Catching up on the Last Couple of Weeks- Part 1

The week before last we had a family reunion with Jon's immediate family...the very first one. We went to a beach house in Monterey and it was SO much fun. I'm trying to get caught up on everything from the last couple weeks so I will try to keep this short. Here is a little bit of what we did-

Visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Jon and I took Emma, Jenny, and Melinda. It is huge and there is a lot to do and see. We had a blast!

Spent lots of time at the beach.
Did the blanket toss.

Played lots of pool

Took family pictures....I can't wait to see how they turned out!

Had a yummy dinner at Bubba Gumps

Played at Dennis the Menace Park

Rode the paddle boats (well, everyone except me and Matthew)

Enjoyed nature...check out this spider web!!!

And the sunsets were gorgeous

And last but not least, we had a talent show. It was a really fun night.

It was such a fun, relaxing week. I can't wait for the next one!

I Love My Family

This is Jon. I am posting tonight because I am lonely and miss my family. Sarah, my beautiful wife has shown her incredible pioneer fortitude once again. She got on a plane on Tuesday with our two offspring and flew across the great planes to the state of Ohio to visit her sister. What possessed her to desire such a journey I will never know, especially with Emma and Matthew. She must have been blessed in her journey however and has been enjoying the week with Rachel (Who I thank sincerely for being such a good sister and friend. )
Today I have been thinking a lot about my family, and how much I love them and care about them. I feel so blessed and smiled upon when I think that our Heavenly Father has allowed me to be with them always.

Sarah, I love you.

I love you like the rain on summer pavement,
Like the fog painting green grass with dew.
I love you like clouds wrapped around the moon,
in luminescent silhouettes sprinkled with stars.
I love you Like the quiet loves the dawn,
And the redwood loves its roots.
I love the purity in your smile.
Like a bow strung gracefully between parenthesis.
Your delicate freckles are kisses from heaven,
each a reminder of a deed with which you've blessed humanity.

I will always love you.

Sorry if that got a little too mushy for anyone. But you all must publicly know, that I am so twitterpated with my eternal sweetheart. Here's to us, and to three years of learning, laughter, and love...

We have cute kids.

Feeling Disconnected

I am feeling SO disconnected today. I left my cell phone at the mall play area and someone took it. I am SO bummed!! It's only been a couple hours but I already feel like everything is thrown off. I have become so dependent on that phone. I can't even call Jon because our numbers are long distance and we don't have long distance on our home phone. But at least we have a home phone.
And really, this was probably the most convenient time to lose it because we are going to our family reunion tomorrow and will be gone until Sunday, so I wouldn't be using it anyway. So, hopefully I should have a new phone by next Tuesday. Crossing my fingers!

I'm looking forward to this week, my week of disconnection. No phone, no internet. But I'm so excited for this family/vacation time. Hope you all have a great week!

Time for Some More Pictures

My folder of pictures is filling up and I realized I haven't posted many pictures recently. So, here are a few from the last couple weeks.

I love this face that Matthew makes. It's hard to tell, but he sticks his bottom lip out pretty far and blows bubbles. Such a cute face.

When Matthew was blessed we somehow didn't get any pictures the entire day. So, this was our attempt at getting some blessing outfit pictures.

There are several really fun parks in our area, which we love. On days that I have the car, I like to look on the map and find a park that we haven't been to so we can go check it out. Our list of favorites is growing. Last week while I was watching Jon's sisters, we went to 6 different parks in 4 days. Parks these days are SO much more fun (and safe) than when I was a kid!
The rest of the pictures are some of the few we got during our park outings.

Yes, even Matthew tried the swing.

He loved it!

I thought this was such a cute picture of Jenny

And a funny one of Melinda (we made her get down right after the picture, but figured since she was already up there, we might as well get a picture)

This week has really flown by fast. It has been a really good week. Tuesday we were able to go out to dinner (with the kids) to celebrate our anniversary. We had a buy one entree get one free coupon for a really nice steakhouse in our town so we figured it was a good time to try it out. The restaurant was really cute, they had live music, and the food was so good. We will definitely be going back there again...without the kids. When we got home we made some Reeses ice cream. So yummy! It was a really good, enjoyable evening.

Yesterday the kids and I spent the day with Jon's family. We were going out there for my sister in law's baby shower so we decided to make an afternoon of it. And speaking of babies, my sister, Esther, had her baby yesterday. Hannah Marie is such a doll and we are so excited for them.

Today has been pretty uneventful. The kids have both been sleeping for 3 hours now!!! So, I got a nice little nap in, got dinner made, and got some laundry done. Now if only they would do this every day...

We have so much to look forward to these next couple weeks. Jon doesn't have to work this Saturday! It will be so nice to be able to spend some time with him. Then next week we have a family reunion with Jon's immediate family from Wednesday to Sunday. I CAN'T WAIT! It will be a much needed vacation for all of us. The week after the reunion the kids and I are going to spend 5 days in Ohio with my sister and her family. I keep wondering if I'm crazy for flying that far alone with 2 kids, but however crazy that part will be, the visiting part will make it totally worth it. I am excited to see Rachel and excited for Emma to be able to spend time with cousins. And yes Brandon, we are excited to see you too. :)

I am really looking forward to these next few weeks. On a random note, I'm also excited that for the first time in our married life we are not affected by the fact that school is starting soon. It's really weird.

Happy Anniversary!

It's hard to believe another year has gone by. Hard to believe we've been married 3 years now. We have had our ups and downs, our challenges and our blessings. It has been a good 3 years! I'm so grateful to have Jon in my life. I'm grateful for the things I've learned and the experiences we've had. Over the last three years we have gone from being just the two of us, trying to get through school to the two of us with two kids, finished with school, trying to make our way in the "real world". Life is good and I feel so blessed. I'm so grateful to Jon, for all that he does for me and for our family. I love you Jon! Happy Anniversary!

The engagement

This was actually taken a couple weeks before we were married. I am so glad we got some pictures taken before because...

we were in a car accident 2 days before our wedding and this is how our wedding pictures turned out. It's hard to let an anniversary pass without reflecting on our accident too. I broke my arm and my face was pretty beat up. Our car was totalled and we had no money. This was NOT how I had planned or expected things to be. While it was a HUGE trial for us, we have learned a lot from it. We started marriage with a lot of extra stresses but it brought us closer together and put a lot of things into perspective for us.

A Little Bit From The Last Week

It has been a really eventful few days for us here. Some fun, some not so much. So here goes...

Friday a friend invited us to go to the San Jose Children's Museum with her and her kids. It was SO fun. It is about 45 minutes away though. I really wish it were a little closer and we could go more often, but we will definitely go back there again. We only saw 3 or 4 different rooms and there was so much more that we missed.

This was part of the water room. We stayed in here forever and left soaking wet. Lots of fun.

They had all these huge soft blocks that you could put in their hole in the wall or build with or anything else you could think of. We stayed in here for quite awhile too.

Reading books

This really was fun. I can't wait to go back again.

Saturday Jon had to work so the kids and I went to his parents house. We were planning on staying the weekend there so I figured we might as well spend the day there with them than stay home alone. It had been a long week and I was tired. It was really hot that day so Jon's dad got the hose out and let the girls run through the water. Emma loved it.

Saturday night Jon and I went to dinner and then he went and saw The Dark Knight with his brother and sister.

Sunday all of Jon's family was there for dinner. We were enjoying the evening and getting to visit with everyone. At one point Emma went out in the backyard and started playing with their dog. She is a big dog (a husky) but has always been good with Emma. Anyway, Emma pulled the dog's tail and the dog bit her face right above and below her eye. It is in moments like these that I feel like such a bad mom. Aside from the fact that I wasn't outside with her like I should have been, I just went into panic mode when Jon's mom brought her in. There was a lot of blood and I just kind of froze. I really didn't know what to do so I didn't do anything. I really hope nothing ever happens to my kids when I'm alone with them...wish me luck on that. :) So, Jon, his mom, and I took Emma to the ER. We spent about 2 hours there and all they did was clean it, give us some little bandage strips, and tell us to keep her out of the sun so it doesn't scar. We really were lucky. The bite wasn't very deep and the dog missed her eye. Emma was back to her normal self before we left the hospital.


Monday I started babysitting Jon's little sisters. His mom is at girls camp all week so they are hanging out with us. We spent Monday at their house. Monday night we all went to this lake near their house. It was so fun. Emma was fearless and ran right in. It was shallow enough that she could walk quite a ways out, so she had a blast.

Tuesday was kind of a long day. The movie theater has free movies every week so we went and saw Pipi Longstocking. We went stocked with snacks, drinks, and distractions, but it wasn't enough. Emma was up and down the whole time. Matthew was fussy most of the time too and it ended up being really stressful, though the girls enjoyed the movie. When the movie FINALLY ended we headed home, stopping at In-N-Out for some lunch on the way. We managed to fill the rest of the afternoon, but it wasn't much better than the morning. I was so excited to see Jon walk through the door a little earlier than usual. He even brought each of us a candy bar. So nice!

Today I was determined to go out and have fun. It was free day at the zoo so we went in the afternoon. We went last month and had a lot of fun. But this time, there were SO many people that we really didn't see much in the way of animals. I didn't even get any pictures because there were just too many people. The crowds were moving slowly and I have no sense of direction so we didn't know where we were going most of the time. We left as soon as we found the exit and headed to the candy store, since candy makes everything better. It was an okay rest of the day. We didn't do much and Matthew screamed all night...not sure why but it really got me stressed out. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and making it a great day.

Rachel's Visit

So, this is REALLY slow in coming, but here it is.

My sister Rachel came to visit from Ohio at the end of July. Her husband stayed home with the kids so she could come alone. She flew in on Friday night, and after picking her up and dropping the kids off at home with Jon, we went to a little Mexican restaurant near our house for dinner. Yum! Saturday we all went to the beach. We were going to attempt family pictures, but the weather and the kids weren't cooperating. Rachel was able to get some cute pictures anyway, and since we didn't get ANY, all the pictures here are hers. Thanks Rach! Anyway, we spent a little while at the beach exploring the tide pools and then headed home. In the evening Jon took Emma to his parents so she could spend the rest of the weekend there, and Rachel, Matthew, and I took the train to the mall to do a little shopping. We had to run to catch the train going there and coming home and I'm sure it was quite the sight. Two women with an umbrella stroller, a baby, and a bunch of bags running down the sidewalk, across several busy streets, and up a bunch of stairs. We were worn out!



Sunday we were all still exhausted. After church, everybody took naps and then we took a little walk down to the train station for some pictures. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon.


Monday was our big day and Rachel's last day here. Rachel, Matthew, and I went into San Francisco. We were feeling adventurous since we had Rachel's GPS, so we drove through the city instead of taking freeways and were able to see a lot of the city that you usually don't see. We stopped at Alamo Square to see the Full House houses and then drove down Lombard Street, "the crookedest little street". It really is a crazy street, very steep and full of switchbacks.

The Full House houses. I think they're actually called the Painted Ladies.

This is Lombard from the bottom of the street. It is so crooked you can't even see the road, but it is there. :)

After that we went to Fisherman's Wharf and walked around the pier, did a little shopping, and had some lunch. After a little more shopping we were all pretty tired, so we left. We made a quick stop at the Golden Gate Bridge and then went and picked up Emma from Grandma's house. On our way home we stopped at a park to visit with a friend that was in our ward at BYU-I a few years ago. We then finished the drive home, had some dinner, and went to the candy store by our house. It's one of our favorite stores here, but we usually try to go only when we have visitors. So much fun candy!

Rachel at Pier 39

I love this picture Rachel got of the Golden Gate Bridge

Tuesday Rachel flew out in the morning. It was so fun to have her here. I have been spoiled to have so many visitors this summer. I really have enjoyed being able to see everyone.


These are just some pictures of the kids that Rachel took. They turned out so cute!