Days 11 (wed) and 12 (thurs)

On Wednesday morning, the girls went outlet shopping and had lunch at Erik's deli (mmmm Pilgrim's Progress...) while the men took the kids to breakfast at Flapjacks and back to Casa de Fruita for more fun.
Carter's had a 70% off sale on their baby clothes.  I stood there, overwhelmed, staring at the giant wall of adorably soft and crazy cheap little newborn outfits and while Amy and my mom peppered me with questions about what clothes I need for the baby.

It hit me.

"Huh.  I have absolutely no idea. I have done nothing to prepare for this baby yet, except throw up!"

I don't have a clue what I need. I just assumed I pretty much already have everything I need, since it's our fourth kid, and I had a boy most recently.  Amy pointed out that the boys will be exact opposite in seasons for clothing, and that it was the heat of summer last time I had a newborn, while this time around it will be fall.  This thought never occurred to me, because my girls were almost exactly 2 years apart, so everything fit Quincy the same way it had fit Reese. 

Both my mom and Amy were in less of a freak out mode than I was, so they bought some long sleeved outfits, knowing there would be zero of those in my baby stash.  I bought a pair of tiny jeans that were probably the only thing in the entire store that weren't on sale, but I don't care because they were super soft and had a soft stretchy waistband and I know I don't already have any.  The prices for everything in the store were totally amazing and it killed me to not take advantage and pick up a few more things, but I really have no idea what's in storage from Corbin, so I passed.  I need to get the boy 0-6 clothes bin from storage this week and sort through it.

Anyway, we came home after lunch and hung out with the family for a bit, then the girls went over to Auntie HolleeAnn's for a fancy tea party (notice the fancy hats) and sleepover, and Corbin had a dinner date with Grandma and Grandpa.  The girls LOVED their tea party. HolleeAnn had made tiny tea sandwiches and shaped cheese and served pink raspberry lemonade with pink lemonade flavored cupcakes for dessert.  It was very pink and very fancy!

Aaron and I left around 5pm and drove to Santa Cruz for the night. 

We stayed at the Babbling Brook Inn...which is the same B&B where we honeymooned 11 years ago. It was fun to go back.  We relaxed, slept like 16 hours, and left all the windows open so the freezing ocean breeze would balance out the fireplace that we let crackle all night.  You'd never have known it was June.  We stuffed our faces with fancy cheeses and breads and flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegar.  Aaron's favorite was the blueberry vinegar, I couldn't get enough of the chipotle olive oil. 
The gardens at the inn are charming and serene.

Breakfast at the Inn was huge and fabulous.  They had an assortment of breads and croissants and jams and cheeses, yogurt, granola, fresh fruit, cereal, and delicious broccoli and mushroom quiches that I got the recipes for before I left :). 

We had planned to go to the beach, but there was a safety advisory issued that there was some kind of bacteria in the water from San Francisco all the way down to Big Sur, so it wasn't safe to get in the water.  We drove along the boardwalk, watched the surf for a bit, then walked around Pacific Ave and Ocean Drive for awhile, I'm pretty useless as far as walking goes, these days and get light headed easily so I have to sit down a lot or I feel like I'm about to pass out, so we didn't of places. Instead, we had lunch at Pizza My Heart and people watched.  Man, Santa Cruz has a lot of ugly people.  No one is allowed to judge Arkansas for homely looking people with missing teeth anymore.  We saw more methmouth in 2 hours in downtown Santa Cruz than you see in a month in Arkansas.

It just isn't a trip to Santa Cruz without at least one hippie junk car sighting.  The people watching was just classic that day and by the time lunch was over, we really missed our kids and just wanted to get home to them.  We loved our little romantic escape for the night.  Our room had a jetted tub and down mattresses that were just heaven for my always aching back and legs.  We had great time just being alone together and reminisced of our honeymoon.  It was the perfect little date.  I bought a pair if Roxy shoes and Aaron got a t-shirt, another chinaman hat and a fat parking ticket at the O'neil shop.
My parents and Paul and HolleeAnn had taken the children to the kid's summer dollar movie at the theater in the morning, and we were home before Corbin was even up from his nap.  The girls had gone back over to HolleeAnn's and were busy cooking us a fancy pretend dinner in the playroom. 

  That evening we went to dinner (more tacos, por favor!) then took the kids to the dollar store and told them they could have any (one) thing they wanted in the entire store. 
 "ANYthing??!"
They were on stimulation overload and we were there for like an hour while they made their selection.

Quincy picked out a set of two plastic mermaids within minutes and stuck with her decision.  Corbin ran from toy to toy and just played like a happy little maniac until it came time to leave, we just bought him the most recent thing he had in his chubby little hands, a red hot wheels car.  Reese was dissatisfied with everything because she knew that she couldn't possibly see everything in the entire store during her time allowance and the fear of missing out on something better caused her to resist making any decision at all.

 At the last minute, when she was about to "just settle" on something, she saw a talking play iphone. "Mom, can I uh, have a phone?"  I relied, "Sure, you know it's not a real phone, right?"  (I didn't want her to be disapointed when she got in the car and couldn't call up her bestie.)  She didn't care. She pulled a purple phone from the rack and ran to the counter, finally happy with her choice.  Many of her cousins already have cell phones and she loved the idea of fitting in with the big kids. She was attached to it like a freaking teenager the rest of the trip, and I gasped when I heard the threat, "you will lose your phone priveliges..." come from my mouth. Ahh!
That fake phone entertained her the entire way home from Ca, has been a prop in all of the dramatic play between Reese and Quincy this week, and is now serving as the ideal behavior consequence/reward.  $1 well spent.  I'm so glad my kids have good imaginations and can still be satisfied with cheap thrills.

Day 1 in Paradise

We spent 5 nights in the US Virgin Islands. It was a dream! Even the flights were great...but I'm sure it's all relative. 6+ hours of flying sounds awful to some, but when you're used to flying alone with 3 kids, being alone with your husband instead is a pretty quiet upgrade. We watched a movie, napped, read, snacked, and talked a lot. It wasn't too shabby.

Our first adventure: the road to our Bed and Breakfast.
Ummm...civilization much?
We felt like we were in the line for Disney Jungle Cruise


Hmm...make that Indiana Jones Adventure....Minus any concern for general safety.

But just over the hill was Secret Harbor beach.

We swam, relaxed, and enjoyed people watching the one other group on the beach that evening-a pair of middle aged drunk guys from Chicago and their wives and teenage daughters. Guy #1 swam out to the floating dock and gave us a free show where he impersonated Flipper, then sang "This is How We Do It" about 10 times. With a dance. He did the running man and the cabbage patch justice. It was quite hillarious. They kept asking me if I was getting married, because of the flower in my hair. They left when their daughter swam out to the dock to pull her father off his "stage" and was stung by a sting ray.

Aaron and I watched the sunset with only the sound of the ocean and steel drums. It was great. We ate dinner at an outdoor grill right on the water. It was perfect!

I'm not going to lie, on our way back from the beach, we ended up walking down this road in total darkness. It was pitch black outside and we kept falling into huge pits in the road. There was buzzing in our ears, and then we heard large somethings scurrying past our feet into the brush.

All huddled together, we walked like a couple of scaredy cats walking through a haunted house.

The next morning, we woke to realize we had been eaten alive by mosquitos on our little night hike. Like I had more than 50 bites on one ankle.

In the light of the day, we discovered what had been crawling past our feet in the dark.

Ahhhh! They are so prehistoric looking. And reeeeally creepy. And they are everywhere. Like squirrels. Aaron was like, "is this an episode of Land of the Lost?"
Yeah, we rented a car.

Other than the creepy location and even creepier owner, the B&B was nice.
Our private balcony had an awesome view of Red Hook Harbor, and we woke up to the sounds of ships coming in and roosters crowing. We ate breakfast on the balcony and headed out for Day 2!

{Ten}

Our 10th Anniversary was on July 7th. Yay us!

We went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple in the morning. When possible, we love to do sealings on our anniversary and be reminded of the promises and covenants we made on our wedding day. Lynda, Janae and Jana were awesome and watched our kids for us. It was so nice to leave the house and be at the temple in 3 minutes, instead of driving for 4 hours. Rob and Lynda are so lucky to have one right down the street!

This anniversary was extra special because we were in Utah, so we spent the week visiting places we went when we were dating. We took the kids to see each of the apartments we lived in when we met, visited the BYU and UVU campuses, ate ice cream at the creamery, showed them the football stadium, the places we worked, the spot where Aaron proposed, the jewler that made our wedding rings,and our first apartment. It was quite nostalgic and the kids enjoyed hearing the stories about life before they joined our family.

Later, we took the kids and met up with our old roommates (yes! two of my roommates married two of Aaron's roommates!) and Dave and Leisha and their kids in downtown salt lake for dinner.

We ate dinner, walked around Temple Square, took the kids in the visitor's center. We felt like total tourists...especially when we posed for this picture. Across the street from Temple Square there were a bunch of water fountains and the kids had fun putting thier hands in the water while we visited with Dave and Leisha.

The splashing got a little excessive and the result was a group of soggy but happy little kids as we walked the few blocks back toward the restaurant where we had parked. We passed these giant fountains and they were just too tempting. The kids were already wet anyway, why not let them get soaked?

Look at that face. Totally worth it.

Happy Anniversary, Aaron!

I love you.

I love our life together.

Dreaming of...

Here.Thanks to my BFF/should-be-a-travel-agent-or-personal-shopper-because-she-is-gifted-at-finding-the-bestest-deals-on-the-interwebs, we found flights (from XNA? Yes, please), entertainment, and a awesome little B&B for my Aaron and I to spend the week of our 10th anniversary on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands on the cheap. Still trying to work out other details, but, I am very, VERY excited.

I Chose My Love and I Love My Choice

For the past few years, I have been saving.
About a year and a half ago, I really started saving.
Cash.
In an envelope. Stashed.


I wanted to surprise Aaron on our 10th Wedding Anniversary with a vacation fund. I know you probably think it is totally lame and unsentimental to give my husband CASH for our Anniversary, but it isn't like that, at all.


It's an act of love, as all $2915 that I have saved, so far, has not come out of a paycheck.
It isn't money that I just moved from one bank account to another and it isn't from my preschool, either. It is cash I have saved from babysitting, our summer garage sale, birthday money, etc.

{See that, HolleeAnn? "never underestimate the power of small change. Cha-ching!" hahaha}

It is one thing to have money in your account. But that money has been spoken for.
Budgeted for living expenses, college funds, retirement, food, new car, whatever. We have a vacation fund. This will just be like icing on the cake and mean we can do extra fun things on that vacation.

"This is found money, Jerry!" -George Costanza

I also had a plan that the money that I end up saving by using cloth diapers would be deposited monthly and added to this little fund. Cuz that way, when Aaron asked 'where all the cash came from', I could honestly tell him 'it is a reward for all the $#!t I have had to deal with!'


So yeah, I have a money stash.
I also realize that this makes me sound a little bit like a granny-with-getaway-cash-under-her-mattress, but whatever.

I wanted it to be a surprise, and if it went into the bank, it wouldn't be.

And weird, tacky, unsentimental, lame, crazy, or not...wouldn't YOU love for someone to give you $1000?

I thought so.

Unfortunately, 5 months early, my Big Secret came cRaShInG dOwN last night, when I was foolishly adding some money from babysitting yesterday to the stash while Aaron was home.

(Do you see where this is going?)

Since I knew I was getting close to my $3000 goal, I (again, foolishly) decided to count it.

(Don't do it, Meg! Don't count the money!)

There I was, counting out the bills, like a little kid does when she is saving up for a new toy, when in walks Aaron.

And I am standing there with an armfull of money.

I think he thought I was planning to run away, or something.

BUSTED.

Happy Anniversary, My Love.

He loves my unsentimental, lame, thrifty, crazy-paranoid-granny of a gift, and we looked at a map and, like we often do, we started talking about where we are going to go on our Big Trip.
And more than the actual gift, he was surprised by my ability to keep it a secret for so long.


He decided it wasn't fair for him to be the only one receiving an early present, and told me he bought tickets for us to go see this, on Saturday!


I LOVE this musical. Can't wait! I hope the roads are clear enough by Saturday to get to Fayetteville!
Happy (Early) Anniversary to him.
Happy (Early) Valentine's Day to me.

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.