A Vacation is Just Doing Something You Don't Normally Do

So I got to spend the last two weeks in Maine on "vacation." My vacation was actually a lot of fun. I got to spend it with Jacob and Heather helping them with their new baby girl and two other girls. Definitely stressful at times, especially when it's the end of the day. You're tired and they're tired, and it becomes a battle of the wills. However, it's always nice to "experiment" parenting on other people's kids. Sure, that's what anyone really does, even with their own kids, but it's nice to sort of get an idea of what to expect, even if it's vague at best.

I did do a lot of reading, they were mostly kids books though and the same few books over and over again because they were the favorites, which isn't a problem until you've read the same book ten times in one day. Even two to three times in ten minutes is pushing it. When I did try to read a grown-up book, I got told by Liliana to stop reading that book and read to her; either that she would try to negotiate telling me that I could read that book when Mommy woke up and I could play a game with her now. The nice thing is that she can now read and so I could sometimes get her to read to me!

The one thing that I really came to appreciate though is quiet time/nap time. Although I didn't usually take a nap, it was a time that everything was quiet. It would be just Liliana and me awake so, while Liliana would watch a movie, I could go check my email, read, or just relax with Liliana and watch whatever movie she had picked out. I now know why quiet time is so essential to mothers.

Jacob and Heather were nice enough to plan a trip down to Farmington to see more family, so I got to see more of my family while I was there. It was great to see everyone, even if it wasn't for very long. It's so hard to spend enough time with everyone to make it last until the next time I get to see.

As always, I took lots and lots of pictures. It's a good thing my camera can hold a lot of pictures because I definitely went overboard this time by taking over 300 pictures. Yeah, I might have an addiction or something. The truly hard thing about taking this many pictures is that so many of them are keepers and over an extended period of time that it makes choosing a few wicked hard. So, I'm going to pick a few of each of the girls.

Liliana loves posing for the camera.
She did more poses for me, but this is my favorite.

Being silly with her cousins.

Such a great big sister.

Mattie actually let me do her hair in pigtails this day.
They didn't stay in very long, but oh well!

Mattie chasing me.

Bumpa and Grammy bought Liliana and Mattie these cute little backpacks. Mattie loved hers.

My newest little niece Jane.

Here she is awake.

Chilling in the pool.

Eating popsicles after painting themselves.

Happy Birthday Ashton!

So, last Friday (the 24th) was Ashton's birthday. Although he wasn't all that excited to be a year older, we had a fun time celebrating. Unfortunately, he was one of the only people that had to go to work on his birthday. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Utah holidays, the 24th is also Pioneer Day and just about everything closes for it, and there are also fireworks.) It was good for me that he had to work because it gave me time to make his cake and blow up some balloons. The cheesecake actually turned out pretty good for my first attempt. It wasn't the prettiest thing ever, but it still tasted good!

After Ashton got home, we went out to eat at Olive Garden thanks to a gift card from Steve and Gail! The food was really good and it was nice to get out. The amazing part was that we walked in and they immediately sat us at a table. That has never happened before, especially on a Friday night. The best part came later when the server came to box up our food. These are the boxes we got:
(For those of you who can't see, the small box says "Olive Garden" and the other says "Red Lobster.") Apparently they ran out of bigger boxes that said "Olive Garden" so they went and borrowed some from Red Lobster, which is owned by the same company. Anyways, we found it funny and I had to take a picture when we got home.

Oh, and for those of you who are curious as to what I got Ashton for his birthday, I got him an English translation of "Les Miserables" and also the version of the movie "Les Miserables" that he likes. I'm excited to read the book although I'm trying to wait for him to start/finish it. It's a wicked big book so I may be waiting for a while.

Here are some more pictures:

It took a little while to get all the candles lit, but the pyro in me loved it!

Making a wish.
Probably wished I had left some candles off,
especially since he was stuffed from dinner.

And he huffed and puffed and blew all the candles out. YAY!

Hooray For Broken Things Being Fixed!

We finally got our desktop computer fixed. The screen kept flickering and got so bad that we'd have to shut down the computer for a while if we wanted to play a game and even that didn't work. Eventually the computer wouldn't even turn on. Well, we figured out that it was the motherboard and since the computer was still under warranty, Dell sent someone to replace the part. He came, the part was replaced, and now we have our computer back! Thankfully, during this whole thing, we still had the laptop, but it's nice to have our other computer back.

Mandy, Andrew, and little Austin came into town last week along with Aunt Marcia. We haven't seen them in a long time so we got together with the whole family for dinner. Since we were all together, we celebrated Ashton and Gail's birthdays. We had a great time and I'm so glad that I had brought my camera.

We're excited to celebrate Ashton's birthday tomorrow! Ok, so I'm probably more excited than he is. I think he's just excited about the cake. He'll use any excuse for cake.

"Music time" with toy dishes. Some people decided to wear the dishes rather than play them.

We got out the Boccie ball to play and Sadie decided that she wanted one of the balls.

Carrying the ball

Us with Austin. We were so happy to finally meet him.

How many people does it take to light candles on a cake?

Gail and Ashton blowing out candles.

The frosting made good lipstick. Looking good Mandy!

Andrew decided to try out the new look, too.

Something For Everyone

Ashton and I tend to read a lot of books. We plan on having an entire room dedicated to books when we actually get a house. The entire room is not just because we like books, but also because that's how much space we're going to need to store our books especially when we gather the rest of our books from the various parents' houses.

Although we both like to read, we enjoy different genres of books. I tend to have a more widely accepting range of genres. I enjoy history books just as much as classical and fantasy/adventure books, if not more. I am by no means a die-hard science fiction fan and usually steer away from, what I consider, the really weird stuff. I'm not big into aliens and the like. As it is with any genre, there are good writers and bad writers. The good writers can make just about anything interesting.

Ashton leans almost solely towards the sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy books. I think this fact became more apparent when I tried to get him to read "Eight Cousins" by Louisa May Alcott and, although it's a short book, he couldn't finish it. I probably should have known better than to recommend the book to him, but at the time it sounded like a good idea since we were talking about books I enjoyed when I was younger and "Eight Cousins" was one of my favorite stories. Live and learn.

In any case, I just finished a couple of books (I tend to read a couple at a time) that I thought that I would mention. The first book that I finished was a history called, "The Last Days of the Incas" by Kim MacQuarrie. The book is what you'd expect from the title, although it does cover the exploration of Inca ruins in more recent years. The author did an amazing job researching, going back to the Spanish chroniclers to gain information and does a good job presenting the facts, going so far as to mention discrepancies and present both sides. For anyone who is interested in Incan history or even in South American history, this is a really good book.

The second book that I just finished is "The Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan. This is the first book in a series called "The Wheel of Time." It's a fantasy/adventure book with the magic and mythical world involving humans and other creatures. Although it is fantasy, there are a lot of political strains as well as a good vs evil theme. I began reading this book because it was the book that really got Ashton interested in reading. So, being curious as to what about it made him interested in reading, I decided that I was going to read it for myself, much to his surprise.

Although I wasn't familiar with some of the things that they talked about, I enjoyed the book. The book is well-rounded in that there are good descriptions, which can be annoying when you just want to get to the action, but his characters are also well written. They have a depth and support about them that make them more real to the reader, which is important to a fantasy book I think. There is also a lot of suspense to the book and, although I can be a very nervous reader when there's suspense, it was fun to read.

I haven't decided yet whether I want to continue on in the series. Apparently the last book of the series hasn't come out yet and is being worked on by someone other than Jordan, as he (Jordan) is dead. I don't really want to start reading the series if I just have to wait for the next book to come out. However, given the fact that I tend to read multiple books at a time, it'll probably take me a little while to get through all the books, so the next one could be out before I get to it. We'll see.

By the way, if any of you have any books that you want to recommend, I'd like to hear!

What a Weekend

So, it's been a while and there are probably tons of stuff to catch everyone up on , even if it doesn't feel that way. However, I'm not going to try to catch up on everything we've done in the past few weeks. That would take a while and you'd be bored by the end...I'd be bored by the end. So I'll just talk about this weekend, or more specifically yesterday.

We had a rather busy Saturday, but we had a lot of fun. We first made a trip to Target to buy some things, but most importantly to buy a pan so I can make Ashton a birthday cake in a couple of weeks. He's requested cheesecake and having never made cheesecake, I didn't have a pan for it. So we bought one and now Ashton is dropping not-so-subtle hints about how I should do a trial run. I would do it except it seems that my first attempts to make something tend to turn out better than my second attempts. Maybe it's because I'm so careful the first time to do it right and follow instructions and, having done it once before, I'm not so cautious the second time. I really don't know, but we'll see.

We also got to got to Greg and Christa's open house to help them celebrate their upcoming wedding. We had a good time there and were also glad that Nate and Anjanette came as well.

To top off an already good day, I got to see my friend, and old roommate, Tiff. We spent a few hours hanging out and catching up. She just got back from her mission in Puerto Rico so it's been a while. It was great to see her again and we had a lot of fun talking to her. I've missed her and it's great to have her back!

The Call of Adventure

We like our adventures here well enough. They spice up life, especially the spur of the moment adventures that you don't know are coming. Well, we had one such moment a few days ago.

We were on our way to the airport to pick up Lance and Stacy. It seemed like a normal enough trip. Everything was going fine until we got on the freeway. We didn't even make it a full mile to the next exit when the car started making funny sounds. I thought it was another car at first and Ashton thought it was the engine. It was neither. We pulled over and to my surprise, and Ashton's relief, it was the tire. Oh, but the fun didn't stop there because it wasn't just a flat. It was a blowout. Where the side meets the round tread part was all coming apart. We did find a screw but it didn't seem like it was in the right part of the tire to cause that kind of damage. (Don't worry, I took pictures later when we got the tire off and in the trunk.)

We spent the next few minutes getting the tire off, which was exciting for me because I've never changed a tire in my life. I'm so glad that it didn't happen when I was driving by myself. That probably would have inspired a frantic, tearful call to Ashton to come fix the situation. We got that all taken care of, replacing the tire with the spare, which brings me to another interesting point. The spare tire was thinner than the others. Who thinks that it's a good idea to make the spare thinner than the rest of the tires? It just doesn't seem safe. Isn't the point of a spare to have an extra tire that can substitute for your regular tire in a pinch so you don't have to worry about driving unsafely? Who wants to get a spare on and still have to worry about being safe? In any case, because we didn't know if the spare would last, we drove back home and got Ashton's car. Later that day, we got a new tire put on. Hope this one lasts longer than its cousin.

Now, the funny part of all of this was that a little light had come on in the car. Apparently, the little light was to announce low tire pressure, but believe me, the symbol looked nothing like anything I'd expect to indicate that something's wrong with the tires. Who thought that a semicircle with a squiggly line on the bottom and an exclamation point would suggest a tire problem? I guess I could have looked it up in the manual, but I thought it had something to do with the oil. If you think you know what it is then there's no need to look it up right? Anyways, the light went off when the changed the tire to a regular tire. Thinking that was rather odd, I looked it up and discovered the true meaning of the light. Oops. Guess I'll know better next time.

This is the damage to the tire

Close up

Dinky spare tire

Happy happy

Life always seems busy until I go to write about what we've been up to. Then it doesn't seem interesting enough to write about and so small. I mean the hardest decision I usually have to make during the day is what to eat (it's a toss-up though. Deciding whether to shower or not and what to do with my hair in the case that I did shower are also hard decisions).

In any case, we did have a fairly busy weekend of celebrations this past weekend. We celebrated my birthday on Friday, which was a blast. Anyone who knows me will be surprised when I tell you that Ashton bought me a set of kitchen knives that are pretty nice...and sharp. No worries, no one has lost any limbs yet. Haven't even broken skin. Overall, it was just a great day. Ashton even made me a cake.

The celebrations weren't over yet, though. We had our 2 year wedding anniversary on Monday, which we started celebrating Sunday with a nice dinner that I didn't have to cook. We didn't do really anything special, but it was just nice to spend time together.

Ashton took some pictures of me blowing out my candles and they're entertaining, but I don't have them on the computer yet. So, I thought instead, I'd put a picture up that I took a few weekends ago. It's Ashton's favorite from that bunch.