I've Been Working Out

I've been working out. I thought you'd like to see my ab definition.

Not bad eh? What? Not impressed?
How about from the side?


The truth is, I haven't been working out at all, unless you can't the COUNTLESS number of times that I had to kneel down to puke in the toilet. I'll tell you all about it later.

For now you can know that I am 18 weeks along, due April 3rd, and in 10 days we'll find out if it's a girl or a boy! Yahoo!

I said I think I'll go to Boston

My mom, my sister Krystal and I were able to do a "Mother's Retreat" to Boston last week. There was supposed to be 6 of us, including another sister and 2 aunts, but in the end, it was just the three of us. We had the best time though, and we came home feeling refreshed and ready to take life on again. Here's a quick recap of our trip (and there are twice as many pictures on facebook.)

• Tour of Harvard- funny/entertaining student gave us a tour and it was fascinating
• Ate at Legal Seafoods- note- I don't like seafood, but we shared the most amazing clam chowder, lobster bisque, scallops, and shrimp OF MY LIFE. Maybe Boston made a seafood lover out of me. Also, the REAL Boston Cream Pie was UNREAL (see picture below.) I NEED TO GET SOME MORE!
• Saw the Statue of Three Lies-- did NOT rub the foot for good luck, since our guide told us that students like to pee on it as a joke to tourists. (Guess those genius students also can be immature like the rest of the normal world.)
  
• 

Rented a car for six hours to drive out into the country. I was IN LOVE with not only the fall foliage, but the architecture of the houses out in that area.

• Walked the Freedom Trail, loved it, and climbed on board of the USS Constitution, which never lost a single battle in the fight for our freedom. I call that divine protection, I don't know what anyone else wants to call it. :)

• Rode the subway everywhere- a bit cleaner and more pleasant than the subway in NYC.

Did a temple session inside the beautiful Boston temple. Only 6 people there...and we were 3 of them. :)

• HAD THE BEST TIME EVER!!!! LOVED THIS TRIP SO MUCH!!!

If you remember the pictures that we had taken of Kalia and Annie back in July, well GOOD NEWS! The photographer in St. George, named Brittany Stucki, is doing a giveaway on her blog for a free mini-session, including the pics on CD! What a deal! So go to her blog to enter the giveaway.
http://myframedphotography.com/Blog

October at Last!

I never really get to see this little one sleeping, since she's still in a pitch-black closet, so I didn't know that she sleeps like this. Those are her precious pink blankets...she can't sleep without them. Apparently unless they are completely surrounding her. (That's Annie)

Well, I've been really stressed out. Life has been really up in the air again. It's wearing me down and sadly, my attitude hasn't been that great. And I've kept most of it all to myself instead of venting it all out on this blog. So if you've noticed my absence or think I've been acting weird...well...I've just had a lot on my plate...emotionally. Just forgive me if I go on and on. Well, there's no "if" here. Of course I am about to do that. :)

Part of it is that our "Plan for the Future" has had to change AGAIN. I am really craving some stability in my life. Don't know when it's gonna come. You may remember that Samuel got a job working 45 minutes away at an Ultrasound school. He was doing financial aid (which he definitely does not enjoy) but he was excited to be able to actually ATTEND the ultrasound school, in fact he wanted to start this month, October, working during the day and then going to school at night, which originally he was promised he could do.

Then, soon after he started that job, we found out that if we wanted our whole family to have health insurance, it was going to cost $1200 a month. Yes you read that right. I was SO ticked. It wasn't even something we had to discuss. There was NO way we would be paying that for health insurance. So we've been without health insurance for awhile and it's really been bothering me, especially after seeing what kind of medical bills can add up after a random accident, say in the bath tub with a drinking glass. (I think her bills totaled over $80,000, which because Samuel was unemployed and we were on medicaid, we didn't have to pay anything...can you believe what a huge blessing? I will never get over that.) And in case you've been wondering how she's doing after that accident, the answer is still, miraculously, that she is completely and 100% fine. She still has this lovely scarring that sometimes peeks out of her swimsuit, but she has no side effects at all. I will never, NEVER get over that miracle. (Hopefully you can tell that this is her lying on her back with the pic cropped down to her right little bum-cheek.)
Okay, so back to Samuel's job. Long story short, the school backed out of their promise that he could go to school, saying he had to choose- school or job. I was already freaking out about the
health benefits, and I was wishing that we didn't live so far away from his job. He would be gone from 8 a.m. until about 9 p.m. and that's without going to school.

He ended up getting a new job. He took a paycut, which means we won't be leaving this basement anytime soon, but the health benefits are WONDERFUL. He just started training last Monday. He now works 20 minutes away instead of 45. We feel really blessed, and hopeful that he will either love his job, and move up quickly (i.e. make more money) or that it will give him a great schedule that will allow him to go to school. He applied for a nursing program as well. It's kind of a long shot to get in, but we're still praying for divine intervention anyway, if that's what's meant to be. By the way, he is working for Paypal, owned by Ebay, who just opened a big new office in this area. They are going to be hiring and expanding more in the next year or two, and since he got hired with the first group, I really hope he can move up faster than normal.

Also, it's been harder than I thought (psychologically) to live in someone's basement. I don't love my ward. I really don't feel like I belong here. 90% of the ward is made up of young families. Most of the women here are close to my age, but much further along in life, as in, they married young, and now have several kids, some even 9 or 10 years old, and they have husbands with well-paying jobs and huge houses that are decorated like Martha Stewart herself was hired. (I'm not kidding. I've been in 4 houses so far and they were all like that. Somehow this bothers me. I don't want to get into the "I can decorate my house better than your house" game. I don't want to feel like I have to measure myself against them. That's a game we'll never win, but we do it anyway (especially in the LDS church) and I don't like to feel bad about myself because of that.) Anyway, there's no "poor area" of our ward...there are no "small houses." And to be honest, it's really intimidating me. don't get me wrong, everyone is so nice, and I'm really trying to love it, but my heart is just not in it. This is not "my house" so it also doesn't really feel like "my ward." I'm not trying to make friends, because somehow I don't think they're really going to relate to me. I'm sure they can, but something about this ward just has been hard for me and I've stayed holed up in the basement...did I mention that for several weeks it was just too hot to go out? Even to swim? It was 108 last week. This week it's cooled off...which has lifted my spirits. I don't think I can take another week of the heat.

General Conference also lifted my spirits, especially Pres. Monson's talk on Gratitude. Guess I really needed to hear it. I haven't been feeling very grateful lately. So I'm trying to be better about that. I'm also trying to keep the basement cleaner. Apparently the older lady who lives upstairs and comes home every other weekend, well, she didn't like my housekeeping skills. (Remember, she has never had kids or grandkids. That didn't help.) But she really got after me, and for awhile we weren't sure we were going to be able to work it out, but we have. Samuel and I are REALLY trying to fix our CLUTTER issues. We're doing much better, but again, it's just all been really stressful lately.

Annie is almost two, and she is ACTING it for sure. Way more tantrums and screaming and defiant behavior than I ever saw from Kalia. It surprises me because she speaks in full sentences, so I didn't think she'd need to resort to screeching about everything. But she does. She sits on time out every day. I'm pretty sure I'm looking at the two-year old version of myself. Payback I suppose? I think it's going to be a long few years with this one though.

Finally, we are struggling with Kalia and her sleeping issues. I wake up every morning and find her in bed with me. That doesn't bother me as much, because it doesn't wake me up at night. I don't LOVE it, and it's not going to fly in the future when we have other kids who will want to crawl in, but what's been bothering me lately is that she is SO tired by 4 or 5 p.m. (no naps anymore of course) but it takes her FOREVER to wind down for bed. Then after she falls asleep, she will wake up every 2 hours and come out to the living room. She just will not stay asleep. And so she's not getting enough good, solid sleep, in my opinion. Thanks to some great suggestions on facebook (thank you friends!) we have made sure she doesn't watch TV after 1 or 2 p.m., I try to make sure she gets more exercise, and I occasionally slip her a small dose of Melatonin. Don't judge on the melatonin because it is helping a LOT and thank you to the friend who was brave enough to share this solution with me.

Okay, a long venting session to clue you in. I won't lie. I've been struggling, but it does feel nice to get it out there. I always feel better when I tell people my problems. I so appreciate the supportive comments and ideas of what to do to make life a little easier. So thanks for reading/listening. :)

And just two little pictures of my three favorite people. Love them. :) Glad they'll put up with me and all my imperfections.

Pretty Stinkin Awesome

In case you missed this on Facebook, Annie, who is now 22 months old, has also learned to swim. Once she saw Kalia swimming on her own, she immediately wanted to get in on the action. She already knew how to kick her legs (like riding a bicycle)- she learned that from her Puddlejumper floatie, so at first she would just slowly move through the water, completely vertical. So I just let her practice and practice and we worked on "big arms", and eventually she got to the point where she could swim (mostly) horizontally. She still doesn't really know how to lift her face out of the water, so I can't say she's all the way there, but this swim across the pool is quite impressive, if I do say so myself. (And by the way, Kalia's introduction of "Ladies and Gentleman!" was all on her own, I don't know where she came up with that.)

So they say the camera adds 10 lbs. I was hoping this wasn't true, but...it is. I recorded this news story and watched it several times by myself. I was happy with the statements they chose to use from our interview, but horrified by the close ups of my face. Can we all just say it together?

WORST ANGLE EVER.

This is exactly why I tell people I am not photogenic. There is only one angle of my face that I like, cause it's flattering and makes me like a generally thin person. I don't see that face in very many pictures. But I forgot the consider it for a video. The angle of the camera and my face during our interview just makes me look like I'm 9 months pregnant. Because that's definitely how my face looks when I've put on lots of weight. However, I am happy with my weight right now, and the shape of my face. So I was super disappointed that my interview shows me with a fat face. I guess I'm overly sensitive about it, fine. But you should see my high school pictures. A fit athletic body, but one chubbbbbbbby face.So yeah. I might have already had a complex.

The first thing I asked Samuel after he watched the news story was, "See how fat my face looks there!? Doesn't it??" At first he felt caught in a lose-lose situation, and he said, "I'm not sure how I should answer this." And I said, "IS THAT HOW I LOOK IN REAL LIFE?" And he said no. (Whew! I was so relieved! I didn't want to believe that I think my face is skinnier than it really is. Again. My issues here.) Anyway, to quote Samuel, he said, "horrible angle for you." (It is nice to have someone who you know will tell you the real truth. I have a few friends like that, and every now and then, I go to them for a straight answer.)

Anyway, I was disappointed, and almost didn't want to share the interview with all my friends! But then I remembered that I am probably the only person (besides my mother) who cares how I look in this interview.

I rewound this and watched it several times, analyzing every clip they got of me. The close ups are awful. But I liked the shots that weren't close ups, and I said, yeah, that's how I think I look...

Ok. Enough whining about my fat face. See for yourself. You don't have to sugar coat the comments. My face doesn't really look like that. I know that. It's just too bad the rest of Phoenix doesn't know it. But Annie sure looked cute! Oh, and be very careful if you use Pampers Dry Max. Check out the facebook page if you want. 11,000 moms can't all be crazy, can they? I'm just so glad we caught it early on before the rashes got blistery.

Kalia turns 3

I just typed a freudian slip (can you type those? I know they are more a slip of the tongue...) anyway, I titled this post "Kalia is 4." Oops. But really I think it's because I've spent the whole year reminding people that she's not 4, not even turning 4. Both sets of grandparents needed reminding that she was turning 3 and not 4. Kalia even thinks she's 4, because her cousins just turned 4. I prepped her for months that she would be turning 3 on her birthday, but when the birthday arrived, she decided she's 4. She is tall. She is smart. She is athletic and very capable of doing anything she sets her mind to. She reasons and speaks and acts like a 4 year old, at least that's what everyone thinks. Okay, enough on that.

I don't like to plan parties. I don't like to make cakes. So we kept it simple this year with a family party with immediate family members of the Bigler family, and one couple from our last ward who we love and it feels like they're family (plus they have 3 girls that get along wonderfully with our 2.)

We swam in the backyard and BBQ'd and had ice cream cake (I made it...it looked kinda lame but tasted delish. Only got a phone pic.) Also had the most divine red velvet cupcakes, thanks to Grandma Bigler.(I love Kalia's face in the background.)
I couldn't deny a cupcake from Annie (ok, she had 3). She still has most of her food allergies/intolerances, so I knew I'd pay for this later, and I did, but it is getting really hard to deny food that everyone else around her is eating. And to quote her as she devoured her cupcakes, "MMMMM!!! I like cupcakes!!!"

Kalia insisted on buying the extra large party hat from the dollar store. She actually wanted to buy one for everyone but I convinced her that she should be the only one wearing the big hat, and that everyone else could wear the normal hats.

We got a smokin deal on craigslist for this bike. We actually got two bikes, two helmets, two sets of knee pads, and a tire pump for $35. The other bike will be Annie's present in November.


I feel a little twinge of sadness when I watch Kalia cruising down the sidewalk on her new bike. When did she turn into such a big girl? I also have a whole new world of anxiety about her being hit by a car, swerving into the road at JUST the wrong instant...that part is not fun for me, but I love seeing her so happy on her big girl bike.


Let's not forget that Samuel turned 33 one day before Kalia's birthday. Poor guy will never get all the attention of his own birthday again. Sorry babe. (We did get to go out just the two of us to a fabulous Thai restaurant and out to a movie. That was wonderful.)
I love it when he wears blue. And I love it when he's scruffy.
These two little girls have been amazing lately. I absolutely love the age and stage that they're at, and they haven't been fighting hardly at all, so I'm just enjoying it while I can. Finally after 18 difficult months, their closeness in age is really paying off and I couldn't be happier about their 14-month age difference. Here Kalia was trying on one of Daddy's belts. Not too bad, eh? She did that on her own.

Kalia also loves to play Reader Rabbit on the computer. It kinda blows my mind that she can use a laptop already. The girls will sit and play this game together (well, Annie just watches mostly) for at least 30 minutes. I love it.


Ok, enough rambling for now.
Bye.

Costco Favorites!!!

I guess I'm just on a favorites kick, but I am REALLY in love with these 5 items from Costco. Even more importantly, Kalia (going through a very picky-eating strage) loves all of the above and will eat big helpings of each. Reviewing from L-R, back row first.

1. Healthy Choice Fudge Bars. They are delicious and super creamy!! But here's the best part: (I love that fiber!)
2. Harvest Village Fully Cooked Brown Rice
They are not kidding about how fast it cooks. Here's how easy it is: Pour 1 cup into a bowl. Microwave for 60 seconds. Done. You don't have to water or anything! It comes out perfectly tender and moist, and both my girls devour it. It's so convenient. Best find ever.

3. Kirkland Brand Fresh Pressed Apple Juice. This stuff is so good, and I LOVE that it's not from concentrate, and that there is only ONE ingredient. (Very important for Annie who has problems with all kinds of preservatives.)

Let me warn you though! If you put this in a sippy cup, and the sippy cup gets lots for a day or two, you will open up the cup to find APPLE BEER. It ferments fast and smells exactly like stinky beer. So gross. Only slightly better than the curdled milk cup. Hope I haven't grossed you out though, this fresh juice is delicious, and you can buy two gallons for about $7.50.


4. Kirkland brand Four Cheese RavioliI swear this stuff tastes just like Olive Garden's. I never order it anymore, cause I can make it at home for way cheaper...any time I want it. Kalia eats adult sized portions of this stuff.

5. Prego "Heart Smart" Traditional Italian Sauce
That's right folks, NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! Hard to find in spaghetti sauce. Everyone in my family likes this flavor. It pairs nicely with the Ravioli. (My #1 favorite spaghetti sauce though is still Gia Di Laurentis at Target, the Creamy Tomato is incredible. But Annie can't have that...fresh cream and butter is involved. And it's obviously not sold at bulk/warehouse prices.)

What are YOUR favorite Costco items?

Love my girls

I seriously love these two soooo much. They are at such a fun age right now, and I know I'm going to miss it. I'm so glad that Brittany at MyFramedPhotography could capture them so perfectly (even if Kalia wouldn't give us a real, genuine smile).

My mom helped me choose the photo spot- it's a neighbor two doors down from my Grandma Esplin. He has a beautiful green yard, and gave us permission to take photos there. And an added bonus...they just happened to have all this cute stuff around their yard- a vintage tricycle, wagons, benches...it was a dream. I was really stressed out about how the pictures would turn out, since I've never had the girls professionally photographed. (Ever!) Everything went so well, I felt like we had a little divine help from above. :) Thanks to my mom and and little sis Kimmy who came along to help. We definitely needed extra hands. (Oh, but after almost 3 years without any hair-cutting mishaps, Kalia did take scissors to her bangs 2 days before the photoshoot. I was not happy. But what can ya do. Actually, my brother is probably editing them as we speak. But we'll keep some with the chopped bangs so we can look back and laugh, just like we look back and laugh at my sister Tara's butchered bangs in a family picture from way back....HAHAHA love ya Tara!)

I know many of you have already seen these on Facebook, but here they are again anyway.