Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Aaron just called to tell me how much he misses us. 

He must be out of frozen pizza and clean underwear.

Dear Aaron, 

I'm out of clean underwear, too. 

It just doesn't feel like a vacation if I'm still doing laundry. 

Miss you. Love you.

Hugs, 

-Megs

PS- Corbin is cutting molars.  It's awesome!

"Sun kissed skin, so hot, it melts your popsicle..."

We crashed the Hollister 1st Ward's beach trip on Saturday.  

It was so fun to be there with family, and hang out with some long time friends (pics later).

There is nothing like walking down the beach with your kids, so they can experience the rush of icy ocean water breaking against their legs. 

There is nothing like hearing someone you barely know shout, "Whoa! White Meat, coming through!" at the sight of you in your swimming suit.

Nice, right? 

I mean really...like I don't know that my skin is not a beautiful california girl sunkissed shade of bronze?

 I started to reply defensively, "Well, at least I won't get skin cancer!"

but I stopped myself at, "Well at leeeeeee....." and bit my tongue.

Keeping quiet.  

It's a new concept for me.

It's a good thing I did, because I turned around to see who was hollering at me anyway, 

and there would be nothing quite like mouthing off about skin cancer to some lady from the ward who only has a partial nose...the rest had been removed when it got skin cancer. 

I should try keeping quiet more often.

and I might suggest that my new pal from the beach do the same. 

Flavor of the Day

We interrupt this vacation to bring you a trip to the doctor's office.
I guess I forgot to add "make sure all three kids get ear infections at the same time" to my vacation checklist.

check!

Just spent several HOURS at the clinic and 5 out of my kids 6 ears are infected, and one eardrum has burst.
And just to paint a little picture of our clinic visit for you:

We were there long enough for me to stop caring that Quincy was screaming at top volume and kicking the floor. I only hoped it would get us out of there faster.

It didn't work.

We were there long enough for the tantrum to turn to sleep. She took an hour long nap in the "tiny room".

We were there long enough for me to answer the "what's this one's pain level" question (that was asked 100 times) with, "How about if you ask them?" and gesture to the kid screaming on the floor with an arched back, the one slumped half awake in a chair, and the baby using all of his tiny man-cub strength to pry himself out of my arms, while biting my finger and throwing the paci across the room every time I offered it.

The doctor also offered Tylenol with Codeine for the kids, "because it looks like nobody has slept in awhile" and Valium for me, to which I think he intended as a joke...but realized by my state of insanity and lack of patience that I would take some if he offered it up for realzies.

After the doctor left we waited an hour for him to write out the prescriptions(not for Valuim, sadly) Another set of nurses came in to ask more questions ("M'am, which one is sick?" ALL OF THEM, people! ALL OF THEM! And really? I'm a M'am, now?), they offered me an old Parents magazine to pass the time while we wait.

The featured article was "30 Simple and Easy Ways Moms Can Relax".
Perfect.

I flipped to the article, and funny thing, I didn't find "get the Hell out of this Doctor's office cuz you've been here for freaking forever" listed as one of the easy, simple suggestions.

At least now I have a reason for why the flight out here was so crazy. Their ears were probably killing them. Poor kids.
Sort of. The flight out here was traumatizing enough that a total stranger came up to my mom when we were at the baggage claim and said, "I was on the same flight as your daughter. You need to take the kids and drop her off at spa. Immediately."

Thank heaven for antibiotics and super tacos. It's been a long day.
Fun will resume tomorrow.

PS-Aaron. I really miss you. Family vacations should be spent as a family. Next year, you're coming out here with us. And I am crashing the "boys only" fishing trip.

Dear Aaron

it isn't the same without you.

{100}

My blog now has 100 readers.

The limit for a private blog is 100.

Now what?

Like, what if my 90 year old Grandma "figures out how to work the interwebs" and wants an invite?

Do I have to give someone the axe for granny?

'cuz my Mima is awesome.

So, if she wants an invite, she gets one, dangit.

I guess, until I find a loophole in the 100 reader limit thing, the rest of you are all on standby for the chopping block.

To Do {CHECK!}

6/22 days in and so far, so good!

It has been TWO YEARS since I have been home to California. I've got quite the list going. I'll have to pace myself if I'm going to get to it all. If I don't, I am not waiting another 2 years before I go back.

eat:
check! check! -Super Taq (carne asada super taco, super burrito, carnitas torta...there will be many visits)
check!-Togos (pastrami)
check!-In-N-Out (double double with cheese, no onions)
check!-Pink Berries (with raspberries, kiwi, and mango)
-Dari Delite (chocolate crunchy peanut butter milkshake & crinkle fries)
-Eriks Deli (Pilgrim's Progress and REO Speedwagon and a chocolate chip cookie w/ walnuts and lemon zest...mmm, 'cuz nothing says "lunch" better than a 750 calorie sandwich with 44 grams of fat. Yes, really. You're better off with the 600 cal Double Double, than the REO at Erik's. Who knew?)
-really good produce. Cantaloupe that is soft and tastes the way it only tastes on the Pacific Coast.
check!-Fruit from Mark's trees. Peaches and apricots...Yum.
check!-The giant artichoke. It won't be the same without Aaron. It's one of our places.
-HalBQ-I hear the new specialty is grilled Alaskan Salmon.
-Lunch somewhere with Mark...he's a busy guy, lunch is a good way to see him.

run:
-see above list. All that food? I'll look like Manuel Uribe (um, check.) by the time I leave Ca, if I don't get some running in.
check! (ouch.)-My sister Amy is planning to drag "Fat Meg" on a 13 mile run through Tres Pinos with her "fun" club, titled, "The Psycho Running Group". 13 miles. (check...14!) That's a half-marathon, folks. If I go, I might die. Or, at minimum, I'll die. Worst case scenario, I won't die, and instead will have to live with the shame of throwing up all over myself, then passing out in it, and everyone will see what I've eaten on the inevitable binge eating that will occur once I arrive in the golden state.

shop:
-IKEA
-Gilroy Outlets
-my fave little downtown shops in Gilroy and Hollister
check!-Target (shhhhh)

play:
check!-MH aquatic center
-Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
-Gilroy Gardens
check!-Jelly Belly Factory
check!-San Francisco: Ferry Ride, Pier, dodge seagull poop, teach children about homeless people and public transportation, eat sourdough, chocolate, frozen bananas, and taffy, Girls Golden Gate Bridge, Take a Trolley Ride
-Monterrey Bay Aquarium
check!-Dennis the Menace Park
-Cannery Row (mmm caramel filled ghiradelli squares)
-See the monkey, eat chowder, and let the girls get seashells at the Fisherman's Wharf
-The beach with old friends and their kiddies
-Getting together with High School gal pals w/out the kids to laugh and catch up.
check!-Spending a couple days in Ceres at HolleeAnn's place, playing, swimming, laughing, napping, check! running w/ Fonzo, hopefully catching a glimpse of busy busy Jordan, and looting HolleeAnn's preschool supplies and accessories. check! Maybe looting J's closet, too.
-The Oakland Temple. Only an hour 1/2 away! Awesome. Mom, you're coming...or babysitting, your choice ;)
check!-Gymnastics and Tumbling and Playing at USA Sports
check!-2 Cousin Birthday Parties and 1 Baptism
-Pony Ride playdate with friends and kids
-Karaoke @ Victoria's
-Girls night with my mom and sisters. It's happening.
check!-Cousin time for my kids. They're going to love all the semi-supervised running around with all those boys that they're going to get. They can't wait to spend hours jumping on the trampoline, playing on the swingset, building forts, riding bikes, learning about StarWars, skateboarding, Legos, and video games, and just plain being wild kids for a few weeks.
-there is just so much more, but I've lost interest in this post, and you probably have too. Plus, I need to go finish packing!

See why I need 3 weeks?
What's on your list when you go to Ca?

Validated

My wildest dreams have come true!

The following email announcement I just received makes me very very happy.
This for all the times I have had to walk through a sea of smokers (smoking right outside the classroom door), just to get inside the building to get to my class. I mean, if you're going to smoke, fine....but please don't do it where I have to smoke it, too. Stay out of my air, Yo.

"As of August 1, NWACC will become a Tobacco-Free campus to comply with the Arkansas Clean Air On Campus Act of 2009. This Act makes it illegal to smoke on all state-supported colleges and universities in Arkansas, including all buildings and grounds owned and operated by the institutions."
Many thanks, Lawmakers.
And now a note from me:

Dear NWACC students,
Feel free to go smoke in your car, and not invade the air of everyone around you.
And by "smoke in your car", I don't mean, "sit in your car with your window cracked one inch open so you can hold your cigs out the window to keep your own air fresh while you selfishly stink up everyone else's, forcing them to roll up their windows".

Sincerely,
a Non-Smoker/Non-Secondhand Smoker

Git Free Chikin

Friday was "Cow Apprecation Day" at Chick-fil-A.
We made costumes.
We got free food.

I'm not above that.

"I gotta get some chicken in me!"

The kids had a lot of fun putting together and painting their costumes.
My favorite part was when we walked in, they rang a loud cowbell, gave my kids stuffed cow toys, took our picture, and everyone in the restaurant said, "mooooooo!".

A Wicked Good Weekend

Our weekend in St. Louis was grand.
During the drive, we talked, laughed, reminisced, and planned.
We listened to this:

and while Aaron drove, I read this out loud:
Which I give a B+ review. A lot of it is common sense, and a little redundant at times. A good portion is geared toward getting out and staying out of debt, which we thought didn't really apply to us, since aside from a small portion left on our van, and our home mortgage, we are 100% debt free.
But that's aside from our van and our home. So....reading this book made us realize that we are actually NOT 100% debt free. But we want to be. How nice would it be to not have a house payment? I don't know why we haven't discussed it before. It is a doable goal. We read, talked, and made a plan to pay off the balance on the car as quickly as possible.
But whether you have a mountain of debt, a little debt, or are like us and sort of thought you had zero debt because "cars and houses don't really count", debt is debt.
I do not love books of the "self help" genre, but I do love to budget.
This book was a fun read, and it sparked a lot of good "what if" conversations between Aaron and I during our 4 1/2 hour drive. It is a good tool to get you motivated again to revamp our own budget (which we haven't done since we added a kid and Aaron was promoted). Apparently, Dave Ramsey has a popular radio and television show. We'd never heard of it, so I won't vouch for what kind of guy he is, or any of his other material. But we'd recommend this book.

We went here
and did sealings, which we try to do around our anniversary each year to be reminded of the vows and covenants made at our own wedding.

We ate here
and here (is it just me or does the storefront look an awful lot like Panera Bread?)
We had plans to eat lunch on a Mississippi riverboat, but we got there to discover that tours had been canceled due to excessive river flooding.
Question.
They closed the boat due to excess water.
Don't boats, like...float?

We decided to take the "Journey to the Top" of the Gateway Arch instead, since it was closed the last time we visited.

Hahahahahaha, well, all we can say about the "Journey to the Top" is that it is not for the claustrophobic or anyone with a nose. You are led through a creepy damp and dark cement hallway that tunnels 50 feet below the ground. (I started to panic. "um, aren't we only like 100 yards away from the flooded River? Are we below the water table? How strong are these cement walls?")

You climb through a tiny elevator door (about 2' x 4')
and into a Mork and Mindy type pod that holds "5" people.
The "" is because Aaron selected a pod with a 450+ lb tatted up couple with a daughter that did not fall far from the tree. Now, I've got nothing against big people, unless 3 of them want to share a 16sq ft compartment that's carrying me up a 650 ft drop via rope pulleys. Aaron ended up practically in the lap of the dude, who told him about the "hood" in Mississippi where he lives and how "nobody can't get a job and it's a miracle we still alive with all the drugs and gangs". Aaron, being a college sports fan, responds with, "Mississippi huh, what college is near you guys?" They laughed and said, "College?! Don't nobody go to college where we from!" Then he showed us his gang tats on one arm, and the giant cross tat on the other arm and each knuckle. The daughter (maybe 8 or 9) said she can't wait to get back home because "the people up here in St. Louis are rude as Hell". I thought that sounded a little sour coming from a child's mouth, and looked over for a response from the mother, who only chimed, "yeah they are!"

The elevator ride was a long, sweaty 4 minutes.

You would think I'd have felt nothing but relief to get out of the tiny elevator pod, but it turns out that the interior of the Gateway Arch isn't exactly spacious, either.
I learned that it's not small, confined spaces that I don't do. It's hot, stinky, crowded spaces that I have a serious problem with.
It only takes one bad case of B.O. fused with last night's curry/garlic dinner to spoil an atmosphere. There was an entire family in there with us. And it was like 1,000 degrees. Unbearable. We were only up there for about 2 minutes before Aaron came to me and whispered, "I can't hold my breath any longer! We've got to get out of here!"
Barf.
But the view was rad, so we plugged our noses to keep our gag reflexes under control, and took a few minutes to soak it up and take a few pictures.
The experience was breathtaking.


Literally.

The ride back down was much more pleasant, and more spacious.
I'd had enough of what felt like the worst dutch oven in history, so I made Aaron pinkie swear he wouldn't fart in the elevator pod, before I was willing to climb back in there with him. I could just see him doing that and thinking it was hilarious. The view from the arch is awesome, but if you do it, go on a weekday when it isn't crowded, and hopefully, there will be a little more fresh air at the top.

Aaron packed for himself this weekend. He also proved me right, that he should not be allowed to pack for himself. (his bag included deodorant, a toothbrush, a pair of underwear, his suit, and a tshirt). I had an entire bag just to carry tools and products to get my hair straight. We decided that wearing sneakers with a suit was equivalent to pulling a "Kevin" wearing Kleenex boxes to a wedding, so we went shoe shopping and got him a pair of more "suit"-able (hahhaha) shoes for the show that evening.

We had planned to arrive at the theatre an hour early. We realized that with traffic and "emergency" shoe shopping, we hadn't left ourselves time to go to dinner like we had hoped, so we took the only drive through option available on the way to the theater. Del Taco.
There was only one car ahead of us, so we thought it would be fast, but we literally sat at the window after giving the guy our debit card for 22 minutes. I was irritated, and wanted to leave, but Aaron felt sorry for the really sweaty guy inside because the entire place was operating on a one-man show inside...plus he pointed out that sweaty guy had our debit card, so we couldn't just take off.

Parking was a disaster. We had driven over to the theatre earlier in the day to pick up tickets and scope out parking locations, to save ourselves the time/stress of waiting and worrying about it later. The lot we had planned to park in had a pre-pay machine at the exit. Unfortunately, about 200 other people had also just arrived and were in the line to pay. We knew we'd never make it, so we kept driving and after a few minutes, parked in a questionable meter spot, got out as fast as we could, and hauled it down the street holding hands, eating our Del Taco with the other. It was quite a sight.
We hurried inside as they closed the doors behind us and flickered the lights, and we made it into our seats as the curtain rose. Phew! Fantastic.
Even better than we had anticipated.

this theatre. Wow.
It was a whirlwind getaway that went by too quickly, as it always does when we fly the coop. But it was all we needed to be refreshed, renewed, reconnected, and ready to pick up our babies, smother them with kisses, and take them back to our nest.

Show Off

I had a couple projects featured here.

Emotional Eater

I must miss my mommy. Since the moment I woke up today, I've been stuffing my face.

I had my morning bottle.a bowl of applesauce and rice cereal,

and some cheerios and turkey for breakfast.Within 90 minutes I was starving and had some bits of egg, biscuit and a hashbrown.

For lunch I ate 4 fistfuls of grapes, the rest of the grilled chicken,and some cantaloupe. Not pictured is half of a peanut butter sandwich I ate after my (almost 3 hour) nap.

For dinner I inhaled a bowl of sweet potatoes and rice cereal,

then I double-fisted some roast turkey,

and a bunch of cantaloupe.

I topped it off with my afternoon bottle the other half of my peanut butter sandwich and another bowl of cheerios.

What? You don't believe me? Here are some videos of my meal time enjoyment.

Breakfast time:

Lunch time:

Dinner time:

Okay...maybe I ate too much:

I'm just glad my mom and dad are coming back tomorrow!

Away

We're off for a little anniversary getaway in one of our favorite places:

Too many posts about our fun to follow. The girls are staying with friends and probably won't want to come back to living with us after the weekend is done, and I'm sure K will hack the blog and let you know what she and our Little Man are up to. Happy weekend!

Sunday Best

Why is it, that EVERY time I tell my girls it is bath time, they respond,
"Is it Sunday?"

Um. What the heck?!

Cupcake Pops

This post is for Scotty, lover of cake pops.

I made these Red Velvet Cake Pops to take to a Relief Society Pool Party/Recipe Contest last week.
Can you believe I didn't win?

They were no match to Kasey's Raspberry Lemon Ice Cream Crisp. It was pretty delicious, and I hope she makes it again soon...like the next time we hang out.

But just look at these little guys. Aren't they the cutest thing ever?!
I almost tied little red ribbon bows around each one, but I ran out of time before the party.
That might have sealed the deal.





Time consuming, but totally worth it. I will definitely make them again.
Like next week with my sister.
HolleeAnn, get your blue ribbon and gold stars ready.
Yum.