Off with a Bang

The day before I left Utah was quite adventurous, Ellia and I went to Cole's birthday celebration at Jungle Gym's where she tried some of the rides. We started with the carousel and she seemed to be doing ok, despite the frightened look on her face, and then all of a sudden she let out a life preserving scream and got the frightened look again (I think she had been holding her breath). The next ride we went on just went around, not up and down, so although she was a bit scared at first, I think at the end she started to enjoy it.

We left that party early to make it to grandma Laura and grandpa Jeff's house to visit with all those cousins and relatives, we even got to spend some time with friends we hadn't seen in awhile.

The next day when Jeremy picked me up from the airport, we decided to stick around and do some things in the L.A. area. As we were heading to our first destination we drove right through Hollywood Blvd much to our surprise, so we decided to stop and walk up and down the street,

We tried to convince Spongebob that his pineapple was in our front yard and he should come back to home with us, but he just gave us that goofy smile and didn't say anything.

Sometimes my students at IHS would tell me they were going to move to California and go to Hollywood High, I doubted its existence until I saw this.I didn't know Superman jumped in the picture with me until I turned around after Jer had snapped it and Superman sneakily dashed away. and I thought Donald Duck was just a cartoon character!

our first planned stop - the La Brea Tar Pits,

these are fossilized skulls from dire wolves that were found in tar pits, there were over 400 of them

This mammoth was motorized and made noise, it kind of scared ElliaAn actual tar pit...the mammoth in the tar was sortof floating around, we weren't sure if it was on purpose or not, weird

finally we spent the evening on the beach and the pier, watching people do some pretty interesting things like tight rope walking, gymnastics and hula hoop routines.

This movie is for Jared Collings and Emily, since we all tried to hula hoop at Lori's party and realized it wasn' t as easy as we remembered it being as kids, this lady had quite the routine, and this was only part of it.

In other news, Ellia still loves water and sprinklers and she is learning to open cupboards and drawers faster than I can follow her around with the drill and safety latches. She especially likes taking things out of and off of anything that has things in it or on it! ( I however keep forgetting the latches are on, and have broken every centimeter of fingernail I ever had!)

Vacationing in Utah

Ellia and I chose the end of May to visit Utah (yes she experienced separation anxiety which you can see by her face in most pictures). It was a good time because there was a lot going on. We had a post- mothers day BBQ celebration where we got to surprise my mom with Nutrisystem,

had a scentsy party with aunts and cousins,

saw my brother Zak graduate high school on a beautiful day,


celebrated his 19th birthday,
played in the wide open spaces of Midway, took part in a 50's surprise party for my Aunt Lori who turned . . . 50,

saw a face-painting, balloon tying clown at Taramahara in Midway,

attended the Independence High School graduation to see the kids I worked with for two years graduate,

visited with friends from high school, had lunch at the high school where I used to work, shopped shopped shopped, and partied some more with family.

Overall there was a lot of visiting and celebrating which was great! Memorial weekend might be a traditional visit for us now!

A Water World

First things first: I have a new nephew! William David Hansen born May 9th! Check him out at www.tomandsarahansen.blogspot.com

Cinco de Mayo pool party. I had been wanting to get together with some of the other SAHM's (stay at home mom's) and I thought a good way would be a pool party. This thought happened to come the weekend before Cinco de Mayo, so I acted quickly and had quite the turnout, it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to do it again when it's a bit warmer - which I'm sure is right around the corner.

Thanks a lot for the Elton John sunglasses Emily! JK

For Mother's Day I got to choose what we did on Saturday. I wanted to drive out to the beach. We chose some that are further north along the coast, namely, Morro Rock Bay and Pismo Beach. I say some because after a few hours freezing in the wind at Morro Bay we decided to drive further south in hopes of a bit more warmth. I was still glad we went to Morro Bay, the drive there was pretty, we went through Paso Robles which is a big Winery/Orchard place. All the Orchards were so amazing just spread out across the rolling hills. It was SO beautiful, I was sad I didn't have my camera handy. The bay was actually cute and quaint as well. It was more of a fisherman's warf than a family swimming beach, but it was still fun to walk around the restaurants and shops and have our picnic there.

As for Pismo beach it was still cold, but it will probably turn out to be one we visit more often. Jeremy and I are learning alot out here, for one thing - look up the weather before packing swimsuits! Despite the temperature, it was a great shallow entry into the water and had a wide fine-grain sandy beach. Once again Ellia could not get enough of the sand. She LOVED it! At first she just kept crawling circles around our blanket and coming back to us for security, but it didn't take long before she felt pretty comfortable. We decided to let her crawl away and see how far she would get before looking back, and we were curious what she would do when she realized she was so far. Well, she did get pretty far, maybe 50 yards away, before even looking back, and then she still didn't care, she just picked up a sand dollar and put it in her mouth - causing Jeremy to run to her!

Another short but funny story. We are obviously still getting used to all the new stores and things here. Jeremy let me pick out a big planter pot and plant for our yard for my Mother's day gift so while we were thinking about where to go we saw an ad on TV for a garden store called OSH. They were having a sale and we had seen the OSH adds in our paper so we decided to find our way there and see what they had. As our GPS kept trying to tell us, "You have arrived at your destination." We were beginning to think the store had moved locations. We did see a place called Orchard Supply Hardware and decided to get Ellia out of the car and see what they might have. As I grabbed a cart to put her in I read on the side, "OSH, Orchard Supply Hardware."

We had the first death by drowning in our pool. Let me explain. On Mother's day I was relaxing after church and Jeremy said, "you've got to come see this, it's worth getting up for." Well I ran outside and laying on the bottom of our pool was a squirrel. Death by drowning.

'Dodge'ers!

(Jeremy didn't understand my pun in the title, 'dodge' because the ump failed to dodge the ball)

GO JAZZ

Ellia has been so excited about the Jazz (expect their dang losses) she gets prepared for every game by sporting her Harpring Jersey!

SPORTIN' THE SPORTS WEAR

Hanging around in her jogger bums!

DODGERS GAME

We ventured out to L.A. for the Dodgers game last weekend. It was quite the game! The Dodgers scored 10 runs in the first inning (first story reported on sports center.) Then later, the umpire was hit in the head with a pitch and dropped like a rock. Shortly thereafter the ambulance drove in from center field and the umpire was loaded up and carted off (second story reported on sports center.) He is ok now for those of you who are wondering.


Ellia had a rough time at the game which made us change our minds about taking her to the Yankees, Red Socks game this July. Eventually though she just got plain worn out and drifted off to sleep.











Ellia has learned to clap too!


Peace for us at last.