I'm goin, going

back, back, to Cali....cali. I'm headin out for two weeks to go visit my fam for a few big events going on at home. My sister and her husband are going to the temple to be sealed and probably having a baby within a few days after that. My sister Rebecca and her baby (whom I have not yet met) will be there too. My cousin Brady will be blessing his baby Ella, Hallie will get to go trick or treating with her cousin Owen, we plan on hitting up Disneyland a few times because our passes are good until the end of November. All kinds of fun things. So see you all in two weeks or so. Please call to check in on my poor Matt who will be here all alone. :)

God bless the man that invented play places

Our park/playdate day is wednesday mornings and Hallie really looks forward to it. The group is getting bigger (up to about 5 moms and their kids) so there are lots of kids for Hallie to play with and lots of Adult conversation to be had. Today we got to the park and it was sooo cold and drizzly so we all loaded back up our kids and headed to Burger King's play place. We fed our kids healthy french fries for brunch and I was able to get my Diet coke fix for the day. Perfection. Here's Chase and I enjoying BK.

Twinsies

Anyone see the similarities? This is a picture of Hallie a month before her second birthday, and a picture of Matt's little sister Katie (who is now 17) when she was two. I guess now we know Hallie will grow up to be ridiculously good looking like her aunt. Crazy how the whole genetics thing works.

Finally finished!!!!

Matt working so hard to get this thing sanded down....definently the biggest part of this project, and Matt did it all.

Where Rebecca carved her name into the piano when we were kids. :)

Sanded down

First coat of stain

FINISHED!!!!

We still need knobs for it, and to try to find a way to restore the brass pedals....but look how amazing it looks!!! We (and when I say we, I mean mostly Matt) have been working on this for about two months. We finally put the last coat of finish on it last night and moved it into our house. Matt did such a good job, and I love love love this piano. It used to be my great-aunts and she passed it on to my family when I was really little. A piano going into a house with 8 kids and a dog took a lot of abuse. It was pretty thrashed. My parents go a new piano and said I could have this one and it has been sitting in my grandma's garage for about 10 years. We finally were able to move it out of there when we moved out here and Matt took it on. I got a picture of where Rebecca carved her name into the side of it at some point in her childhood. Anyways.....horray for finished projects!

Girls just wanna have fun

I stole this picture off my friend Kelsie's blog because I liked it. Shhh, don't tell her. :)

Hallie being pensive...

Hallie and her Cheesy grin

The girls

The girls again

Hallie and some of her friends went to the beach on Thursday and we all had a really good time. So yes...here some more of our beach pictures. Believe it or not, we do have other clothes besides our bathing suits. :)

Sweet Madeline

I don't even know where to start with this post. Brother and Sister Anderson were an older couple serving a mission in our branch. They had to go home suddenly because she came down with a bad case of the shingles. When I asked sister Anderson if there was anything I could do to help before she left she asked me if I could please check in on Madeline. Madeline is 91 years old and has been in a nursing home because she fell at home (where she lives alone) and needed help recovering. However, she couldn't afford to stay there and had to return home about a week ago (to the very small trailer where she lives). I called her today to ask her if I could go and pick up some groceries for her (she requested a lemon meruenge pie and Orange Juice) and see if she needed any help with anything. I picked up her groceries, made dinner for my family, then headed over to her house with some of the dinner I had made and her groceries. From the moment I walked in the door....I felt the small amount of service I had done was so insignificant. The tiny trailer was is horrible disrepair. When I walked on the floor I could feel that the floor boards under the carpet were rotting because the floor gave in a little with every step I took. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes all over all the counter tops, and when I went to put the food in the fridge, it was full of old food that obviously should have been thrown out months ago. The furniture she had was very old and broken and too big for the small trailer. After sitting with Madeline for a while I learned a little bit about her. She didn't marry until she was 50, and her husband died 16 years later. She never had any children and has no family. She was kind and had a smile on her face the whole time she told me her story and about the trees she loves in her yard and the home health nurse that she keeps thinking is going to come today, but never comes. I was figthing back tears the whole time I was there thinking how grateful I am to have parents, siblings, children, and a husband. And how horrible I felt that she didn't have that. I offered to do her dishes (trying not to embarras her about the state of her little house) and she refused and said she could them. I told her I didn't really have any friends and I was so glad that now I did I wanted to help her in any way I could, she still refused. Finally I convinced her to let me come back in the day light and vaccume. This poor woman should not be living alone, but can't afford to do otherwise, and I feel totally helpless. I just kept imagining if this had been my grandma, or mom, or sister and finding them living in these conditions. Nearly broke my heart. My experience tonight is not one that I will be forgetting anytime soon, it has opened my eyes to the needs of the elderly who so often get looked past and ignored and are trapped at home in their tiny trailers....waiting for the home health nurse to come so they can do something as simple as take a shower. Their entire existence depends on other people making the time to take out their garbage, do their grocery shopping, make them meals, do their dishes all the simple things they can't do for themselves anymore. I hope I can do something in Madeline's life to make it a little better.

The newest member of the fam!

No, not Chase....our new scooter! Fun!

Cuteness Vs. Nastyness

First of all....... is this not the cutest little boy you've ever seen? I can't get enough of him! He's so sweet, happy, smiley, cozy, perfect. I feel so gooey about him I can't even handle it. Then comes the nastyness below......

We came home the other night to find this not so little guy waiting for us on our front porch. We debated on what to with it.... Matt wanted to get a can of hairspray and a lighter and torch it (aracnaphobia style), but I was worried it would run into our bushes on fire and start a bigger fire. So what's the next best thing to torching a HUGE spider? Catching it of course. Matt caught it and it is slowing sufficating in a tupperware container on our back porch. I don't know if you can see it's butt, but that's hundreds of babies it's carrying around. Glad we caught it before we had hundreds of those things cruising around here. I get the willies still just looking at these pictures. I felt nausious for like an hour after Matt brought it in the house. Ugh. So, anyone ever found a spider at their house bigger than this one? Prove it!

Who's the man

Chase is the man! Check him out in his cute little board shorts. Gotta love it. So here's a short little story for ya.... I was in living room yesterday talking to a friend while Hallie and her daughter were playing in Hallie's room. I heard them start to argue about something then Hallie started yelling at her, "Shut up! Shut up!" huh? Where the heck did she learn to say that, and how did she know the correct context to use it? I can only think of one time that I have said shut up in front of her and it was like a month ago. Matt was teasing me while we were in the car and teasingly said shut up to him. Hallie repeated it and I told her that I shouldn't have said that and it was a bad word. She never said it again after that one time. Turns out, she's been storing it up for a really good argument.

Just some pictures/glamour shots :)