Taking "Can you pack me in your suitcase and take me along?" to a whole new level.






















































She's the cutest thing ever!















Me chill'n with Mr. Samuel J.ackson's handprints in Cali.

-Climbing on everything. Her favorite are chairs and we keep turning around finding her sitting on top of the table.

-Loves going down the slides at the park. She likes the swings too.

-Sounding out the word's we say and trying to repeat them. She's learned Car, Wow, Bubbles, Juice, Uh-oh, Shoes and attempts to say belly button.

-The first two days after I got home Kylie would cry and cling to Jared when he'd leave for work in the morning. The minute she hears that garage door go up she runs right up to the door to greet him. She loves her dada soooo much!

-She calls both Jared and I "Mama" now.

-She's 17 months now. In one month she can officially be in nursery (though I've been taking her quite a bit already... she's been ready for months)!!!

-While I was finishing the postlude music on the organ Kylie wandered out of Jared's sight in the back of the chapel (she runs fast), and Jared went looking for her in the halls. Then he found her in the overflow section of the chapel just in time to see that she had climbed on a chair and then slipped through the opening in the back with a loud thunk a few moments before he could catch her! She cried pretty hard, but we think it scared her more than anything.

-Pointing out each and every baby that she sees.

-When we are in the front yard she is starting to learn that she's not supposed to go near the road. It's slow going, but she seemed to get the hint finally yesterday. Though that didn't stop her from trying to slowly inch her way there.

Okay these pictures are from Christmas but I promise more are coming soon! I swear I've got to figure out an easier way to download them from my camera. It takes forever and I dread doing it every time!

Somehow a little field mouse has found his way into our house. When Jared came back from his Florida business trip he saw it when he opened the door. I was sitting at the computer today while Kylie was napping when he peeked from behind my fridge. Scared the crap out of me! So looks like I'm off the store to get a trap. I'm clueless how he got in. A few weeks ago I had to leave our back door open for a bit because I put the oven on self-clean mode and it was smoking up my house.

Growing up I only remember getting a mouse in our house one time. And somehow it got into my bedroom! But then again we had four creatures of the feline kind that patrolled the premises. Oh we found mice, they were just of the headless variety left on our front door step.

For .02 seconds that is! We made it onto the Price is Right with third row seats!

Last weekend I went on a four day trip to California with some of the girls from our ward. There were six of us total. We had so much fun!!! It was the first time going to Cali, and while it was fun I can definitely say I don't think I'd want to live there. Holy crap the traffic is nuts! NUTS! And I thought Utah drivers are bad, we are angels compared to California drivers!!! We had such crazy things happen. Our friend Tina ended up in the hospital, and Heather made it onto the Price is Right as a contestant after we spent the night waiting in line! She won some camping gear. We got awesome seats, third from the front and three people around us went up so I'll have my .02 minutes of fame! Anyway here's a recap of what happened:

We left for Cali on Thursday night, flew into Long Beach on Jetblue. On Friday morning somewhere between the lobby and the rental car Tina lost her wallet. So we spent a few hours looking for it everywhere and getting her credit cards canceled and trying to figure out how we'd get her through security to come home when the time came. That afternoon we went to Manhattan Beach, ate at a yummy cafe next to the beach, and walked up and down the shoreline and looked at the little shops in the area. It was a stormy day and pretty cold! I was hoping it would be warmer but it wasn't. I dragged around a weird piece of seaweed on the beach. I've never seen such strange looking seaweed, it looked like little marine critters.

That night we drove to visit Venice beach, walked the pier and ate at a mexican resteraunt a few blocks away. People were everywhere and it was very busy even in the cold. I was surprised how many homeless people are in those beach districts, literally almost on every street corner in some places. It's so sad to so many of them everywhere.

Six Flags
Saturday was spent at six flags at magic mountain! I spent most of the day with Tina because we are scared spitless of the maximum thrill rides that everyone else wanted to go on. We did go on quite a few rides, and I went on Colossas and I think my favorite was roller coaster called The Riddler that you stand up on. I discovered that I can handle the loop-de-loops pretty well but the extreme heights and sudden drop is what kills me, so I baled on those type of rides. By ten pm we were exhausted so four of us left to get dinner at Denny's and we left Heather and Elisa at the park because they wanted to go on the X2 roller coaster (it had had a 3 hour waiting line earlier in the day). Immediately fter dinner Tina got really sick. It was really instant and she was in so much pain. We thought it might be kidney stones, appendicitis or food poisening, we weren't really sure. It was pain like she had never felt before and she felt pain like if a knife was in her stomach. So by some miracle directions we were able to find a hospital and spent until 4:30 am in the morning at the emergency room! They ended up admitting her to the hospital and she spent two days there with a bad case of gall stones. She has horrible veins and it took two nurses to get an IV into her.

They let her out of the hospital just in time to catch the flight home and she'll probably have surgery soon to remove her gall bladder. Nothing like loosing your wallet and ending up in the hospital on your so-called vacation. Poor girl!

On Sunday we woke up late trying to catch up on some sleep, checked out of the hotel and drove up to see Tina in the hospital which was about an hour away from the hotel. Then we drove to Los Angelous to check into our last hotel of the trip, a little dive that was right next to CBS studio's where the Price is Right, Dancing with the Stars, Jimmy Kimmel, American Idol are filmed. We were didn't have much time that evening but we were able to see the Hollywood walk of fame and the celebrity handprints and footprints that are in the concrete in front of the Chinese Theatre.


Price is Right!
After being up the night before we were all exhausted but I only got about two hours of sleep that night. We woke up and were in line outside CBS studio's by 2:30am, bundled in jackets, blankets and pillows to get the Price is Right. Yes that's what those crazy people do in order to get on that show! We got our order of arrival passes at 6am, were able to go back to the hotel, checkout and eat bagles at a local eatery. By 10 am we had to be back to the studio and they started processing us for the show. We each got an official Price is Right nametag and we had mini-interviews in groups of twelve from the producers of the show. This is how they pick the contestants. There are only 9 contestants out of 300 people! Heather had prepared this song she wanted to sing for them but when she asked they kind of shot her down! I looked over and she looked so sad about it. Ugh. Finally at 1pm we were allowed to go into the theatre. It's amazing how small it is. It's so small, and everything inside looks much older than it looks like on television. They really are able to make things look so bigger and different with the cameras. There were constantly about 15 people on the stage at all time. A couple of camera's, the announcer, a few public relations people, prompters, sign holders, you name it.

We were absolutely shocked, dumbfounded, in complete CRAZINESS when our very own Heather Roberts was picked as the second contestant!!!!! It was total mayhem! She won some camping gear, an inflatable pool and camp chairs. Sadly she lost the game for a trip to Hong Kong and none of the other contestants won their showcase except for the last girl on the show. She somehow managed to spin the wheel twice onto the $1 and won $25,000 cash and then won the showcase and got herself a brand new red mini-cooper! I was so excited for her! We had become friends with a few people while in line and it was really weird that both Joel and John also were called up to be contestants thoughout the game! They just happened to be sitting near us so I'm sure the camera's will show me a few times while the contestants are being called! I think our show will be aired on April 8th so stay tuned unless you hear different. Crazy huh! We had such a blast and we were so happy for Heather.

Here are a few things I thought were interesting. Drew Carrey looks a lot older in real life than he does on that show. He's also doesn't seem very personal, at least compared to Bob Barker. I also didn't realize how LOUD, absolutely DEAFENING it was in that theater. I literally couldn't hear or understand the announcer when he was talking about the showcases or prizes. You couldn't even think straight because of all the noise! My ears were ringing and my throat was horse when we got out from all the shouting and chaos. It was so crazy but so, so, so fun! I recommend it if you are ever there. It's definately something I'll always remember.

So if you are still with me we had such a fun time! All the palm trees and warm tropical plants made me wish for the beach life. I was very excited to see Kylie when I got home and to give her a big kiss. She's still kind of clinging to Jared though. I wonder if she is thinking I might leave again? We had an absolute blast but I was happy to get home and get some sleep!

Kylie: 1
Parents: 0

Kylie put our LG cell phone through a full cycle in the dishwasher. I started emptying the clean dishes on Saturday morning. When to my shock, amusement, horror etc I saw our cell phone sitting on the bottom shelf where a two foot tall baby girl had placed it the night before while I was filling it up.

Sparkling clean and dead as a door nail.

I think this is the fourth cell phone we've gone through in two years. This one was only a few months old! Dangnabit. Kylie was in love with our cell phone. And understandably she won't play with it anymore because it won't light up!

So if you need to get a hold of us please call Jared's cell or his work number. Or email me. A replacement will be on it's way soon but I'm going on a trip in a few days and probably won't have it by then.

My little munchkin has quite the sweet tooth. We've had to go cold turkey on the treats because over the past few days she won't eat anything, and then is continually motioning over where we store the chocolate chips and oreos! I swear we aren't giving them to her often, but she sure does remember where they are.

I've been trying to do that couponing thing people are so crazy about. Admittedly I'm going about it in small doses though because it tends to overwhelm me. I refuse to pay money for extra coupons so I just use what comes in my Sunday paper. I was kind of annoyed because today I made a trip to Maceys for some shampoo/conditioner that was on sale and I had some coupons for them also. Of course, I'm not the first to do this so the entire shelf was empty. I got a rain check but still. Maceys also had 45 lb buckets of hard white wheat for $19, the cheapest I've seen anywhere so I wanted to get a few. And of course they were out of that. Another rain check. More annoyed. It really bugs me when stores advertise sales and they have very limited stock on hand.

Question for ya... I know that you are able to use both a manufactur couppon and store coupon for the same item at most places. For example a brand of shampoo was on sale at Walgreens for $.99 (originally 2.99 - a 1.99 store coupon). And then I found a $1 off manufactur coupon in the paper. So am I not able to use it because it would make the price of the item less than what it's worth (ie. -.1 cent)? I've been under the impression that you can't do this but I've been too chicken to try it.