It's a girl!

It's a girl! The doctor and I saw that very clearly today but Chase is holding on to his 2% chance that he may get a boy. We weren't even to the truck this morning before he was trying to convince me that having another one after this one wouldn't be so bad. I know that he going through a grieving period for his lost NFL player today, so I let the comment go. Tomorrow though, involuntary sterilization.

Worst Mom Ever

I ended up bawling last night because I almost let my child get hit by a car. She was in the coat room and all of a sudden she was gone. I thought she was hiding in the coats so by the time I realized she was outside, she was already at the end of the garage. The second that she saw me, she thought it was a game and took off. I started chasing after her and before I knew it she was at the end of the driveway and she didn't even pause to look up before she was in the road. I was screaming so loud that my mom came outside and she started screaming. My parents have trees at the end of their driveway so you really can't see the road, but I could hear a car coming. I was running as fast as I could and I heard the car slam on the brakes. Izzy was completely across the road and by the time I caught up to her. I was bawling and I spanked her, so she was bawling. I am so thankful that the person driving the car was attentive enough to be able to stop so quickly. I ended up crying for another hour. Izzy asked me while I was so sad and I told her it was because she scared me. She said, "Don't worry Momma. I won't be scary anymore." I can only hope right? I took the pictures above last weekend. Izzy loves her Elmo Live. I was a little hesitant to buy it because the consumer reviews weren't that great but I'm glad I did. She reads to Elmo, hauls him around, dances with him and so on. She's pretty sweet.

Price, Utah

Izzy and I decided to surprise Chase last weekend. He surprises us a lot and we wanted to return the favor. I attempted to get all my weekend chores done during the week so that I could leave without feeling guilty. Of course I didn’t get them all done but I still really wanted to go. Chase has been essentially living in Price for the last six months and we hadn’t been there yet and he is almost getting ready to leave. Of course, when I saw his hotel room, I almost died of shock because it was so organized. Eventually I was just pissed that he couldn’t be that way at home ;). His little desk was all organized and his fridge was stocked. Needless to say, he probably lives better on the road than he does out our house. We left around 2 on Saturday because he usually doesn’t even get off work until 8. The drive was nice and we got see Grandma Sue and Grandpa Don which is always fun. I drove through the canyon leading to Price and it was so beautiful. We saw tons of deer and the red rock. In my head, I was calling Chase a baby because he always complains how “dangerous” this drive is. It’s really not that bad. Driving through this canyon, it’s much how you would expect, with the occasional passing lane. It was our side of the roads turn for the passing lane and I was leading the pack. I really wasn’t going that slow but there was a truck behind me that seemed insistent on passing me. He still hadn’t gotten around me when the lane started to end and I was hugging the right and he was still trying to get around me. Naturally I was screaming “JackA**” in my head. Guess who it turned out to be? You got it, my husband. Chase didn’t realize it was me (obviously I didn't know it was him either) when he was risking his life and my family’s financial future by driving like a maniac. In fact, he was telling his friend Robert “That’s the kind of car my wife drives” without making any kind of connection to the family he was trying to drive off the road. Later down the road (yes, I essentially “won” because I was still in front), while he was riding my car like a cheap hooker, he realized that not only was it the same kind of car but it was MY car. That’s when he called me. I still didn’t know that he was behind me. He asked me what I was doing.
“Uhh driving.”
“Where?”
“Uhh on the highway.”
“Why?”
I really tried to avoid lying to him but he backed me into a corner.
“I’m coming home from my Grandma’s”
That’s when I saw the lights flashing behind me and I found out that I had been caught. What are the odds that he would end up behind me? He did though. Izzy and I didn’t even get to see the look on his face when he realized that we drove 5 hours to come and see him. We had such a nice weekend that I didn’t want to come home. We drove up and saw the memorial for the coal miners that they couldn’t rescue from the Crandall Canyon mine. It was very sad. Chase asked a lady for directions at a Maverick and she started bawling. It really touches a lot of raw nerve in the city still, understandably so. Chase gave us the official tour of Price and I felt kind of weird because it felt like he was showing us his home town. I put off going home until after 5 because I didn’t want to leave. Izzy and I didn’t get home until after 10 but it was worth it. If only we had gotten to see how surprised Chase was when he realized we had come!

The Disneyland Balloon

Considering this has taken me much longer than anticipated, I feel as though it is time to wrap up the vacation memories. There was just more thing that I wanted to include and then you will no longer be subjected to my attempt to live in the past. When we went to Disneyland, Izzy really wanted a balloon. Every time she saw one, she would beg for one. We told her that she could have one right before we went home. As luck would have it, right as we were walking out, there was a balloon lady. Of course, right when it was our turn, she ran out of weights and she couldn’t sell any more $7 balloons without a weight. After waiting for 15 minutes and seeing her with a ton of balloons in her hands, this was kind of frustrating. Especially because explaining this to a two year old is impossible. We had been at the park for 11 hours and it was time to go home, but we agreed to wait for her until she could go track down some weights. We waited and waited and finally my lack of patience would not let me stand around for one more minute. But Chase refused to leave until Izzy was happy. The point in me telling this story is so that one day Izzy can read this and know that her dad walked around Disneyland for another 20 minutes looking for another balloon person just so that he wouldn’t be a liar and because he loves her so much. Of course, when he did find a balloon person, it was the same one who completely ditched us and had I been there I would have asked for her manager’s name because I was LIVID but this is beside the point. Izzy got her purple mouse ears balloon and she played with that thing everyday until we had to leave it at the hotel. Chase was actually trying to find a way to untie it so that he could take it home and have it blown up again. I walked him through basic reasoning skills to see if we could establish how it would be conducive to my sanity to haul trash across state lines so that it could lay around our house and he finally understood this was completely unrealistic. But he has heart. I really have no idea where it came from but he has the biggest heart of anyone I know.

Lay Down Mommy

When I can't sleep, which seems to be most nights, I turn on the TV so that I don't have to think and it usually helps me fall asleep. Unfortunately, the noise doesn't allow me to stay asleep but that is a completely seperate issue. Last night, Izzy must have heard me turn on the TV because she came into my room around 3 in the morning. She said, "Can't sleep Momma?" and I said, "Not tonight babe." She then crawled into my bed and sat next to me. She said "Lay down and close your eyes. I'll wait for you." And then she kissed my forehead. It was really adorable. She patted my hair until I pretended to sleep. She turned off the TV and fell asleep next to me. Isn't she a doll? Why can't she do something like this in public instead of yell at her doll and tell her she is in "big trouble!"?

We love Shamu!

Seaworld was an adventure. An expensive adventure, but fun nonetheless. It was virtually empty. This made the experience extremely nice for us but I wonder how they are feeding all these animals still. Even for the Shamu Believe show, the stadium was way less than half full. We arrived two minutes before it began and had great seats. The reason that we were running late is that we were at the 4-D Sesame Street Make Believe movie. You have to wear 3-D glasses, which Izzy refused to do. I tried to watch it without the glasses for a second and it gave me a headache. It was fuzzy and didn’t make any sense without them. The 4-D part came into play when a hose got away from Big Bird and sprayed you in the face. Izzy did not like this. In fact, earlier in the day during the dolphin show, we sat in the Splash Zone and got wet and Izzy started crying. She normally likes water but I don’t think she liked the surprise. Izzy loved the Sesame Street play area and would have gladly stayed there all day. They had a huge bounce house, a big ship and an Elmo ride that completely captivated our two year old. I still don’t know if the entrance fee and the $50 lunch was worth it, but we did have a great time. Chase loved petting the Batrays and kept trying to get me to touch them. I have no interest in getting dirty from sea creature germs though. Izzy had a smart moment and made a couple of girls feel incredibly stupid. There was a huge exhibit with Nemo and Dory fish in it. These two girls were probably in their early 20's and one said something to the effect that she thought they were Tiger fish. Izzy looked at her like she was completely stupid and said "That's not a Tiger fish, that's a Clown fish. Gosh!" As they walked away, one said, "I think we just got schooled by a four year old." Chase and I thought it was so funny. I don't think my kid is a genius or anything, I think it's more of a testament to how many times she has watched Finding Nemo.

The Beach

Izzy is a beach girl. She never wanted to leave! We time there everyday and when we weren't there, Izzy would keep saying, "I just wanna go the beach to see the ocean." Except she says ocean like lotion. It's kind of cute. She would build "sandcastles" and "pizza" which both looked amazingly like huge blobs of nothing. She also loved chasing the birds and they have become so humanized that they would let her get relatively close. We ate at a restaurant by the pier and Izzy proceeded to throw her food in the water. I think she was trying to feed the fish. She was being kind of grouchy that night, in fact this incident happened the same night as the pirate picture below. But as soon as she was at the beach in the water, all was good.

Disneyland!

Disneyland, it really is the happiest place on earth. Of course, when we got back, I found out that my workplace had been going through major turmoil and both of the General Managers I work with are moving on. Russ’s last day was actually my first day back. When I was having a blast at Disneyland, he was finding out bad news, which completely breaks my heart. But back to the trip. I really didn’t want to remember by birthday because I turned 25 and that was extremely hard for me. I’m 25 with two kids! Crazy! Chase didn’t say anything to me when we woke up, which really was fine. We drove all the way to LA and he still didn’t say anything. The drive was nice because while traffic was completely stopped, the car pool lane was completely empty. We got to LA even earlier than we expected. Even before Disneyland opened. Chasey asked me what I wanted to do for breakfast and I said, “Well, I guess because it’s my birthday, I should get to pick.” All the color drained from Chase’s face and his hands dropped to the bottom of the steering wheel. I could see behind his glasses that his eyes were moving a mile a minute while he decided if he should acknowledge my comment or drive the car off a cliff. I was laughing so hard. Chase proves his love 365 days a year by being sweet and loving me so I can give him a break. Besides, if we spend the next 60 years together, I now have a free pass. I really didn’t need a reminder of a being a quarter of a century anyway. We got to Disneyland, paid $12 to park and then were off on our grand adventure. Izzy loved the Finding Nemo Submarine Ride and the Tea Cups. While we were on the Tea Cups she said, “Isn’t this so much fun guys?” It was really cute. The rest of the day was kind of blah for her. She was excited to meet Mickey, but when I asked if she wanted to meet Goofy, she said, “No thanks. I just want to go to the beach.” If only we have known, we could have saved a lot of money. I definitely think that it was a good family experience for us to go together but I also could see how she would have much more fun in a few years. She didn’t like waiting in line especially because she had no concept of what we were waiting for. But I’m looking forward to taking her back one day!

The Many Faces of Izzy

I’m going to have to blog about our vacation in short bits because I don’t have the time to do it one sitting. The gist of the trip was that we had a really great time and we didn’t want to come. We left San Diego when it was 78 degrees and returned to a 23 degree Salt Lake City. It even snowed on us while we were driving home. We definitely feel that the California life style is the life for us. I have attached some pictures where I have blown up Izzy’s face because I thought they were funny. The kid can be such a ham. A grouchy ham, but a ham none the less. We have so many great memories that I hope I can touch on a few of them.