Happy Halloween

We had a very happy and low key Halloween this year, after all there isn't much for a non-candy eating infant to do on an American holiday in Germany, but we made the best of it. Last Friday we went to the church for our ward trunk or treat. We decorated the trunk like a garden with felt grass and a pot of flowers with candy as the dirt. I was dressed up as a gardener and my little flower Reese handed out candy to the other kids, she had fun watching the other kids running around on a sugar high. Today Nate ended up with a day off so this morning we cleaned out her pumpkin and let her play with the gooey innards while we did the carving; Nate and Jaeger collaborated on the pumpkin that is vomiting its guts while Reese and I collaborated on the traditional pumpkin face. She was quite intriqued by the gooey innards and surprisingly I only had to halt her once from trying to put them in her mouth. After all our pumpkin carving fun we dressed Reese up and took her to the grocery store on base to have her picture taken for the costume contest. Everyone commented on what a cute little flower she was and she was more than happy to offer up a cute smile to anyone who looked her way. This evening she and Jaeger went trick or treating at our friends' house and we stayed for a Halloween get together. We were about to start watching a movie when Reese's gums started hurting her so we gave her some teething tablets and headed home. I feel so bad when her gums start hurting because it'll come out of nowhere and tonight was the worst as the teething tablets did little to help and all I could do was comfort her till she fell asleep. We're hoping this vicious tooth will break the surface soon because the pain seems to be stronger and more often, but we'll just have to wait and see. Anyways, Happy Halloween to everyone from an adorable flower and her cute bumblebee.

Excitement in the Air

(Cutie playing in our backyard)
Reese is in such a fun stage right now because she's noticing everything around her and the look on her face when she sees something new makes me feel as if I'm seeing it for the first time as well. A perfect example of this was when we took Jaeger for a walk today. She's big enough to sit in the main portion of her stroller now so she's facing forward which probably makes a big difference. We wandered into the woods near our house where all the trees are in beautiful fall colors and the breeze was blowing through them causing the leaves to flutter to the ground. As the leaves fell in front of her eyes her face lit up and she watched them flutter til they dropped below her line of sight. Then when she couldn't see a certain leaf anymore she would start laughing until another leaf caught her eye. It's funny that it's somewhat cliche to talk about wandering around taking in the fall colors, but to her it was this completely new experience and it made me see, if just for a moment, how it must look through her eyes. (Notice how she's holding Jaeger's tags)
In talking about things that excite Reese I can't forget to mention Jaeger. Reese is 100% intrigued by Jaeger and she loves to sit on my lap and watch Jaeger play fetch. Her eyes get super big when I throw the toy and then when Jaeger brings it back she giggles and squeals. If Jaeger gets within her reach she stretches out to try and pet her. The first few times she got a handful of fur and after that Jaeger learned to stay a little further away. Despite the few yanks Jaeger will still let Reese pet her when Nate and I are sitting with her and Reese is getting quite good at it. The past few times she kept her hand flat and just ran her fingers through Jaeger's hair, if only she could be that kind to my hair.
(Can't stop staring at Jaeger)

Comic Relief

Reese has the cutest laugh and I was able to get her to do it on video, which is often a difficult task because as soon as the camera comes out she gets a dumbfounded look on her face and stops what she's doing to stare. I took this a few weeks ago, and tonight I had her laughing super hard and non stop, but when I got the camera out she stopped so this slight laughter will have to suffice for now.

I've Been Husband Tagged

-Where did you meet your husband? Freshman year in the ghetto Deseret Towers dorms at BYU.

-How long have you been married? 2 years, 4 1/2 months.
-What does he do that surprises you? When he deployed he preordered some presents that I would get while he was gone, it surprised me each time a new one showed up.
-What is your favorite feature of his? His eye lashes
-Does he have any annoying habit? He always wants to sleep.
-What is your favorite quality of his? How thoroughly he throws himself into a project.
-Does he have a nickname for you? Jesses
-What is his favorite color? Blue
-What is his favorite food? My chicken burritos
-What is his favorite sport? Are video games a sport?
-When and where was your first kiss? In my apt. a few months before we started dating (we'd been best friends for 4 years at this point).
-What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? Travel
-Do you have any kids? Our FANTABULOUS 5 month old baby girl REESE!!!
-Does he have a hidden talent? He's really good at taking things apart and fixing them without any instructions.
-How old is he? 25
-Who said I love you first? Him
-What is his favorite type of music? Alternative Rock
-What do you admire most about him? How thoughtful and caring he is
-Will he read this? Ya, he checks in on me from time to time

TAG! Tiff, you're it.

Crandall Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Roots - Family tree graphs

Go Ahead and Laugh

My Columbus Day started off with a bang, or rather a squish. At some point last night, that I'll arbitrarily call 3am, Jaeger woke me up and was trying to get me to take her outside to go to the bathroom. I was so out of it that I just pulled her into bed with me and went back to sleep. Well when Reese woke up at 7 I went in her room and she still seemed pretty sleepy so I just gave her her binky and headed back to bed. Here's where the story takes a turn south so if you have a weak stomach you might want to go on about your day. As I was walking through the doorway I stepped in something squishy that oozed in between my toes. Now the awake part of me realized that I had just stepped in dog poop, but the asleep part of me had no clue what I had just stepped in and freaked out. I kicked my foot in order to get the "mystery" substance off and just screamed as I jumped on my other foot over to the bed to sit down and see what was going on. By the time I arrived at the bed I had fully awoken and realized that I had poop all over my foot and squished inbetween my toes. When I had started screaming Nate had woken up and so when I got to the bed I told him to turn on the lights because I had poop on my foot. We looked over to the doorway and saw where I had stepped in it. I hobbled off to the bathroom to wash my foot while Nate grabbed the cleaning supplies to clean up the mess. It was at this point that we realized what really had happened. When I followed my natural reaction to kick my foot after stepping in it I had sprayed poop randomly about the room and this was no ordinary poop. It was a soft poo so instead of sending a hard chunk of poo across the room that could easily have been picked up without leaving a mark, I had sent little squirts of poo everywhere that were not so easily picked up. There were some flecks on Nate's jeans, and my shirt that had been on the floor, there were some flecks on the comforter and the sheets and even the bedskirt, and that's not even mentioning the little flecks all over the carpet. So Nate worked on cleaning the carpet while I took the sheets, comforter, and bedskirt into the bathroom and washed off the poop before I carted them down to the washing machine to finish off the job. I checked the comforter before I put it in the dryer and luckily enough the poop had left no mark, hopefully the same is true for the rest of the stuff now in the washer and the load of poop covered clothes that will be going in next. As for the floor, Nate did a pretty good job getting it up but we have a carpetcleaner that we'll be using in just a bit to get anything else up. Needless to say our relaxing holiday has turned into a day of deep cleaning, but I guess that's life.

Reese Does America

Reese's first trip to the States was great, I'm sure everyone got that impression from the rest of the posts about the trip. We had a long flight to Frankfurt to San Francisco and I was worried that Reese wouldn't be her cheerful self on the flight but she was amazing. The plane wasn't near full so we were able to bring Reese's carseat on the plane and have her sit in her own seat instead of on our lap. The flight was going well until a few hours in when I got up to change Reese's diaper; the woman in front of Reese had had her seat back about halfway but as soon as we got up she rammed it back all the way forcing Reese's carseat into a vertical position so when I got back I couldn't put Reese in. I couldn't believe someone would be so mean to a little baby, but she and her husband had already gotten upset when they got on because they couldn't get a free upgrade and were being pretty rude to the stewardess about it so I shouldn't have been surprised. Luckily the gentleman behind us had an empty row and offered to change seats with us.

It took Reese a few days to adjust to the time change and to the new people that were around her, but eventually she got used to everythind and everyone and just in time for Nate and I to leave her with my parents so we could take a trip to Tahoe. My aunt has a cabin up there and so she let Nate, Jaeger and I borrow it for the night. We went up and went over to the lake for a little bit and the next day we took a nice long hike before we headed back home to Reese. I'd like to think that Reese missed us, but I'm pretty sure she was too busy having Ava entertain her to worry about where we were. Ava was the ultimate Reese helper getting anything she may need and giving her tons of kisses. The best part of Ava with Reese was that Ava would always ask to hold her and then after a few seconds she would be done with it and push Reese away from her will trying to stand up and get away at the same time.

Well I've already posted about the rest of our trip and now that we're back we're just trying to get back to our routine, well I guess first we're trying to get back on Europe time then we'll worry about our routine.

Idaho Roadtrip

While we were in the States we made a trip out to Idaho to see Nate's family. We were planning on leaving early the morning after we got back from SoCal, but when we picked Jaeger up from the kennel she was a little under the weather so we decided to give her some time to get over it and left that evening instead. That decision ended up being a good one because Reese fell asleep 30mins in to the 11 hour drive and woke up about 15mins before we got there.

It was great to spend time with Nate's family. Reese got to meet all of her aunts, her uncle, her cousins and her grandpa while Nate got to meet his now two year-old niece for the first time. Nate also got to go home theater shopping with his dad which I'm pretty sure was the highlight of the trip for him, Nate loves to go shopping with other people's money. While we were there Nate's younger sister Molly took some family photos of us, she's such a great photographer (she would be the one who took our new header photo).

While we were there we also took a daytrip down to Utah to have lunch with Nate's sister Kendra who's at BYU and to visit some friends. We spent the afternoon with my friend Jenny and her sweet little boy Bjorn and then went to dinner with my old roommate Lara and her husband Alan. Being back there makes me miss all my college friends and the great times we had.On our drive back to California we had a great creepy gas station attendant moment that I definetly feel is blogworthy. We stopped in Reno at about 3am to gas up for the last leg of the drive and go to the bathroom. I went inside to return the bathroom key and buy Nate a slimjim (I know, random thing to ask for at 3am). When I walked over to Dwayne, the 5'5" blond mullet wearing gas station attendant who lacked a full set of teeth, a shivered, not because it was cold but for some unknown reason. Dwayne asked if I was cold and I told him no, I just had one of those random shivers. Dwayne then proceeded to tell me that if I was cold "he," pointing to Nate outside, "could probably keep me warm." I gave a polite chuckle despite the fact that my face was frozen in a scaredly quizative manner, grabbed the slimjim and left. I guess no roadtrip would be complete without a creepy gas station attendant moment.

How Dumb Are We?

The night has gotten away from me and I just now decided that it was time to eat dinner. Due to the late hour I opted to select a frozen food as opposed to creating a meal. As I snatched my chicken and cheese chimichanga from the freezer and read the heating instructions on the back I noticed the words that bug me to no end...."Caution: Product Will Be Hot." I'm sorry but how stupid am I that someone has to tell me that the chimichanga that I'm putting in the 350 degree oven in order to make it hot will in fact be hot when I remove it. It bugs me that our culture has become so petty sue happy that manufacturers are forced to place these crazy labels on everything in order to avoid a lawsuit. I've vowed as a parent to teach Reese that things that come out of the oven are hot, as are things that come off of the stove or out of the microwave or off on open flame for that matter so that she won't have to look at that warning and say "good thing they let me know that, I might have burned myself." Now I realize that some people just don't get it no matter how many times they are told, but let the morons burn themselves either they'll learn a lesson or natural selection will serve its purpose.

Disneyland

I absolutely love Disneyland and was beyond excited to take Reese there, despite the fact that she's only 4 months old and it won't really be a "memory" for her. I wanted to make sure that she got to do everything that she possibly could and while the majority of the time I just got her standard indifferent face there were quite a few times that a ride or a character coaxed a smile out of her.

Friday morning Melissa, Ava, Nate, Reese and I went to the Goofy breakfast which was at the hotel and had a bunch of characters wandering through the restaurant at different points. They had all the foods a kid would want to eat for breakfast from regular breakfast foods to peanut butter and jelly pizza and dirt and worms. Nate chowed down on the pb&j pizza and even added sprinkles to it, I stuck with more traditional breakfast foods. After breakfast we met up with my parents and went over to Disneyland. Our first stop was Space Mountain since I hadn't been on it since the remodeled it and I was not disappointed. We were pretty lucky because most of the rides had a 20 minute wait at most and those were the rides that we just got Fastpasses for and came back to later, so we actually ended up doing almost every single ride that first day. Reese got to ride the merry go round and the majority of the rides in fantasyland plus she went on Pirates of the Caribbean, seeing as she is a pirate in training. I was so excited that when we came off of pirates there was a pirate in the ride gift shop so Reese got her picture taken with him.

That afternoon we went back to the hotel and went swimming in the pool, mind you this is after they cleaned the floater out of it :) Both Friday and Saturday the pool was closed for a period of time thanks to turd nuggets, but I guess that's what you get when you've got a pile of 2 year olds in the pool. Reese really liked the pool as did Ava who is in that "do it again" phase so I got to have her jump into the pool to me over and over and over again.

The next day Nate and I took Reese and Ava over to the park early for the Magic Morning early entrance. It was nice because it was so empty that we were able to let Ava run around a little bit without worry. We rode some rides and then got a Churro breakfast....BAD MOM ALERT: I let Reese have a lick of churro dust and she was licking her lips she liked it so much. After that we went over to Disney California and rode the Tower of Terror among other rides. That afternoon Ava and Melissa headed back to the hotel while the rest of us took Reese over to the bugs life kiddie ride area. She really liked this ride that was like the teacups but a lot slower. After that we went back to the hotel and did some swimming before we went back over to Disneyland for the rest of the night.
As you can tell, we had a really great trip. It was fun to see Ava so excited about everything and hopefully we'll get to go back again soon.