Sharing a room . . .

Last night Riley and Dash slept in the same room for the first time.  They were both tired out from our Safari Park excursion so they both went to sleep almost immediately.  About 5:00 am Dash woke up and started fussing, which woke Riley up.  Our first reaction was to go in their room and each take a kid and try to get them to go back to sleep.  But we finally decided to just leave them and see what happens.  Over the monitor we hear Riley softly say, "It's okay baby, don't cry."  Then Riley sang "I'm a Child of God" to Dash, which is what we sing to them when we are putting them down for the night.  Soon they were both asleep again, and a lot faster than if we had gone in there to try to help.  Awesome!  I was really hesitant about putting them in the same room.  I thought that they would just keep waking each other up and no one would be getting any sleep.  And I guess there might be nights like that, but I have to say that last night was a total success!

Riley-isms . . .

We were saying prayers with Riley the other night, and Gary was prompting him on what to say.  Gary said, "We're thankful that Riley and Dash are super healthy."  Riley said, "We're thankful that Riley and Dash are super-duper awesome!"  It's true!

We were putting the kids in the car one evening and it was kind of chilly so I put Dash's sweatshirt hood up around his head.  Riley said, "Mom, will you put my neighborhood up too?"

We were driving to the Safari Park and were driving past an Ostrich farm and from the backseat we hear, "Do you see that duck!!"

When I'm in the bathroom and Riley comes to see me he always says, "You need a car mazgazine mom."  And picks one out for me.

Scary Halloween . . .

I'd have to say that we had a pretty successful Halloween this year.  Earlier this month Riley and I decorated our front sidewalk with lots of Halloween themed chalk drawings.  (If you look closely you will notice little scribbles and hash marks which are Riley's additions.) 

Bat with fangs

Happy pumpkin

Spider on web

Ghost (if you look closely you might see his purple stick arms, added by Riley)

This is hanging on our front door

I cut out a bunch of bats and Riley "helped" me hang them up in the entryway of our house.  He somehow ended up with tape and string all over him.  What can I say?  Halloween decorating can get pretty crazy!

Scary bats!  I even added a small cluster of bats hanging upside-down on the left

In this video Riley is asking me to hang him up on the ceiling like the bats.  He also shows how well he has practiced saying "Trick-or-Treat", nice and loud!!

Earlier today Riley and I carved an awesome little pumpkin.  He helped scoop out the inside and gave it a few good stabs with the safety saw.  I think it turned out pretty great!

We had a family theme of scary costumes.  I was a Witch, Dash was my Witch's Toad, Riley was a Ghost, Gary was a Mummy, and Jack was Count "Jack"ula.  I made both Riley's and Gary's costumes.  They started me out easy thankfully.  Riley's costume was made with white and grey chiffon.  I frayed the ends a bit and melted them with a candle.  This was inspired by a sweet costume made by my mom a few years back.  Gary's was made from 6 yards of gauze from the fabric store, cut in to strips and wrapped around him.  Pretty simple, but it turned out looking so great that he won "Scariest Costume" at the ward Truck-or-Treat party.  It was awesome!

Gary as a Mummy

Gary and Riley right after Gary won "Scariest Costume" at Trunk-or-Treat"

Baby Dash as my Witch's Toad

Riley in his Ghost costume

The whole Scary Family out to get some treats!

Here is Riley in his ghost costume, just practicing what a ghost says before we go out.  I am pretty proud of how it turned out!

New Little Man . . .

On Monday, May 2nd, we welcomed our second baby into our lives and our home.  Sunday night I started feeling contractions around 9:00 pm.  I waited about an hour before mentioning something to Gary, I wanted to make sure that they were consistent and that they weren't going away.  We walked the dog to see if that changed anything (it didn't) and then headed off to bed to get some sleep (yeah, right!) about 11:00.  My water broke around 2:30 Monday morning and we called my midwife, Karly, to let her know what was going on.  She said to try to get some more rest and to call her in the morning.  Gary got up around 6:30, packed up Jack and Riley and dropped them off at their babysitters' houses (Thanks Prices and Cranes!).  I spent the morning laboring in our bathtub and called Karly at 7:30 and told her to her head over.  She arrived about 8:00 and started setting up the birth tub and her supplies.  By then the contractions were getting pretty intense and I was really starting to feel a bit overwhelmed and tired.  I told Gary I didn't think I could do this, but he smiled and assured me that I could and that it would be fine and fast.  Not long after this the real work started and I got the okay to start pushing.  It was nice to be able to give in to the contractions and really start working with them.  It was hard work and I couldn't have done it without Gary.  Each time a new contraction would start he would hold my hands and help me get into whatever position I needed.  After really pushing my heart out for an hour and a half his head was quickly born.  By this point I was utterly exhausted, and my pushes just weren't very effective anymore.  I think it is mostly because I kept telling myself that if I could just get that little head down and out then the rest would come easily, but no, he needed help with his shoulders too.  Since I was so tired they pulled me out of the birth tub and onto the floor where Karly manipulated his shoulders and finally he was born.  What a cute munchkin!  Everyone is doing fantastic.  Riley loves his baby brother and asks to see and hold him all the time.  We are falling more and more in love each day!

Mother's Day . . .

My two little guys on my second Mother's Day. Wouldn't trade this for the whole world!!

I am so thankful for all the mothers in my life and for their wonderful examples, love and friendship. My life is made more rich because of you!

February Update . . .

Since I fell of the blogging planet for the last few months I will do a couple of quick updates from pictures I have taken.

Riley is as entertaining as ever. Here he is with a plastic bucket shoved onto his head. He thought that was hilarious! He is starting to be quite the comedian. He will stand on our bed and count, "1, 2, 3 . .", and fall face first into the blankets and then say "oof!" Then he will smile back at you, so funny!! I can't get enough of this little guy!

These two pictures are from our last trip up to Disneyland.  I love the look on Riley's face as Gary is eating that HUGE turkey leg!

Exploring in the cupboards

 Gary made this fantastic surf rack one Saturday.  He is so handy!  He just sat down one morning and drew out a little sketch, headed out to the Home Depot and came home and put it all together.  It took a few hours, but look how nice it turned out!  It even has places to hang the beach chairs and some of our other beach items.  I love this guy!

10 Years . . .

On February 18th, Gary and I took work off to celebrate our 10 year "couple" anniversary.  We don't usually celebrate this anniversary, but 10 years together is kind of neat so we decided to make a day of it!

When we were first talking about what we should do I thought it would be fun to do something really different, like maybe take a hot air balloon ride or spend the day at Disneyland without the munchkin, you know, something along those lines.  Well, because I am really pregnant most activities like this are off the list.  So instead of doing one big fun activity we decided we would go out to some of our favorite restaurants and spend some time at the beach.  However, the day was overcast and pretty cool, and then it started to rain in the afternoon, so the beach was out.  We still had a great time, but everything ended up being centered around food!  Not that we minded too much!

First stop was at Harney Sushi for lunch, yum!  We think this is the best sushi place on the planet. 

Next, we took a little walk around Old Town and bought this cute little guitar for Riley.

After Old Town we stopped by See's Candies for some chocolates.  I love this place!

After See's we went and had massages.  So nice, especially for the prego girl.

After our massages we went to see a movie.  Gary let me drag him to Tangled. 

After the movie we went to the Melting Pot for dinner.  We love this place and hadn't been in ages.  Actually, the Melting Pot is where we took my parent's to dinner when we talked to them about getting married.  Nice memories!  Dinner takes about two hours.  It's not just about the fantastic food, it is about the whole dining experience.  The fondue is whipped up at your table and you get to cook things and experiment with sauces.  It is so yummy!

Here's to many more 10 year anniversaries to come!

(And a special thanks to the Price's for entertaining Riley for us all day!)

Cajon Pass . . .

So after enjoying a wonderful Christmas vacation in Salt Lake we headed back to San Diego at about 10:00 am (Salt Lake time) on Sunday morning.  The sun was shining, but it was still freezing as we made our way south.  We kept our eyes on the in-dash temp gauge and enjoyed seeing the numbers creep up as each hour passed.  We had decided to make the whole trip in one day again and the munchkin and puppy were being pretty agreeable.  We hit a bit of slow traffic around Vegas, which we knew was going to happen, but it wasn't the worst Vegas traffic we had seen.
About 11:00 pm (California time) my mom called to see where we were at.  I informed her that we were about 2 1/2 hours away and that things were going pretty smoothly.  About a half an hour later we were sitting in stand still traffic watching as people were pulling off to the side of the road to play in a small dusting of snow that had begun to fall.
Now, seeing as how we were now in Southern California, a small smattering of snow is kind of a novelty.  And yes, perhaps people there are a bit freaked out about driving with a bit of powdery whiteness on the road.  But that was no reason to bring traffic to an absolute stand still.  We moved about 3 miles during the next 45 minutes.  Luckily the boy was sleeping peacefully in his car seat, for now.  We started using our blessed internet-connected phones to try to map out an alternate route.  We got off of the freeway and headed up the frontage road, which was still very slow, but moving faster than the freeway.  Still too slow for us, we hit up some side roads to try to skip ahead.  This worked rather well, but we were in a smallish town, so it really wasn't getting us much further ahead. 
By now we had discovered that because of the "snow" (2 inches, tops) they had closed Cajon Pass down to one lane.  And keep in mind that this is the Sunday after New Years, so traffic is kind of heavy, since this is the main access to San Diego and LA from Vegas.
Finally we decided to go a bit further west and hit up a small highway and avoid the main thoroughfares all together.  It took us a while to get out there, and yes, the small back road was a bit slippery, but nothing a couple of Utahns couldn't easily handle.  After all, a few days earlier we had braved the roads after a snowstorm left 6 inches overnight.  No big deal!!  When we finally got to the top of the highway, right before it started into the "canyon" we ran into a police blockade who were turning everyone back who didn't have chains on their tires.  CHAINS!!  Are you kidding me?!  There was literally 2 inches on the road!!  2 INCHES!  It was ridiculous!  So we had no choice but to head back to the freeway and the frontage road.
By now traffic was at a dead standstill.  We sit on the frontage road for over an hour in the same spot.  I don't believe we moved more than a few feet.  During this time Riley wakes up and starts to fuss.  He is done being in his car seat.  I completely understand what he is feeling, because everyone is done being in the car by now.  I get Riley out of his seat and we pass some of the time watching Toy Story on the DVD player (thank heaven for that!).  At about 4:00 am we decide that we should try to maneuver out of this mass of traffic, head north a little ways, and find a place to sleep until morning.  We tried 5 different hotels/motels, all full of people who long ago gave up on the wait.  Finally, way back in Barstow (about 30 minutes north of where we were when my mom called at 11:00) we find a place to stay.  We don't know if they allow dogs or not, but we don't even ask and we sneak Jack in with us.  We are thankfully able to finally lay our heads down at 5:30 am.
Our trusty alarm clock, Riley, even after a rough night, wakes us up bright and early at 7:00.  He is ready to explore our temporary new digs.  We turned on the TV to try to get an update on the traffic situation, which was still bad, but at least had started moving.  We get breakfast at Burger King and head back to the room to eat and relax for another hour.
We pack up again at about 9:30 and head out.  We might as well get going.  We run into pockets of stand-still, but nothing that lasts too long.  When we finally reach the top of Cajon Pass we are stopped for a moment to let two huge snow plows go ahead to clear the "snow" off of each shoulder.  They go about 35-40 miles an hour all the way down the pass.  It felt like it took forever, but after that it was clear sailing the rest of the way home.  It took us about 3 1/2 hours to make it home that morning, but we finally made it!!

Seeing Red . . .



Making his "silly face" while wearing his "snowsuit" pants

 So Riley is a pretty healthy kid.  The only sickness he has ever really suffered from is a small handful of colds.  They last longer than they would in an older kid or normal adult because he has not yet learned to blow his nose, so he has clogged-mucus-head for longer than most other people do.  (Any suggestions on how to teach a kid to blow their nose would be very helpful.)  He inevitably gets sick every time we go to Salt Lake.  I'm sure it is because when we are there he is exposed to LOTS more people than he is ever exposed to here in San Diego.  Everyone wants to kiss his pudgy cheeks and sweet little mouth, and, let's face it, he is a really lovey kid and likes to give kisses too!  This Christmas was no exception. This time he added a hacking cough to the routine.  Wonderful.  You know you have to be at least 4 years old to take any kind of real cough medicine, so little kids are left to suffer most of the time.  My sister, Ivy, gave me some cough medicine made mostly with honey and homeopathic ingredients that had worked really well for Anya.  The weird thing was that each time I gave it to Riley he would cough more.  I though that perhaps it was just thinning the mucus and it would help him get over the cold more quickly. 
This went on for a few days, until . . .
We were going to my mom's cousin's daughter's wedding reception.  (I know it sounds a little far removed, but we love these guys, and like I have said in early posts, we are really close to our families, no matter how distant.  Plus, everyone else would be there too, another family-reunion-type party, yeah!!)  We got all dressed up, like you do for receptions, gave Riley some medicine to help him feel a bit better, and headed out to Bountiful.  On the way there Riley was hacking away, but also jabbering happily from the backseat.  We went inside, congratulated the bride and groom, and made our way into the party.  The reception was at the groom's parent's house, which had a basketball court in the basement.  That is where the tables and food were set up.  In the middle of the room there was a big, tiered, cupcake holder full of beautiful red velvet cupcakes.  I needed a sugar rush, so I grabbed one and we grabbed a seat at the table that my parents were sitting at.  Riley was sitting on my lap and eagerly eating any cupcake bites that I would give him.  However, almost immediately after the cupcake was finished he started coughing . . . a lot.  Then the coughs turned in to hacking and then he started throwing up . .  a lot!  He has never thrown up in his entire life!  He hardly ever spit up as a baby.  And remember, he had just eaten a good portion of red velvet cupcake, so of course, it is red.  Very red.  Gary said that he was really concerned when he first looked over, thinking that Riley had thrown up blood!  It got all over the little guy's pants and sweater vest and a little bit on his shirt collar.  I came away fairly unscathed, considering he was sitting on my lap, and only got a little on my skirt. 
Well, of course this would happen when I am completely unprepared!  I have no other clothes to change him into.  What a blessing that we weren't somewhere on our own, but surrounded by family who immediately rushed to our aid.  After cleaning up what we could at the table we gathered in the bathroom to see what we could do.  Of course, just like a little kid, he is jabbering away again, like nothing happened.  I'm sure he was feeling much better.  We ended up rinsing his pants and vest and putting them in a plastic bag to take home in the hopes of washing out all that red.  (It actually all came out, if you can believe it!)  We rinsed his shirt collar too and put is shirt back on him.  Luckily he is little, and cute, and has scrumptiously pudgy legs, so no one minded too much that he was now attending the reception in just his shirt, socks, and diaper.  We stayed and visited for another half and hour or so.  When it was time to head home we couldn't put him in that freezing cold car with his bare legs hanging out so we put his coat sleeves around his legs and zipped it up around his body as much as we could, and made sure he had his hat on tight around his ears.  In the picture it looks like he is wearing a snowsuit.

Christmas Time . . .

We went to Salt Lake for Christmas. Gary and I were both able to take about two and a half weeks off of work, so we got to spend a lot of time in Utah. We left early in the morning on Friday, December 17th and decided we would try driving straight through. I was a bit nervous about it, but I figured we could always stop if we really needed to, so we went for it. We used to always drive straight through when it was just me, and Gary and the dog, but since Riley has been around things have been different. The few times that we have driven up after Riley was born we broke it up into two smaller trips, starting our trip late in the afternoon and stopping in St. George or Mesquite around midnight, and then starting off again the next morning. It seemed easier, and Riley would sleep during most of the first day (bedtime) and half of the next day (morning naptime). Sleeping baby during a road trip = more peaceful time for everyone. Our straight-through drive went better than I had expected, in part because Riley is starting to really get into movies and we had some of his favorites ready to play in the DVD player. Plus, we really took our time and made a bunch of stops along the way so that everyone could stretch their legs and use up some of that excess energy. It ended up taking about 15 hours, instead of the usual 12. But it is worth it to know that you don’t have to spend money on a hotel or inconvenience someone by invading their space for the night, and also to know that you don’t have to pack everything up again the next morning and drive and drive for half the day.


Once we were in Salt Lake we were busy, busy, busy. Lots of family parties and get-togethers. And of course we have to hit up some of our Utah favorites (Café Rio’s yummy salads, Taco Time’s crunchy tacos, Arctic Circle’s shakes).

We stayed at my sister Ivy's house. She has a daughter, Anya, who is about 14 months older than Riley, and it was fun to see them play together. Riley's first word in the morning was always "Anya" and he would run upstairs to find her as soon as he could. Here is a little video of them playing together at my parents’ house:

It was wonderful to spend so much time with family! We have really missed everyone. I was amazed to see how big all the cousins were getting. We took a picture of all of the cousins at Gary’s parents’ house.

The afternoon of Christmas Eve was spent with my family playing “Minute to Win It”, where you have one minute to complete different tasks. Tices declared themselves to be the winners, but everyone had a really good time. Here are some pictures:

Had to stack 8 nuts on top of each other using only a candy cane

It was really hard!

had to slide three nuts down the sticks and then balance ping pong balls on top



Sam trying to move the cookie from his forehead to his mouth


We also opened all of our presents, fun fun fun!!

That evening was spent at Gary’s Aunt Pam’s house. We had dinner (yummy soups), and cake (for baby Jesus’ birthday), and then we gathered around the piano.  The kids dressed up and acted out the Nativity and then we all sang lots and lots of Christmas carols. It is such a fun tradition and really puts you in the right spirit for Christmas.

Christmas morning we headed over to Gary's parents' house to open presents and visit with family and then we went to my parents' house for more family time.  We love and miss our families a lot and it was such a treat to be able to spend so much time with them!