Finding Joy in the Journey

Lydia is quickly changing from baby to toddler. Her personality gets bigger and develops more sides to it everyday. She's a hoot! :) She loves to play, which makes for some fun/cute times, but also some frustrated times when we can't give her the attention or play time she demands. She's going to love having a playmate around. Let's just hope she can patiently wait while her baby sister grows up to the point where she can play with her.

Sundays are her hardest day! Church used to be a game to her. Sometimes we'd win, sometimes she'd win. Now it's a game she just doesn't want to play. She starts being ornery the second we walk into the chapel. She's just not one who likes to stay in one place for too long. Then she'll usually fall asleep for the last half hour of church (we've tried to prevent this, but if she's decided she wants to fall asleep there's no stopping her) which gives her enough of a nap that she won't take her normal nap once we get home. Occasionally this leads to her crashing at some point that evening, as seen here :)



She went through a phase where her absolute favorite thing was toothbrushes, and you wouldn't dare take them away unless you wanted to suffer through her wrath.



She's gotten more into books lately. She loves to just look through them. We've gotten really fast at reading them to her to try and fit in all the words before she's decided it's time to turn to the next page.

Playing with Daddy and the squeaky bird. Her laugh is so infectious :)



Having fun with the Harry Potter glasses. (Can you tell that Robert put this PJ outfit together?)

She loves being an entertainer. She's cracking us up all of the time.



She's been doing better with walking, but it's still just a game to her. Crawling is faster for her still so she prefers it. Most of the time when we are trying to get her to walk she bends over into this position, thinks it is hilarious, and then will continue to do it for 10 minutes or more at a time.




She still loves playing with the piano. She'll bang on it until the demo song ("Just the Way You Are") comes on, and then will dance to the music with her arms, legs, bum, or head. Some of her arm dancing is featured in this video.



Other than that, she's been cutting molars which has not been as fun as all these entertaining pics and videos, but manageable. We love our little girl and can't wait to add another to the mix.

Completely unknown to me, Robert declared last Wednesday, July 20th, All About Heidi Day. At 9:30am he woke me up and was dressed in his suit and handed me a clipboard and said, "Will you sign this please?" On the clipboard was a waiver that read as follows:

All About Heidi Day 2011 - No Choices Necessary
Information and permission sheet

Today is not your birthday. It is not Christmas. It is not any special anniversary of some sort. It is just a day that, if you wish, could be yours. A day where you can do many fun things and not have to worry about watching the baby much, cleaning the house, or anything but having fun.
The way it works is that an itinerary will be given to you which has all the activities planned out for the day. You will never have to choose what fun activity you may want to do next because it is already planned out. Any time Lydia is fussy or cranky, I will take care of it, except for tonight when the Nixons will take care of it. If you aren’t having fun in a particular activity just notify Robert, the director, and he can modify the activity based on special needs.
This can be any ordinary day, but it could be your day. The only choice you will need to make is if you want to do it. If you would like to participate in this otherwise ordinary but will be spectacular day, just sign and date below. Otherwise hand the sheet back to the director and he will make sure your day is still ordinary.
Thank you for considering have an All About Heidi Day.

Signature _________________ Date________

(Sidenote: The "No Choices Necessary" is a plus to me because I hate having to make decisions about what activities we do) I of course signed it and in return was given this schedule complete with pictures.

9:00 - Wake Up (He let me sleep in a little later because we had had a late night the night before)
9:10 - Light Breakfast
9:20 - Donkey Kong Country (The SNES version. Robert purchased it just for the occasion. It was the last game we needed on our SNES game wishlist. It's a classic :)
12:00 - Picnic at the Park
1:00 - Head to Nickel City
3:00 - Crafts/Games - Lydia Naps
6:30 - Dinner at Chuck-O-Rama
8:20 - Harry Potter 7 Part 2 Movie

So I headed in for my light breakfast and it was waiting for me on the table with some flowers.

After breakfast, I relaxed and played Donkey Kong Country, then got all ready to head to the Duck Pond to have the picnic lunch Robert had prepared.

Lydia loves roaming around at the duck pond.

Aaron and Kaci then joined us to go to Nickel City. This is the only picture I got of them, shame on me. Anyway, Kaci had the most amazing luck with every machine she touched. She got the huge jackpot on a couple of games, one machine even gave her 100 tickets when she was only supposed to get 5. It was awesome. They used some of their tickets to get us a set of glasses to wear that night to Harry Potter which you will see in pics later on in this post.

We weren't quite as successful this time around, but we did win enough tickets to get quite a bit of candy. Check out our winnings!

Random cute picture of Mommy and Lydia :)

Then it was time for the "3:00 - Crafts/Games - Lydia Naps" portion of the day. Kaci and Aaron stuck around for this activity and we all finger-painted. I did the lighthouse/beach scene in the middle. Robert did the Nertz and baseball paintings. Kaci did the flower and boat/beach scene, and Aaron did the river and the dragon named Dragon paintings. Pretty much we all are AMAZING!! ;)

Kaci had to go to work so they left, and after Lydia woke up from her nap we dropped her off at the Nixons (one of our hometeachers and his wife), and for the first time since before Lydia was born, had a date night with just the 2 of us. It was LONG overdue. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, Chuck-A-Rama. Mmmm rolls and honey butter!

Then it was off to Harry Potter 7 - Part 2. We had a little fun with the glasses before the movie started. :)



And one picture of the 2 of us without the goofy glasses.

It was a GREAT, SUPER FUN, WONDERFUL day. And a complete surprise, which is hard to do. I'm a snoop, so I usually know when something is up. Robert even reorganized his work schedule so that he could do it on a Wednesday instead of the usual Friday date night or free Saturday to catch me extra off guard. He scored major points for this one! ;) I'm so lucky to have him.

There are several places that during our whole stay in Provo we've driven by and said, "We should eat there sometime." Now we're running out of time. We're going to try and hit a few before we leave, but procrastination and money will prevent us from going everywhere.

A couple of weeks ago we checked Slab Pizza off of our list. It had been recommended to me by several different people. It was really good, but I think people talked it up a little too much, so it didn't quite reach my expectations especially for how much it cost. Still really good nonetheless.

I got BBQ Chicken and Robert got New Mexican Green Chile

And STUFF!!

Around the time of Robert's past 2 birthdays (July 10th) we've been... what's the best way to put this... broke! Robert's always been a super awesome sport about this, and grateful for the little no-money-spent celebrations we've pulled off for him. Then it would seem like we not only would be financially stable by the time my birthday would come around (August 29th) but we would have extra money so Robert would go all out on my special day. (Ex. My Birthday 2009 Post 1 and 2) This year we have been blessed in that several of Robert's professors hired him on for the summer, so we are doing better financially than we have our whole marriage. (Although we call it fake rich because most if not all that we have managed to save will be going to moving expenses. So goes life.) So this year I decided we were going all out for Robert's birthday! His birthday was on a Sunday, so the festivities began Friday evening. I cleaned up the house, wrapped his presents, and had these decorations up for him when he got home from work.

When he got home, I told him that he could open his presents whenever he wanted to that weekend. So of course he chose right away :) This first present is a new battery for his laptop since the old one wouldn't hold a charge anymore. I laugh because this picture is totally staged. He had already opened the new one and put it in the laptop to charge before I remembered to get the camera out, so I had him do a reenactment of when he opened it so I could take a picture. That's not even the new battery in the picture, it's the old one because the new one was already in the lap top. We're so sneaky ;)

Lydia helped Robert open his presents.

A set of ping pong paddles and balls since the ones in the complex rec room are always broken or lost. (This was the one thing he asked for)


An electronic dart board. Robert has had a little too much fun with this since he got it. Let's just say that there is too much a statistics/numbers man can do with a dart board ;)

Before it goes unmentioned he also got a portable DVD player and car power adapter from his parents along with some money for us to go out someplace nice for his birthday dinner and to buy Lydia a couple of new outfits. Thanks Mom and Dad!!

I let Robert know that we'd be going to Tucano's the following night, and then listed our favorite cheaper food places and a bunch of different activities we could do that night. Robert chose J Dawgs and then wanted to go to the church house to play piano and hit baseballs in the cultural hall. He's a simple man with simple pleasures :) Lydia looks puzzled at how much stuff is on Daddy's J Dawg.




On the way home we stopped at Hokulia. It's our favorite shaved ice place in Provo. We have to give credit to our friends, the Clovers, for finding it during their "Quest for the Best" last year. We usually get a small and share it which is plenty and they'll put as many flavors as you want at no extra charge so I choose a flavor and Robert chooses a flavor. It's wonderful. Basically heaven in a thing of shaved ice. Since it was Robert's birthday he wanted a medium. His wish was my command. It's about half gone in this picture, so if you can imagine it was GINORMOUS!!

Saturday we relaxed, played darts, and relaxed some more. You have to rest up before going to Tucano's Brazilian Grill! :) Robert was so excited. What man wouldn't be - it's all you can eat! He was like a little boy on Christmas morning.

Lydia and I love it too. My mouth is starting to water as I think about their grilled pineapple and their buffalo wings. YUM!!

In all the times that we've been to Tucano's we haven't ever really explored what other shops are there at The Riverwoods so we went exploring. They just put in a new place called Provo Beach Resort. We probably would have passed right by it except that we saw a carousel in the window and thought it would be fun for Lydia to go on it. So we went in and loaded $5 on one of the re-loadable cards they use instead of tokens and tickets (very convenient) and used $1 of it for Lydia to ride the carousel. She HATED it. At first she didn't want to hold on to the pole. Maybe she thought she'd fly away or something. Once she finally grabbed on to it, she held on for dear life and wouldn't stop screaming. We'll try again in a year or 2 when she can understand it a little better.


After the carousel we browsed around to see what else this beach resort had to offer. Miniature croquet caught our eye. It was a little overpriced in my opinion ($16 a person) but it was Robert's birthday so it was worth it :) Robert kicked my trash!! Every section had an optional Bonus challenge where you could get anywhere from 5-10 or more bonus points and Robert got almost every one.

My one shining although partially spiteful and evil moment was when I became poison by hitting the poison stick. Once poison, you can hit the other players ball and throw them in the poison pot so that they don't get to finish that section.

I got Robert and straight to the poison pot he went. I'm so evil!

But I can be a cute little croquet player too :)

Robert found his surfboard.

We're a cute couple of croquet masters :)

Lydia enjoyed giving the ball a couple of whacks too :)

After the exciting round of croquet, we still had $4 left on our card so we hit up the arcade games. We played a couple rounds of Hot Shot Basketball, each winning a few tickets, then went to the Wheel of Fortune. We had enough money left to play it twice. You would spin to see how many tickets you would get per letter you guessed and then if you were able to solve the puzzle you got an extra 5 tickets. Our first game we spun a 5 and solved the puzzle making our total ticket win including the Hot Shot tickets about 50 tickets, which we thought with how few games we played was pretty impressive. Then it was my turn to spin for our last game. As you can see in the picture there are 4 little silver slivers on the wheel that are sandwiched by "1" slots. 2 of the silver slots are 20 points, 1 is 50 points, and 1 is 200 points. Lo and behold, I spun the 200 point slot! We then guessed 5 letters and solved the puzzle, winning more than 1000 tickets in our last game! It was AWESOME!!! This is us holding our prize loot - A squeaky duck puppet for Lydia which she loves, a blow up super bat, 6 giant foam dice, a dart ball, and a bunch of candy. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. Lydia was about to fall asleep at this point if you can't tell :)

The next morning was Robert's actual birthday. As is tradition in his family, he received breakfast in bed. One of Robert's favorite breakfasts is One-Eyed Jacks (Toast with eggs cooked into the middle of them) topped with Spam.

Robert has this unexplainable love of Spam. I think it's absolutely disgusting. You know your wife loves you if she's willing to prepare Spam for you just because it's your favorite ;)

After a full day of church meetings we had Robert's birthday dinner. Crockpot Chicken Cordon Bleu, mashed potatoes, and salad.

Then it was time for cake and to sing and blow out candles. Lydia was thoroughly mesmerized by all the fire. We were one candle short, note the reason why there are only 23 in the picture. If you watch the video (to be posted later) closely you can see that I sneakily light a match and stick it in the cake just in time for him to blow it out. We made it work :)




Happy 24th Birthday Robert!!! I hope you enjoyed your special weekend. Thank you for everything you do for us!!

As is common in the Provo area, the city celebrations went on all weekend long. We didn't participate in as many this year as we had planned (Freedom Festival on Center Street, watching the hot air balloons take off), but we still had a marvelous weekend.

It started off Saturday night with watching the Stadium of Fire fireworks show. We parked on top of a parking garage in our old neighborhood and watched them from the back of our Blazer. Lydia had a blast being able to crawl around in the back of the car. It was like a whole new world for her that she never knew existed.


This young man got more anxious for the fireworks to start then I think anyone else that was there on the garage. I found myself saying the same things that I could overhear people saying to their 5-year-olds. "It'll just be a few more minutes. You just need to be a little more patient." Etc.


Monday morning, the actual 4th, we walked down the street and watched the parade. I felt like there weren't quite as many floats this year, but the ones that they had were great.




Cute Daddy and Lydia. She was a little more into the parade this year than last year.

And our traditional red, white, and blue pancakes. Usually I do the colors separate, but this year I decided to attempt to swirl them. I think they turned out great, except next year I'll use less blue dough cuz that sort of overpowered the others, and I'll make the red dough darker cuz it turned out too pink :)


Lydia loves pancakes.

And so does Daddy.

This pic is to show off Lydia's shirt. I got it at Kohl's for cheap. It says "Red, White, and Cute" which I think is rather fitting ;)

That evening we went up to Katie and Mike's for grilled homemade pizzas, swimming, and fireworks. It was a blast. Here's Mommy and Lydia watching the fireworks. I would have cropped it down to make it a little more centered, but I love Katie's face in the background ;)

This was the finale of our homemade show. Not too spectacular, but it was hilarious watching Mike almost catch himself on fire when he and Robert were trying to get all 3 lit at the same time.

After our homemade show we watched all of the firework shows that were happening across the Salt Lake Valley. Mike and Katie's apartment is up higher on a hill so we just picked a patch of grass and had a view of all the professional shows but also some pretty spectacular at home shows people were doing. They legalized the purchase of aerial fireworks here this year, so some of the home made shows were pretty great.

So that was our 4th. It will be fun to start new traditions in Santa Cruz next year, or with Robert's school schedule it might work out that we'll celebrate the 4th with our family in Mesa. We'll see.

I am so thankful for this country and the freedoms that I am blessed with because I am a part of it. I am forever indebted to all those who have fought and continue to fight to give us all the freedoms we take for granted so often. God Bless the USA!!!