Things that I haven't posted about.

I haven't posted about:

*K.C.'s Birthday (Done! click here to read)
*Me Taking A P90-X Class and placing 3rd!
*Savannah's First Birthday!
*Savannah's Birthday Photoshoot (don't worry I haven't edited that yet)
*Me loosing over 30lbs (go me!)
*K.C. becoming a round table break out teacher
*Our job hunting
*Getting our phones switched to a new provider and thus getting cool new phones
*Getting started selling Paparazzi Accessories and what a blessing that has been.
*My dear friend that I've tried to help but who has actually lifted and inspired me more than I can say as she has dealt with her sweet son moving on to continue his adventure in heaven, and the struggle that has been.
*All of our crazy traveling in May including:
     *Going to Salt Lake to pick up Daniel my cousin and get my brothers stuff
     *Going to NV to take pictures of K.C.'s sister Kaylea's wedding,
     *Going to Arizona to shoot a wedding in a hot air balloon. (can I just say "most stressful shoot I've ever done?!") And 2 newborn shoot that I snuck in!
     *Coming home for a few days
     *Then back to Arizona for a few weeks for another of K.C.'s sisters weddings (Lana) which I also took the pictures at. And helping his parents get started selling Paparazzi Accessories.
*All of Savannah's milestones and updates
*The crafts that I've made
*Craigs' brilliance as he continues to delight us every day...
*And how we're planning another trip this time to encompass Salt Lake, NV and Idaho.

Basically I'm behind. Very very behind. But I've been so busy doing all of these things that I run from one to the next and don't have the time to keep a nice record of them. And I've been bad, oh so bad at reading other people's blogs too! sometimes I just want that lazy feeling of "hmm what should I do now? I think I'll look at some blogs and catch up on my friends...leisurely... because I can!" or even just "Hey my kid just did something cute I'm going to post about it and I can do that!"

Notice the time? 1:40AM? sigh.

Dear life, why can I never catch up? Please try to get back to normal soon. Thanks so much. Love me

Road Trip

Here we go again! We're off to Salt Lake today, Mt Timpanogos caves tomorrow and the farm in NV after that. It will be fun to be out there again and see all my aunts and uncles and family.

And with Craigs' new found love of Cars (the show) and especially "Mack" the big truck I'm sure he's going to be in seventh heaven when he gets to play in one! I'm excited.

See you all when I get back next week. (prepare for another long post :) Cuz there will be lots to tell!

AZ Fun

We just got back from a weekend in AZ. And although it's still blazing hot here... It feels like blessed cool. K.C. and I both suffered from heat exhaustion while we were there. It was tons of fun to visit but we are so glad to be home.

Here's some of the highlights.

Hoover Dam, we were actually going to stop and look at it this time but Craig fell asleep 5 min. before we got there so we pressed on.

They are making a lot of progress! They may actually finish it someday.

When Craig woke up we stopped on the side of the road and ran around to stretch our legs. K.C. and Craig climbed this huge rock.

And of course Craig had to copy daddy!

I love my boy, and I'm so glad he loves me too!

I thought this turned out kinda fun!

Craig with his Great Grandpa Hunt. It was fun to stay at his house for a few nights while we were there.

Me being brave and trying the whole, flower in the hair thing. I'm trying to just be confident but I still feel like it's hard for me to pull off.

My little Craigo was so sweet the whole trip. Every time I braced myself and 'just knew' a break down was coming he would always surprise me and happily and sweetly respond.

Even with traveling in the middle of the day while he was bored and awake he was sweet and didn't even cry. We found lots of fun games to play and he had a blast finding all the semi's on the road and saying "Hi Mack! Eggo found Mack!" We would race them too.

This may have been a bad game to start because now every single time he sees a big truck he gets all excited and starts exclaiming "Go daddy, go daddy, go daddy!!!! Get him! Let's win!" It's cute, but with the amount of trucks on the road it's practically a non stop game.

It was BLAZING HOT in Mesa! Oh it was miserable, I felt lightheaded a ill most of the time. We went to this play place that had AC so that we could cool off and Craig could have fun. It was great.

He loved sitting on all the animals!

Big tough gorillas

ROAR like a lion!

His uncle Kieth took him on a fun spinning teacup ride. he was good to only let it spin a little though.
(and Kieth he still remembers you, he saw this picture and said "Kieth, arms up!")

K.C.'s parents and Kaylea enjoying some cool. It was fun to spend time with them.

Blake and Abby were very patient as Craig learned how to play sweetly and share THEIR toys with them!

Jackie (K.C.'s oldest sister) had this fun covered wagon that she gave Craig and Abby a ride in.

We went over to Jackie's house to can some meat (yes that's right! I canned meat! How domestic of me! It was actually tons easier than I expected. I would actually like to get the stuff and do it now! I'm all motivated, but we'll see how it pans out.)

I forgot my shoes in the car (bad idea when the ground can burn your feet off in .02 seconds.) So I walked on K.C.'s feet out to the car! I love him.

The night before K.C. was really sick and the only thing we could figure was heat exhaustion. We were both feeling really yucky all day that day (Monday). Luckily I'd kept Craig hydrated well enough that he didn't seem to be effected.
We headed out around 4 and just prayed that we would feel good enough and be awake enough to make it home. But as soon as we got out of the valley we started feeling better. Then we ran into this wonderful rain storm!

The AC was cranked and it was like 10 degrees in the car, it looked cool and peaceful outside and I was in heaven! It really was fun to see everyone but the heat was terrible! We sure picked a great week to go south!

We were almost to Mesquite and one of our tires blew out! We are very lucky though because the several times that we have had a tire blow out our little car continues to drive straight and true! It was a bothersome delay, but all was well and we were soon on our way again.

By the time we got home it was 2 am and Craig had slept most of the way home and I was so worried that he wouldn't sleep any more, but he was so sweet, he slept clear till 10:30! Yay.

While I was there Kaylea showed me more things about my camera, so I've had fun practicing what she showed me. It will probably be a while before I'm very good at it but it is fun to have something new to work on and feel like I'm actually going to get better! Thanks Kaylea.

There you have a it a huge post and a ton of pictures! I didn't even take pictures of all the other things that happened. I kept forgetting to pull my camera out!

Rain Storm

While driving home from AZ was trying the best I could to practice the photography tips that Kaylea had given me while there. It wasn't exactly the ideal environment because the sun was going down and I was in a moving car. So composing a picture and not getting the traffic on the other side of the freeway in it was tricky. I think I finally started to get the hang of it and Shot all of these shots on the Manual setting. Go me.

I love this one!

Splashes of rain from the windshield wipers.

These were extra tricky because the camera was trying to focus on the mountains and cars, not the windshield, so I manually focused them too.

AZ Sunsets

I guess when you're stuck in a car there's always something you can do to amuse yourself! Craig was pretty cute too, after I'd take a picture he'd want to see it and say:

"Mommy, Eggo see it, please, okay."

I was happy with how well they did turn out because usually taking pictures from inside the car through the dirty glass is just a ridiculous waste of time. Especially given the fact that the things you're trying to take pictures of are flashing past you at rapid speeds along with the other things that you're trying to avoid like cars and trucks and stuff.

Cruise Day 2

Day 2 was an 'At Sea' day so we just wandered around the ship most of the day, went out in the sun, and enjoyed the AMAZING blue ocean!

That night was formal night! I was a little disappointed because I thought that we would have been dancing to go to. And there might have been but it was in the smoke infested bars. so we danced on the deck instead. (it was fun, there was no one out there, but everyone was staring at us through the windows.)

This is Jason and Mayone. They were at our table every night for dinner.

Lovely desserts

Our formals.
(everyone that saw us would say "congratulations!" They all thought we'd just been married I'm sure.)

My super handsome husband in his wedding tux

K.C. trying his hand at taking self portraits. He did good.

K.C. loved this curtain because it totally changed depending on what lights they shined on it.

What a strange light!

When you can't find anyone to take pictures for you, what do you do?
Set the camera on an obliging bench, (a squat down so you're in the picture) of course!

I tried to straighten my hair that day... But hello humidity, goodbye straight hair, hello poodle head! I'm glad there's not that much humidity here!

The hallway to our room. This isn't even the whole of it. There's probably that much hall behind us too.

And last but not least. The crazy self portraits.

By the end of this day I was still limping pretty bad but it was bearable. I had hope that I would still be able to swim with the dolphins the next day in Jamaica!

A funny tradition

I took this picture on our cruise. It was kind of a hilarious tradition that got started one night while I waited for K.C. to get ready. I started taking pictures of myself. Some turned out really good I thought. And some are just plain hilarious.

I did it just about everyday, while either waiting for K.C. or just bumming around in our room. I'm sure I'll be putting more up, so beware! There are many and just the whole concept is funny (to me). Good times.

Cruise Day 1 Miami

OK I'm going to tackle this one day at a time. On Friday night we kissed our little Craig goodbye and Sent him off to grandma and grandpas (he had a blast by the way) but it was hard. then we finished packing and at 2 am started the trip to Vegas so that we could catch our 6 o'clock flight to Miami.
This is when we got to the hotel in Miami around noon on Saturday we grabbed some lunch and then took a very long wonderful nap!

About to go get dinner (I'm in Miami!)

I have a sad tale to tell about Saturday night. Just my luck too. As a precursor to the story though you need to know that we had 3 excursions planed all of which involved quite a bit of physical activity, we were very excited for them.

OK so Saturday night we decided to walk a little ways away to a Cuban restaurant to eat dinner. It was just under the freeway and a couple of blocks away. Never having had Cuban food I was excited. So we got ready and headed out. I'm not gonna lie it was a little scary. The rout we were going was hardly designed for pedestrians and I had heels on so it was a little slow going.

We were about to dash across the off ramp and when I stepped off the curb I somehow twisted my ankle, very badly! I couldn't put any weight on it and K.C. had to pick me up and put me back on the curb. It hurt so bad that I could not walk on it and it immediately started to swell.

We were only about a block away from the food place so after sitting long enough that the pain wasn't so sharp we decided to go the short distance forward instead of going the long walk back to the hotel.

I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything that we had planned. Such bad timing! My foot still hurts today if I'm not careful. I just had to limp around for several days and go very slowly.
Sunday morning (which is where I start counting the days, hence this post is day 1 even though we had been on the road for a day and half at this point.) we headed to the port. Miami is a beautiful city. I was amazed at how much water there is everywhere. I mean it's EVERYWHERE. There are huge rivers and channels running through the city in every direction, and from the airplane it looked as if there were some buildings that were only accessible on foot or by boat. I could be wrong, we weren't too close but it looked that way.
We had a heart wrenching experience when we got to the port. The were putting us all in our lines to board and we realized that we had left K.C.'s passport home! I seriously felt ill. You had to have a photo ID AND proof of citizenship. I had my drivers licence and birth certificate but K.C. only had his Drivers License. Of all the things to forget! But as you can see we made it.
We were about to breath a sigh of relief, and then they said,
"It won't be a problem you can still go, the only time you might encounter a problem is when you're coming back into the states."

We were like:

oh O.K..... wait WHAT!? that happens to be a very very important part! we asked over and over again to see what we could do to make sure we could come back but they assured us that people did it all the time. So we more that just a little trepidation, we were off!

Here's one of the few times that we actually have a picture together!
(Miami port in the back)

this is as we were all lining up on the deck waiting to set sail.

As we sailed out of the port this was the last part of Florida we saw. I am amazed at how close to the sea they build things!

I love how blue the ocean is! it is SO gorgeous! I loved to just sit and watch it.

This was kind of a fun shot of the Miami skyline. I liked it anyways.
We had to get dressed up every night for dinner. That was fun. There were 2 formal nights and the rest were just resort casual (no beachwear or flip flops or shorts, in short NICE attire.)

This was the library

This is the dining room where we went for Dinner every night.

And last but not least... the towel animals. (And the bed!... Oh the bed.)


You can't really see in this picture because the covers are filling up the hole. This bed was 2 twin beds side by side. The one close to the window was decent, if you don't mind feeling the springs in your ribs while you sleep. But the one closest to the camera... holy cow. I think that it was the first mattress that The Carnival Cruise lines ever bought and it ended up on Carnival Triumph.

It had a crater in the middle of it. I kid you not if the person on that side was not holding onto the person on the other side they would fall down into the abyss that was trying to be a bed. And it was uncomfortable! We would wake up all through the night.

And it's not like we could both sleep on the one semi-good side either because the ridge in the middle where the mattresses met was like a mountain between the valleys. You couldn't stay perched there without considerable effort and we both couldn't comfortably fit on the one mattress either.

In short: the bed was our enemy.