Top 10 Things to do in Portland...

Okay guys, I need some suggestions. For those of you who live here, used to live here or have even visited I would like suggestions of things that we should do while we're here. Dusty informed me that I only have 23 days until we leave for our trip to Connecticut and then we'll only be here for about 3 or 4 days when we get back before we move for good. I want to make sure that I do all (or at least some) the things that are unique to Portland. I'm looking for parks to visit, sites to see, places to eat, shops to go to, walks to take or anything else you think I (we) should do. Even if it seems obvious to you (you think we may have already done it) suggest it anyway, we probably haven't done it. Help me get out of the house and do some fun things. I may even blog about it. Thanks in advance!

Annoying.... but so funny...

Bella is our little turkey, but she's still pretty funny. She knows what she wants and when she wants is and how she wants it done. She has an opinion about EVERYTHING! She is constantly trying to get into my personal space even after I've asked her NOT TO CLIMB ON ME. She loves sitting right in front of me (or even on me), she wants to use my arm to boost herself up onto the bed or couch or chair or... whatever else she can find, and basically be in constant contact with me or Dusty (and on the occasion her favorite mommy-substitute, Jen). She wants to show me how she can climb things, jump off things, slide down things or swing on things. She wants to show me what she's playing with and what each toy can do. She wants to tell us what she's going to have for dinner and then will decide if she really wants to eat it, even if we give her what she's chosen. She likes to push the buttons on her toys that make noise until I can't stand it (if I hear, "you've made a match, look what you've found, you've made a match hear a duck sound, quack quack"... one more time...). All the while she does these little funny things that consistently make me laugh. Her favorite friend's name is Maddy and for the longest time I thought she was calling for Maddy ALL THE TIME, but then realized when she says Mommy, it sounds exactly the same. Now I can tell which is which, but she does still call for Maddy multiple times throughout the day. Her favorite letters are O and P and she some times wanders the house just saying O,P,O,P,O,P... She likes it when new people enter the room, but instead of announcing them she announces herself ("BELLA!" or "Hi Bella"). She wants to know what mommy and daddy are doing and sometimes do the same thing. Yesterday Bella and I were laying in mommy and daddy's bed watching TV and she had to have her blanket over her just like mommy did and then she had to go out to the living room to make sure daddy had his blanket on too ("mommy's blanket, Bella's blanket, daddy's blanket"). She wants to make sure that we know certain things are just for her and usually refers to herself in third person ("Bella's train"). She likes to 'walk' on the ceiling in our apartment (a game we call "spider pig") and she'll go to daddy and just say "Bella piggy" when she wants to play. On occasion she likes to play by herself and when this miraculous event happens she doesn't want you in her room with her. If you try to enter she will tell you to leave ("daddy out" or "daddy no"). She finally knows how to open and close all the inside doors in our apartment. One of her new favorite games is to shut herself in our room and then wait for you to call her or ask where she is so she can "reveal" herself. Of course while she's waiting for you to call her she's standing on the other side of the door yelling "Bella! Bella! Bella!" and will continue to do that until you call her. She loves to wear shoes and likes to put them on herself. She can often be seen with two mismatched shoes, often on the wrong feet. I think she has finally figured out the potty and some times she will come and tell me that she's going to to go the bathroom, but when I ask her if she wants to go to the potty she says "Potty, no. No potty!" She likes to go over to the front door to go to the bathroom, I guess she just wants a little privacy. She also likes to announce to the room that she has tooted. Most often, we already know (she can be quite loud... must take after her daddy...), but in case we didn't hear her she'll tell us ("I toot"). She likes to use the TV remote and turn the TV off while we're watching it. She turns it off and then looks at us, so proud of her accomplishment. She is mastering the art of the "fake cry." I think she thinks that we buy it, but as soon as you can get eye contact she stops crying. So far it's not working in her favor. She likes to repeat what we say to her, often leaving out a few words or syllables. This can lead to some very funny concoctions. These are just a few of the things that Bella does on a daily bases that make me laugh, some times so hard that it makes her laugh and then I laugh harder, then she laughs harder. It can get a little crazy around here.

Now we know...

Dusty found out the rest of his schedule for next year. It looks like we'll be in Redding for about a month and a half and then he'll start his rotations in Meford the first week of August. He got all of his rotations in the Medford area so he won't have to travel at all. We can't wait to finally get the show on the road.

Another Medford Update

Dusty got two more rotations in the Medford Area (one is in Ashland). We are super excited about moving down there and being a little closer to home, but sad about leaving all the awesome friends we've made up here. We don't know when his first rotation will start so we don't know when we'll be moving yet. We'll keep you posted.

Medford, here we come...

Okay, okay, not quite yet, but the wheels are in motion. Dusty found out this morning that at least 3 of his 7 rotations will be in Medford. We have to wait until after the "lottery" that they run to see where his other rotations will be (they could all be in Medford, we don't really know). So it looks like we'll be moving there next year. Yay!

20 months!

Not a whole darn lot to report on this month. I feel like I say the same thing every time I post. "Bella is still progressing by leaps and bounds..." "I am so proud of Bella..." So instead of going through all that again, I'm just going to list what Bella has been up to...
She is sleeping like a champ! She goes to bed between 8 and 9pm and then wakes up around 9 or 10am (sometimes she gets up earlier, but that is pretty rare. sometimes she sleeps in even later, like 11am, it's pretty great). She still takes one afternoon nap between 2 and 3 hours.
She still sleeps in her crib. We got her a toddler bed, but she's still getting used to seeing it her room. We aren't going to force her to sleep in it... at least not yet...
She's still right on target with her clothing sizes, she's wearing 18month clothes, which means she's still smaller than most kids her age. She is still wearing diapers, but we are looking forward to a future without diapers. We got her a potty and one for her baby doll. She likes to put her baby on the potty, so I'm hoping that as time goes on she'll feel more comfortable sitting on the potty herself. I think we're going to get her into her toddler bed first and then really start the potty training. Any tips on these transitions from anyone out there would be great.
She started going to nursery 2 weeks ago. She likes going in there and playing with the kids, but she still wants Mommy or Daddy to go with her. There were 10 kids in there yesterday and it was a little over whelming. She has figured out that if she stays in there the whole time she will get a snack at the end (which she LOVES). For the mean time I think we will just switch off and one of us will go with her.
She loves to feed herself and has her favorite foods that she loves to eat. In the morning she loves eating her bowl of cereal. She can finally eat it in a bowl with milk. She is so proud of herself. However, if she tells us that she is done and we don't get to her soon enough then she dumps the rest out and it can get kind of messy. But hey, that's life with a kid. If you ever come over to our house, you will probably notice that the floor under Bella's chair is a little sticky. ;) She still loves to eat anything that we are eating. If she gets hungry (and we aren't eating) she knows where to go to get her snacks. She goes in the kitchen, opens her cupboard and gets out whatever it is that she wants. She usually gets a fruit cup or applesauce and then climbs up in her chair and waits for me to open it for her.
One of her favorite things to do is to check out her fish. She has a stool in the kitchen that she can climb up on and see her fish. Sometimes, though, she wants us to help her see the fish so she'll stand in the kitchen and yell "shishy, shishy!" The first few times she did it it was cute and funny. But by the 3rd time of the day... not so much.
She loves to hang out with her friend Maddy. They like to play tea party and dress up in her princess dresses. Of course she only wants to dress up when it's her idea. If I ask her to dress up, no way! If she asks me, she loves it. Maddy on the other hand, loves to dress up anytime. Today she had on a dress and wanted Bella to put on the other dress. When I told her that Bella didn't want to dress up, she was very confused. She couldn't figure out why Bella didn't want to dress up.
Her favorite thing to say right now is NO! She says it to everything. Sometimes she'll ask for something and when we go to give it to her she puts her hand up and says no! and then realize that she really does want it and ask for it again.
We got her a little stroller for Christmas that she loves to push around the house. I ended up getting another one that we can leave in the car. We take it out when we go to the mall or to the zoo and she can push it around. She thinks it's so great. She also likes to take her purse with her wherever we go. It's very funny to see her pushing her stroller with her doggy in it with her little purse on her stroller.

I was in the bedroom the other day and I heard Bella and Dusty out playing and laughing so had I had to come and see what they were doing. Dusty was kicking the ball all around the living room and Bella thought it was hilarious. I finally got the camera going right at the end of it. Notice how she is sitting on a ball, she loves to do that. And, yes, that is 13 Going on 30 in the background...

I took Bella to the zoo the other day (it wasn't raining so we HAD to go outside). Here she is pushing her stroller (with her doggy) and her purse (Kate, you may notice that this is the purse you gave me a while back, when you were still living out here, filled with goodies. Bella has claimed it at her own.).

She was peaking at the wild pigs through the split in the glass. Why she wasn't just looking through the glass? I don't know.

I don't know when I took this or what Bella was doing, but as I was flipping trough my camera I saw it and immediately started laughing. Yes, those are my wellies.

One of Bella's favorite games... let's turn the lights off while Daddy's studying.

We got to watch our friend's parent's dog (it's a long story) over night a while ago and Bella had so much fun. She followed him all around the house. By the time it was time for Bear to leave, I think he was a little tired of having a toddler chase after him (he was hiding under the computer desk).

I found Bella like this one day. I think she was playing hide and seek, but I'm still not sure who she was playing with.

Holidaze

I have been putting off this post while we tried to figure out the status of our laptop, but it turns out that it’s only use now is as a paper weight or maybe we can stick it under the leg of our table to keep it from wobbling. I have given in to the fact that I will no longer be using it for its intended purpose. So now, here I am, using our OLD desktop (desktop!?! desktop!?! who uses a desktop these days?) that my parents got us when we got married almost 8 years (!!!) ago (this thing still works and our laptop was only 2 y ears old, huh…). So anyway, here it goes…

Every time we go down to Redding it seems like the time goes by so fast and we are busy the whole time, but when we get home I can never remember what we did.

One thing I know we did get to do was to visit with some of our friends. It seems that we always get to Redding with the best intentions of calling the people we know and getting together with them, but it hardly ever happens. This time we didn’t get a lot of time with friends, but at least we got some. Some of the highlights included; dinner with the Hansens and the Bonds (always an adventure with the kids…), New Years Eve at the Hansen’s house (less of an adventure because my Mom was willing to watch Bella) and a fun filled night of Wii at the Smith’s. All in all I wish we could have spent more time with everyone, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Christmas was an adventure this year. We stayed out at Dusty’s parent’s house (that is always an adventure) so Santa visited us there. It was a lot of fun opening presents with Dusty’s brother, Jared, and his daughter. Bella’s not quite old enough to get the excitement behind opening presents, but Annikah certainly was. After presents and breakfast we headed back into town to my parent’s house. On the way, Bella had her first car sickness episode. We’re not sure what caused this bout of projectile vomit and screaming, but it may have something to do with the fact that she is continuously teething these days, the windy roads, the fact that she hadn’t slept the night before or the M&M’s she had for breakfast. On the up side her puke smelled like acidic chocolate. Yumm… or not. After we finally made it to my parent’s, put Bella down for a nap and hosed out the car, car seat, blankets and such we finally got to relax. For the rest of the day Bella was pretty out of it (this always seems to happen when large groups of people get together at my parent’s house, last time it was a fever of 101). Because of all this, it ended up taking Bella 3 or 4 days to finish opening all her Christmas presents. She ended up getting a LOT of stuff, but I am glad to say that she plays with most of it on a regular basis (some of it was intended just for car rides or just for church, that sort of thing).

A few days after Christmas we got to spend some time with Dusty’s oldest brother, Giegh, and his wife and kids. Since they live in Utah we hardly get to see them, so we’re always excited when they make the trek out to see everyone. And while getting all 12 grandkids together is a blast, it makes for one hectic afternoon.

Another highlight of Christmas day was getting to talk to my brother, Grant. Since he’s serving a mission the only days that we get to talk to him are Mother’s Day and Christmas. It’s always fun to hear about what he has been doing. When we talked to him last Mother’s Day it was hard to get off the phone knowing that we would have to wait so long to hear from him again. But this time it wasn’t as bad because we knew that we’d get to talk to him in May and have him back home in less than a year. All in all it was a pretty good Christmas break.

Since we’ve gotten home we have been pretty busy. Bella and I went to the mall to walk around and noticed that the Disney store was having a huge sale. We went in just to see what was what and Bella found these cute little high heels and matching tiaras. Bella loves shoes, she is always trying to put my shoes on, and when she was in Redding she found her cousins little plastic high heels and would not take them off. So she got these little shoes, which I love because instead of just being the slip-on style they are more like real shoes. They won’t fit her as long (they are a couple sizes too big so they’ll fit her for a while), but they stay on her feet and she can actually walk in them un-aided. So on day one she got two pairs of shoes and two tiaras. Later that night I noticed that one of the blinking lights on one of the shoes wasn’t working so the next day we went back to the Disney store to get a different pair. We walk out of there with a Tinkerbell dress, wings, shoes and a tiara to match and a Cinderella dress, shoes and a tiara that match. Everything was 50% off so it was like I was saving money by buying them… right? Either way, they are so cute. Usually Bella doesn’t really like the whole dress up thing, but these dresses she goes and gets them and WANTS me to put them on her. I figure, she’s been so obsessed with Disney Pixar’s CARS these days that I will encourage anything girly to help balance that. When we picked out a new sweater for her I let her chose between two and she chose CARS, her cars are her favorite toy that she got for Christmas and she picked out a new sippy cup… CARS. Plus, we are planning on going to Disneyland during the summer of 2011, so she can wear one of these outfits then, they should still fit since they’re a little big now (kids under the age of 7 are encouraged to dress as their favorite character). Anyway, here’s a couple pictures…

Bella getting a little help from Mommy.

A little help from Daddy too...

I made all the granddaughters (minus Hunter) tutus for Christmas and with the help of my mom made Hunter and Max pirate costumes and Chance a cowboy costume.

Jared opening a box full of Annikah.

Bella pushing around her new stroller. She didn't like her new baby so she banished it to the bassinet and put her old baby in the stroller.

Playing with the laptop Grandma and Papa got her.This was the only time she opened something without someone's help. About 2 seconds after I took this she was distracted again.This was what we came home with the first day at the Disney store, just shoes and a tiara.But how can you resist this? Notice the hands on the hips. This is her new thing. If I don't get her out of the tub in time she stands up and puts her hands on her hips and just stares at me. I swear I don't do this to her... at least not often...Still a little bit too big, but she loves it anyway.