I am only blogging on our new site now, so please come over there to check out the new posts.
www.dixiemillers.com/jen

I won't be using blogger any longer. If you would like to keep up on the happenings of our life (as short and far between they may be) you can visit us at www.dixiemillers.com/Jen for the family blog and www.dixiemillers.com/Casey for Casey's blog (although I'm not sure what he will be blogging about).

Hope to see ya at our new blog!

So our little man isn't so little anymore. He had his 18 month check up when we got back from Hawaii, he now weights 26.7 pounds and is 34 inches tall! I can't believe that he is already a year and a half old, time really goes to fast. I don't regret our decision about not having anymore kids, but I know I will miss having someone this little running around. Not the temper tantrums or the teething mind you, just the happy baby that is discovering everything for the first time. The baby that finds even the smallest rock so fascinating and asks "whas that" and points to everything he sees. Those first moments when you realize the gibberish you've been listening to the past few months has finally turned into a word. The look of total adoration when he see's his sister come in the door from school or even when she just comes into the room. Those are the things that I will think back fondly on as I am dealing with the back talk and fighting that is sure to come in the future.

At 18 months these are things that Brayden and do and say;

• He can count 1.2.3--1.2.3 GOOOOO!
• He knows the color's yellow, blue and red and will point to the objects that are those colors. He can also say blue and yellow.
• He sings the blues clues song and even does the hand motions (draws in his notebook which is the palm of his hand, and puts his hands to his face to 'think, think, think'.
• Can say and point to cars
• Says Kylee's name (well he says Ky)
• Will point at pictures of people when we ask where they are.
• Knows that a cop car, ambulance and fire truck all go weeooo weeoo (and will say weeooh weeooh, if he sees one)
• Knows the sounds of a monkey, kitty, puppy, cow, pig, elephant, owl, mouse, chicken, bird and horse.
• Says 'button' which at first I thought was 'bull shit' but then I watched and listened and realized it was indeed 'button'
• will tell you where his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, toes, belly, butt and hair are located.
• said "please" for the first time yesterday (3/21/11) in the car on the way down to pick Ky up from her dads house.
• He loves to take showers and is a total water hog (must get that from his dad!)
• he absolutely loves music and will dance whenever music is on.
• He loves Old Disney movies more than the new Pixar or Dreamworks movies, and we think it is because the older movies all have songs in them, where the newer movies don't. Right now his favorite is 101 Dalmatians.
• He loves Buffy (Grama Kay and Grampa Bob's dog) and will let her kiss him in the mouth (gag).

I know there is so much more he can do, but I would be here for hours trying to get it all down.
Just know that our little boy is growing up and is learning so much everyday. It truly amazes me at all the things he picks up. I really can't wait to see what an amazing young man he is going to turn out to be.

I like Jello as much as the next person, but not when they are my arms!!! Oh my, today was our first official workout with our trainer. In 1/2 an hour he managed to make my legs weak and my arms feel like Jello.

Well crap, Casey and I are tired of being over weight and under active, so we broke down and got a gym membership. We got the best deal at Golds Gym, no contract, waived enrollment fee, and daycare for the kids. We had our first meeting/workout with the trainer today, it wasn't too tough since he was just showing us the ropes, but we both are feeling it. I was really nervous about leaving Brayden in their daycare, but he didn't even notice when we left and we found him in the same exact spot when we went to pick him up. He had found himself a giant airplane (his favorite toy of all time right now) and sat down to amuse himself. I don't like the fact that there are about a billion kids to like 3 young employees, I worry they aren't paying attention to things, but we will see how it goes. He seemed to have a good time. I will keep you all posted on our our body transformations go!!

Sign says it all!

Calee's litt

Uncle Casey and Calee

Wave at Waiamea

Brayden and Daddy at Waiamea

Stairway to heaven

Tunnel on our way to Kaeohe

Island

Brayden throwing a fit

Brayden pulling Kylee's hair

Kylee and Calee

Kylee running from a wave

The two most awesomest Jens around

Brayden and Calee

Ky and mom

Watching Brayden throw a fit

Well I know the 3 people that actually read this blog also have me as a friend on facebook, so you've seen/heard about our trip to Hawaii, but I'm going to post on here also so I can say that I am posting on my blog! This may be a long post so if you get bored just skim through it. LOL!

I'm going to start off by saying this, when traveling Casey and I have yet to go on a trip where something hasn't gone bad! Just keep that in mind.....

As you all probably know, Casey works for Skywest and has since 2005 or 2006 I think, a perk for working for Skywest is being able to fly standby on Skywest flights and Delta flights, this was how we were going to get to Hawaii.

Our trip started at 4am on Monday 2/21/11, we got the car loaded up with luggage and kids and headed to the St. George airport, boarded our flight and headed to Salt Lake City. We were going to try and catch a flight from SLC to San Diego because the flights to L.A. were all full. When we got to Salt Lake the flight we were hoping to catch to San Diego was full and we were going to have to wait for the next one, no big deal we will just have breakfast. After breakfast we head down to the gate that the San Diego flight is supposed to leave from and find out that the flight has be CANCELED!! Ugggg, what do we do now. Casey sees that there is a flight to Palm Springs that we can get on and then catch a flight from Palm Springs to L.A., so we haul all our stuff back to the gates we had just come from. We were able to get to Palm Springs, it was about 12 by this time, we were all tired and getting cranky, both kids had been up and Brayden really needed a nap! Well we couldn't get to L.A. from Palm Springs either all flights were full, we were stuck!
We headed to the car rental counter to see what options we had, a shuttle from Palm Springs to LA=$375+ for the two hour trip, yea I don't think so. 6 car rental counters and all but one were sold out, WTF, what was going on that on a Monday they were sold out, granted it was the end of a 3 day weekend, but it was the afternoon, they should have had most of their fleet back by then. Anyways, 1 counter had a car, so we sucked it up and paid the OUTRAGEOUS rate that they charged and drove the 2 hours to L.A.
At this point both kids were passed out and I look at Casey and say "It's a good thing we aren't new to this sort of thing happening and that we can laugh at it and say 'It's all part of the adventure!'"
We got to our roach hotel about 4ish, the best thing about this place is that it was directly across from the airport, the rental car drop off was a few block from our hotel, we unloaded the car, had some dinner and crashed.

Tuesday 2/22/11, get to the airport and sit and bite our nails until we hear our names are cleared for the standby passengers! Woohoo finally on the plane to Hawaii!! Now to sit back and relax on our 6 hour flight right? WRONG!!! Brayden DID NOT like having to sit still for 6 hours! He wanted to run up and down the aisles and was pissed off when we would not let him, he was really ready for a nap but of course wouldn't go down because god forbid he miss something. At one point even the stewardess tried to take him and walk with him (which I thought was very nice of her), but  he wouldn't go with her so Casey got up and walked with him. He was fighting the sleep so bad, crying and throwing a fit, finally Casey got him to sleep (and to me there is nothing sexier than a man holding a sleeping child) and came back to sit down. There was only about 1 1/2 hours left in our flight so we just sat back and took a breather. Ky was awesome through the flight, she just sat and watched a movie and talked to the gentlemen in the next aisle. She is such a good girl, we are very lucky!

After we landed we waited for most of the other 260+ passengers to unload so we weren't in there way trying to grab our luggage and haul our kids off the plane. As we stepped off the plane the heat and humidity hit us immediately! It. was. AWESOME.!!! We got our rental car and were off!!

On the way to Jennies

                                         

Mountains near Schofield Base

Jennie had sent us directions the night before so we could find our way to a Walmart close to her house, so we could pick up some things we didn't want to pack, and from the Walmart to the base. Well google maps screwed up the exits and we took the long way around to get to a Walmart and to Schofield! It was funny but we finally made it to both.

We were so excited to see her and Calee we could hardly stand it, we got to the base, went through security and wound our way around til we got to her place. Then we thought it would be funny to call her and tell her the guards wouldn't let us through the gate, she didn't think it was too funny though!

The welcome sign Jennie made for us!

International Market in Honolulu

Once we actually got to Hawaii things went great, we went to Waikiki beach on Wednesday and just walked the 'strip' and checked out the International Market (giant out door 'flea market'),







 Thursday we drove up to  North shore and went swimming at Waiamea beach. Everybody except Kylee and Calee got sunburnt! Even Brayden, who was slathered up in sunscreen got a little red near
his waist line.



Friday was a day for Casey and I. We left the kids with Jennie and went over to Pearl Harbor, there really are no words to describe the feelings that I had when we were there. If you ever are on Oahu, I strongly recommend visiting Pearl Harbor, as an adult it takes on a whole new meaning than it did when I learned about it in school.




Friday evening Casey and I were treated to a dinner cruise by Jennie and Mike! It was so nice, we went out and cruised the coastline of Waikiki beach, watched the sun set and we even got to see a whale jump next to a sail boat.













Saturday was supposed to be our last day in Hawaii, but when we looked at flights for Sunday, we soon found out that we would be there a few extra days! I was sooooo upset, NOT!!! I never wanted to leave, Hawaii itself was okay, but being with Jennie and her little bug was the bestest part about our trip. Saturday ended up being a chill at home day since we were going to be there for a few extra days, so Casey
and I took this time to catch up on school work (slackers)!

Sunday we went to a beach cove near where they are building the new Disney resorts, Kylee played in the water, Calee, Jennie and Casey sat and chatted, and Brayden was chatting up the other beach goers while I followed him around. He actually charmed an older lady and her daughter enough that they let him take their kids' football and play for awhile! Again, all but Calee and Kylee got burnt, sunscreen just doesn't work on poor little Brayden, his little cheeks and his head got the brunt of it this time. I'm not asking for sympathy because I went with the full intentions of getting red as a lobster so I would tan, it worked! Monday was also a chill day for us, Tuesday we went to breakfast at a place called Kono's-->(click here) then went home to finish packing.

Our plan was to catch an island hopper flight over to Kona to catch a flight back to L.A., there was no way we were getting out of Honolulu, all the flights had at least 130 non rev/standby passengers listed so we figured we would buy tickets to Kona and then fly home from there. After we bought our tickets to Kona, we checked flights again and noticed that we wouldn't be able to get out of Kona Tuesday night, we would have to spend the night in the airport. Yea, not happening with two kids, so we finally just broke down and bought tickets on Hawaiian from Honolulu to Las Vegas.




Our flight didn't leave until 10:55pm so Casey and I decided to do some site seeing, we drove over to Kaneohe and back around to the Waikiki area, it was so nice! We made one final stop at Liliha Bakery-->(click here), it is supposed to be world famous for it's coco puffs, we tried some of those and I didn't really care for them, but we got a few other things and they were good. Went back to Jennies, finished loading up our things, watched a bit of American Idol (thanks a lot Jen!!!) and headed to the airport.




Both kids were ready for bed, but we kept them up until we boarded the plane, Kylee fell asleep before everyone finished boarding and Brayden would have, but we got stuck sitting on the plane at the gate for an hour while they addressed weight issues with the luggage. Brayden was very good for the first hour of the flight, then the extra super tiredness set it and we fought with him for the next two hours, again the crew on this flight were great and offered help in whatever ways they could. We finally got him to sleep with two hours of the flight left, needless to say, Casey and I didn't get any rest on the flight, this was going to be a long day of flying. Honolulu to Las Vegas, Vegas to Salt lake (so sad since we can see our house as we fly over St. George, ugh) and Salt lake to St. George. When we got to Vegas, Casey made a call to one of the car rental places here in St. George and found out that they had a car that needed to come back to St. George, so we got a car, car seat and drove to St. George. Woo hoo! An hour and a half and we would be home!!!! Things went smoothly from that point, we are now home, wishing we were still in Hawaii with Jen and Calee, trying to get the kids back on their routine!

Hope I didn't bore you all to death with my story, I am not a very good blogger! I am going to do a post with just pictures also, no long drawn out story! LOL!