My Little Hoarder

Oh Josie, my sweet little hoarder.

A few months ago, Josie started carrying around a collection of junk with her at all times.  She stores it in a variety of places, the pink princess bag in this picture, a purse, a kitty that zips up, and most recently, her closed up umbrella (!).  Last night, she slept with this collection at the bottom of her bed.  This particular collection includes: a knitting needle, two spoons, one of my scarves, a broken jewelry box, a kitchen clip, two headbands, one ballet slipper, a stuffed pig, etc, etc.  If you attempt to take ANY of this stuff away, there is a giant freak-out.  A couple of weeks ago, I found her in her bedroom.  She had arranged all of her junk in a circle and was curled up in a ball inside of it.  She called it her "nest".  Also, her teacher recently asked that I please not let her come to school anymore with rocks in her pockets (safety issue!).  She says the rocks are very special to her and she needs them.  She doesn't play with any of these toys normally, she just likes to spread it all out and look at it.  If you ask her what exactly is inside her bag on any particular day, she tells you "it's a surprise".

I fully expect to see her on an episode of Hoarders one day.

Disneyland, the Beach, and a Wedding: Days 1 and 2

We just got back a week ago from a great vacation down to Southern California.  My cousin Kelcy got married in Redondo Beach, so we decided to make a week out of it and take the girls to Disneyland for the first time.  My parents decided to join us for the week and we had a blast!

After spending the first night in a crappy hotel in Mesquite, we pulled into town Tuesday afternoon and headed right over to Disneyland for a few hours, sans my parents.  We got the Military hopper 3-day passes for half price, so we wanted to take advantage of having the three-day passes. We got a few rides in, and watched the parade, then came back to our hotel to rest up for the next day.  The parade was great and Josie was THRILLED when Princess Aurora blew her a kiss.

The next day, we had a crowd with us.  My parents came over, plus Uncle Jeff, Aunt Leslie, my cousin Kelcy and her daughter Addison.  Almost every trip I have ever taken to Disneyland as a kid included these family members, so being there with them made me feel a bit like a little kid again.

The girls (especially Josie, the little mother), had a great time with Addison.

Unfortunately, the girls were about 1/2 inch too short to ride the big roller coasters, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, etc, but we had lots of fun riding the other rides.

 For lunch, Josh and I took the girls over to California Adventure for lunch with the Disney princesses at Ariel's Grotto.  This was all new to me as the princess obsession was not around when I was a kid.  But Josie and Piper know all the princesses and each have their favorite (Josie - Aurora, and Piper - Belle).  They just watched the Little Mermaid for the first time a few weeks ago and have watched it 3 or so times since then.  Ariel was the first princess they met.  Piper wasn't sure what to think so she fell back to her happy place with baby.

Eventually, she warmed up and all the other princesses came by our table.  We had brought along their little notebooks so they got autographs from each of them.

After lunch, we headed back over to the old Disneyland to meet the rest of our group.  We rode some more rides, including Pirates and the Haunted Mansion.  And then for our finale, Josh took all three little girls and the rest of us rode Splash Mountain.  It was CLASSIC riding that ride in front and listening to the comments from the old folks behind us.  Kelcy and I laughed until our stomachs hurt. We snapped this off the screen displaying all the pictures, so it isn't the best quality.

 After a group dinner in downtown Disney, it was back to our hotel.  We were all exhausted.  Disney is no joke!

Disneyland: Part 2

 Our last day of Disneyland, we were all getting a wee bit tired, but still having fun. The highlight of this day was a reservation we made for the girls to turn into princesses at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.  After riding a few rides, we headed there.

 Here is Josie in her chair getting all dolled up.  She loved it immediately.  As part of the package, we brought their princess dresses and the fairy godmothers do their hair, a little makeup and nail polish.  This was RIGHT up Josie's alley.  My little Aurora.

 This was Piper's reaction at first.  She is like Josh and just does not enjoy people looking at her and paying attention to her.  At one point, her fairy godmother pulled me aside and said they could not continue if she was going to cry.  I asked Piper if she wanted to do it and she said YES.  She really wants to do things like this, but she has trouble feeling comfortable.  After she was all done, she LOVED that she looked like Belle, but not until the people were not looking at her anymore.

 They taught the girls how to do princess poses and as you can see, Josie took to it a little more than Piper. :)

 Then after we left, they were both as happy as can be.  They each got to pick out a doll.

 The rest of the day, we rode rides at California Adventure looking like this.

We watched the parade over there too, which was great, and wrapped up our Disneyland time!

Part 3: The beach and a wedding

The last couple of days of our trip were spent in Redondo Beach, where my cousin Kelcy got married.  We drove down from Anaheim and walked down to the beach.  We were killing time, so Josh bought a couple of kites and we flew kites on the beach.

Later that day, Brynn and Emery flew in and we had a late lunch/early dinner together.

The next day, I had a nice run along the beach in Redondo.  We talked about how we probably won't be that warm again until June. :(  The whole group headed to Hermosa Beach for the afternoon.  It was overcast and actually a little chilly, but the kids didn't care.

 Piper ran into the waves over and over again.  She could not believe how much fun it was.  I felt a little bit bad for moving her so far away from the beach!

 I have a thing with her butt, so I had to take this picture.  Could it be any cuter?

 Of course, we had to bury them.  And we hunted around for seashells, which were pretty WEAK.

That afternoon, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for the wedding.  My camera took this one weird, but how handsome did little EJ look?

Two of the bridesmaids gave the girls their flowers, which they brought home and are still playing with.  They were quite fascinated with the wedding and loved seeing Kelcy all dressed up.  We did manage to get one family shot together.

Piper loved "toasting" with her Martinellis and Josie was obsessed with the candy bar.  We filled up bags of candy and unfortunately, it helped fuel our LONG drive home the next day.  Eleven hours straight and we were back home with some great memories.  Can't wait to do it all over again.

Marine Corps Retirement

Last month, Josh officially retired as an active duty United States Marine.  I would love for him to sit down and write about his thoughts on this and what the last 11 years have been like for him, but I don't think that will happen, so this will have to do. :)

We have reflected a lot about what path our lives might have taken had we not decided to take the plunge and head off to Quantico in October of 2002.  When Josh first presented the idea of pursuing a career as an aviator in the Marine Corps, I really hoped it was just an idea that he wouldn't really pursue.  I was scared for a lot of reasons - scared to be so far from my family and out of my comfort zone, scared to have no control over where we live, scared of the deployments.  It turned out that those were all valid concerns.  Those three things presented significant challenges for us over 11 years.  Going through three cycles of IVF away from my family, and one while Josh was in Iraq, being on bedrest, having premature twins, living in places like Meridian, Mississippi - they were all very trying times for us.  But we got through it and it made us stronger.

I really have no idea, but I will say that I'm SO glad we did it.  It was even harder than I suspected it would be, but it has strengthened us as a couple, family, and as individuals.  We also met some of the best friends we've ever had.  We opened up to people who were different than us, who came from different places, backgrounds and had different perspectives.  I learned how much can be gained from a friendship by loving someone for who they are, and appreciating their own unique perspective, rather than always sticking to people who were more like us (not that I don't adore those friends too).

Also, I couldn't be prouder of Josh for taking the steps to make his dream come true.  It seemed a little "out there" to a lot of people when we told them what we were doing, but everyone thinks its pretty darn cool now.

In recognition of Josh's retirement, his command at RS SLC had a going away dinner for him.  Here is his CO presenting him with a retirement plaque.

Then, later that month, we had all of our family over for a little retirement party.  Nothing too crazy, but it was nice to have everyone there to recognize his service.  We put out a lot of his awards, patches, and a picture book that I made.

 That's it for now.  Now to figure out our next adventure...

Camping in Moab: First time in a tent!

 Earlier this month, we headed down to Moab for a weekend of camping and some fun in the side-by-side.  We went down with Brett and his kids and another friend and his daughter.  This was the girls' first "real" camping trip, i.e. sleeping in a tent.  They loved it - almost as much as they loved setting the tent up in the basement and "camping" there.

We set up camp in the slickrock area.  Here's our group enjoying some breakfast.  Josh made homemade scones over the fire.  Yum.

 Saturday morning, we all headed out to ride fins 'n things, a trail we've ridden before.  It was a little too hot.  Moab wasn't quite ready for summer to be over.

The girls had a great time playing with Leah (and Hayden too).

Heat + camping = a trip to the local Moab pool, probably a highlight for the girls.  There was an indoor and outdoor area, with big slides in both and the girls ran back and forth.

Next year, we'd definitely like to take more camping trips, but I will be more picky about the weather.  Call me a fair weather camper, but 95 degrees is no bueno when there's nowhere to escape.  But we did have camping on our summer checklist, so I'm glad we made it happen!

Big Cottonwood Marathon

This summer has been another summer of marathon training.  Lots of early Sunday mornings sweating it out for a few hours.  But this year I had company!  It was so much fun training with Brynn and we put our training to the test on September 14th at Big Cottonwood Marathon.  Our main goal for this race was to get a solid BQ time so we could go right home and register for Boston 2014 before it filled up.  We accomplished those goals and ran a solid 3:14 on a downhill course.  It was a lot of fun.

Here we are waiting at the top of Guardsman pass for the race to start.  The race did not get started without a hitch.  There were about 45 minutes where we were wondering if it would happen at all.  Here's why:

That's a bus, carrying a bunch of runners, trying to make the turn up Guardsman pass.  Mr. bus driver got himself high centered right over that hill.  This is a problem when the canyon is lined with other buses waiting to bring the rest of us up to the top of the canyon.  It's also a problem when there's no other way up.  We were still 3 miles from the race start, so there wasn't going to be any running up.  After a very amusing 45 minutes of watching a bunch of skinny runners try to push the bus off, while everyone else wandered around in the dark canyon trying to find somewhere to pee, they finally had us walk up 1/2 mile where another bus picked us up and shuttled us all up to the top.  Then eventually the bus was towed off.  We started 45 minutes late.  Oh well.

 The race itself was tricky.  It's difficult to run a course like that and we started out with a bunch of people who were trying to run a 3:05.  We paid for running that fast in the canyon and slowed WAY down after we came out onto the flat/hilly parts.  The last six miles were a bit of a death march - moreso than most marathons.  But it was enough to get both of us a PR and BQ.  It sure was fun to see our families at the finish.

 Now, we will take on a long winter of running in order to line up ready to go on April 21st, the day before Brynn's birthday.  Can't wait!!

Dancing girls

The girls have started taking a little dance class here at Black Diamond Sports Academy. We have been sort of hit or miss with activities so far which I chalk up to them being very young. But they have instantly loved this class. Partly because their preschool BFF Ireland is in their class and also because they have a great teacher. They love getting out their tap and ballet shoes and getting all ready to go. And it is so cute to watch.  My sweet little dancing girls. 

Sundance with the Jones crew

Last weekend we had a great time at Sundance with the Jones crew. Jer got us a great deal on a beautiful house up above the resort where we all stayed together for the weekend. 

The girls have a lot of fun playing with their cousins. They swam in that hot tub like it was a pool. On Friday we drove further up the canyon to check out Cascade Springs which were really pretty. It was great spending time together in a beautiful setting. Can't wait to do it again.