Where the magic happened

So my brother-in-law got married 2 weeks ago, so we drove to Utah to be there for it.  It was a fun, but stressful get away.  We did a lot of night driving and drove 20 hours in 4 days. Blagh!  We broke up the driving with visits to my parent's house on the way there and on the way back and that really helped.  Jif loved to see Grandma and Grandpa in Las Vegas, but after we left to Provo, we realized that Jif left Elmo at Grandpa's house.  Grandpa came to the rescue though and took good care of Elmo for Jif.

 Grandpa took Elmo to work with him and Elmo helped grandpa feed the fish

 Grandpa brushed Elmo's teeth at nighttime.

 Elmo helped grandma on the computer at work

 Grandma and Grandpa tucked Elmo in at nighttime

 And Elmo got to play with the kitties and puppies and Grandma and Grandpa's pet store.  Jif wasn't so sad that he left Elmo behind because he got to check facebook periodically on my phone and see what Elmo and Grandpa were up to.  On the way home from the trip Grandpa presented Jif with a book he made of Elmo and Grandpa's fun weekend together.  It is Jif's favorite book.  The only thing better than Elmo is Grandpa and now Jif has a book of both.  I was so touched that I have such good parents who care so much about my son to do something fun for him all weekend so that he wouldn't miss Elmo too much.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  So we spent the first night in Utah in Provo visiting my sister Aunt "Jacket" (that's what Jif calls her anyway).  We went to Cafe Rio with her and her husband and then she gave me a massage.  Yes, my sister is a massage therapist.  Am I lucky or what?  The only way I could be luckier is if my husband was a massage therapist, but for some reason he wants to go to law school.?  While I was getting a massage that husband of mine spent a fun evening trying to kill Jacket's husband at Wii Resort.  One day honey, we will get a wii.  I promise. We spent the night at Aunt Jacket's house and first thing in the morning we went to walk around BYU.

 First stop.  Heritage Halls.  Horne Hall and Harris Hall: Where the magic happened.  This is where I lived my Freshman year and my husband lived his Sophomore year at BYU.  We met my first week at BYU and became best friends immediately.  That friendship soon turned into a beautiful romance and that romance soon (after a 2 year mission, and a few more years of marriage) turned into a family of 4.  It is so magical to walk around Heritage Halls.  We have so many memories there.  It makes me blush just writing about it.

 Speaking of family of 4, here are the 2 that made it that way.  Maybe they will live in Heritage Halls one day, if it's still there in 16 years.

 Next stop...the next place where the magic happened.  That's right, we had to go to where my husband and I shared our first kiss.  Right in front of the MOA next to the benches.  The first time he kissed me there I was just kind of frozen.  I seriously stood there for a minute not doing anything and deciding whether or not I wanted to kiss him back.  But my determined husband just kept kissing and soon I yielded.  I am so glad I yielded.  It's our tradition to always stop by the MOA and embarrass our children by kissing in public.

 Oh, they look so embarrassed.  Jif...maybe one day you can bring one of your dates here and give her one of those famous Jif kisses and convince her to wait for you on your mission.  Yeah right!  No kissing for you until after your mission, muahahaha.

 Next we stopped by the BYU Bookstore because our kids have outgrown their BYU attire.  And they needed something to wear to assist with our brainwashing efforts.  I mean it's not enough to sing them the fight song every night as their lullaby, or read them My First BYU Book as their bedtime story.  They have to wear the alma matter too!

 They aren't putting up too much of a fuss.  They really want to go there too!

 Then we ate lunch at the Cougar Eat, or as I like to call it the cougareat.  L&T wraps, yum.  I would have preferred to get the parmesian chicken there or some creamery ice cream, but this dang milk allergy stood in my way.  Thanks Reese.

 Oh, but she's so cute, we'll forgive her.  I love her in her pink BYU shirt. I'm going to be in trouble when she's a co-ed.  Maybe my husband can teach law at BYU so we can beat off all of the boys.

 Next we walked all around campus and spent some time at the Bean museum.  Jif had a little melt down because he wanted to pet the dead animals, but after we got over that power struggle, he had tons of fun.

 Then we all took naps in the car.

 Except me, I'm just pretending.  I couldn't sleep.  You see on the day that we left Jif decided to get a nasty cold and by this time he gave it to me.  So even though I was sleep deprived I couldn't sleep because I couldn't breathe.  Soon everyone else would be as miserable as Jif and I.  That's how cold's work.

 Next we went back to Aunt Jacket's house because we love her.  We had to get pictures in or her and Reese, because maybe you wouldn't believe it but Reese actually looks a lot like Aunt Jacket.  You see Aunt Jacket is really a blonde but opted to dye her hair brown.  Jacket says that people around her treat her like she is smarter and older with darker hair.  I think she looks good both ways, but if I had such natural beautiful blonde hair as Jacket I would keep it that way.

 Then Jif decided to work on his basketball skills.  He is really impressed with Jimmer Fredette, in fact Jif thinks that he has a future in BYU Basketball.  Jif is in the 99th percentile for height for his age.  People say that 2 years old is a good predictor of future height, so if he stays that way he should be around 6 foot 4 inches by BYU Basketball time.

 Then we piled in our car, visited my good friend Lacee and her new husband who happens to be Aunt Jacket's co-worker, who knew? And then we went to Tucanos with my side of the family.  My Aunt Jenny Uncle Chuck, and about 10 of my favorite cousins.  It was a great evening and so fun to catch up with everyone.  I feel that I haven't seen those guys in forever.  It was awesome. Then we went to my husband's Aunt Shawn's house to spend the night.  Great Grandma and Aunt Wendy were also there.  We loved hanging out with them, but unfortunately Aunt Shawn got a new cat, and since we are all deathly allergic to cats, we had to cut our visit short.  It was not a pretty picture, a nasty cold on top of severe cat allergy.

 But by the time we got to the temple we were mostly better.  I don't have a ton of pictures from the reception but I hope to soon.  Mother-in-law if you are reading this and you have tons of extra time on your hand (which I doubt you do with your new CD that you are working on http://www.archangelmusic.blogspot.com/ ) you should put some of those pictures on mobile me.  Anyway, Jif looked dashing in his suit and Reese looked beautiful in her pretty dress.  Jif tried to get into all of the pictures with Uncle Kissy and Aunt Nana (that's what he calls them), and threw a few tantrums when he couldn't be with them.  Their sealing was beautiful and I am so happy to have a new beautiful sister-in-law.  We are in the process of talking to them to get some cousins for Jif and Reece.

 Reese was little miss popularity and got passed around to all of the people at the reception.  She was such a good girl and was well behaved and smiled at everyone

We drove home late at night, stayed with my parents the next morning and then made it home in time for my husband to get some sleep before classes started the next morning.  The whole next week I felt behind in everything.  When you have 2 kids you have to be very organized to stay sane (at least I do because I kind of freak out when I fall behind in things).  And I felt very unorganized as I was trying to catch up on everything.  But then we had spring break and did some potty training with Jif and things got a lot better.  That's right, we did the 3 day potty training method with Jif.  See 3daypottytraining.com.  I really liked it and it worked for the most part.  Jif is a pro when it comes to peeing, we just need to get #2 down.  I can't believe my little baby is (mostly) potty trained.  But I am very glad.  2 babies in diapers was way too much.  Believe me, twins are not on my 40 things to do before 40 list.

Reese-3 months old, Jif-25months old, Choosymom-famous, the Husband-busy

Beautiful Reese turned 3 months old this month.  Here she is sitting up in the Bumbo that our wonderful friend let us borrow.  She loves the Bumbo, she almost never tires of it anymore.  

Reese is doing really well.  I feel like we finally have a good handle on her allergy with a few small issues that we still have to work out. She is an extremely pleasant baby, hardly ever cries and loves to give huge smiles that take up half of her face.

Reese also sarted rolling from her stomach to her back.  She did this once even before she was 2 months old on a flat surface, but I counted it as a fluke.  A few days before she hit 3 months she started rolling more regularly.  She really hates to be on her stomach so it is good motivation for her.

She has started laughing, loves to play with toys that Jif so graciously shares with her.  Her favorite thing in the world is still to be swaddled with her pacifier in her mouth.  I have never had to rock this girl to sleep, all I do is swaddle her, put the paci in her mouth, put her in her crib and leave.  She falls asleep immediately without a peep and sleeps 8-10 hours straight.  I feel so lucky.

Jif survived his 1st month of being 2 years old, but this choosy mom hardly did.  Jif is at a very independent stage so it took a while for me to learn how to deal with this.  Even though he is in his terrible twos he is so sweet and more fun than ever.  He loves to play with balls, especially soccer balls and he is extremely coordinated.  This month he has been in love with the movie Cars.  He loves Lightning McQueen which he calls "Perqueen".  

One of Jif's favorite things to do lately is to make requests for meals.  His most common request is quesadillas and apples.  Sometimes he will ask for a cookie for breakfast.  One particular dinner he asked me if he could eat a tomato and cereal.  I started trying to convince him out of it and then I stopped and said to myself "What am I doing? If my kid wants to eat a tomato, let him eat a tomato".  So here he is eating his tomato and cereal.  He ate the tomato like it was an apple, and he loved it.  

Jif loves to read books.  My husband says that in nursery while all the other kids go play with toys, Jif always goes to the corner and reads all of the books.  This is one of his favorites The Teacher from the Black Lagoon.  The only problem is that when he sees this picture he calls it "dada"

Which would be really funny to me except that he calls this picture "mama".  Go figure?  He loves to sing "I am a Child of God" and he always speaks about God in a tone of reverence and awe.  He knows that Jesus and God are the same person.  He also loves to sing "the ABC song", and "nananana, nananana, hey hey hey, goodbye".  I may have posted this before, but he still has the amazing ability to recognize a song's name by the music played before the song starts.  One of his favorite activities is eating pretzels and turning them into letters and numbers.  Lately he has been doing a lot of Bs and 9s.  Elmo and Doggie are still his favorite stuffed animals.

We are lucky enough to have a great playground and great people in our apartment complex.  Almost every day we spend an hour or two at the playground and Jif plays with his friends.  His favorite is wagon rides.  He is getting good at climbing up ladders too.  He loves to swing from bars as well.  He gets along great with his friends and loves to share with them, just not kids that he doesn't know.

The husband has been very busy lately.  He recently competed in a Moot Court Competition in which he raked in several awards.  Please excuse me while I brag for a second, I'm so proud of him and wives get bragging rights, right?  He received "Best Written Brief" for both Fall and Spring Semesters.  He got "Best Overall Brief" for both semesters combined, he got "Best Team" for him and his partner for their skills in oral advocacy and his written brief.  I am so proud that he competed in moot court this year.  It was extra curricular so he could have chosen to skip out on it, but he worked really hard on it, strengthened some of his weaknesses, and I think he will be a better lawyer because of it.   So finally moot court is over so he can take a breath and be a little less busy, that is a blessing.  The other Saturday I convinced him to take a break from homework and go to the park with the family.  We went to this great park that had an awesome playground and a famers market.  We bought the best oranges we have ever tried.  And we had a picnic and let Jif play.  It was such fun going to the park with the family.  We have to go back soon, if for no other reason besides getting more of those delicious oranges.

Even Reese loved the sunshine.

So the highlights in my life are that I recently went to an American Idol taping with two of my favorite ladies.   We got in line at 11am, the show didn't start until 5pm, and it was raining.  It was so fun though.  I loved the girl time and we got 2nd row seats.  The performances are way better in person than on TV, and we were really star struck by the judges.  I even got my 2 seconds of fame when it showed a close up of me when it aired.  I am so glad that I have such good friends that will go with me and make things like this so fun.  I am also so glad that I have an amazing husband who was willing to babysit the kids ALL DAY!  I'm sure lots of other things are going on, but this post is long enough,  we just got back in town from Utah, so I will post about that shortly.

Tom

So today my husband put on his new suit and walked to the bus stop.  As he was walking a woman shouted at him “Tom, Tom!”  My husband kept walking and the woman caught up to him “Tom, Tom!”  My husband turned around and the lady said, “Oh I’m sorry”.  My husband told her “It’s ok” and they started walking to the bus together.  The lady then said “Well you must get that all the time.”  My husband said, “What? People thinking I’m Tom?”  The lady said “Yes!”  My husband said “Why would they think I’m Tom?”  And she said “Because you look just like Tom Cruise!”

Hmmm.  Quite the new suit.

Great Date

On Friday my husband planned our Valentine's date.  While I took Jif to the babysitter and Reese snoozed in her crib my husband cooked a delicious dinner of filet mignon, broccoli/craisin/almond salad, homemade french fries, and of course, sparkling cider.

 While we were eating I played Pandora's valentine's radio in the background.  I should really make my husband cook more often.  This was amazing.  When he cooks, he really goes all out.

 Yes, the yellow circle on the filet mignon is the butter he melted on top.  It was so decadent.  It was an amazing dinner and then he took me to see Unknown.  Yes, Reese went with us and did pretty well, except for the previews.  Previews are so loud!  They really scared her and we were worried for a while that we wouldn't be able to stay.  But by the time the movie started she went to sleep.  On Saturday we had an awesome date of staying home watching a movie on Netflix (Rudy) and giving each other pedicures.  I did pedicures recently at a girls night and I learned that you can make a foot scrub out of vegetable oil and sugar.  So since it was my night to plan the date I chose pedicures!  We started with a foot soak, then a sugar scrub, and then a foot massage with lotion.  My husband was not excited about doing pedicures for our date, but after enjoying the scrub and the massage-I don't think he will complain as much if we do it again for a future date.  On Monday we had the missionaries over for dinner.  I made a REALLY good pot roast.  The pork roast was so tender and delicious.  I can't wait to have the left overs tonight.

 Earlier that week was a particularly challenging day with Jif.  He was acting out and needing some 1 on 1 attention so I let him make cookies with me.  I premeasured all the ingredients into bowls, he stood on a chair and poured each bowl that I pointed to into a big bowl and then stirred the cookie dough.  Jif is allergic to eggs so I wasn't going to let him eat any of the cookies, but he's made cookies before with me and enjoys the process of making them.  He would put his little face right next to the bowl to smell the cookie dough.  It was really cute until he went face first into the cookie dough and took a big bite.

I immediately ran to the cupboard and grabbed the benedryl and gave it to him, but he was already this bad within a  couple of minutes.  The picture isn't very good resolution but he was absolutely covered in hives and his eyes and lips were swollen.  Luckily the benedryl took care of it and we didn't have to have any hospital visits but it was a scary part of the day.  No more cookie dough for this boy.

This week Jif has been working hard on learning the ABC song.  He has a bunch of it down.  He says "A, B, C, D, na na G, H, I, na, na, na,na,na,na P, Q, R, S, na na V, na na X na na Z. na na na na ABCs na na na na na na me"  He can recognize and identify most if not all of the letters, but he is still working on the song.  He got an ear infection on Monday and we went to the doctor.  Jif is so good, he always lets the doctor look in his ears without crying.  It's probably because I check his ears so much at home with my otoscope.  While we were there the doctor listened carefully to his heart and heard a heart murmur.  We knew he had one, but no one made a big deal about it before now.  The doctor said he could hear it in a few unusual places though so he referred us to a pediatric cardiologist to see if Jif has a hole in between his ventricles (VSD).  It's a fairly common, usually not worrisome problem.  Usually the hole closes on it's own or can be fixed with a fairly easy procedure. So we hope that it is just a normal, benign heart murmur.  We should see the pediatric cardiologist in a couple of weeks.

Reese is such a good little baby.  She amazes me.  I feel so lucky that she sleeps 8-10 hours straight every night, almost without fail.  I hope this lasts.  She had 2 firsts this week.  On Monday she laughed for the first time.  Unfortunately it was when my husband was teasing me and she joined in.  On Tuesday she rolled over.  She rolled over a few weeks ago which I counted as an accident, but this time it was obvious that she was doing it on purpose.  She hates lying on her belly so much that when I put her on her tummy she swings her head to the side until her whole body follows and she rolls to her back.  She's getting really strong.  She can hold her head up very high when she is on her tummy.

This next weekend will be a busy one for the Choosy family.  I am going to see American Idol taping with a few friends on Friday and the husband has his big moot court competition on Saturday.  Stake Temple Day is also on Saturday. And then I have meetings pretty much all day on Sunday.

Happy Valentines Day

 Happy Valentines!  I hope you had as good of a Valentines Day as Jif did.  He got a Valentine box of conversation hearts and his mom even let him eat them for breakfast.  Don't judge me, he begged and it was Valentine's Day after all.  I don't feed him candy every day for breakfast.

For lunch we surprised Daddy with a "heart shaped" pizza from Papa Johns.  Well, it was supposed to be heart shaped.  They did a pretty poor job, they need to go back to kindergarten and learn what a heart is shaped like.  It looked more like a circle with a point.  We had a picnic right outside of the law school. Jif had a blast eating pizza with his dad and running up and down the steps in front of the law school.  Reese slept through the whole picnic.

My husband got home from school late and I had to run a lab sample off to the hospital for Reese (further testing for milk allergy) so by the time I got home V-day was pretty much over, but for dinner we had Costco barbecue ribs, mashed potatoes, salad, and rosemary bread.  And my husband gave me a back massage which is always a great gift.  It was a pretty good day.

Last week was a crazy week.  My husband had to grade tons of papers for his writing advisor class and also had to finish his brief for moot court, so we hardly saw him.  I was expecting to have a busy weekend with a lot of church meetings but that changed on Friday.  Friday evening it was our turn to babysit for our babysitting/date night co-op group.  It is a group that we just started with two awesome families in our ward where each family babysits once a month for 4 hours.  1 hour of play, 1 hour dinner, and 2 hours of movie for the kids.  And then they get 2 date nights each month.  The babysitting went really well, the kids were hilarious.  They all get along really well.  I really like our co-op and I recommend that everyone with small kids do one.  Ours is full currently, but start your own!  Friday evening we put the kids to bed and Reese woke us up in the middle of the night.  She was having a hard time breathing.  We tried to hold off taking her to the ER, but she was struggling so much that I thought she might need some deeper suction.  By the time I got there around 3am and got checked in she started doing much better, so I went back home so we wouldn't be charged.  She has been fine ever since.  I think that since it was her first time ever being sick, she could just not figure out how to breathe through her mouth.  Anyway, because of the late night and my nervousness to leave my sick baby I cancelled all my meetings on Saturday.  By afternoon we realized that she really was doing much better so we dropped by the tailors to get a new suit fitted for my husband and dropped by Costco to get my husband's glasses fixed.  We had breakfast for dinner, cherry cornbread pancakes, bacon, hashbrowns, and eggs and my husband and I watched a show together.  Sunday was very busy with meetings (it was ward conference week) but was very productive.  And the following week is very busy for me, I have meetings every night this week.  But it should be good.  At least I'm not bored!