One mobile, one to go...

Well Tanner has taken to crawling during the last month and recently discovered that he could pull himself up to things as well. He often stands at the stairs and tries to shake the bars like we've caged him in. He is so incredibly curious about everything. Sydney, I recall, left most potentially harmful or messy things alone like the outlets, cords, and my chest of piano music. Tanner has brought us to a whole new level of baby proofing and I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. The big upside to this is that he keeps himself entertained all on his own almost all day. And if he gets bored his just follows Sydney around because he adores her.

Natalie on the other hand, has zero interest in crawling or rolling. She doesn't care that Tanner crawls circles around her. Tanner will crawl up to her and steal her toy or binky and she screams at him or defends claim by swatting at him, but still has no motivation to chase after him. I haven't been terribly good about forcing her to lay on her tummy because she tends to scream at me. I know she is strong enough and I know she could figure it out, but she doesn't want to do it. Anyways, I know all kids figure things out at different times. And I should probably just enjoy the fact that I only have to worry about one child finding some stray outlet plug to suck on. I just think she would have a lot of fun going off exploring.

Tulip Festival

The tulip festival was slightly disappointing this year. This is our third year in a row attending. We usually go on my birthday but I saw it was supposed to be cold that day so we decided to go on Tuesday, the day after. It turned out Monday was beautiful and Tuesday was quite cold. And it's been such a cold spring so far that the tulips are not blooming yet. Most of them were still green. So we couldn't stay too long because of the chilly wheather and the cute matching outfits I had on the kids aren't showing because of their jackets, but I did get exactly 200 pictures and lots of cute ones. A bridal photographer was kind enough to offer to take a family picture for us which turned out pretty good. I felt so sorry for all the brides getting their pictures done there that day. They had to pay quite a bit to get in there with a photographer just to find out that there aren't hardly any flowers. Anyways, I did get some decent shots of all three children, and I told Josh that if I at least got that then I would consider the trip a success.

Another Sydney moment

Lisa was calling tree removal companies to get bids on removing the stump of our apple tree. The person on the other end of the line said "do you have dogs?", but Lisa couldn't hear well, so repeated it to make sure she heard right. Lisa said "oh no...you're safe to just walk into the backyard.". Sydney obliged with a rousing "but we have two cats!".

Caribbean

Well...Lisa was finished blogging a few hours after our return, so if you go here you'll see more pictures and the day to day account of the trip. I met a few strange people (as you'll see below), but otherwise we really enjoyed the company at our table, and spending a lot of quality time with my favorite and best friend Lisa.

Our Caribbean Getaway

Well we are back from our cruise. We got back last night and are still feeling like we're rocking on the ship. We are also missing the mints on our pillows, towels folded up like animals, and menus with no prices on them. But we are SO happy to be back to our kids again! It was a great vacation. I'm posting lost of pictures so I'll try to type less so this isn't an enormous blog post.

We had four stops on this cruise: Grand Cayman, Roatan, Belize, and Cozumel. Grand Cayman was our first and decidedly favorite stop. We did an excursion through Moby Dick Tours (which I HIGHLY recommend). We went snorkeling for a bit by a beautiful reef where we saw some cool tropical fish and an eel. Then we went to Stingray City to play with the stingrays. They are as friendly as puppy dogs and get really excited to see a boat because they know we will be feeding them. I fed one of them but she kinda chomped down on my thumb so I didn't do that again. We learned how to "hug" them though and got some cool pictures. It was an awesome experience. I still can't believe how cool the water looks in Grand Cayman. It's like someone dumped a bunch of blue food coloring in the water. Beautiful! Josh thinks we should move there.

Our next day was in Roatan, Honduras. It's pretty new to the cruising schedules so they don't have a ton of excursions yet. But it also hasn't been affected by the touring industry too much yet either. It was really neat to see an island with many more homes than hotels. We went on a tour of Gumbalimba Park. It was incredibly hot that day and we were glad for the shade there. During the tour everyone got a few seconds with the macaw and a few seconds with a monkey for photos. After the tour of the park our guide said we could do whatever we wanted until we wanted to go back to the ship. Josh and I chose to go back to the monkeys. We're so glad we did because we got to spend about a half hour with them all to ourselves. It was so fun. They would just climb all over us like we were just another couple of trees. We even got 2 capuchin monkeys and a howler monkey at the same time so we took a picture and decided it could be our new family portrait.

Our next stop was Belize. We booked a cave tubing excursion with explorbelizecaves.com. We were very surprised to find Josh and I got a tour guide all to ourselves. At first I was a little worried because really he could have just drove us out to the middle of nowhere and robbed us. But he was a great guide and took our picture whenever we wanted. We passed a tour group of 38 people while in the caves so it was nice to be on our own to do whatever we wanted. The caves were awesome and Belize is very jungly and beautiful. After the caves our tour guide asked us where we'd like to go, so we chose the Belize zoo. This zoo is very different from most zoos. The animals were naturally living there so someone just enclosed their homes and made it a zoo. The monkeys can actually swing right out of there if they wanted to but they don't because it's their home. It's the first zoo I've been to where I did not feel sorry for the animals. We saw the Belize national animal which is a Tapir, or mountain cow. It is a cross between a hippo and a horse.

On Cozumel we weren't sure what we wanted to do. So we got off the ship and rented a Jeep for the day. Josh was so brave to drive in Mexico. We went to Playa Mia for a bit, which is basically a beach park with paddle boats, water trampoline, and a rock wall in the ocean. It was fun for a couple hours. Then we drove down to Punta Sur and saw the lighthouse. We went on a boat tour that was incredibly boring and our guide did not speak english. Not the highlight. Punta Sur was a beautiful beach but there was nothing to eat there and we were hungry so we didn't stay long. We went downtown and did some shopping. We were wishing later that we had gone snorkeling because everyone at our table said it was awesome. Someday we want to get scuba certified and go back.

Well it was a fabulous vacation and special thank goes to our parents, who took care of our kids while we were away, and to Dane Newland, our realtor who paid for the vacation!

What's new with you?

As sacrament meeting ended, Lisa took Sydney and Tanner while I got the diaper back all packed up with Natalie and got ready to head to Sunday school. I looked right, looked down for the diaper bag, then did a double take. It was another fun time where an old friend was visiting for his sister's baby to be blessed. It seems so innocent to ask how things are, be so excited for the great things they're doing, have done, and who they've become. Inevitably, the question is "what's new with you?".

Well. Don't count this as a midlife crisis. I find my best blog entries (and sadly most ramblings) happen after 10pm.

If you want the short version, here's what I'd say if we weren't close:

1. Remodeled the kitchen. Cabinets, cupboards, floor, bannister/railing.

2. Tanner's starting to really crawl. Natalie doesn't seem to care. Daddy is close enough to anything she needs anyway.

3. We're going on a cruise of the caribbean the second week of April from a free trip we won through our realtor.

For those who want what's really going on, here's the long version. For those who I don't talk like this to, here's your chance you know what's really new lately.

1. Improving. Becoming.

It's been a great new year so far. Our family has become great at having Family Home Evening. I decided we should do it, be consistent with it, and we really have. I'm sad to say the most troublesome thing going around and around my head is that I want to be more consistent once I've changed for the better. Lots of irony in that. :) I've been better about exercising (keyword: better), reading the scriptures and getting more out of them, as well as just feeling progress in who I am and liking it a whole lot more. I'm finally realizing the main consistency I want in my life is to be constantly changing for the better.

2. Goals being accomplished

At the first of the year, I set some crazy goals (as every year) and stuck to a lot of them. I'm not getting the 1:1 time with the kids I wanted, but I'm spending some quality time. I've been doing better with reading my scriptures, better on temple attendance (still work to do), but have been doing much more around the house. I'm a hilarious oddity for so many reasons, and am learning more and more of them each year. For example, how many people do you know that start their new year's resolutions in September so they have it right for the new year? If it was so important to get it right, wouldn't you think you'd want to change immediately instead of waiting for a specific time of year to make major changes? I'm learning (and trying to unlearn) the ways I work around doing the things I really want done, but fail the courage, brainpower, or energy to do it right the first time. It's amazing how doing the right thing the first time really is the easiest thing to do.

3. Your wife is always right, even when she's not right

In general, this is good advice. I seem to only listen to what I want to hear, but I seem to be listening and hearing more lately. Lisa had a great observation a few days ago. I seem to need to worry about things. If I'm not worrying about something, I'm looking for something to worry about. I think about what people will say at my funeral. "Man...he was weird, but he sure loved his family." One of the kindest things God has even done for me is let me change a step and a time and not show me the long road behind or the long road ahead. Sadly I've realized how much I've taken Lisa for granted lately. She is amazing to do all the housework, take care of the kids, cook, pretty much everything minus getting paid. She's kind, loving, gently honest, and the best thing that ever happened to me.

These are the things that are new with me.

Easter

One of my favorite things about Easter is the outfits. It was so fun to get Sydney and Natalie matching dresses and Tanner was hansome as usual. Once again I did not get any great pictures of all three of them. Someday, someday. I attempted to get all three of them outside after church to take their picture. But Sydney threw a tantrum over something I don't recall. That girl can get the tears flowing over anything. And then Tanner tipped over while he was sitting on floor and smacked his face right into Natalie's which made both of them cry and gave Tanner a nose bleed. So anyways, one day I will get the perfect picture of all three children and I will put it in the frame in our living room that says "This is our Joy" across the bottom of it. Then people will stop asking "what is your joy?" when they see the empty frame. Well we did get several very cute pictures of them in their cute clothes to put in their scrapbooks.

We missed the Moore family egg hunt on Saturday which we were very sad about. We spent the whole day putting in our new kitchen flooring. My parents offered to help us take care of it that day and it is SO nice to have a floor again. On Sunday, we went to my parent's home and had an egg hunt which mostly consisted of adults watching Sydney walk around a pick up eggs. We need a few more kids on that side to make it a little more interesting I think.

Tanner and Natalie thought the baskets were lots of fun to play with though. They were entertained with those for quite a while.

The Easter bunny is not a really big part of our Easter. In fact, Sydney totally forgot about putting her easter basket out the night before but I did it and the bunny filled it. My mom asked her that day who we celebrate on Easter and she said Jesus. It's nice to know she understands that.

This was the first year Sydney painted eggs too. I have bought egg dying kits every year and we just never get around to using them so this year I made sure she got to do that while the babies took naps one afternoon. She really enjoyed that and we only had a couple of egg casualties.