Summer Saturdays: Renessance Center

We have decided to go do something fun every Saturday this summer. We have compiled a long list of necessary sightseeings to accomplish while we live here. This week we visited the Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit, which houses the General Motors International headquarters. The complex overlooks the river. We had a relaxing morning.

These were taken in the showroom. The guy who designed the Camero is in our ward!

This is a suburban-- the rural Utah mom car that I swear I will never own. I'm minivan all the way!

 We had trouble getting buddy out of the cars...

Fashion show, Fashion show, Fashion show at lunch!

I would like to report that I just had a pre-pregnancy fashion show in the which I fit into my prep-pregnancy clothes I had saved! The pants are even a little big in the leg! I am now officially a size ten! AND, when I stepped on the scale this morning it said 158! Which may mean I'm finally breaking my plateau! I'll tell you, the weight loss is worth the wait of months and months of little to no results. Just stick to it! 2.5 weeks left of Body for Life. We'll see what happens!

Decidedly,

It is time for an update. I feel like my life is so cool, even though society labels 'stay at home mom-dom' as mundane and full of stress. Well, it is, but life can still be pretty cool, too.

I don't even know where to start.

We have decided to sign on our house. We looked around Vernal for an apartment, and even had some good friends think of us when a townhouse came open to rent in our ward. But in the end, this investment is worth the risks, even thoug we really don't deserve a house this nice. So, yay for stability!

Dave's job is getting better. They are resolving issues with the management in the store, and he wants to stay in Vernal until something better opens up with DI (experimental jobs out east and international).

We went up to Salt Lake this weekend. It was like a week of Party. Earlier in the week we drove the 2 hours to Grand Junction, CO to go to their Chick-fil-a and the Bananas Fun Park. We did Bumper boats, where Dave and Sarah got soaked, mini golf, and a Dora & Diego bouncy house. I caught a game of lazer tag while Dave and the kids did the arcade. Then we went shopping at Kohls. Dave spent $100 and saved $500. We loveKohls. Then I went to Old Navy, where I'd like to say I found similar saving, but I didn't. However, I did find that I am officially a Medium shirt size again. I didn3 think it was possible, but I really am that small again! Thank you, Body for Life. I also bought a pair of size 10 pants to motivate myself these next couple weeks. Also they were cheap and I don't have pants smaller than 12s. 3 weeks to go!

Thursday we went to the beach without Daddy (who was at work). Steinaker State park is only about 15 minutes away, and has some really nice sandy beaches. It is $7 per car, which means we can't go all the time, but we can swing it every couple weeks. I didn't but sunscreen on and got a nice burn that is turning into an even better tan. But- no more sun for me this season. I put sunscreen on the kids, but they got burned anyway. =( Not to badly, but I was rubbing baby oil on their backs that night, and it felt so good to Christian that he smiles and says 'woil' every time he sees the bottle. That boy. He says mom, dad, hi and woil. =)

Friday I spent the whole day cleaning and packing. At 4 we got dad from work and left for Park City to the Deer Valley Music Fest again. This time it was the Utah Symphony playing the 1812 Overture with live cannons! It was an audience picks concert, so we enjoyed a lot of classics: Willaim Tell, Beethoven's 5th symph, Kannon in D, Porgy & Bess, Flight of the Valkuries, Four Seasons. Dave's parents met us there. It was nice to do something with them. So, Sarah and Christian danced the night away, and then almost fell asleep until the 1812. The cannons were awesome. Sarah was familiar with the song from Little Einteins, and she talked about the parts of the episode that were associated with each part of the piece (monkey, volcano, playing too loud.) It was tons of fun.

The next morning we went to the Zoo with Kat and Nick. The kids really enjoyed it. At the end we played on a playground there and headed home. It felt like we spent forever there, but it probably was just the sun.

That evening I bought Dave some strawberry cake rolls, red vines and ordered out for Papa Johns Pizza, all his favorites, and talked him mom into letting him open and use his present, Star Craft II. He has been waiting 12 years for this game to come out. Star Craft was his game of choice, and apparently he could womp most people growing up. It was fun to play with him. Star Craft is a lot like War Craft, which I played as a kid, just set in space instead of a medival fantasy world, so I got the hang of it pretty quick. We, along with Dave's little brother Michael, started on Very Easy against 4 computers, and got all the way up to Hard by 1 am, when we decided to call it quits. Because kids don't care if you didn't get any sleep the next morning.

We got up on time, though, and went to church with Josh and Carrie. Carrie gave a wonderful talk on living a balanced life. She's so amazing. I'm always surprised when they want to hang out with us because they're so cool. After church we hung out with them and Josh let me eat some Ranch Doritos. They were yummy.

The last thing to do was family dinner, which is now a bit of a blur. There are so many people, and his parent's house isnot small, but there is too much sometimes. His mom made lots of great food, as always, and we had cake and pies and opened presents. Christian had his own little cake, which he had fun riping apart with his fork. It was wonderful.

There you have it. Any question?

Tidbits

Good morning! I feel like my mom when I get up this early. But actually, it's 5:30, which is sleeping in for her. I'll write and go to the gym.

Some more interesting things have been happening.

After a couple of long conversations, Dave and I are seriously considering not buying this house. We haven't closed on it because the seller is a bank that is being foreclosed by the FDIC, so our paper work goes from us to the Credit union to the Bank to the FDIC and all the way back before it's official. We've been living rent free because we qualified for early occupancy, but there's no contract yet. It's been a great trial run, because I love this house, but it's too expensive. I mean, not too expensive to live a regular life, but to expensive to live the life we want to live. We can't pretend that we don't both have student loans and Worldmark, and we still battling revolving balances on a credit card. I just realized that having equity in a house meant nothing to me if we weren't making some serious payments to our loans.

So, we're looking for an apartment. The only thing we'd owe for living in this house is $500 for the appraisal. That's not bad at all in my book. We'll have to see how things pan out, but we don't have any concrete plans as of rigt now.

Now to change gears for a moment. I'm about to go to the gym, but I wanted to give another update. I've been hovering at the 160 mark for a couple weeks now, and been trying to break the plateau. A friend of mine sugggested to start eating as many gross-tasting vegetables as possible, because their low calorie and aid in weight loss. So, I bought some snack baggies and filled then with green peppers, broccoli, celery, (gotta be), carrots and wilted collard greens, which have to be the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted. I've also started adding spinach to my protein shakes, which actually isn't too bad, you can barely taste it. I bike the half mile o the gym in the morning, and have started running with the kids to the gym at 9:30 for class. I'm really hoping this will be the week. And that next time you see me, you see me, you'll hardly recognize me! Let's hope.

I'd still like to write about the rst of the fun things we're going to do this summer, like camping, and our races, and concerts, but I've got to go pump some iron, as it were. ;)

The ward potluck.

Greeting from Vernal.

We had an interesting experience at our ward party yesterday evening. It was under a pavillion at a park. The activity was a pot luck and cooking contest for the men. Just as everyone (probably 150+ people) was getting food and starting to eat, dark clouds rolled in and it started pouring. Everyone huddled in close so they wouldn't get wet, but then the wind started blowing 45 mph throug the pavillion. Then it started hailing. I remember looking up into the crowd while my back is being pelted with stinging, cold balls of ice, and seeing parents huddled with crying children, holding plates of food, most of which has blown away, and just hearing general screaming and chaos, and lauging outloud. It was such a comic scene. Eventually people started making a break for their cars, and then the wind died down. We were soaked! It felt like we had just jumped into a cold pool. The whole thing probably only lasted ten minutes, but it will be a fun memory. If the point was for us to bond, I think it worked.

Family Home Evening

Tonight for FHE we decided to start keeping a record of our kids. I have, in the past, through e-mail and my own journal, recorded mile stones for our kids, and we definitely have plenty of pictures, but we don't have them all in one place. So, tonight we got each of them notebooks. Here are some of the things we wrote:

Sarah

Age: 2.5
Favorite things to do for Sarah Time: McDonald's play place, go to the park, paint and sing.
Favorite movies: Shrek, Toy Story, Muzzy, Dora and Meet the Robinsons.
Likes to read with mom and dad
Favorite color: purple
Favorite foods: Milk in a sippie cup, instant oatmeal, hot dogs, Dora Spaghettios, sugar and peanut butter toast.
Loves to have her nails painted, but eats it off her fingers! Yuck!
Loves to dance to the music during the crdits of a movie
Loves to build with legos, take a bath, and Loveslovesloves putting on makeup.
Can do summersaults!
Not potty trained, and doesn't want to try.
Pushes buddy down twice a day. At least.
Has 12 teeth


Andrew Buddy Christan

Age: 11 months
Favorite thing to do: eat.
Also loves: playing with Sarah, Dancing, and cruising
First words (in order): Mama, Dada, Hi, Bye, Hello
Signs: More, Milk, Waves goodbye.
Claps hands to 'If you're Happy and You Knowit'
Can give 5 up to 100!
Randomly dances when cars with loud music drive by.
Walked 10 steps unassisted today!
Eats anything off the floor
Climbs on child size chairs and sits down
Swings one leg when he feels accomplished or happy
Pretends to talk on the phone. Says, 'Hello?'. Uses various other objects as phones.
Loves to color, and pretends he is coloring by moving his hand around when he has paper but no crayons
Has 7 teeth
Goes down the slide (headfirst!) by himself
Plays princesses with Sarah! =)
Makes everyone smile!

school, music, races

Dear Blog and the people who read it,

We are fairing well in life. A lot of things have come together for me this past week. The first is very exciting. I talked with the ladies down at the USU extension, who are going to get me into school this fall! I still don't know how many music courses I'll be able to take (still need to e-mail Mr. Jessop!), but I do know they offer online Italian language classes, which will most certainly count toward a voice emphasis. I've applied, but still need to take care of FAFSA and scholarship applications. We can also breath a sigh of relief because we won't have to pay on my student loans come fall (just in time to start payments on Dave's, though!).

Another fun thing is because we have a piano in our home, I could teach voice lessons! From what I've gathered, there aren't many voice teachers in the area, so hopefully we could make it viable source of income? We'll see how things roll. I plan to advertise in the classifieds and around town, and quite possible start up a website... I'm not sure. Everything is still in the works.

Intejection: I was reading a history of Maine until I got stuck in the seventeenth century (near the beginning =/ ) and now I just want to read To Kill A Mocking Bird because that's all they're talking about on NPR this week.

Body for life is going great. I had a rough spot last weekend because we partied way too much. My free day spilled over into other days a little bit. But, no long term damage done. I'm back on track again. Actually, I've started going to the gym during the day again, too. It feels really good, and I've ended the last few days dead tired around 8. It's turned me into a morning person! I actually am foregoing the Temple tonight because I knew I'd be too tired to focus on what I want to. I'll go Saturday, early morning.

Dave and I were asked to speak on Sunday. I'm to speak on Sacrifice, and I was a little nervous at first because I couldn't think of anything to say. Really, for 3 days nothing has come to my mind when I think of it. Finally, this morning I found a few Conference talks that got the thoughts flowing. But it was a kind of scary couple days. I thought I was going crazy!

So, now that we know where we are going to live for a while, Dave and I are preparing to finish the race season. We still have a 10k, half Marathon and another Sprint Tri to complete before the family Turkey Trot 5k in Draper at Thanksgiving. It's kind of hard living so far away from everything. They had a Tri a couple weeks ago here in Vernal, but it was on my birthday, and a little too close to our move. There are plenty left in the season, but we'll have to travel. If any of you want to race with us, let me know! We could even do it from a distance-- you find a race, we'll find a race, and we'll pretend we ran it together! Let me know!

So, that's all for now. I'm ready for bed! And it's before eight! Silly girl. =)