormon, so you can't say for sure that the people who built them were Lamanites or Jaredites, etc... but just being there I felt like I could see wicked King Noah and Abinadi testifying to him. It was really pheonomenal.

Day Six: At Sea
Again, a perfect way to wind up a cruise is with another day at sea. We slept in, lounged by the pool and just enjoyed our last day.

Day Seven: Port Canaveral & the Kennedy Space Center
We had such a late flight on Sunday, that we decided to take a tour of the Kennedy Space Center before we went home. Our tourguide was officially a grumpy old man, who was like a great Uncle who you dreaded going to see. He hustled our group from place to place, and regurgitated facts from the posted signs. It got to the point that it was hilarous, and our group was just kind of laughing. He would wave his little clip board and run around gathering up the group like a crazed mother hen. But we did get to see exactly how astronauts go to the bathroom in the orbiter (not shuttle as we learned from Uncle Ralph) and that alone was worth the price of admission.

Overall it was a fabulous vacation, however I am so glad to be home with my sweet baby & be back to my full time job of Mom.

Why we keep the bathroom door closed.

This is why we always keep the door to the bathroom closed...

"Am I in trouble?"

Seriously...Kaiya loves taking baths. So I left the door to the guest bathroom open & Kaiya walked in and immediately got into the bathtub. I could hear her in there, and when I walked in with the camera, she wasn't sure if she was going to be in trouble or not, so that is her, playing it cool...

"Inquiring minds want to know!"

I don't even know what was going through her mind for this one. I like to think it is an experiment of some sort, involving the scientific method and other smart things, but really, she was probably just licking stuff.

Hair Clip Madness!

I should totally be asleep. I have to be up at a very unfriendly hour tomorrow morning, but yet here I am, bitten by the crafty bug. I saw these totally cute hair clips on etsy, and decided to steal their ideas; and I am so pleased with the way they turned out! Jamie isn't here for me to show, so I am going to show them to you!

I wanted to do something Halloween-ish, so in honor of my friend Jen I made a candy corn (don't judge my blanket stitching, I just printed the instructions of the internet, it's the first time I've tried it).

Then I thought maybe something fall inspired, so here's a leaf:

Then Kaiya needed something blue, so...a flower

And finally, I love personalized things, so a pink K-

Ta Da!!! There is my crafty-ness, and I didn't even have to go out and buy any supplies! They are all made out of things I pulled out of the back of the craft cabinet! I love it when that happens!

The Problem with Country Music

So as you may know, I have recently switched over to country music. It was a difficult decision, but as I have said before, country music is more about my life than Green Day or The Cure. When I made the switch, one thing I liked about it was that country music seemed more appropriate for little ears than rock.

Unfortunately, we have run into our first problem with country. We were in the kitchen, and I was fixing breakfast. Kaiya was toddling around in her P.J.'s with her favorite stuffed animal and we had the radio on. I wasn't even really paying attention, until Kaiya learned a new word from the song on the radio; all of a sudden, as clear as day Kaiya said the word "Whiskey".