Thanksgiving in St. George

Well we made it back from our Thanksgiving Vacation to St. George, Utah. We had a blast with Jim's family. Here's Tralee doing her new upside down trick. She'll do this and then lift up one of her legs. We're not sure why she does this, or how she learned, but it's pretty fun to watch!

Our vacation started out on Wednesday morning. We dropped Corky off at Kathy and Nathan's (Jim's cousins) so she could be dogsat, then we headed off to the Boise Airport. Tralee loved crawling around while we were waiting for our flight to board and she behaved well and slept on the airplane.

Adrienne, Jim's sister picked us up from the St. George Airport with her daughters Tandra and Cassie. They were hiding behind newspapers, so we couldn't see them. Then -- Surprise -- they jumped out and we were so happy they were there.

Wednesday night we ate dinner, and hung out at Jim's brother, John's house. Tricia and Jeff (Jim's mom and her husband) were there. John and his wife Cassie have two kids. A girl, Lexi Jo who's two, and a boy, Brody who's seven months old . Tralee had fun playing with them. Later on Wednesday night we sung karaoke songs and hung out.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. Basically there was a lot of hanging out, eating, watching football, playing football, and sleeping. Tandra and Little Cassie made place sitting signs for everyone at the Thanksgiving table as well as Pilgrim hats. It was very cute. Tralee and Jim took a long nap, and later Tralee crawled around and got used to her new surroundings and cousins. Thursday night we went swimming at Adrienne's pool. We all had fun.

Thanksgiving was a nice, relaxing, fun day.

Friday the girls went shopping and Jim and Tandra and Cassie went bowling, miniature golfing, and played video games. Tralee fell in love with her reflexion again while in a fitting room. It was so cute! Lexi even got in on the action.



Can you blame Tralee for looking at herself, look at how cute she is!

Here's some trampoline fun from Thursday and Friday:
Tralee fell asleep for a while when we were shopping, and actually let Grandma Tricia hold her. I had to take a picture of the rare event.


Here's Lexi singing on the way home from the mall.

After shopping Cassie cut my hair, which I haven't had done in forever! I love my new do!

Friday afternoon John took us to a place where we could go hiking. Jim and John went on the more intense hike which involved some actual mountain climbing, while the rest of us did the less intensive hike. It was beautiful!

Here's Jim and Adrienne:

Here are some random shots from hiking:


These are two cool pictures of Jim and John scaling a mountain:


Jim decided to jump over a gap in the mountain. I'm watching from below:


Here we are, just a happy family:

When we were done with the hike, we left for Mesquite to go eat lots of sea food at the all-you-can-eat crab leg buffet. It was yummy!

Jim and Adrienne gambled for a bit, Big Cassie and I talked in the hotel check-in area, and the rest of the gang watched the Boise State football game in the lounge.

Saturday was my favorite day of our vacation. We went four-wheeling and had a blast! Here is little Cassie getting ready for a ride.

Four-wheeling was awesome.

Tralee and I rode in John and Cassie's friend's Rhino with the other moms with young kids. I thought I would be nervous, but it was just fun going up in the sand dunes. Tralee slept all the way up, but she woke up and played in the sand, and then squealed with glee on the ride back down.

I also took Adrienne's four wheeler for a ride while Jim watched Tralee. Lexi Jo had an "accident" while up in the sand dunes. I captured this photo of her in the middle of her "accident" it was too cute to pass up. Poor girl had to go pant less for the remainder of the day.

We had a picnic, and then the guys took the Rhino for a more intense ride.

Adrienne got a fun video of it. Jim said the video isn't true to how crazy they were being. This was towards the end of their ride.

That night we all went swimming at Adrienne's again. Fun!

Sunday was a relaxing day. We hung out, took some cousin pictures, ate leftovers, and chatted with each other.

We played ping-pong at Adrienne's clubhouse that night. Nothing too exciting happened. Sunday night Tandra lost a tooth, and we got it on video. The tooth fairy visited her that night, and even let her keep the tooth.

Monday Jim and I packed up, hung out with family some more, and then flew home. Our flights were uneventful. The only bad news is, Tralee seemed to pick up a cold. Poor thing has been a little fussy and snuffly yesterday and today. Yesterday and today I've been trying to get back into the groove of things. But, it's not working too well. I still kind of wish I was in St. George and Tralee is really fussy and sick! Poor thing.

We stayed with Adrienne while we were in St. George and she is always a great hostess. She's super fun to hang out with and talk to, and she likes to feed us yummy food. John and Cassie are also fun to hang out with. We really love to be around them, and we think they're great people. We all had fun, and Jim and I are sad the vacation is over.

Here are some random pictures of Tralee and some of her cousins.

One thing we kept saying on this trip was "WE LIED!" with extra glee. This is because Adrienne, Tandra, Little Cassie, and I all tricked Jim into drinking a health drink. The drink is actually disgusting, but we told him it tasted good. As soon as Jim took a sip Little Cassie squealed, "WE LIED!" and put her hands up in the air. It was more funny than Jim's actual expression.

Here are some dinosaurs Jim made out of clay for his nieces. Cute!

The End

Dreams and the Weekend Report

Lately Jim and I have been having the same dreams. Weird! We both dreamed that we saw skydivers jumping, only their parachutes were all tangled, and they were crashing to the ground. Then the next night we both dreamed about Jim's business and it was almost the exact same dream. How weird is that?

This weekend was normal. Friday night was bowling league night. We did alright. We were up against a REALLY difficult team. Their league shirts were all matchy-matching, they had bowling gloves on, serious bowling balls, matching bowling shoes, and they bowled really well! We managed to beat them once, out of three games. They said to us after the games, "You guys really made us work!" Well, not me so much, I'm lucky if I break 100. I think they meant Jim and Billy. We'll have a new member of our bowling team next week. We met him. His name is Greg and he's from California. Greg seems like he'll fit right in in the Idaho bowling league circuit. Let's just say when we met him, he had one too many, and was really loud and really outgoing. To say the least, he was amusing. I think we're the only people who don't drink on bowling league night. It's pretty funny to watch the people around us.

Jim had to work on Saturday. He came home around noon and napped for a bit. Then Jim, Tralee, and I all went to Costco to walk around and sample food. We had fun showing Tralee some GIANT stuffed animals, and looking at things we wish we could buy. We also walked around The World Marketplace, that was fun. We managed to not buy anything except for a smoothie from Costco. We're saving our money for when we go to St. George over Thanksgiving.

Jim had two meetings for Church on Sunday morning so Tralee and I got ready for Church, and then Jim came home and picked us up so we could all go together. Church was nice. It's just a weird time to go with a baby. Usually Tralee naps during our block at church, and she really shows no interest in napping while at church. There's too much going on around her, and by the end she's really frustrated with just sitting in our laps. So, for the last part of Relief Society I took her out in the hall and let her crawl around with some other babies.

That's all that's happening in our life. Not too much to report. We're flying to St. George, UT on Wednesday. I'm so excited to see Jim's family there! Yippee!

The only new photos I took were of Tralee climbing. The girl loves to climb up and over anything! Lately she's been pushing her little piano up to her playpen and climbing up on it, trying to figure out how to get into her playpen. Tralee also likes to climb on us, if we're laying on the ground. If our legs are in her way, she's climb up them, and then nose-dive back to the ground. If there's a pillow on the ground, she'll climb over that rather than crawl around it. It's pretty funny to watch.

Bumps and Bruises

Now that Tralee is standing and trying to walk, she's falling down A LOT! I can't possibly catch her every time she falls, so when I miss she usually ends up with a bump, scratch, or bruise. She currently has a bump on her forehead, a scratch on her nose and cheek, and a bruise on her leg. Every time I take her out I'm worried someone is going to call child protective services. Not really, but it's amazing how beat up a baby learning to walk can get. If you zoom in on this pictures, you'll be able to see her bump and scratch.



Nothing too eventful has really happened this week, which is why I haven't written. Jim and I went bowling to practice and a little old bowling lady came and coached me for like 20 minutes! It was GREAT! I think after all my life of bowling wrong, I might have actually found my groove. We'll see how bowling league night goes.

I went to Enrichment on Tuesday night. That was fun, Jim watched Tralee so I could be child-free for an hour or so. It was nice.

That's really all. Lately we've been playing music and dancing with Tralee. I captured a cute father-daughter dance a few nights ago:

Last night I tried capturing Tralee making her new noise. I don't know how to describe it, but if we blow raspberries, or make a similar sound, she'll try to copy it her own little cute way. I only got her doing it at the end of the video, but I think you get the gist of it.

Just a Nice Weekend

Friday was bowling league night. No money was won this night, but fun was had. Jim and I didn't bowl as well as we would have liked, however we won two out of three games. Not too bad, right?

Saturday was nice. We were lazy in the morning, I think because it was a gray drizzly day. You know, the kind of day where you just want to stay inside and sip hot cocoa. After the rain subsided we went for a nice family walk. Then we decided to go to our house on Chicken Dinner Road to measure it for flooring. While there we decided that there's a bit of work we'll need to do on the property before it's move-in ready. Jim ripped out the old carpet, and burnt a ton of weeds. That's about it so far.



We were hungry after Chicken Dinner Road, so we went out for pizza, and stopped by Home Depot for some inspiration. That was fun. While we were there I thought how fun it would be to have an unlimited budget for a home, and to be able to decorate and style it however you wanted. Until then, we're going to try to make the house look as nice as possible, without spending too much.



Last night we rented the movie Next, starring Nicolas Cage. At first I didn't think I would like it, but I actually really enjoyed it, and would recommend the movie to anyone that's looking for a fun show to watch. The following is another fun little movie. Tralee was laughing at me when I said "Boo!" We were right out side the movie rental place. How fitting!



Today was Stake Conference. There were some great speakers, and we really enjoyed listening to the talks. Afterwards we went to Jim's Mom's for lunch. She made Navajo Tacos, and I made Key Lime Pie. We watched some movies with Tricia and Jeff, and came home.

That's about it for this weekend. We had fun, relaxed, and I even managed to get some laundry done. One thing that annoyed me (not just this weekend but always) was the fact that you're never done with the dishes. As soon as you clean the kitchen, it's dirty the next time you eat. Usually only a few hours apart. Oh well. I guess if that's all I have to complain about I'm pretty lucky.

One more thing: The cat's been MIA for the last few days. I hope all is well in Kittydom.

The Cat's Back

The cat didn't make it back last night. But, I left my old sweatshirt out, just in case. Tonight when I was letting Corky out, I thought I'd check on the cat situation again, and sure it enough, there was a ball of orange and white fur curled up on my sweatshirt.

Jim thinks I'm ridiculous and that if I ignore the cat it will just go away, but I couldn't help laying out an old towel too, just for some extra protection from the cold air. I also put a dish of water out for it, and fed it some tuna. I was debating whether or not to give it food, but it kept meowing at me and pushing my hands with its head, like it was trying to tell me something. I felt better when the cat gobbled down some more tuna like it was starving. I feel bad leaving it out in the cold, but I really don't want to get attached, and I really don't want a pet cat. I just want to help it a bit. I have a good feeling that it can survive outside since it seemed to hate being stuck in our garage, and the sweatshirt and towel will help it a bit. Also, it's against our house, so it's blocked from the wind. Plus, the cat only shows up around eight at night. The rest of the day it's MIA, so if I can help it at night, why not?

Yeah, maybe it's a bit of a nuisance, and something else for me to worry about. However, maybe there's a reason this cat picked our flowerbed. Jim thinks I'm crazy, and that it's just a stray cat. Maybe he's right, but what harm is there in giving a stray a bit of comfort?

Funny Little Girl

Tralee ate lunch today (grapes, turkey, bread, and avocado) and then crawled over to a bucket and started screaming and dancing. The lunch must have given her a good boost of energy. Watching her was pretty funny, so I grabbed the camera and captured this video.

In the video I'm singing (sorry it sounds so terrible, but I'm just trying to entertain my daughter), then you'll hear me go "Ah" a few times, and Tralee echoes back it screeches. She's a funny little girl.




As I'm typing this Tralee is blasting some pretty serious toots, and smiling at me. I bet she'll have a little present in her diaper just for me in no time!

More Dancing and Bob Barker Advice

Tralee's dancing right now. She always dances when I don't have the camera or video camera out, but as soon as I pull either one out she stops dancing. Why is that? Anyways, last night she was dancing like crazy, and as soon as I pulled the camera out she just stared at me. I did manage to get her dancing for a second though. It's pretty cute.



I checked three times last night to see if the cat was back in our flowerbed, but it never showed up. I'm resolved to thinking it walked right up to someone who was looking for a cat, and now it's in a happy home. If I think of the alternative I feel sad. Tralee and I walked through the kennels of available dogs to adopt yesterday. I couldn't bring myself to look any of them in the eye. Some of them seemed so desperate for love and attention. Many of them were mutts, one of them was a gorgeous St. Bernard, and there were some little puppies laying on blankets shaking. It made me really sad. I think if I made eye contact and saw the desperation in their eyes I would have left sobbing. I wish there was something I could do to help. I wish more people were responsible with their animals, and would get them spayed/neutered. It doesn't cost that much money. I also wish that when people buy pets they realize it's a life-long addition to their family, not something they can have fun with until they get bored, and then drop them off at the pound when they're done with them.

A lot of people around here go out to the country areas and drop off pets they don't want anymore. When I lived with Jim's Mom we found a beautiful dog -- like lady from Lady and the Tramp -- running around. It's hair was all matted, and you could see its ribs. It was scarred, and hungry. So we fed it some of Corky's food, gave it some water, and called animal control. I hope that dog is in a happy home now. But seriously, do as Bob Barker says and have your dogs and cats spayed and neutered!!!

Jim ripped out all the old carpet in our house on Chicken Dinner Road. So, now I have to pick out paint colors. We won't do anything that costs money until our house in Utah is sold. Jim talked to he people renting from us, and they're getting it appraised today or tomorrow, after that they'll take the next step to buy it. We're hoping by the end of the month it will be sold. Cross your fingers!

Kitty Rescue Gone Bad

So for the past few nights an orange and white cat has been sleeping in our flowerbed. The first night I noticed I put an old sweatshirt out there for it. Last night it came back. Jim was checking out Craigslist and a woman posted that her orange and white cat went missing. We thought this was the one, so we called her, she came to check it out, and it wasn't her cat. Too bad! So, after checking the weather and finding out that it was going to get down to 28 degrees F, I let the cat sleep in our garage. I filled a box with dirt so it could relieve itself, we fed it some tuna, laid some old towels and sweatshirts for it to sleep on, and gave it a dish of water. The plan was I would call animal control in the morning so they could come pick it up. Well, animal control doesn't open until 10am, so I waited, then called and found out that they don't do pick ups for cats. So, I packed Tralee up, got the cat in the car, and headed over to the animal shelter, which was only a couple minutes away. When I got there I opened the door and the cat hopped out, and ran away. So. . . all that fuss and the cat is right where it began, only now it might be lost and won't have a nice flowerbed or garage to sleep in tonight. I wish I could be more like Jim and not get emotionally involved, but now I'm worried about the cat. Maybe I should have just let it out of our garage, and let it back in at night for it to sleep. It's getting cold at night now, and I don't want the poor thing to starve/freeze to death. I don't know much about cats, but can one survive ok in cold weather? I just can't stand the thought of it suffering. It was a really nice cat, and crawled into my lap, purred and let me pet it. I tried to do the right thing, but maybe I should have just let it be. I said it a little prayer for it, maybe it can find a nice home. Or maybe it will find its way back to our flowerbed tonight. Who knows. We took a picture of it last night, when we thought the owner was going to come get it. I hope this little cat is happy. . . wherever it ends up.

Dancing Queen

Last night Jim, Tralee, and Corky all fell asleep on the couch. So cute!



Tralee's found her rhythm. Whenever there's music playing that she likes she'll start dancing. It's pretty cute! Here's a little video of her dancing to one of her favorite songs today. It's only a short clip and it's a little wobbly because I'm dancing too -- trying to help Tralee get her grove on. She's not wearing pants either because I JUST finished changing her poopy diaper and she scurried off before I had a chance to put her pants back on. Enjoy.




Other than that it's been an average day. A little cleaning, a walk, playing, reading, singing, dancing, staying in touch with friends, and that's all so far.

An Average Sunday

I didn't even hear Jim get up this morning. He had to wake up for a leadership meeting at church that started at 7:00 am. I'm glad it wasn't me! The good news is our church doesn't start until 1:30pm, so after the meeting he was able to come home and take a snooze.

I woke up after having a strange dream. I dreamed about this lady from a dating show. I was a contestant on the show and she really liked me, but I had to tell her I wasn't interested. Then all of a sudden I was in another room and there were two Tralees. I wanted to put Tralee back together so I picked both Tralees up and squished them until there was just one again. What in the world does that dream mean?

Anywho, with the time change it seemed like we were waiting all day to go to church. Jim and I were both set apart for our new callings today. I'm a ward Visiting Teaching Supervisor, Jim's the First Councilor in Young Mens. I guess this means I have to make sure I get my visiting teaching done every month. A card or a phone call probably won't cut it either. I really like my companion, so it should be fun.

This next pictures is of Corky. We were leaving for Church and she was ticked off that we were going, so she ran up to our bedroom and started whining at us through the screen. Poor dog, she's always left out.



We ate a yummy dinner when we got home from church. We had a pot roast, mashed potatoes, broccoli salad, jell-o, and pumpkin bars for dessert. Yum yum!

Now Jim's watching sports, Tralee's napping, Corky's napping, and I'm typing on my blog. Nothing too exciting. You're probably wishing you didn't waste your time reading this. Sorry to disappoint.

Steals of Deals

Since Jim won some money last night, we decided to take advantage of it today with some guilt free spending.

We started out going to The Cracker Barrel for breakfast, then we hit some local Goodwills. We found an old milk canister to decorate with, some home decor, an i-pod stereo for only $20, toys for Tralee, antiques, and Jim got a banana chair with built in speaker to sit in while playing Guitar Hero and other video games. We were stoked with our finds! All of that only ended up costing around $100 -- including breakfast!!

Then we decided to hit Big Lots and we found a high chair for Tralee for only $20. So, overall we had a great day of bargain shopping, and we even have money to spare. Go us!

Bowling Night = $320 Richer Night

So, last night was bowling league night. When we got to the bowling ally we were placed against a team that I can only describe as large, smelly, Amish looking, hillbillies. They smelled like they didn't have running water at Grandpa Remus's farm. There was a old lady that the son's called Mother, a Father, and two boys. Only the boys were grown men with Amish looking beards, home-made jeans that were being held up with suspenders, and American Flag bowling balls-- not to mention their bellies hung to their knees. The father looked like an older version of the sons, but he had thick glasses on, wild greasy hair, and a hat that looked like Jed Clampit's. Mother was fashioned in moss colored polyester pants, with a matching sweatshirt that had a picture of an American Eagle on it. Mother bowled in slow motion. In fact, she did EVERYTHING in slow motion, and hardly cracked a smile. However, she bowled great! Strike after strike after strike--it just took ten minutes for the ball to get down the lane. The other guys took bowling WAY too seriously. If they got a strike it was like watching a human jell-o mold as they jumped around and pumped their fists. If they didn't bowl so great, they smacked the air like they were hitting Osama Bin Laden, and the jell-o would wiggle with that movement too. Jim, our teammate Billy, Tralee, and I all stayed behind them up by the table when we weren't bowling because not-to-be too terribly rude, but it REALLY stunk down by the lanes.

So, we started out not bowling so great. I blame the distraction of the Clampit family. Every time I got a split or not a strike, the Clampits all went "Oh that was horrible!!" and shook their heads in dismay. Thanks guys. It was an experience. We were actually quite amused, and couldn't really believe this was reality. We thought someone would come out and announce we were on a hidden camera show.

However, the bowling ally does this jackpot thing for bowling league night. Everyone can buy raffle tickets and if your number is called you have one chance to get a strike, and if you get a strike you win the pot. Nobody won the pot for three weeks so it was up to $320!! Wouldn't you know it, they called Jim's ticket number! Well, there's one thing I know for sure, Jim performs GREAT under pressure! So, I hand in his ticket, and all eyes are on Jim, they guy who at the last bowling league night bowled a 243! I watch him and sure enough . . . STRIKE!!! YAY, we win the pot!!! So, after that boost of energy our team started bowling AMAZING! I even bowled great for me! We beat the Clampits and had a great time!

Bowling League Night was a success! Tralee even behaved remarkably well.

Tralee's Socks from Grammy Jacobs

Tralee wore a pair of socks today that Grammy Jacobs knit for her. They were still a little big, but we were going for a walk, and she needed something to keep her tootsies warm. They worked really well, plus Tralee was fascinated by the fringe on top of them. The overall effect was cuteness!



We had a good walk, and Tralee fell asleep. This aloud me to read a book and take a nap myself when we got home. NICE!!