12 years

Jason and I have been married 12 years- wow! It's amazing how different it is now, compared to the five years when we didn't have kids. Though there was less going on in our lives, it has definitely been more fulfilling and we have grown closer since we have had children. I always felt like a newly-wed for those first five years, and I have learned so much more about marriage and families since then. I am grateful for the power of prayer and inspiration and that we took the big step to be married when we did, it has been worth every minute of it!

We celebrated yesterday by going out to a small Italian restaurant. Then we did what we haven't done in years- we went to the movie theater! Since we just barely saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I from Netflix, we had to finish it off by seeing Part II in the theater, rather than waiting another year. It was worth it! The movie ended earlier than we thought and wanted to give the babysitter time to finish putting the kids to bed, so we enjoyed some yummy Kilwan's ice cream.

Here's looking forward to another 12 wonderful years!

(24 weeks pg)

Our Personal Sauna

It was so hot and humid here this week that I felt like I was entering a sauna every time I went outside! The high on the hottest day was 101 degrees with a heat index of 115 degrees! To give you a perspective, the average this time of year is 84. It's like getting snow in LA, people just aren't used to it and we're not prepared for that kind of heat; like Jason's tennis court where he practiced in TX. had an ice machine. They just cancelled everything around here, such as Victoria's outdoor supervised playground program she and Bethany go to M/W/F for three hours to do activities with other kids and are supervised by college students. (It's the best spent $20 for the summer-ever!) Luckily, on Friday they had a field trip planned to the roller skating rink, so they got to be there for a few hours.

Here the kids are running through the sprinklers at 7 pm to cool down before going to bed. I didn't want to take them out earlier, for their benefit as well as mine!

Austin just loves Bethany, who he calls "Bet-ny", she's like another sister to him.

Summer Days

This week we helped Daddy clean the bike chains. Found a preying mantis on the window (we made sure to put it back in the grass later on).

We went to Music in the Park to hear the Saline Fiddlers, which was fabulous, but I have no pictures from it. The kids enjoyed our picnic and dancing to the music.

We started swimming lessons. Here's Victoria in her class with the kick board.

Here's Karissa with her "barbell" in her class.

And we played with our neighbor Bethany, who we see every day when she comes over while her parents work.
We have very unusually hot week coming up, so we'll see if we can survive the next week of summer!

Snoozin' at the Zoo

On Friday night Victoria and I got to go to the Toledo Zoo with her girl scout troop for the Zoo Snooze. It was a great experience and we both learned a lot! We learned a lot about the polar bears and seals since we got to meet the keeper of those animals. Even though he told the girls that someone got eaten by some polar bears there a while ago (he also mentioned the guy was high and jumped into the water with them), they still enjoyed learning about them and no one woke up with nightmares! Victoria's favorite part was touching some animals in the learning center. She got to touch a hissing cockroach (eww!) Here she is after touching the Leopard Gecko.

A Chinese Alligator,

she touched a tree frog, and a Frilled Lizard and they got to see a tarantula up close in it's cage (yuck!) Though I didn't enjoy some of them, she enjoyed every single one.

After eating some pizza we learned about how to train zoo animals from a zoo keeper and then made some enrichment foods for the animals to be fed the next day. When we were done making the enrichment at 11:30 pm, we got to look at some animals at night; the cheetahs, tigers, and elephant who was mad and blowing dirt at us.

By the time midnight came and we were led to the museum to sleep, everyone was so tired from all the activities that we didn't have a bunch of giggling all night long, much to my relief!

At 7 am the next day they woke us up and we had breakfast then got a private tour of the zoo. Victoria stayed in front the whole time with the guide, she didn't want to miss a thing! We got to see the keepers feed our enrichments to the three animals we made them for. Here's the otter chasing after her fish pops. She moved so fast I couldn't get a good shot of her face.

Here's one of the orangutans enjoying an oatmeal-covered wreath with four grapes stuck to it.
Here's the rhino, though we didn't see him eating the melon bomb, which was a cantaloupe with carrots poked through all around it.

We were tired when we left, but it was definitely worth-while!

Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico!

Warning: this may be a long blog and I'm still cutting out about 3/4 of the pictures!

We just came back from spending 10 days in Puerto Rico, where Jason has some cousins, some of whom he's never met, and where his aunt and closest cousin still live. It was great for the kids to be able to meet them and get in touch with their Puerto Rican side.

After a long day of travel (all three kids actually fell asleep in the car before we got to Mayita's house; Karissa and Austin stayed asleep for the transfer to bed- shock!), we took it easy the first day. We also has to get used to the weather. Though our temperatures here right now aren't much different from there, it is a little more humid there and there is no air conditioner in the homes, just fans. Luckily, I have been there before, and happened to be pregnant then also, and learned what kind of clothes to pack from the limited selection I have to cover all my qualifications, so this time I felt better in the heat and slept mucho mejor! Here's my chicas with Mayita, Jason's cousin. They took to her really well. Austin did well, but he took about half the trip to just get used to being somewhere different, so most of the time he was on my lap, which did make it warmer for me!
After going to a local park, the kids played in this little splash pad that Mayita got for them. This was the first time I'd ever seen Karissa get her head wet without being in the bath!
The next day we went to Mayita's church party and had lunch and the kids got to play on these fancy bouncers. Here's Karissa climbing up the "rock" bouncer.

Here's Victoria going down the water slide.
Later, in their church building they had a puppet show. It was quite the experience! Victoria still claims it was her favorite activity there, but I'm not so sure. We went into a room about the size of a primary room at our church. We sat front and center, since we were one of the first to enter. These clowns came out from behind the puppet show set with a keyboard, electric guitar, drum set, and the lead clown on the mic. They started playing full blast, as if they were 20 feet away in a huge auditorium, we were not even 5 feet away! It was so loud, I worried about the baby's ears in my womb! The kids were in such shock that even Victoria wouldn't give them a high-five! So, imagine having this crazy loud music played by clowns with the speaker on the mic yelling into it in Spanish, which the kids don't even know. After 15 minutes of that, they started the puppet show, which was still loud, but not with the music. The kids relaxed a little by then and seemed to enjoy it, but I completely forgot to take any pics because I was so caught off guard!

The next day we went to the LDS ward in the area. We sang some songs Victoria recognized in sacrament meeting. She also enjoyed listening to the English translation on the headset. We went to the first part of Jr. Primary and the kids got to participate with the four other kids in the lesson, even though it was in Spanish. We sang "I Love to See the Temple", Victoria's favorite and the new song all the Primary children around the world are learning. Karissa got to say a prayer. Even though it was hot in the Primary room, we all enjoyed the experience and I'm so glad the kids got to experience it!

Later, Stephanie, Mayita's daughter, painted nails with the chicas and we did a fashion show, complete with entertainment from the kids.

Here's Austin's pose.
Then we got to go visit Mayin in the home she is in. She just loved seeing the kids!
Victoria read to her from her diary.
Afterwards we went to Parque Colon and climbed up this huge tree house. The tree was over 200 years old!

The next day we went to Jobos beach where all the families with young kids go because of the shelf that made a shallow pool for the kids to play in. The really enjoyed the water and sand and I enjoyed less worry over waves since there were none where we were! You can see Victoria and Jason walking out to the shelf where they walked around for about an hour! Later, Jason took both girls to some rocks on the side to look for seashells, which they found a lot of, including a live hermit crab.


On the way home we got Pinchos, which is just bbq chicken on a stick, but they are to die for! So good! Only $2! Karissa, of all people, loved it! For not being a big meat-eater, we were surprised! We got empanadas another day, Victoria liked those the best.

It was off to the tropical rain forest, El Yunque, the next day. Even though we had a long drive to get there, we all enjoyed it. We heard many coquis, which are tiny tree frogs, and saw a couple of lizards.

The kids loved to hike around the first trail area!
Here's La Coca Falls. This one is just on the road, so we didn't hike to it.

We went up Yokahu Tower, Victoria went a couple times. I think she said there were 71 steps.

I couldn't even get the whole thing in the picture

We decided to hike the 30 minute one-way trip to La Mina Falls. Even though the kids were starting to get tired, it was worth it! They go a bit higher up, but it was hard to get a good shot from the very non-child-friendly bridge I was standing on with Austin.

Karissa got soaked!
Here's the bridge that Austin could have slipped right through to the rocks! Luckily he was eating a granola bar, so that distracted him. Speaking of food, on the way home, we stopped to get dinner at the first place we saw so we could clean up a little and feed our hungry hiker kids. We stopped at Burger King and the three kids ate 19 chicken tenders, plus Victoria had a cheeseburger and she and Austin had a bunch of fries! I told them before if they ate well they could have a cookie, so they had one of those too. I have never seen three little kids eat so much, nor I have spent so much money at Burger King!

We went to the beach again the next day with Stephanie. It was just as much fun the second time and all the kids went on the shelf that time.

When we weren't out and about the kids would play with Stephanie's stuffed animals and the dogs, Snoopy and Coral. Here's Victoria with Snoopy.

Here's Karissa blowing bubbles in front of the banana tree. Coral loved snapping at the bubbles!
(I just noticed that I didn't include a picture of Coral and if I do now, it will screw up my picture order. Just picture a chocolate lab!)

Here's all the kids with Mayita and Stephanie when Austin started going to them.

On our final day of adventure we went to the Arecibo Lighthouse. It included La Nina, La Pinta, and La Santa Maria as well as a pirate ship and cave, an aquarium, Taino Indian huts, a park, and mini-zoo. It was fun, but very hot and sunny that day!

Austin is giving a kiss to the statue at the hut.

Here's the lighthouse.

The day before we left we went to a local splash pad. It was nice and cool, plus it rained a little.

The kids had such a good time that our messed up flight adventure back which brought us home at 1:30 am instead of 9:30 pm, didn't linger too long in the kids' minds after we got home. Hope you're all enjoying your Independence Day!