January 2013

At home in Washington!
Back in Washington we were glad to be home!  We spent all of January basically at home with each other!  It was great!
DALIA:  At the beginning of this month Dalia tried out for her elementary school play of "The Little Mermaid, Jr."  At home we helped her practice a little monologue between Ariel and Flounder.  And the beginning of the song, "Under the Sea."  She stayed after school for two hours on a Thursday for play try-outs.  Friday after school she came home with an envelope.  We opened the envelope and read, "Dalia you have been chosen to play the part of a Blue Fish in the Little Mermaid play."  Hooray!!  (However, Dalia cried and cried when we read this news.  She was so sad because she wanted to be Ariel.  Poor girl.  After some crying and watching a movie, Dalia decided that she wanted to be a Blue Fish.  There were about 200 kids that tried out for the play and there were only 50 spots.  In the play there are kids in grades 1st-5th.  Dalia is one of the 3 first graders that got into the play.  We are so proud of her!!  This now means that she will be going to play practice twice a week for 2 hours each day after school for the months of January and February.  This also means that she won't be taking dance class since i thought it would be too much for her to be in play practice and dance.

Dalia has been a little more interested in cooking this month.  Dalia usually doesn't want to help out in the kitchen, it is usually Tes.  She helped me make pie crust.  She rolled it out and pinched it all together in the pie pan and even cut the slits on top that read, "Mom and Dalia."  She is growing up.
Rockwell is a lucky little brother because he gets lots of hugs and kisses from his older sisters and his mom.
Rock likes to imitate what others do.  But most of all he likes to do whatever his dad does!  For Christmas I got a new kitchen faucet and Brian installed it this month.  Rock enjoyed "helping" his dad work under the sink.
There are times in the day where we get to have Tes and mom time!  Dalia is at school and Rock is napping.  One day we got out my wedding dress and we each took turns trying it on, walking around, and getting our picture taken.  So fun!

Dalia watched a Disney short at Callie's house about the Toy Story toys pretending that they were going to Hawaii.  So Dalia wanted us to do that too!  She planned a Hawaii party for our family!  She was so cute and specific about what we needed.  She told me that she needed a big white paper (poster board) that she could draw a beach on to put on the wall.  She planned our meal of Hawaiian haystacks for dinner.  I added some pina colada's and coconut bars for dessert!  We dressed up in our Hawaii clothes and pretended that we were at the beach in the middle of Washington in January.  The girls had fun building "Sand " castles made out of paper cups.  We also danced to island music!  Aunt Emily came to "Hawaii" with us too!  Eric was out of town for work.  Dalia is quite the party planner.  It was fun!

TESILA: Tes started Dance class this month!  Creative Movement with Miss Sara (she is our favorite!!)  Tes loves to go do dance class.  I think it is fun for her to have something that is just for Tes!  However, this time around she is being more shy and i don't think it is just because Dalia isn't in class with her.  Tes does great during class and listening to her teacher.  Tes hasn't pouted as much when things don't go her way as she did last year.  At the end of class they usually have a free dance time one at a time.  This time around when Miss Sara calls on Tes, Tes bury's her head in her arms and shakes her head no.  My sweet shy Tesila.  Other than that she really seams to enjoy dance.  Tes gets a huge smile on her face when ever she sees me watching her!

Disney Store Shopping Spree!  The kids got gift certificates for the Disney store from G&G Ha.  It was fun to take them to the mall and walk around the Disney store helping them decided what to get.  Dalia choose 4 little stuffed princess dolls: Pocahontas, Jasmine, Ariel, and Mulan.  Tes choose a "Brave" Bow & Arrows! and 2 stuffed princess dolls: Briar Rose and Rapunzel.  Rock choose toy cars from the movie CARS!!  He got about 7 of them: Lighting McQueen, Ramon, Miles Axelrod, the Blue American muscle car, Fillmore, the Red Chine Racing car, and Sheriff.  Rock was in heaven around all the cars.  He cried when we left, and we left with 7 cars.  Back at home the girls were pretty good at shooting arrows onto the sliding glass door and the mirrors.  Rock of course loves to drive his cars EVERYWHERE!  He also likes to sleep with at least two of them, one in each hand.  Thank you G&G!!   


January we were able to work on a few small home projects.  First our new kitchen faucet!  Next Brian installed a sconce in the living room above the couch.  We got rid of our lamp that was just barely hanging in there.  Rock really liked to knock the lamp over just to see it fall.  I did not like that he did that.  I love having the lamp gone.  There is a nice feel in the room without it there and you can see my picture wall better!  Brian had to thread the wire cables down through the crawl space and back up to the light switch.  He needed to drill a hole in the ground from the bottom up for the cable.  Lucky Brian drilled a teeny tiny hole into our washer drain pipe.  So he ended up having to take the drain pipe out and replace it too.  My Brian can do anything!
Next up I finished my bedroom cubby curtains!!  I bought the fabric when I was big and pregnant with Rockwell.  My plan was to have them up by the end of  2012, but that didn't happen.  So i got them finished by the end of January 2013!  Thank you to Brian and Rock for hanging up the curatin rods!  Don't they look great?!
My Rock!  Did you know that he likes to cuddle?!  He does!  I love how his body just melts into mine when i pick him up. 

Utah - Jan. 6, 2013

A. Family Reunion 2013

Hooray!  Check out our awesome winter picture of ALL of us!!  I love it!  Thanks Erin!!
It was freezing out so we figured we would just wear our coats and hats and jump out of the cars for a picture and then jump back in.  Which is what we did, but out jumping was not all that fast, it was more like a 15 min. jump.  Tes was so sad because she said her legs were so cold.

After our trip to Idaho we drove down and spent 2 days in Utah with my family.  We stayed at Callie & Rayson's home.  In the day we let the kids play inside and out in the snow!  We went over to Grandma's C's out for lunch and to visit and play and then we stayed so long it was time for dinner and you know grandma she is a FP!  What Grandpa liked to called a Food Pusher!  Grandma is always there to feed you something!  I love being at my grandma's house, it just feels so good to be there and be with her!  I also love that my kids love playing their too!  That night Ava came back to Callie's with us for a sleepover with the girls!!  While Rayson & Brian watched the kids, Callie, Jami, and I went on a shopping run to Kohl's in search of a new wardrobe for Callie.  It was a lot of fun.  The three of us worked well in the dressing room.  (Side note:  Callie did buy quite a few things from Kohl's but ended up taking then all back.  Sad.  But Jami came to the rescue and took Callie shopping on her birthday in February to Maurice's (Jami's favorite store) and Callie totally scored!  She got hot skinny jeans and tons of cute shirts!)
 

Our second day in Utah was our A. Family Reunion!
We met up at the park for our snow group picture!  Then headed across the street to costco to get hot dogs for lunch!!  Then it was off the "Hollywood Connection!"  Which Dalia now refers to as the "Utah Hollywood!"  It was awesome!  It was perfect for our family of little kids cousins!!  First off we rode the carousel!  The kids all loved it!!  Rock was sad because Aunt Callie was standing next to him and not his.  (I'm sure it is nothing about aunt Callie and only because Rock can be quite attached to Brian sometimes).

Next up was Mini Golf!!  I beat Brian!  That's all that needs to be said.  Well Jerry beat me, but only by like a couple or one point.  The kids had fun.  Rock kept waking the gold club around and i was scared he was going to hit someone.  This was our girls first mini golf experience.  For the most part the 3 oldest girls stayed ahead of us playing with eachother.  So i don't even know how good they were but they seemed to like it.  Brennan and Raylie stuck together.  Rock mostly followed Brian or tried running in the water.

After golf the kids rode all the rides!  Bumper cars, hot air balloon ride, carousel, bus ride, and Dalia's favorite! "Dragon Coaster!!!"  Tes liked it too as long as she didn't have to sit in a seat by herself.  The three big girls kept riding it over and over.  And we were like the only ones there so there weren't any lines.  It was pretty much a kids dream!  Dalia is still talking about it months later.
It was fun to all be together and doing something fun!
After the connection Jami came out dinner with our family to Cafe Rio.  We have to go a least once while we are in town.  Then it was back to Callie's where we packed and slept and drove out the next morning at 11am.  We were back home that night at about 11pm!  Great trip!  We made it home in time for church the next day which thankfully started at 3:00pm (one time thing because another stake had stake conference in our church building.  Our new time for this year is 9am).  The kids were able to meet their new teachers!  Tes has the same one as last year, yes!!!  

REXBURG!! - Jan. 2, 2013

Rexburg, Idaho January 2013
We hadn't been back to Rexburg since October 2006, when Dalia was 6 months old and we watched the moving guys load up our storage unit to move our belongings to Washington.  It was fun to go back for a day.  It was FREEZING this day, about 9 degrees Fahrenheit and a little windy (yes, i know it gets colder there, but that 9 degrees was cold!  I really don't know how i lived there in that cold.)  I had been telling Dalia for awhile now that we were going to go to the city where she was born and see the hospital that she was born in and see her first home.  Dalia was OVERJOYED!!  to be in Rexburg.  The top left picture on the collage is as soon as we took the exit to head into town by Walmart.  I said, "Dalia, we are in Rexburg!"  I looked back to see her big smile!  She kept saying, "This is my town!  This is my town!  We get to do what I want." 
 

First off we were hungry, so we drove around deciding where we wanted to have lunch.  We came upon Taco Time and decided that was the place!  (Taco Time is WAY better in Idaho than it is in Washington, serious!)  This Taco Time is a little sentimental to Brian and I.  There is a certain booth where we talked the night I tried breaking up with him.  Obviously it didn't work.  We had fun sitting in the booth with the family that might not have been.  Thanks Brian for not giving up on me. I am sure glad that all 5 of us were there together!! 
After our lunch (and prolonged stay at Taco Time, Tes threw up in the car as soon as we parked in the parking lot, she needed a change of clothes.  Then Rock had a blowout after we ate, and he needed a change of clothes.  I was glad to have suitcases full of clothes in the back of our car!) We headed on a driving tour of Rexburg.  We drove around the campus, up to the Temple, (we got out at the temple and took a few pictures, but it was WAY to cold to even walk around the entire temple), we drove by the hospital and Smith and Porter Parks.  We drove by our old apartments, school buildings new and old, we drove past the court house and down main street!  Oh the memories.  We stopped at our Main Street apartment to walk around!  And then drove up to campus and walked around a few buildings.  Every building we tried to go in was open, which i was surprised with it being January 2nd.  There were not many people around though.  We spent a lot of time in the Austin building, aka: Engineering building, where Brian spent a lot of his time when he was in school.  He was very pleased to see that they still have a C-clamp that he made in the display case after all these years!
Next we walked through the Taylor quad and into the MC, which is like entering a whole other world for me.  It was a maze, it is so so so different.  It was fun to find the old parts of the building that were left untouched during the remodel.  Those places felt like BYU-I, the rest of the building felt like i was in another world.  Then it was off to explore the new BYU-I center.  That place is HUGE!!!  I definitely felt like i wasn't in Rexburg anymore when i was in the BYU-I Center.  It was nice to walk over to the Hart and stand in the center of the auditorium there.  I felt like i was back in good old Rexburg again.  It was fun to see all the changes and re-minis about the time that we spent there. 



Our First home!  Woodman Apartments on Main Street!!
Such a cool building.  I loved living there!  And I love looking back on our time in Apt. #3 above the bed store!  The owner of the Building was working hard at getting things all fixed up when we lived there.  It was cool to see some of the things completed that he had told me he wanted to do.  He has fixed up a lot of things.  Mainly the ballroom!  Wow!!  That is what Jim had told me he wanted to restore.  It looks great!  We had fun dancing around and watching ourselves in the new wall of mirrors!  (We had a luncheon in the ballroom after Dalia's baby blessing in June 2006, complete with dry wall and putty walls and bright orange chairs.)  The great big red stairs were the same!  The front entrance has changed, the door to the stairs is not so hidden anymore.  Also, the scary, but cool looking old staircase in the back of the building has been replaced with a new sturdy set of stairs.  So many good memories!  Oh, Rexburg!  Where our little family all began!  I am so thankful for my days at BYU-I!!  Some of the best in my life!  But mostly I am thankful that I met my Brian there and for our 3 beautiful children that we have created! 
P.S. I love family road trips!