Tis a beautiful place

You know how everyone always says that Hawaii is so stinkin beautiful? Well, it is! Despite the awful plane ride, the nasty 3 year old and his case of the "I wants" and Tatum being beyond exhausted and crying... Tis a beautiful place.

Tate finally fell asleep and is napping despite the 3 hour time difference. Tony took Spencer down to the beach and I am about to take a nice bath (gotta rinse off the travel and the sweat from my Oregonian body going into shock from the nice weather) and then sit on the porch of our hale and crack open a nice book!

We have officially been lei'd!

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport...

So I have a small bladder. It's no secret to anyone who has spent an hour or 2 in my presence. So during the hour and a half trip it takes us to get to the airport we inevitably had to stop. I took 3 1/2 year old Spencer in the stall with me... As we are sitting there I realize I have to go number 2. Spencer starts asking questions...

Spencer: Why are you sitting down?

Me: Because I'm a girl.

Spencer: Oh, and Daddy and me stand up?

Me: Yes.

Spencer: Are you going poopy?

Me: Yes.

Spencer: Is it stuck? If it is you can try again later.

From the other stall: *giggles.

CARS!

Okay, I'll admit it, we go through cars like we go through toilet paper. In the nearly 5 years we have been married, we have collectively had 11 cars. But if you ask me, we have had a good reason for each car change! And now, I am ready for a new car! First let me give you a rundown of our car past...

Tony started with an older Honda Accord when we got together... And I drove a 1997 Suzuki Esteem. We were young, broke and they did their jobs... got us to and fro...







Right before we got married I totaled my Suzuki (my one and only accident) and got myself a cool Mazda Tribute - 2001. A big improvement from my postage size prior. And as Tony's car started to fall apart (the clutch was totally busted) he got a massive gas hog: the Ford Taurus.











After about 5 months of being married we were pregnant! And soon after I realized I didn't want to be driving a stick with the baby in the back. And I've always wanted a Jeep Liberty... so we got the Renegade. It was awesome and this wicked army green color too! Tony wanted something a little more friendly on the environment so he got a cute little blue VW New Beetle. Yes, he picked it out all by himself. And yes, he is apparently comfortable in his sexuality. :)









After our 10 pound child made his way into this world we realized we needed to think bigger. Within the first 4 months we had to get a bigger car seat, and we realized that the cool, but not so realistic Renegade could not fit a car seat turned backwards in the back seat with a 6'4" Tony, driving or not. So our next purchase was (and to this day my favorite) the 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca. I LOVED THAT CAR! We also realized that we couldn't fit Spencer's car seat in the back of the Beetle if need be either, so Tony got a 2006 Honda Civic. Both blue...








We soon realized that 2 ridiculously high car payments was just not doable. So Tony sold his Honda and got a modestly priced Audi A6 Quattro while for the first time in a long time, I kept my Subaru...After only 6 months of the Audi, we realized just how costly an older German made car can be. We had to fix it so many times, it drove me nuts. We finally realized we needed to get rid of it. And it didn't make much sense to me that I had the beautiful car and we only had enough money in our budget to get Tony a junker car. So... after 2 years (the longest I'd owned a car) we traded in our Subaru & Audi and for the same price we were paying per month for the Subaru alone, got our current vehicles: a 2007 Dodge Charger & 2006 Hyuandi Accent, both silver.








I know what you all think... it's ridiculous how many cars we have had... But if you think about it, it's kind of like dating. After going through all these cars, we have really honed in on what we want and don't want in a relationship... er uh, car.

So here's the deal...

I want YOU to help me pick out a new car!

Everyone says now is the best time to buy, and we agree. Tony is going to keep his Hyuandi since it gets great gas mileage and is just a commuter car. But I ABHOR my Charger. I don't like how the doors only open half way or all the way, I hate how low it is to the ground. And we want to have another baby in the next year or two and will be needing a vehicle with 3rd row seating.

So here's my list of wants in our next vehicle. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please let us know!

• 3rd row seating (I totally would have kept the Subaru if we had gotten 3rd row seating)
  
• Either a hybrid larger SUV OR crossover SUV (Don't want a big SUV unless it's a little friendly on the environment)
  
• Used
• Around $20k
• AWD
  
• Would LOVE to have Nav and Entertainment package!

So here's a cool surprise! If YOU are the person who finds/suggests our next car for us (the one that we finally decide on), there will be a prize for you! Don't know what, but I will try and make it something semi-cool. ;)

Thanks so much! And happy hunting!

Strollers

I HATE ALL STROLLERS! Seriously now. I, for the life of me, cannot find a stroller that I like. It's ridiculous. There are so many options out there that you'd think that I would fall in love with one that's priced decently? No. Like every other first time mother out there, when I found out I was pregnant, the first thing we needed to get was a car seat & stroller combo. So I did some research and figured Graco was a good brand and headed up to our nearest Babies R Us do some purchasing. I fell in love with this "Mocha" print combo and took it home.

I was so excited to use it... That is until I realized it weighed like 730 pounds! I didn't get the "lite" version, oh no. I HAD to get the "quattro." I thought it meant cooler or coolest, but really it just meant freakin' heavy. I also thought it might help me lose the baby weight faster if it weighed a decent amount. Dumb me. Just hurt my back.

So then I went the polar opposite way once Spencer was able to sit semi-upright without his head flopping about. I got this cheap umbrella stroller for like $10 at Target. Perfect. Super light weight... won't hurt my back... wrong again! Didn't hurt my back from lifting it, hurt my back from bending over too far. I swear, the only person in our family that can push it comfortably is my 3 1/2 year old son. My 6 foot 4 inch husband absolutely refuses to even try.
So when I found out I was having our second baby, I was like, totally gotta get a double stroller! But not one of those massively bulky and annoyingly long ones... So my sister-in-law and a friend of mine recommended the Joovy Sit & Stand... Umm, I loved it for about 4 months (the time it took my daughter to outgrow the infant car seat that I could just click into the front portion). It is absolutely NOT comfortable for her in any way. The front section is like sitting against a flat board and only reclines to one position. Reclined or Not. And when it's reclined, my poor son gets a flat board to the back when he's sitting in the sit & stand section. So no falling asleep while we shop. Not to mention my husband has to oil the wheels every 2 days because my children weigh so much (22 & 32 pounds) that it squeaks like nobodies business. Such an irritant.
The only stroller that I have heard great things about, from a friend, and looks like it could possibly be comfortable for both the children at the same time is the Phil & Ted. Very rad looking, cool placement of kiddos and nice large wheels that turn when you want them to. All this at a modest price of close to $400! And that's WITHOUT the attachment for the second kid...
Are you freakin' kidding me!?! It costs more than my first car! And I'm not old! So my first car was like 10 years ago... I love my kids, but not that much.

So here's my question... Are there any nice, comfortable, non-bulky, semi-stylish strollers for 2 kids out there with a price tag this isn't going to make me cry?

Hawaiian Amendment

I think I speak for a lot of mothers out there when I say I'm not quite ready to leave my near one year old daughter over night.

I started planning this trip to Hawaii about a week ago when I found out I'll be getting the dreaded orthodontics again. Turns out it's really hard to plan a destination vacation in a relatively short period of time. Who knew? ;) So after a few days of internal and external debate, we have decided to take the children with us! Not exactly the honeymoon type vacation we were thinking of, but this way I won't be freaking out every time I see a couple with their kids. I won't be totally unable to relax and take in the experience. I won't be calling my mom every 5 minutes to check on my babies. We will make it work!

Not to mention I found this wickedly awesome deal that if we go by May 3rd the all inclusive resort we want to go to is 50% off. Sweet. So basically taking the children now vs. going later by ourselves is the same price. So now I'm nearly guilt free. Not guilty for leaving my babies. Not guilty for asking my mom to take time off work to watch them. Not guilty for spending more money! Win win win...

How do I leave my babies?

So I may be the minority, but I have never left my little girl over night. It wasn't until Tatum was born that I left Spencer over night and that's just because I was giving birth. As you've all read, we're planning a trip to Hawaii next month and the more I think about it, the more I start to freak out, and not in a good way.

Tatum will be one on the 6th of May and she is completely attached to me. She's a cuddler and an absolute sweetheart. But I want to pose a question to all of you parents out there... Will my daughter hate me for leaving her for 5 days? Will she stop wanting to cuddle? Will she not want me when I return? She and Spencer will be staying with my parents (my mom is one of a couple people I trust to take care of my kids). I'm so nervous, I feel like I'm going to throw up. I had a meltdown and I was crying over just thinking about it. Ridiculous right? Part of me just wants to take them with me, but the whole point of this was for the hubster and I to have a "real" honeymoon, since ours consisted of 3 nights at the rainy Oregon coast.

Please be honest, I'm just so afraid she's going to cry the entire time I'm gone and then resent me when I return. How do I do this?

Sick... AGAIN!?!

Oh dear LORD, I think my children and I missed the boat on immunity when they were giving it out! I am a sad and pathetic asthmatic and have been since birth. I missed a lot of school because of it. On average I would have about 4 sinus infections and 2-3 bad bouts of asthma per year growing up. After 5 years of allergy shots and sinus surgery, things are much better. HOWEVER, Spencer has inherited the dreaded asthma. Sucks to your ass-mar! (Little Lord of the Flies reference for those that think I'm two fries short of a happy meal).

Spencer has gotten a cold maybe 2 times in his short 3 1/2 years on this planet where it HASN'T turned into pneumonia/bronchiolitis. We're talking about in insane amount of lung infections. It's miserable.Or at least that's what one would think right?

When your baby is sick, it's the saddest thing in the world. The coughing, the snot and puppy dog eyes. SAD! EXCEPT when your baby turns into a toddler that no longer wants to just sit in mommy's lap when they are sick. Instead, he wants to run around, make himself cough even more AND to top it all off, repeats the following phrase every 3 minutes: "I need a tissue!"

I love my boy, I feel terrible when he's sick, but if I hear him whine, "I need a tissue" again in the next 5 minutes, I'm going to put in my 2 weeks notice. Done.

Good thing he went to bed already.

Hawaii here I come!

I am not gonna lie. I am totally freaking out. Not in a good way. But I am going to Hawaii.
It's decided. May 14th. Done. Okay, let me back up real quick and explain...

Where should I begin. When I was in 7th grade I got braces to straighten my teeth. I had them on until 8th grade. But that was just to straighten them, because you see, I had this wicked underbite, so that everytime I chewed I looked like this: So my freshman year of high school I got braces a 2nd time along with some wickedly awesome reverse headgear. This is actually the exact make, model & color... I know, you're jealous.
Anyway, got the braces off a year later and it fixed the problem, or so they thought. I went for about 9 years only able to chew on one side of my mouth since the other side didn't touch. After going to the dentist and the dentist telling me that I had so much wear on my teeth that by the time I was 40 I'd have nubs on one side and normal teeth on the other I went to the orthodontist.

As luck would have it, he recommended braces for a 3rd time! Turns out my husband had a wicked crossbite and needed them as well. So we broke the bank and took the plunge. Last April Tony got his removed and at 8 1/2 months pregnant I finally got mine off just in time to give birth to Tatum.

Turns out I had some wicked inflamation in my jaw that made my bite even worse. The only place in my mouth where my teeth met were in the front. Orthodontist man blamed it on the hormones from baby birthing and such. But here we are a year later and still no sign of recovery.

So lucky me, I get to have braces a FOURTH TIME! Got the lovely news this morning and had a freak attack. Tony & I were planning on ditching the kids with my parents for a few days sometime this fall and taking that honeymoon we never got and running off to Hawaii. And now, knowing that my face will once again be full of metal (May 26th: doomsday) I have decided we are going sooner rather than later! I don't want to look at our amazing Hawaii pictures and see metal.

But on the plus side, my orthodontist is footing the bill!

Bathroom Talk

Just a little advice for when your children are driving you nuts...

What ever happened to those Easter egg shrink wrap thing-a-ma-doodads?

I have never really been a fan of Easter egg dying. It's just messy and makes an absolute dreadful mess. My absolute favorite as a kid were those shrink wrap type deals that you put around your egg and dropped it into boiling water. So easy, so fast. Nearly non-existent clean up. What ever happened to those? They were the coolest. I assume there were too many lawsuits of burned children trying to shrink wrap their eggs?

Anyway, I was at the Target the other day, yes, I call it THE Target, way cooler that way. Anywho... saw there was this kit that you just sponge painted the eggs. Seemed way easier and I thought there was more room for creative freedom. So I paid the $1.99 and took it home. We busted it out tonight and let me tell ya, NOT easy OR clean. And since my 3 year old is a clean freak like his father he only wanted to paint each egg one color and within 5 minutes we were done.So here are Spencer's works of art. The one multicolored one is the only egg I could get Spencer to let me paint. I get the artistic itch sometimes and it's hard to let Spencer do his thing without going back through and "fixing" them. Is that bad?
When we were finished I took Spencer to the sink to wash his hands only to realize mine were the filthy ones. He didn't even have a spot on his! Ridiculousness. I am guessing I won't be the only mommy at church tomorrow with purplish bluish greenish pinkish yellow fingertips. Or at least I'm hoping.

Help! I want to move my blog!

So like any new blogger, I have decided I want more! I want to upgrade my sight, give it a little makeover. But I need some help... I have iWeb and I've been piddling around with it and I've found it to be pretty rad. How do I go about merging iWeb & my current blog? Any ideas, suggestions? Anything would help in the most tremendous way...

Thanks so much!

A Picture's Worth 1,000 Words

So what do you do when your husband is in a teleconference meeting in your 3 year old's room, the house needs cleaned because it's on the market and potential buyers could show up at a moments notice and the baby cries everytime you set her down? Make it work my friends... make it work.

Social Media Mommy

I am married to someone who is tech savvy and totally into social media... His job requires it in fact. As a direct result, I have become a little addicted to this world as well. I LOVE my computer and spend most of my free time on it, that is until we made the switch to AT&T and got the iPhone. Now I spend all of my free time on my iPhone. I know it's a bit ridiculous, but I love it. I can email, chat, tweet, and even check the status of my Etsy page from anywhere! It's convenient and I don't know if I could ever go back.

For Christmas, my husband also got me the Mino Flip pocket camcorder. It is rad. It fits in the small pocket of my purse and I can bust it out to tape my kids doing crazy things whenever and wherever and it's totally inconspicuious.

That being said, I'm feeling kind of out of place. Most of my friends are "normal" mommies that aren't too into the whole tech/social media trend that's happening. A few weeks back I busted out my flip to record the kids playing during one of my playdates and one of my friends looked at me like I was crazy. Like, "what the crap is that?" It seemed like she was weirded out and I felt totally embarrassed. Why is that? Why am I embarrassed and why are my friends weirded out? Don't get me wrong, some of my friends are all about the tweeting and the cool gadgetry and whathaveyou, but I'm almost embarrassed to tell most of my friends about all this cool stuff. Why?

I also recently found out about Ustream... this wickedly rad way of streaming live video and chatting. In fact, I think my next post is going to be a video just because it's so easy, takes me way less time than typing and I feel like it's almost more personal. Are my friends going to think I'm crazy? Probably so, but I can't stop the inevitable. This is social media & I'm loving every part of it!

Family fun time...

Twas a beautiful sunny weekend! About flippin' time am I right? Seems like the last time it was this nice out was a lifetime ago. Saturday afternoon I decided to try and catch some rays... Spencer was so stinkin' cute. I was in the midst of reading "The Shack" and he decided he needed to read too. He ran inside and picked out some books and came back with his little chair and sat right next to me. He pretty much has half of his books memorized, so he "read" them aloud. He's getting so big and independent, he doesn't even need me to read to him! :)
Yesterday I was feeling pretty nasty with this awful cold I can't seem to shake, so while Spencer & Tony ran around in the back yard, Tate and I sat on a blanket playing. She was making the most hilarious faces I had to bust out the camera.
Such a girly girl... But if you look closely, you can finally see her 2 new teeth!
Here she kept trying to put Spencer's hat on top of her hat on her head. She knows she's being cute. You can tell by the look in her eye.
I have no clue what she's doing here...
This one I like to call troll face. The phrase was coined a couple summers ago, when my nephew, Braeden would always wrinkle up his nose when the sun was in his eyes. I guess it's a family trait. :)
After all was said and done, we had 2 sweaty smelly babies that needed to be bathed. Lately Tate has been freaking out when we try and give her a bath. Turns out she was only upset because Spencer wasn't in the tub with her. Funny girl. Can't bathe without her big bro. Also turns out she's got super curly hair. Spencer thought she looked funny though and kept calling her a "silly Tatum." Funtimes had by all this weekend...

Strawberry Shortcake

I have a theory, turns out it's pretty well spread. I believe that whatever you crave and eat the most of during your pregnancy, that your child ends up loving that food the most!

When I was pregnant with Spencer, from the very first moment I craved corn on the cob. Sadly for me it wasn't in season until I was 5 months pregnant. The moment it came into the grocery stores I remember sobbing almost uncontrollably from happiness. Lo and behold, (when Spencer finally started eating "real" food) he LOVED corn on the cob. Still does.

When I was pregnant with Tatum, I would literally go through a Costco size flat of strawberries a week. She is my little Strawberry Shortcake. When I finally let her try strawberries, she was absolutely sold. She freaks out a little when she sees them because she wants one immediately. We also have these dried strawberries and bananas that come in a huge box at Costco that she likes when the real thing isn't available. I gave her a bag full the other day and there was a bunch of strawberry powder at the bottom that I never thought she'd even get to, but somehow she got to it, AND got it all over herself.