The Big Birthday Boy

Our little boy celebrated his second birthday last week. It just blows my mind how time flies. Sadly, I've had to admit to myself that Riley isn't really a baby anymore.
We had a great party, and he was definitely into it more than with his first birthday. Riley's completely obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine right now, so we made him a Thomas cake and his Grandpa and Grammy bought him a little Thomas train set. He almost couldn't handle all the excitement.

"Here, Grandpa. Lick my candle for me."



Blow out the candles!

The masterpiece de pastel. I wish I could take credit for this. It was mostly the creative genius of my mom and brother. I'm the one who wrecked things that they had to fix.

Riley's birthday book--Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. I highly recommend it....it's amazing. Riley has been asking us to read it to him ten times a day.
Riley and his daddy putting together his Thomas set. Riley went ballistic when he saw it. Sam was just as excited. He kept saying, "Man, I hope Riley goes to bed soon so I can play with his train all by myself."

Ah, Motherhood

When Riley was born, I remember the nurses telling me that he had accomplished a feat previously unreached by any other newborn at the good 'ol Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. He could scream so loud that they could hear him all the way down the hall from the nursery, through two sets of those heavy-duty metal doors that hospitals are always full of.
In my perverse new mother-hood naivety, I thought that was something to be proud of... "Oh, good. Our robust little boy has a great set of lungs."
Since, then Riley's ability to scream at the top of his lungs has reached its peak. These days, when he's in tantrum mode, he arches his back, throws his head back, and screams so loud that his tongue and little hangy-ball thingy start shaking.

Like so.

It's simply delightful. Especially when we're in a public place and all those seasoned mothers start rolling their eyes and looking at me like.."Pulleezz. Can't you control your child?"

I always thought people were exagerrating when they used the term terrible twos. After all, how could it be so hard to deal with a little person 1/10th your size and cognitive ability? Little did I know.

Riley has also enacted his own set of toddler property laws, which are as follows: 1. If I like it, it's mine. 2. If I can take it from you, it's mine. 3. If it's mine, it must not appear to be yours in any way. 4. If I saw it first, it's mine. If we try to make him share anything (or take something away from him after he viciously ripped it out of the hands of a hapless, less-savage toddler) he looks at us with this hurt little face like the world is coming to the end and then the screams start coming.

Needless to say, I am incredibly grateful for those wonderful moments when he wraps his sticky little hands around my neck, smiles at me, and says, 'Hi Mama!' It's enough to make me forget all those tantrums almost entirely....just not quite enough that I can completely convince myself that it's high time to have another baby.

P.S. If any of you expert moms out there have any tips for me, book suggestions, etc that may help me deal with the terrible twos phenomenon please shoot them my way.

Happy 4th!

Hope you all had a great Fourth of July. Riley decided to start the celebrations a little early by necessitating his first required trip to the hospital. He grabbed a hot motorcycle exhaust pipe with his poor little baby hands. We couldn't tell at first how bad it was going to be, but after about 30 minutes of constant screaming we decided to take him in. Luckily, we got him hooked up with some baby Lortab which helped us get through the next couple of days. The first little while was rough though. For about 8 hours after the injury, Riley couldn't stray too far from his ice pack. He would drop it to play and about 30 seconds later come running to pick it up again. It was pretty hard to see him so miserable and not be able to do a thing about it.
Everything has pretty well healed up now, but every once in awhile when Riley is looking for some free sympathy points, he'll randomly point to his hand and mutter a pathetic "ow." He left this bandage on his hand for approximately three seconds. You've now seen Riley wearing a bandage for longer than I did.

Here we are at the Neola 4th of July kids rodeo. Despite his injured hand, Riley decided he wanted to run around in the dirt beneath the bleachers and kick up some nice clouds of dust for everyone to enjoy. Unfortunately, he got distracted, forgot to notice the bleachers were sloping downward, then smacked his little nose and fell flat on his back. His bloody nose lasted about 10 minutes. I took him to the bathroom to clean him up, and seeing the blood and bandaged hand, the ladies in there looked like they wanted to report me to DCFS.

Riley and the chicken he "caught" before we released him so we wouldn't have to take the thing home.

All in all, despite the injuries, we managed to have a pretty nice holiday.

My secret wish

So today as I was thumbing through my high school year book, I decided on a secret wish. In my current state of sophisticated, glamorous maturity (yeah, right) I wish I could go back to my freshmen self and teach that raggamuffin girl how to fix her dang hair and makeup. I would post a picture for you so you could agree with me about my secret wish being a good one, but it's simply too shameful.
Any one out there want to confess to a secret wish of their own?

Our Crazy Life

All of you out there dying to know what's going on in our crazy life, here's a brief update. 1. We bought a house in Oklahoma (or, if you want to get technical, my parents' bought us a house in Oklahoma. Something about how we couldn't get approved for a loan with zero income. It sounded a lot more adult to say we bought a house, but my conscience wouldn't let me get away with it. Don't worry though...we'll be making highly-responsible monthly payments). 2. Sam's job in Texas ended. 3. Since we knew it would be a few more weeks before we could close on our house, we figured, ...hmmmm...why not pay billions of dollars per gallon to visit Utah and go to Lake Powell? Logical, aren't we? 4. Now that we're in Utah, Sam is losing brain cells daily staining my mom and dad's house. I am working for the hometown paper covering highly-exciting subjects like who the Grand Champion steer was at the county fair. 5. Our closing date on the house has been changed from June 26th to July 8th to July 18th and back to June 26th again. Something about how the guy conned his senile mother out of the house title or something like that (No one told us that's what happened, I'm just venturing a highly possible guess.) Needless to say, we still aren't sure when we are going to become full-time Okies. It's not soon enough if you ask Sam, who can't wait to finally dump his Texas residency. :) As soon as we know anything, we'll let you guys know.
Meanwhile, enjoy some Lake Powell pics.




You're witnessing the near-death of another camera, thanks to my brilliant suggestion to my mom that she kneel in the water to take the shot so she could take a nice action photo. Luckily, we managed to save the camera.
Driving the houseboat/eating chips

My mom bought a blow up pool for all the babies, who needless to say, after discovering that they did not have to swim in freezing cold water, chose to omit swimming in anything that represented an actual Lake from their daily schedule.

Riley and Lawrence, his second cousin/friend/worst nemesis when it came to sharing toys.
Reading with great-grandma.
Mmmmmm....licorice and boating. What a winning combination.

All about Riley

So, I realize it's been awhile since I've posted about Riley. I thought I would update everyone on the fun things he's been doing. He's finally, finally starting to catch on to the talking thing and is learning new words every day now. Some of his favorites--hot, all done, bubble, ball, apple, where's daddy?, and NO!.... I'm not so excited about him learning the last one, as he firmly lets his opinion known now every time we try to make him do something he doesn't want to do. Riley started saying DaDa (daddy) when he was about 12 months old, but waited to learn to say momma until a couple of months ago. How's that for gratitude? But, he decided to make up for the length of time it took him to learn mama' by saying it approximately 350 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. I only wish I was exaggerrating. Mama now means not only me, but pretty much anything that Riley wants but doesn't know how to say.
He's turned into a champion sleeper and is still (thankfully taking naps). We solved his sleep problems by securing his door from the outside with a bungee strap. That may sound really mean, and I know it's not a long-term solution, but it's really worked for us (for now). He usually gets out of bed, comes to the door and tries to open it, realizes he can't get out, then climbs back in bed and goes to sleep.
I can already tell that Riley is going to be asking for a motorcycle or four wheeler before he's in kindergarten. He had too many rides on fun toys at a young age and is absolutely obsessed with cars, trains, planes and anything else that moves. He has this little scooter he rides all the time. If wish that thing had an odomoter, because I bet it easily has 150 miles on it. He drives soo soo fast and loves going down hills (scary). Already, he knows which direction to turn the wheel when he's backing up. Pathetically, I didn't catch onto that concept until I had been driving for a year or so.

This is the wear and tear on Riley's shoes that comes from hundreds of hours of riding his scooter on cement sidewalks.

A couple of Riley videos for your enjoyment...in case you didn't believe me about him going fast.

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Aloha!!

So, it's FINALLY Hawaii update time. It took forever to make myself do this because there were so many pictures it was completely intimidating. I'm just going to warn you...there's a massively long travelogue to follow. Any of you who don't want to be struck with vacation envy (or read a really, really, really long blog entry) may want to skip all this.
About six months ago, Sam and I decided we wanted to take a really fun vacation before he started medical school. We figured it was now or never (or at least not for the next five or six years). Amazingly enough, we actually followed through this time, and I'm so glad we did. We made some great memories and hopefully they will help us get through our vacation drought which is sure to follow.
I have to credit my friend Serena with most of the pictures here. Serena and Ian Ishii--our friends from the BYU days-- also went with us, and it's a good thing they did, because we totally ended up using them for their awesome camera the whole week they were there (hope you guys don't mind being used!) If you remember, I dropped our camera in a snowdrift last winter. We borrowed one to take to Hawaii, but it wasn't a great one. So if any of you see a photo you a really, really, really impressed with, odds are Serena took it. We can probably work out a purchase order---just write the checks out to me and I'll make SURE she gets the money :)

The Ishiis and us at Hanalei Bay in Kauai. We stayed on Kauai for almost the entire time we were in Hawaii, and I'm so glad we chose to go there. The north shore, where we stayed, is very rural and very green. You can see farmers out working in their taro fields and most of the people there still speak Hawaiian.
We spent a lot of time in Hanalei Bay, as it's a world -renowned spot for surfing. Whenver it rained here--which was at least a few minutes every day, there would be little waterfalls running around all the hills that surround the bay. There were also clouds of mist and rainbows....one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

Check out our matching swim suits. Totally unplanned, by the way.

Another beautiful Hawaiian sunset

Sam on the Skim Board in Hanalei Bay

Duke's

Believe it or not, one of the things I liked best about Hawaii was the chance to eat out without having to frantically try and keep a tantrum-throwing toddler under control. We really only ate at one nice place because we were on a pretty tight budget. The place we picked was called Duke's and it was really, really good. I don't like fish much, but the fish at this place was absolutely delicious--probably because it was drenched in tasty, macademia nut, calorie-laden sauce.
Another plus about Dukes...it was located in the commons of this fancy schmancy hotel, so after dinner we got to stroll around and take pictures in front of all their tiki torches

Life's a Beach

The next five pictures are from this great place we hiked to called Queen Emma's Bath. It was the expanse of lava rock right next to the ocean. There were lots of indentations in the rocks and fun little "baths" were you could snorkle and soak in the sun.
We saw hundreds of huge sea turtles there too. They would come right up to the rocks to feed. Unfortunately, the water was too choppy for us to jump in with them--I probably would have been too jump right in the middle of all those turtles anyway.













This was another great place we went to called Tunnel's Beach. It had great snorkeling and great sunsets. They filmed part of the movie South Pacific here. The little pointed peak is called Bali Hai--the place that crazy old lady sings about.....If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. "Come to me, my spesial island, come to me, come to me..."

Under the Seas

We did a TON of snorkeling while we were there....We didn't see anything too exciting (luckily no sharks) except a sea turtle or two. But there were tons of pretty fish everywhere.
I came to an interesting conclusion during the hours we spent snorkeling.....fish really freak me out. I'm not exactly sure why, but I've always lived in fear of the slimy little things brushing against my leg when I'm swimming. We bought some fish food to attract the fish while we snorkeled...the little scavengers flocked to us and followed us the whole time. They kept trying to rip the bag of fish food right out of our hands. I spent a good deal of our snorkeling time frantically waving my fins at the dozens of fish that were approximately two inches from my body and trying to make them give me a little more personal space.

The Na Pali Coast

If I had to pick a favorite thing that we did while in Hawaii, it would be the half day Sam and I spent hiking the Na Pali Coast. The Na Pali is this undeveloped stretch of coastline in Kauai that you can only see via hiking, kayaking, or boating. We hiked a few miles of the coastline to this secluded beach and then turned inland for a side trip to this awesome waterfall.
They say the Na Pali coastline is one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and if there is one thing I would have done differently on our vacation, it would be shelling out the money it takes for a boat tour of the coast. We talked to a guide who led kayak tours down the coast, and he told us you almost always see dolphins and whales when you boat the entire 17 miles of coastline.
Even though we didn't get to see all of it, the part of Na Pali that we did see was absolutely beautiful.

Up a river.

We also spent a day kayaking up the Wailua river to this little waterfall/swimming hole. The scenery was, of course, beautiful, but the best part by far of the trip was our tour guide Judah.. He was this major hippie, reggae band player complete with dreds that had moved to Kauai twelve years ago to be a bum. I'm pretty sure his brain was fried, which made him quite fun to talk to.

Getting ready to hike up to the falls.

Everywhere on Kauai, there were these crazy roosters. You hardly ever saw the hens...just lots of roosters. People down there pretty much hate these little guys, and after spending a week there I can see why. They crow all day and all night.