Well it has been a good week. I feel like we are finally getting out and taking advantage of this state! We have been attempting to discover all of those obscure little things that make this place unique, and we've got a pretty good list going.
And we have learned a lot in our adventures, namely:
Disneyland is even more magical with a bitter breeze and a light drizzle; nobody is there and the rides a thousand times better!
Mac really likes putting his thumbs in his nose. Too much. We've had three bloody noses this week.
Ryan is REALLY good with cars; he brought my neon back from the dead! She's still got some life left in her. Thank you Ryan! And Mark is becoming even more handy . . .
Writing a book is actually kind of scary; perhaps I will write with an alias. Then people won't know how nerdy I really am.
BIG DISCOVERY: we now know why Mac has not been sleeping so well the last few nights . . . he's got his first tooth! And enjoys licking it and running his bottom lip over it.
Gremlins is a ridiculous movie and does not fit into any genre I am aware of.
Soup bowls are so good.
Chocolate dipping parties are fabulous, leftovers are troubling.
The Arboratum closes at five. You cannot see it all in an hour. We will be back.
We would really like to go on a cruise.
The Queen Mary is haunted.
The Queen Mary has a very loud fog horn.
There is a Scottish shop on the Queen Mary, and I could've stayed there all day. The sweet old clerk was very kind and her accent was divine. Mac was "the youngest Gunn I've seen in quite some time." I wish she would've said "wee" or "lad"; America must be getting to her. I want to go to Scotland very badly.
There is a Scottish Festival in February, and I am mildly obsessed.
Baby forts are easy to make and provide a lot of entertainment.
Going out to eat is wonderful, only mildly less enjoyable with tired little boys.
I was wondering . . . how do you plan your meals? Do you grocery shop Monday and cook for the week? Do you write out all your meals on Sunday? Or do you go by month? Day? Do you find yourself running to the store about every other day to grab "one little thing"?
Just curious.
I definitely find the weeks that I go day by day, I end up buying a whole lot more than I really needed. I try to plan out the week, but it doesn't always happen. I must say though, there is one meal-plan that has worked like a charm for me, allow me to share:
Buy a whole chicken. (At Albertson's they're about $5-$7.) Throw it in an enormous pot and cover the chicken with water. Add a whole onion (quartered) and five or six cloves of garlic (I leave them whole). Boil for about two hours, then take the whole chicken out and peel off all the meat, and stick it in a ziplock bag and throw it in the fridge. Then throw EVERYTHING else back in the pot (skin, bones, guts; everything!) and cook the crap out of it. I mean like at least a day, two if you've got the time. Just keep it on low and simmer with the lid on. You then have a fabulous healthy tasty chicken broth, and a lot of it! With all the meat, you've got enough for three or four meals, and I use the broth to cook rice in, to make soup, make chicken enchilada sauce, and several other things. So for about 6 bucks, you've got the main ingredients of four-ish meals!
That is my favorite so far. But we can't do that every week or we will get sick of it . . . so what do you do?
For the beginning of Mark's "spring break", (we call it that so it will feel like he's getting loads of time off; a two-week spring break sounds much better than a two-week summer break) we went swimming with Seth and Lindy.
We really liked it.
It's like a giant bathtub, one of Mac's favorite things. Then we went to a beautiful Baptist wedding for Mark's classmate Christina, and Mac couldn't stop staring at all the ladies. He also had a great reunion with the Godfather. (Which is kind of fun since we don't really do the Godfather thing . . . I don't know if it's a Mormon deal or not, but we love that Mike is so enthusiastic about it!) Mac enjoyed sweet potatoes -- and didn't even make a mess, oh my -- and loved stealing Mark's beans and olives. And he even fit into his old suit from his blessing. . . sort of. Good thing we bought it so ginormous. Also I suppose he is still rather scrawny. I keep thinking he's getting so big, till we go hang out with Seth. Or most other babies. Oh well, he is just our size. A good start to our two weeks . . . we have a lot we want to see and do! We figure we should really take advantage of our time out here, I'm pretty sure once we move away we'll never get around to doing all this. So we love you Utah family, but we are sticking around here this break.
Have I already said how much I love the Bias family? I had forgotten how fun it was to have friends till they came around. Anyway, we went to a little local zoo with them yesterday, and they were hilarious as always.
The monkeys were awesome, Ryan's stories were hilarious, Lindy was precious as ever, and the boys were gems. A good day. Check out my facebook for the highlight of the day, I can't get videos to work on here much!
So I have this wonderfully brilliant husband, which is quite a benefit. I don't think I realized how much of a benefit it would be to our little family; brilliance definitely wasn't number one on my ideal-husband list back in the day. (Yes, I did make an actual list. Don't make fun, I'll bet you might have as well.)
Basically I married Mark for several good reasons, and have since discovered many other even better reasons that probably should have come first, had I been smart enough to seek them out. Either way I got him and today I am especially grateful for his incredible intelligence. Why? Well he just finished his last final yesterday, and turns out he got all A's and one B this semester, about the same as every other semester. The best part of all that?
He doesn't study that much.
Don't get me wrong, I know he does at school between classes and while working in the gym, but when he's home, he's home. Thanks for being so smart.
However . . . . I might actually need to thank this instead: The good-luck finals facial hair. Turns out a bunch of them do it, and it hasn't failed Mark yet. This term he resembles a Hidalgo of sorts . . . kind of hot in a nasty sort of way. Good work boys. Glad those nasty spiky hairs get your chiropractic juices flowing.
He's so grown up! Seven months now. Weighs in just shy of 17 pounds, but I feel like he's gotten a lot fatter recently. He also:
Eats an entire container of 2nd foods; loves everything so long as the fruits are cold and the vegetables and meat are warm.
Can sit up by himself.
Still loves to stick his thumb in things and recently discovered he has nose holes that fit his thumbs perfectly.
Giggles and flaps his arms at everything.
Has become a bit needy; he gets bored more quickly and loooves to be entertained.
Can fall asleep on his own if he's swaddled, but has started waking up at around four or five. Not sure how I feel about it . . . if I feed him he sleeps in till seven or eight, which I do love!
Loves his little brown teddy bear! Giggles whenever he sees it.
He really seems to enjoy eating my little butterfly necklace. Upside: it's a short necklace, so he has to cuddle into my neck to get it. Downside: it's a really old necklace (my grandma's, actually), and after he chews on it he smells like metal and I can't help but wonder if there's lead or something really bad in it . . . is it bad that I like the cuddling too much to keep him away from it?
Will NOT stay on his belly; he just squeals and then rolls right over! I don't know if he'll ever crawl.
Loves to be standing. Perhaps he'll skip crawling and go straight to walking.
When holding him, he often likes to tuck his knees in and push off you like he's going to mountain climb right up your chest.
"Bababa, mamama, dadada, papapa" . . . I hear it all day long. Love it.
When he's ridiculously tired and fighting sleep, he'll arch his back while I hold him, then try to blow without losing his binky (which looks hilarious) and then he'll try to bury his face in my arm so he ends up losing the binky anyway. It's super funny and super frustrating.
He can roll his tongue! I can't do it and neither can Mark, but we watch him roll it around back and forth, twisting it and doing all sorts of crazy stuff! He is quite skilled.
I think this experience is finally funny to me, and I would like to blab about it. Perhaps a few of you can relate ... well it centers around the joys of WIC checks. Let me preface by saying I am SO grateful for them; not having to worry about my family's meals is an incredible blessing to us, and I love living in a country that takes such good care of those getting started in the real world. That being said, these WIC checks are a PAIN. Each time you get checks you have to sit through an hour or so of classes telling you that "whole grains are good for you" and other little gems of wisdom. Now, if you don't know that, then thank heavens you're finally being told! But does anyone seriously not know that? And then, when using the checks at a grocery store, you are a ridiculous burden to EVERYONE around you. The checker groans when they see you walk up with your little booklet, the people behind you attempt to stare daggers into your skull . . . I think the only thing saving me is my adorable son; he generally grins at everyone and deflates the situation.
Well I had just gotten my first batch of baby food checks. Exciting! I couldn't believe how much they gave me; there were about ten checks each having 6-15 jars of baby food, depending on what it is. I knew that I might mess this up because you have to make sure you've got the ounces right, so I had a store clerk come help me out. She pointed out the ones I could get, and so I started to load up. It takes a good 10 minutes or so; it was my first time ever buying baby food and I took my time soaking it all in.
I scan the lines of check out stands, attempting to read each clerk's aura and decipher who would be nicest. Of course the length of their line is an issue; I don't want to be first, have a billion people line up behind me and then hate me . . . but I couldn't resist this gal. She had just opened up, she looked like she knew what she was doing (very important when you approach them with checks) and seemed nice enough.
She wasn't nice.
She literally sighed and furrowed her brows when she saw all my checks, and I apologized like I generally do. Gads I hate feeling like that poor, young, irresponsible burden to society. Well then people start to line up behind me and she says rather roughly, "No, no. Don't come here. This person is going to take forever, this line is closed." And she flips off her light, takes my checks and starts shaking her head and tapping her toe. Gee. I even organized all the food as I was putting it on, making sure it stayed with its appropriate check.
After some grumbling, she starts putting it through. The bagger was very sweet, she tried to make small talk with me and oogled at Mac. Suddenly the checker groans and says, "Hey you did this wrong. All this food is the wrong stuff. You have to go back and start over." AAaaaah. I feel stupid and suddenly hateful to whoever that worker was that helped me pick it out ... but what do you do?
I head back to the aisle and find the right ones (which happened to be 2nd foods, which doesn't make sense) and start loading up again, attempting to be very quick this time. Mac had started to get fussy and was chewing on his binky. (Not sucking, chewing; like he bites the plastic edges.) Suddenly he makes the oddest squeal I've ever heard. I snap to attention and find his binky is wedged sideways in his mouth; as in the plastic part that would stretch across the corners of his mouth had it been in its proper place, was now wedged straight up and down, wrapped around his little gums. Now one of my worst fears growing up has always been my jaw breaking off (I have no idea why) so panic grips me as I imagine how tightly stretched his little mouth is! I yank and twist and FINALLY get it out, and then attempt to wrestle him out of his car seat to cuddle him.
Well of course he is screaming, and a young teenage worker holding two big bags comes up and asks if I'd like any help finding anything. Mildly annoyed I say, "No, I'm fine." Then he tries to be good-natured and continues: "Well you probably know all this way better than I do. Up front some stupid lady tried to buy all this food but got the wrong stuff, so they want me to come put it all back! I have no idea where any of this goes!"
A thousand thoughts run through my mind ... laugh? Help? Tell him the truth? Show him where they all go, because I definitely do know. Well I settled for a strained, "Good luck" and whipped the last of the foods into my cart, and headed back to the front, still bouncing Mac on my hip. GOOD GRIEF.
The checker was waiting for me, still tapping her toe and rolling her eyes. Luckily we got them all through without a hitch, and after being at the grocery store a grand two hours I finally get my poor little guy home.
But hey, he's got food. And I will never forget how to do baby food on WIC checks.
So yesterday I went with the lovely sister missionaries to a neighbors house . . . he lives right in our little complex! His name is Gary and he is a very good guy. Kind of sad and tired and wise. He is also the last in a long line of Free Masons, which is kinda cool. All I know about them is from National Treasure, so it seemed pretty mystical. Anywho, we had a good talk and I hope we get to talk to him again!
Favorite story of his: Einstein was in a nursing home at the end of his life, and the day before he died he went out in the rose garden with his nurse Mary. He asked Mary if she believed in God and she responded, "Of course, how could I not? Look at everything around us!"
She then turned the question on him and he responded: "Yes I do. I know He created everything around us, and I have spent my entire life trying to catch him at work."
Mac has now been to his first baseball game. Go Angels!
They actually got creamed, but we still had fun. Babies make you very popular at baseball games. We made loads of friends.
Mac was a champ, made it through the sixth inning! With a hand clasped over his ears, he made it till the eighth inning, when Mark decided we should probably go. He never leaves baseball games early. Mac, your daddy loves you.
Hurrah, they came to visit! Mark's brother and his fabulous family are heading out to Haiti to . . . well, basically they're going to save the country. Matt has a wealthy friend who's looking to do some good, and Matt is going to be his hands by creating a school, a business, houses, and who knows what else to help the Haitians to help themselves! It was awesome to hear about, this family is amazing. They're leaving in just a couple months, but thankfully had some free Disneyland tickets from their day of service and happened to be in St. George earlier this week, a mere six hours away. So they swung down to make use of those tickets and let us bask in their magnificence. The trip actually was probably a bit of a bummer for them . . . Danika has developed some intense foot issues and Matt was working like mad on getting things set up for Haiti, but being the selfish person I am I was super glad they came anyway! Unfortunately, all of Utah decided to come along with them. Disneyland was RIDICULOUS, I have NEVER seen it that busy. Luckily the kids are small enough that they're more interested in the shows and walk-through wonders like Tarzan's Tree House than they are in any rides. And it turns out Danika's bum foot actually benefited everyone; they got to be in the wheelchair lines which were shorter! (Though not much.) Without Mark (he had to go back to take a test in the middle of the day) it got a bit intense pushing two strollers and a wheelchair with only two completely functioning adults . . . but we managed. Hazel lost a shoe, but Disneyland is still magical in socks. Maybe even more so. We took turns hanging out with the babies. At one point Mark and I had Lia, Hazel, Olive, and Mac while the others went on Indiana Jones. I ran to the bathroom as fast as I could, and came back to find a baby in each of his arms and a little girl on each shoulder. I wish I had taken a picture. Mark informed me that Mac might be an only child.
I think he was kidding . . . .
Luckily because basically everyone there was from Utah, they were all super understanding with kids and it was a very pleasant day. We met people from Spanish Fork, Draper, and even Logan! Mac slept about twenty minutes all day, but was surprisingly good-tempered. As soon as we got in the car he crashed.
The next day we sat around and talked all morning, which was maaaarvelous. Danika is just so great to talk to. She loves to analyze things with me, and she's hilarious. A perfect combination. Plus she's no stress, which I love. They are basically your ideal guests. We then went out to Huntington Beach, and I think everyone from Disneyland came with us. Once again, I have NEVER seen it so packed!! It was quite windy, but the kids still managed to love it. Well, they loved it for about an hour anyway. That's enough time to make a sand castle and find some neat shells, I guess. Then we headed home and topped off our trip with My Thai and Mark gave out a round of adjustments. It was pretty exciting; it was the first time Mark had adjusted someone who was not a classmate or me. And he did GREAT! It just reaffirmed that I am a difficult person to adjust and that Mark is indeed getting the hang of it.
Thanks Matt and Dan, we love you to pieces and are SO glad you stopped by before you head out on your crazy Haitian adventure!!
