Lights

At the beginning of this month we had the fun chance to meet up with our "Chicago" friends for dinner and to celebrate a new baby who was expected soon. It was lots of fun & Noah even did somewhat okay at the restaurant. Eating out is hard for 2 year olds not sure how to make it easier. After dinner we decided to visit temple square & see the lights since we had already made the drive down. Noah loves seeing Christmas lights when we drive places so we figured he would love the lights at temple square. In our calculation we forgot the large amount of water present in all the fountains. Very pretty to look at but also very tempting to a 2 year old. Our visit didn't last long as Noah kept trying to "swim" which resulted in him being strapped in the stroller which ticked him off and caused a huge tantrum. We quickly left temple square with our screaming toddler, maybe next year he'll like it. On our way to the car he did calm down whenever a horse and carriage would pass us. He would cheer and clap for them, we think he thought it was a parade. Enjoy a few pictures from our quick light trip.

Thanksgiving

See as it is almost Christmas I figured I should blog about Thanksgiving. We had 2 wonderful meal this year. One when Mark was home, Mom & Dad H let us invade their house/kitchen it was a wonderful day. I cooked my first turkey, with lots of help & patience from Mom H. It was so yummy, I hope I can remember how to make it that yummy again :)
Granddad, Grandma and Great Aunt Marianne joined us also. We had lots of yummy food and great company.
For the actual Holiday we Noah & I joined the Zwick family at Mom & Dad H's house. It was again a wonderful meal, way to much food but worth the stuffed feeling.
After a wonderful meal we traveled to Mom & Dad N's house for the weekend. Noah got to hand out with Grandma, Aunt Jessie and the twins while I worked. The twins are growing and changing. The pictures are from thanksgiving weekend.
Attached you will find a random array of pictures, my phone makes it hard to post them in order & with captions so good luck figuring it out :)

Halloween

For Halloween Noah was the most adorable dalmation I have every seen :)
I was lucky enough to only have to work 1/2 a day on Halloween so we joined my friend and her friends daughter going around town enjoying some of the Halloween activities. We trick or treated down town to the stores, visited the firetruck at the mall and went to the local grocery store where they had treats and a small "spook" alley. It wasn't scary at all, Noah loved it.

For traditional trick or treating we joined a family in our neighboorhood. This was an entriley different experience than I had growing up, the going door to door I mean. It was EXHAUSTING! Noah slept like a rock that night & I am pretty sure I did too. I am not sure Noah understands the trick or treating thing, all he wanted to do was ring the doorbells and run around with his glow toy. Next year I think he'll get it more.

All that trick or treating means our house has lots of candy, lots of the same candy actually Noah was rather particular in what candy he would pick. I had it hidden till about 5 minutes ago when Noah discovered my spot of hiding...time to change it!

AND NOW THE MOMENT THAT WE WAIT FOR EACH FALL........

THE PUMPKIN BLOW 2012!

side note, my brother is actually a great shot he was trying to hit a trigger pumpkin the first 2 shots....

 

Blessed, very blessed

I realize this isn't our Halloween post, I'll get to that.
I am currently sitting at the farm I grew up playing on with my dad, uncles & cousins watching Noah "help" his grandpa feed the cows. This makes tears come to my eyes as so many grand kids don't get these special opportunities with their grandparents and here Noah is the 3rd generation creating memories on this farm.
I have so many wonderful memories of this place. Playing in empty cow stalls with my siblings & cousins I am sure our games were silly but we always had fun! Being brave and going in the old barn where we were sure wild animals or ghosts lived. Stealing our grandpa's double mint gum that he had everywhere (trucks, tractors, tool boxes). Shoveling grain to the cows, no this wasn't work to us as little kids, we felt awesome being able to help our grandpa and dads. Than running into the farm house and sneaking to the treat drawer, in my memory I think it was the bottom drawer on the left side of the sink but I could be wrong....grandma always had chocolate, she still does.
People find it odd that my entire family on both sides lives no more than 2.5 hours from each other and I find it hard to imagine when families don't live that way. I always new my cousins where there for me, always had a friend even during rough days in school when all friends disappeared cousins never did. They are still some of my best friends! I realize the world we live in and that this doesn't happen often and that I am blessed more than I realized as a child. As a child I assumed everyone lived by all their family. I also realize Marks job could take us literally anywhere in the world, i try to be okay with that. I do have to admit I always hope life finds us close to the farm as this is a life you can't get anywhere else.
Tomorrow the awesomeness of my family continues with the annual pumpkin blow...stayed tuned :)

Reading assignment

Yesterday Mark walked up to me handed me a book and said here is your reading assignment. Haven't had one of those in close to 10 years, unless you count medical information, I was a little taken back and slightly confused until I saw the title....THE HOBBIT. Mark loves this book and is very excited for the movie, to help me enjoy the movie more (or I am assuming it's to help me) I have been given a reading assignment.
I love to read, usually mushy love stories and lately a ton of books by Marcia Lynn McClure...another post entirely but if you like love stories and your library carries lds authors check her out. Anyway back to the reason of my post, I am now on page 10 of my assignment and have already giggled out loud, excited to see where this adventure that Bilbo Baggins is about to begin takes me and thinking maybe I should get out my usually genre of books more often....well maybe I mean who doesn't like a good story about love and silly romantic things.
Off to read more of this hobbit adventure, what reading adventure are you on?

McAllen, Texas

Early on the morning of September 26 we loaded ourselves in the car &  set off for the airport. We arrived on time, which was surprising since we only had about 3 hours of sleep. We walk up to our gate, it's looking like we should make it on the flight. Over the loud speakers we hear "is there a American Airlines mechanic on this flight" Mark looks at me smacking his forehead and giving me a here we go look. No mechanic responds, next announcement "Due to a mechanical problems this flight will be cancelled." We wait patiently while other passengers are taken care of. During this time we begin chatting with the flight crew & one of the flight attendants says that this happens all the time and than they will uncancel the flight and you'll end up being on the flight with hardly any other people. We hoped this would happen but came to the realization that most likely we would be hanging out for 5 1/2 hours waiting for the next flight that had room for us. After playing on the moving sidewalk with Noah for awhile we head back to our gate. I smile at the flight attendants as we walk up she give me a huge smile, thumbs up sign and mouths "we're a go" Could have cried with happiness. Entertaining Noah at the airport was becoming a challenge since they took out the play area's to put in express Spa's....not a smart choice Salt Lake, not at all. Happy moment the flight was a go! There was an 8:20 departure that was booked full with passengers, they offered us seats but couldn't place us by each other deciding Noah wouldn't do well not sitting by us we declined the seats and waited for the cancelled flight be uncancelled and us to board. We had seats on the uncancelled flight, there were 11 passengers. This was fantastic, Noah was able to be load and not really bother anyone because there wasn't anyone sitting around us. On American flights first class passengers are always given a meal, there are 16 first class seats. If you are good at math you just realized that there were fewer passengers on the entire plane than there are first class seats, why does this matter? FREE BREAKFAST! They had the meals, they shared the meals with EVERYONE on the plane instead of them just sitting there. Noah thought it was pretty great so did we!

We made our connection in Dallas to McAllen without problem. The best part of the Dallas airport is the train that goes from terminal to terminal, Noah was in heaven and would have spent our entire vacation riding around in circles. Noah was so tired he didn't even make it to the runway in the airplane before he was out cold, Mark & I might have made it to take off. We landed in McAllen called Heather to let her know we were there and wandered out wait for her. I have been to humid places before, but this humidity was different. Mark's Aunt Karin once said that humid air gave you hug each time you walked outside. This air was giving bear hugs & I wanted it to let go :)
After waiting outside for a few minutes the humidity wasn't bad. We loaded up in the car and headed to meet Brett who had just got off work. Starving from a long day of travel we headed for a local Texas BBQ joint, delicious!





Thursday morning we loaded in the car and headed for the gulf, South Padre Island. I love the beach, I have always loved the beach I think I inherited that from my Grandma and Great-Grandma. The Gulf was unlike any beach I had been too. It was WARM, so much better than the cold pacific. We played in the water for hours. Noah never once shivered, this never happens when we swim...not matter how hot it is outside. It was an unusually wavy day in the gulf, which was a blast. Noah loved playing in the waves, he actually spent most of the time not holding hands with anyone. We had a nice picnic in the beach pavilion, they have some very determined birds on South Padre. They actually ripped on a sealed bag of Cheetos, it was a feeding frenzy and a little freaky to be around! After lunch we wandered out on what we decided must have been an old pier. There were lots of people fishing. I was kept freaking out because Noah wanted to walk not holding hands, it was so deep around and the rocks were uneven. He survived but I might need Xanax if he is going to do things like that. Noah got tired of not being able to play in the water around him so we headed back to land. Brett & Heather went out a bit further and were able to see a baby shark someone had caught. We did learn from some nice fishermen, after Noah tried to become the catch in their net, that to catch crab you fish with raw chicken. Who knew, not me! We spent a while longer playing in the waves and than headed out to drive around the island. Noah was awake for all of 5 minutes in the car. We spent time searching for souvenir sweaters, funny since it was over 90 degrees, while Noah slept. We ended our beach day with fresh seafood at Dirty Al's. Noah even loved it, he was downing the calamari. We had calamari, shrimp & flounder. Oh my mouth is watering as I type this. SO GOOD! We stopped at a giant souvenir shop after dinner, sadly it was closed. We took fun photos outside, they are on my phone and I don't want to deal with the transfer. I did give you lots of other photos to see :)



Family Photo on South Padre



He wasn't freaking out, promise, he loved it.



See why I was nervous for Noah walking!



Noah fell in love with Heather & Brett right away.



Baby Shark



There open side made me giggle and the painting was to fantastic to not share

Wonderful place, can't wait to visit again!

 

Boarder patrol

 

Friday we spent the morning at the outlet mall, bad place to visit....especially when you have kids they had way to many kid stores! After a very successful shopping trip we headed for a picnic. Now we didn't just go to any park, we headed to a park on the USA & Mexican boarder. It was interesting watching the boarder patrol speed up and down the Rio Grande while we hate our sandwiches and drive around the park. I imagine they wondered what the heck  a bunch of white people were doing picning on the Rio Grande. We could see & hear Mexican children playing not even a football field away. For some reason this entire scenario made me a little sad. Not sure why but it did. After eating and standing on the dock for photo ops we let Noah play at the park. The playground equipment seemed to be new an well take care of as were all the tables, maybe it was just an off day and that is why we were the only people there. Noah had fun playing with his Dad & Brett on the slides and climbing the chain ladder. He did it all by himself multiple times. He is growing up so quickly!

This is when Mark got an Ant bite



Boarder fence

 

Brett took us on a tour around the boarder, at one point while driving down a dirt road we were being followed by the boarder patrol. I won't deny it I was worried we were in trouble. Brett was right we weren't, they turned around and we continued our "tour" We ended up in a small town that I commented looked like what I image Mexico does look like. Brett said it pretty much was and that he had just done a new story (he is an news anchor man) on how this town was trying to get running water. 

We finished our day swimming in Brett & Heathers neighborhood pool. This pool was built for kids, it had an entire section just over a foot deep and never got deeper than 3 1/2 feet, Noah was in heaven. He even floated on just his water wings without us holding him, not sure he agreed with us doing that to him but he did it!



Love this friend of mine, college roommates 8 years ago!

 

 Due to flight cancellations we had to be at the airport at 5 am to catch our flight home, we did & made it on our flight.

 

We had a wonderful trip  look forward to many more family trips visiting new places.

Please forgive spelling & grammar errors, in attempt to actually post this before Noah tried to help I was working very fast.



Family

Sunday Mike & Jessie came over after church to have lunch and hangout before they visited their beautiful girls at the NICU. We went for a walk, Noah brought his bike to "ride". He informed Jessie it was her turn so she got on and he proceeded to push her. This is what I call an awesome aunt!
Also i have to shown off my cute nieces, they are getting so big. Can't wait till they get to come home!