Happy Halloween!

Jake loved dressing up and getting/eating candy. He was the cutest little Elmo I've ever seen! (Although he wasn't the most cooperative when it came to taking pictures... dang little Elmo.)

After we took a little trick-or-treating walk in Gramma's neighborhood he helped pass out the candy to the other kids. Then he tried to get the candy off the top of the piano... he wasn't very successful so he decided to play instead. What a sweet little boy!!

Guess What... You Guys Were...

RIGHT... maybe.

The ultrasound tech tried several times to get a straight-on shot to no avail. This little one growing perfectly inside me did not want it's picture taken. It was laying on its tummy with the bum in the air and feet and hands tucked up underneath. The only thing the tech was certain of was from the bum view there was nothing "hanging". So she says it's not a boy, unless he has some serious medical issues -- and let's hope that's not the case. She also says she looked several times from different angles and never saw any boy parts. So bring on the pink... it looks like Georgia Ann will be joining our family!!

A Down Day...

After a very busy weekend today was so nice to relax and go to church. Jake napped through an hour of it-- apparently he learned to sleep through anything at Disneyland!! :) It's been a good day.

I'm starting to stress a little about tomorrow. It's a big day... we see the baby for the first time, make sure it's growing as it should, and find out if we're expecting a boy or girl to join our family! So far the poll is very much tipped to the GIRL side. It's currently 5 to 28 votes. I'm anxious to find out... and thinking about not finding out. For some reason it's stressing me out!! But, I'm sure I will have news for you tomorrow, John can't wait... and he won't let me! :) Not that I really want to anyway...

Famous Faces...

On our way to meet up with Meme, Lin, Norah, Tom, & Jim today we decided to take Melly by the Dunder Mifflin building -- The Office set. It's always fun driving by and seeing the building as well as Pam's car in the parking lot. Melly took a few pictures and we headed off again.

As we were driving towards the Wilde's place we saw an "Open House" sign on the side of the street that also said, "Designed to Sell, HGTV" so I asked John to follow the sign. I wanted to see the house... and maybe get a chance to be on tv. We pulled up and sure enough the camera crew was sitting outside waiting for visitors. Since Jake was asleep John stayed in the car and Melly and I went to check things out. We were filmed going into the house, touring it, interviewed on camera with Clive (the host) and coming out of the house. It was a lot of fun, although I'm sure I look and sound like an idiot on camera! They make me so nervous. It's supposed to air in, like, 6 months so I'll probably have completely forgotten about it by then. The improvements were really impressive though... it's just too bad neither of us are in the market for a house, especially a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath in Van Nuys for $699,999. Anyone interested? I can tell you where it is... and it's cute, with a nice backyard including a pool. (there's a picture to go along with this but i have to wait for melly to email it.)

After meeting Clive and being filmed we went to lunch at In-N-Out and laughed about the whole thing. You see, yesterday at California Adventure we saw one of our favorite 80's tv characters, in fact he was the imaginary Baby-Daddy of all of Melly's dolls, can you guess who?? I'll give you one hint... he had the coolest train in his bedroom!! That's right, we were walking with and riding Screamin' with Ricky Schroder!! And Melly's got the pictures to prove it!! And now we see Dunder Mifflin and Clive! We're totally celebrity sighters. And THEN... John says, "that guy in the drive thru looks like another famous face from the 80's -- whatcha talkin' about Willis." Melly and I both say, "naw, he lives in Utah... Santaquin, Utah!!" But we turn and look anyway and SURE ENOUGH Gary Coleman is waiting in the In-N-Out window for his food!! And he looked grumpy. And he was in a huge truck with a monster-sized horse trailer. As he was slowly pulling away (how do you get a horse trailer through a drive-thru??) John walked over to the window to see if his license plates were from Utah or California and... UTAH! With a Larry H. Miller plate frame. We laughed SOOOOO hard!!

Once we finished eating we made our way to meet up with the rest of the bunch. Then we all drove down to Santa Monica, took a walk on the pier, saw a crazy lip-syncing guy with his handicap daughter dancing to bring in the cash (so sad!!), as well as another guy with a marionette dancing to the radio... and we laughed and laughed some more! It's always so good to be with Melly and Meme. Those two girls were so important in my life through college and they still are. After our trip down the pier and back we decided to get "pizza drug" for dinner and Cheesecake Factory cheesecake for dessert... there's nothing like a lactose overload! :) Each car took an assignment and we met back up at the Wilde's ate dinner, dessert, watched the World Series, and the ASU v. Cal game, and really just enjoyed each other's company. It was a great day!!! I truly love my friends and spending time with them is such a special experience. I can't wait to do it again.

Halloween Time at Disneyland

It was a long day, to say the least. We arrived at Disneyland around noon and left a little after 1am... and it was SO. MUCH. FUN!! Jake was so excited to see Mickey Meeeww-ouse everywhere he turned. We probably could have saved ourselves some serious cash had we just stayed in the parking garage the entire time, the kid was in heaven pointing out Mickey Meeeww-ouse on all the poles. He was so cute! Once we finally got into the park he was in awe of everything. It was a great day. We're so glad we were able to spend another trip to Disneyland and California Adventure with Melly, Tom, Jim, and Meme, Norah & Lin. I love that it's a yearly tradition... let's not let that one stop!!

Here are a few highlights from the day...

Riding the tram... with NO hands!:

While the "big kids" rode Tower of Terror I got to hang out with Jake & Norah... too bad the three of us missed this one: (Look to the far right in the front two rows. Front L-R: John, Jim, Melly. 2nd row L-R: Lin, Tom, Meme):

Daddy & Jake checking out Lightening McQueen:

Driving his very own Autopia car:

He fell asleep- sound asleep- DURING the fireworks:

Jake, me, Melly, Norah & Meme:

Lovin' on Mickey Meeeww-ouse:

Jake, Mickey, and the great Meeeww-ouse pumpkin:

We can't wait to go back... hopefully it's sooner rather than later!!
It really is THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!

Bring On the Good Times!!

Melly and Tom arrived from Salt Lake today! We are very excited to have them here with us for the weekend. Tomorrow is Disneyland and the rest... well we'll play it by ear. Thankfully the fire's are under control and the smoke in the air is subsiding. We love having visitors!!

Oh... and my back-up doctor said YES, that is excellent news!!

Birthday Wishes!!

Happy 32nd Birthday Scott!

(Sterling, Scott, Abi, and baby Jacob)

Happy Birthday Aunt Diane!!

Nothing like seeing an old picture from 1967, is there?! :)

We sure love you both!!

Oh, the Weather Outside is FIREFULL...

... and the fire is not delightful. Since there's no place to go, here's how we spent our day-- INSIDE! The air is terrible out there so we were inside all. day. long... we started going a little stir-crazy. Someone let Jake get ahold of the camera and he ran around saying, "Cheese, cheese, cheese" for a good while, taking pictures of us and wanting his picture taken.

I will tell you though, it's amazing how clear the sky is today even with the fires still burning strong. I suppose we have the wind to thank for that, but it still smells awful. You can taste fire. It's gross.

And as we were thinking the fires were finally starting to be less of a danger for our community another one started this afternoon... even closer to our house. Now we are almost completely surrounded by fire. This latest fire we can see from our driveway. It's across the freeway from us though, so probably 4 miles away. We hear it was arson too. Stupid arsonists, what's their problem?!?! Seriously?! Thankfully the wind is blowing the fire westward, away from town toward the deserty mountainous area, keeping the smoke out of town and hopefully the fire away from the homes... although it's not looking all that great on the news right now. dang. Here's hoping tomorrow brings calmer skies and less fire.

Dinner's At Our House and Somethin's Burnin...

Church was early today because of Stake Conference- which was super good- so we decided it was about time we invited some friends over for dinner, seeing how it's been a LONG time since we've had ward friends over. We called Clint, Eden & Flynn as well as Ben, Heather & Kyle and thankfully (since it was so last minute) they were all available. Jake was so excited when the boys arrived... he ran around like a crazy-man! Those three boys are so cute together.

Here they are at dinner:

and playing the piano:

and watching Elmo:

If one went somewhere, they all went. I think this was the first time they've actually interacted and played together instead of all just being in the same room. It was very cute to watch. They would laugh at one another and chat about everything (although the adults had no idea what they were saying!!). After a yummy dinner of bbq hamburgers, baked beans, pasta salad, green salad, asparagus (thanks Eden... so good!), and tator tots the adults played a round of Blokus while the boys continued to entertain each other. It was a lot of fun having these two families over. We really enjoy their company! John treated us to a lemon cake with lemon 7-minute frosting for dessert... I think it might've been his best cake yet. It was soooo super good! That boy really is the Suburban Fantasy!! :)

Although we had bbq for dinner, that wasn't what was causing the entire town to smell of campfire. You may have heard by now, but pretty much all of Southern California is on fire thanks for those blasted Santa Ana winds! There are two fires surrounding our town. The sky outside is smoke-filled, it's hard to breathe and everything smells like camping. For those familiar with the area... Vicci Hill above my mom's neighborhood is currently on fire. Mom's on evacuation alert. Scary! There are several hundred homes between her and the hill... that's a lot of loss if it continues down. The wind is whipping fire all over the place. It's jumping from here to there with no rhyme or reason. Watching the news is depressing and frustrating because there are so many fires you can't get all the information you want about the local ones. We took this picture this afternoon of the sky but for more/better pictures try here or here. The temp's are supposed to be in the 90's for the next few days with no humidity and high wind warnings... I'm afraid it's going to be a long week for those poor firefighters.

Trunk-or-Treat!!

Tonight we had our ward Trunk-or-Treat and, amazingly enough, Jake wore his Elmo costume! He was so cute, although we couldn't get a good picture of him... maybe on Halloween. He loved seeing all the kids in their costumes. His little friend Kyle was the cutest Nemo ever, Flynn was quite the astronaut and Ella was a beautiful witch (we missed getting pictures of Flynn & Ella, oops...)

He loved trunk-or-treating. I'm fairly certain his favorite part was taking all the candy out of his pumpkin and putting it back in the big treat bucket and transferring it back and forth, back and forth. He also enjoyed passing out the candy to the bigger kids... and they loved having Jake pass it to them-- he gave them HANDFULL'S! His hands may be small but he can sure fill them with candy!! A few kids came back several times. It was a fun evening, even Gramma came along!

Nothin' An Otter-Pop Can't Fix...

So... Jake had a run-in with a chair this morning. We thought about taking him over to Urgent Care, but he doesn't really seem to be all that hurt. It looks ugly, and it might scar, but the kids running around jumping off everything and running into walls like usual. Apparently Otter-Pop's are the cure-all.

What do think? Would you take him??

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown...

We had a lot of fun today at Lombardi Ranch with some friends--

playing in the pumpkins...

climbing in the haystacks...

driving old fire engines... and touring the sunflower maze.

The Peanuts Gang
Taylor, Flynn, Jake, Kyle, & Ella

And the Mom's-

Nikki & Taylor, Eden & Flynn, me & Jake, Heather & Kyle,

Heather & Ella, Kiersten & Henry

Here Grows the Family!

This (Doo) little family is going to have an addition!
Jake is so excited to have another cousin.
Congratulations, Spring 2008 is going to be an exciting time!!
(That's my baby brother, Ben; his wife, Lisa; Elijah, Caleb, & Loryn)

RoCK STaR!

It was another great day... church was wonderful- Jake even made it through all of nursery without having to come find me, apparently the leaders have found new way to bribe him when he gets a little weepy... TicTac's! Nice. Their bribin' my boy with food/candy... not something I'm too fond of but I suppose they have to deal with him and if that's what keeps him from crying...

After church we hurried home so we could head down to Meme & Lin's for dinner. We knew we had to hurry because dinner was at 6, we get home from church at 4, and the 5 was closed. We weren't sure which route would be the best way to get out of town, especially on a Sunday evening heading South and so we gave ourselves some extra time. They only live 20 miles south of us, but still...

We ended up sitting on Lyons for about an hour before John decided we'd try another route. I was a little worried, what if every road out of town was just like Lyons and we just left our spot... you know, like always being in the longest line at the grocery store! Well, why I ever doubt my Map I have no idea. We drove across town without a problem, got on the 14 and sailed down the road... no traffic, no parking lot... and made it to Meme & Lin's in about 20 minutes... normal time.

Dinner was fabulous, thanks guys! Nothing like vegetarian enchilada's... homemade by Lin. yummmy! Ruthie and Jim were there, as were the Spilkers and JB!! Amy, Meme, & I met at USU and had such a fun time together at school. It was great meeting her kids and spending time with them, they live in New Jersey now so it's a rare treat. After dinner came the real fun... Guitar Hero! Everyone took their turn to show off their WT-ness, as well as their butt rock skills, I'm pretty sure Amy stole the show!! She's a total ROCK STAR!!

(Rock Star Amy, doin' her thang - Mark & Baby Si, listening as mom totally rocks- Henry & JB giving the famous "Rock On Mom!!"- Jake a little unsure of all the butt rock- finally my boy's all grown up... look at him with his guitar. He & Henry had so much fun when it was their turn!!)