Andrea, Hailey, Emi and Joel's Not So Typical Adventures: January 2015

Since I have been working and Joel has been staying home, I've missed out on a few things. Joel will usually call and tell me in frustration something that just happened. I usually end up laughing. Being home more he's the one who's had to deal with the problems, the issues, the drama, but in return he gets some awesome memories and laughs out of it.

"Emi, Emi, Emi. Whack! WAHHHAAA." This was what Joel told me at work one day. He had just gotten Emi to sleep when Hailey came in with her singing baby doll and wanted to play.

Hailey is learning how to dance and she loves it.

She loves to jump, but usually needs a little help if she really wants to get some air. Hailey loves circles. She'll spin spin spin and "all fall down." She also likes "pop goes the weasel" because she can jump.

We call it flying, Hailey calls it "swing." She Hailey is usually in some kinds of upward position and will swing down between our legs and then back up again. When both of us are walking with her she has to grab our hands and then she just picks her feet up. This is our cue that she wants to swing.

Hailey is starting to watch movies. Her favorites are:wreck it Ralph. How to Train Your Dragon--apparently after watching this one she goes, RAAWR to everything. Yes her hands are up by her face in roaring position. She also enjoys Jungle Book. She likes to dance to the jazz music with Baloo.

She's trying to sing.

Joel says she's started to get an attitude. I think she's always had one, but now she has a strut to go with the pout.

She is starting to play games with us and start them. Peek a boo. Tickle fights. Where's Hailey? There she is. Chase.

When folding laundry, she has to have her own piece of laundry or pile of clothes to fold. She makes sure to lay them out all nice and flat, one of top of the other.

Emi is getting more aware of her surroundings. She's curious. She has this pull and vibrate monkey that hangs from her play dome. If a 5 month old can have a favorite toy, this would be it. It makes Joel wonder how fast Hailey grew up, or if it's just that I can't pay attention solely to her, that it only seems like she's growing up faster.

Hailey is picking up vocabulary words super fast!

Hailey enjoys crawling into the dome mat when Emi is in there. They talk to each other in the dome.

Hailey is addicted to being outside. It should be interested to see what happens when it's warm enough and she can go in the pool Right now, she stays away from it.

When I go to get Hailey up in the morning I'll open the blinds to her window. Her crib is right by the window. A little while ago I pointed out trees, flowers, and birds. Now when she gets up she points out the window, "Tees. Flowey."

Emi is almost to a point that she'll actually laugh. When you tickle under her chin by her collar bones, she scrunches her face and tries to laugh.

Emi loves naked time. She enjoys total naked time but that can be disastrous. So when she is cranky, Joel will strip her down to just her diaper and let her play. Usually it's with her feet.

Hailey loves showers. She has her own towel with a hood and she'll hold everything around her herself. BUT she doesn't want to be naked for long. If we leave her for too long she tries to put some type of clothing on.

Hailey is obsessed with socks and shoes. She is always trying to put on socks. So far, the only ones that she can get on by herself are mine. They go up to her calves.

Emi sucks on her fingers. You'd think they were covered in sugar the way she goes at them.

Joel has had to teach Hailey not to throw rocks in the pool.

Potty training continues. She'll use the potty if we put her on it but she still uses the diaper as well. Joel decided that in order to help her poop she needed to grunt. It's quite the sight and sound listening to them. Oddly enough every once in a while it actually works and it's one less poopy diaper to change for the day.

It's surprising how much Hailey likes to be a helper. If Joel's outside cleaning out the pool, she has to be right there. She'll try and grab the cleaning rake if he puts it down. She gets mad at him if he pulls the filter bucket and doesn't let her empty the leaves into the trash bucket. Pictures are in the previous post.

It's an art trying to get both kids down at the same time so that Joel can have "kids are asleep" peace. I think he's starting to understand why I like not having "background noise." Because I have it all day when I'm home.

Hailey could survive on fruit and yogurt packs and animal crackers. If you give in and give her crackers to "hold her over till we can get lunch or dinner made" she fills up on crackers and won't eat her meal. Joel is now cracker training her... she can only pick up two crackers at a time. One for eat hand. When those are done, she can go grab more.

Hailey has stash corners, apparently in each room.

hailey is learning how to use a cup. We'll give her a little bit of whatever in a cup and give it to her. She does really good at drinking it as long there aren't any other bowls or cups that she can pour it into.

Joel learned the hard way not to give Hailey Sunkist. Sugar and caffeine. Not smart. Causes toddler to have a massive sugar crash. "But I watered it down!!!" Yeah...

I didn't know that Hailey had learned how to click a clicker pen. Usually I get let her play with a pen...my mistake. I was sewing and she was playing. She had finished drawing and got down. Next thing I here is scratch scratch scratch... Now keep in mind that I'm sewing in the dining room. The chairs are ivory linen covered. Well, now one of them is ivory with "blue pin striping." I about freaked. Ok, maybe no about about it. Furnished house. Not our stuff. Blue pen. PEN is ridiculous to get out of anything let alone an upholstered ivory colored chair. No worries. Brother came with his cleaner and cleaning chemicals and all is well again. Probably looks even better than before.

She has graduated from string cheese to regular sharp or cheddar cheese. You go to the fridge and open it and she points at it. She also likes the little baby bel cheeses. They are just her size.

Joel used to let her sit on the tall chairs, but she likes to rock and all it took was one fall and bonk. No more chairs.

Although she knows that she has her kitchen food chair. When it's time to eat she goes to her chair, waits for us to pick her up, then she waits for her bib.

Hailey still wants lap time. She says she's done eating but sometimes that just means, she's done eating in her own chair. This usually is the case when I'm holding Emi at the dinner table.

Started writing this Nov 25. It's now January 2nd. The short of everything. We moved to Vegas.

Nov 25.
Packed everything up that we didn't sell or give away. table, chairs, washer drier, van, couch, tons of other little things. We've collected a lot of "stuff" over the almost 2 years that we've lived in Boise.

Ryan is currently bidding on a large project so he ran the idea of Joel working for him over Christmas break past us. After talking and deciding that it was going to cost as much to fly down as it was in income we decided that it wouldn't work. When we kept thinking about things, we decided that if we moved down for the length of the contract, 3-4 months, it would be worth it. That got the ball rolling and it eventually came down to... We are moving to Vegas. That was the readers digest version of things. Joel had known for almost a month before I had even talked with Ryan that we were supposed to move, and move to Vegas. I have always said, I never want to move back to Vegas. That is where I grew up and I didn't like it so much. It's crowded and the people and all the stuff and it's busy and did I mention crowded with traffic? It took me most of a day to come to grips that I wasn't coming back to Boise after 3-4 months, but that we were going to pack up our stuff and move, not leave it in a storage unit up here.

We started making a Boise Bucket list not soon after. There were things that we had planned to do but hadn't ever gotten around to it. Now was the time. Joel wanted to go to one last hockey game. We wanted to see the Da Vinci exhibit at the discovery museum. We wanted to eat in old town Hyde Park. Take a walk at Bogus Basin with Hailey.

Lots of things. Now we have started packing our apartment. First it was things we really didn't need. Then the canned jars of pears, applesauce, and other goodies. That was when the apartment started to feel empty. Then we pulled the pictures off the wall and took down the quilts. That really made the apartment depressing. Things were starting to really look like we were moving.

With both girls I had a hard time managing cleaning and packing and taking care of them. The Colehaven ward was awesome and Meredith Gregory, Jackie Muehlstein, and the sister missionaries came over to help me pack.

Ryan was supposed to leave Vegas Friday and get into Boise either late Friday or early early morning Saturday. Things didn't go anything close to that. Ryan called Saturday and just left at 9-10 that morning.He finally got to Boise Saturday at 11PM. We weren't very happy about that because I still had things to pack and clean since the trailer wasn't here Friday. Two weeks isn't very long to pack up your life. Needless to say, we weren't ready. Amy Stanard said she'd come hold Emi while we packed but with it being so late, she just offered to take her back to her place. That was a great blessing. I was stressed beyond stressed. A great blessing came from Amy taking Emi. Amy was able to put Emi to sleep and keep her asleep in something called a Sleep and Play. Needless to say when we got to Vegas we found one. She currently still sleeps in it!

We sold the mini van. Used the money to pay for plane tickets for the girls and myself so we didn't have to drive 10+ hours, which would have been more like 15 with stops, feeds, and changes. Even flying was a hassle as the plane was delayed two hours.

We eventually all made it into Vegas. The next thing was figuring out what to do with all of our stuff. It was all packed into the trailer but we didn't have a place to put it all. The house we moved into with Ryan was already overly furnished. More stress. Lovely. We finally moved a few things and made space in the covered open shed in the back yard. It will stay mostly dry. The heat will be a different story. But we'll approach that when we need to. We're not sure how long we'll be here.

Jobs have been interesting as well. Joel was expecting to work with Ryan but Ryan has been super slow. Nobody wants to trim their trees during the holidays. They have better things to do. Joel ended up working currently 2 days a week if lucky. The unexpected work came for me. My dad fired one of his employees. She just happened to be the only dental assistant. Of course before he fired her he called me to make sure I could work for him. That call came on a Monday and I started work Tuesday. That has been a blessing and yet another stressor. Blessing because it bring in income and gets me out of the house and working, using my brain. It's a little rusty when it comes to everything not kid raising wise. The stressor is there's a lot to learn. Luckily it's only 3 days a week and Joel can work on the off days if/when. Joel has had an interesting time learning what it's like to be a stay at home dad.

So why did we move to Vegas? We have no idea and we ask ourselves that multiple times a week. Do we like it here? Eh. Sometimes but mostly it's not our favorite place, but neither was Boise when we first moved there. Now we miss it terribly. We miss the gym, our friends, the activities, the parks, the everything, even our tiny 900 sq ft apartment and neighbors. We are grateful that we have my parents in the area even though it's about a 30 minute drive. Hailey had been able to see Nana and Papa a lot more, and Mandy-the dog. She loves and squeals with happiness when she gets to play with Mandy. Fortunately we aren't anywhere close to the middle of Vegas. We live on the outskirts which is almost it's own city. That little part of town we enjoy. We are surrounded by mountains and that has been a saving grace for Joel's sanity.

We are learning a lot. We had a funeral to go to a week after we got to Vegas. On the drive to Colorado we stopped in and visited with Grandpa Clarke and Grandma Margaret. Margaret was making hand towel dresses and she showed me how to do it. It was fun. Sewing on the other hand... well it tests my patience. I can't seem to keep the machine working properly. BAHH!!! I'm learning a lot about dentistry as well. I'm grateful that I pick things up quickly.

We've tinkered with me not working but Joel thinks it's worth my sanity to be out of the house for a couple days. We are looking for someone who can watch the girls. It's interesting. I don't make much but Joel is willing to let those funds go to a sitter for sanity's sake. Sanity is expensive.

Joel is looking into a couple different job options that have to due with welding. It's still what he loves. Hopefully Vegas will be a stepping stone for his career path, but honestly we don't know what Vegas is or will be. We are trying to make the best of it. Hailey doesn't seem to be phased at all. She loves playing outside in the backyard when Joel is cleaning the pool. She's got lots of space to roam around. She loves playing on the couch. I think that's her new favorite place to hang out. She's currently stuck in a box that we got from Costco. It's too small for her. Off to save the toddler and make something for snack time.

We never got a chance to take a picture of all of us in our Halloween outfits. I was Joel's biggest fan. Hailey was a Wyoming cheerleader. Joel was a football player and Emilee was the ref. It was fun getting dressed up.

We found a camping high chair in camo Pink!

Not to long after we moved to Vegas a dear friend died. We rented a car because ours probably wouldn't have survived the 10+ kid stops hour drive. Emilee screamed for a good chunk of it till we figured out that she had to eat, relax, get tired and then she'd sleep in the carseat for 2-4 hours. Some of our pictures. When the sun would get in Hailey's eyes, she covered them. :)

Emilee likes something for her hands to grab onto.

This was a nursing stop in Beaver Creek. Hailey and Joel got out and played on a park playground.

Then it was lunch time. PBJ in the carseat, or all over the carseat and baby.

Ryan Marsden and Hailey playing. Hailey was up till 10 that night. That's super late for her! But we had a great time. Emile on the other hand, crashed. Ryan didn't mind holding her when she wasn't screaming.

We didn't have a christmas tree up this year because of all the traveling and moving. Instead we went and saw a bunchof different houses in Vegas that had light shows. Nana and Papa, Dana and Thomas came with us one of the nights. One neighborhood wasn't musical but it was decorated like it was Santa's village.

Play time with Daddy while Mommy's at work. Get dressed up and go to the park. The next week it was 70 degrees. No need for jackets. Crazy Vegas weather.

This is how we spent New Year's. In a bath full of bubbles. Hailey didn't want in. The bath is too big and the jets absolutely freaked her out! She prefers showers now.