Hangin' in Utah

My girls and I are now in Utah. We will be here for 3 weeks for the purpose of me doing my clinicals in a local hospital (AF) in the ICU and ER so I can finish getting my BSN.
Me n' my girls flew to Utah and it was a pretty easy trip except for when we were boarding the plane. Picture me carrying Lydia in the baby carrier in front of me down the narrow airplane aisles while wearing a HUGE backpack with all their necessities while dragging my 2 year old who is screaming/crying "no ride a blue airplane! no ride a blue airplane!" Luckily once we got seated the stewardess brought her an "airplane snack" and she stopped screaming as if I was trying to kill her.
Kiera ventured outside to see the snow just once so far. We bundled everyone up and went outside and I showed her how we could make footprints in the snow. She finally got brave enough to try it (with her new princess boots on), and was fine with it until some snow got on top of her boots. After that we had to go in. It took more time to get everyone bundled up than the time we actually spent outside (about 3 minutes).

First haircut

After much internal debate, I cut Lydias hair (and not just the mullet). For some reason it is sad to me to cut baby hair off, but I'm so glad that I decided to do it. She looks much better without the crazy 4inch hair that was never tame for more than 2 seconds.

Behind every cute picture of a child...

Behind every cute picture of a child is a exasperated parent who is doing cartwheels and pulling faces trying to get the child to smile for one precious moment.
Lydias pictures turned out beautifully, but after 2 different photo shoots I had to settle on this picture of Kiera (although not very good at all). I'm embarassed to think of everything I did in order to try to get that little lady to smile. The photographer probably thought I was an idiot. Oh well. I tried. Good thing I have lots of cute non-professional pictures to make up for it.

My dancing experience

1999: Made it onto the Ballroom dance team in high school but graduated a year early so never got to do it.

2003: Made it onto the Country Western Swing dance team at UVSC but since I also got accepted to the nursing program I had to forgo dance.

2009: Made it onto the Nelson-Family-Dancing-With-Tutu-In-The-Kitchen team. Enjoy it thoroughly.

Warm weather and mullets

So I'm just writing this to make all of you non-Southern-California folk jealous. Yesterday we had a picnic and it was beautiful and warm (75 degrees-- I have no clue why Steve wore a jacket-- he said he didn't want to be itchy from the grass). Today Steve and Kiera read books in the hammock outside. I put a little local weather thingy on the side of our blog so ya'll can see how warm it is here and have incentive to come visit us in the cold winter months.

If your daughter had a bald spot and a mullet like this would YOU cut it? I've seen some pretty funny looking babies out there and thought "why doesn't somebody tell those parents that their baby looks ridiculous?" I just don't want mine to be in the same category. So, let's be honest folks-- would you cut her hair?

Somethin's gotta give.....

Next week I will be starting school again online through BYU idaho to finish my BSN in nursing. No, I don't have extra time on my hands-- in fact, I still don't know just how I'm going to be able to achieve it since I'm going to be taking the BEASTLY critical care class with nasty nasty papers and 60 hours of required clinical time.
Basically, something else in life has got to give. So here are some the things I'm going to do to make room for my schooling--

1. No long distance running-- I'll stick with 2-3 miles only.
2. I'm no longer in charge of my local babysitting co-op. I handed the responsibility back over to my friend.
3. I can't blog as much. I have a new goal of only blogging once a week (sundays).
4. No entertaining this semester. I LOVE having people over and hosting huge events. I'll have to wait till the semester is over to take it up again. (I'm doing a very simple baby shower this weekend, but that's it).

The crazy thing about all this is that I never PLAN on using my nursing degree again. But you never know....

Christmas and Steve's birthday

First of all, happy birthday to Steve who turned 30 on Christmas eve. Yes, my poor husband has to endure a birthday on the 24th of december. He is a great sport about it though (much more so than I would be). Not only that, he spent his birthday this year caring for our barfing Kiera (who had the stomach flu) and then got the stomach flu later on that night himself.

Christmas this year was spent with the majority of my family in Albuquerque New mexico at my sister Christa's house. It was an interesting Christmas as we had 4 different state's germs converging in one location. 3 different colds and the stomach flu converged in one household to make for an intersting Christmas. I've surrendered to the fact that any time we travel to visit family we are going to get sick, but I didn't expect to get THAT sick. Then, on the 26th we traveled back to California to spend time with Steve's family. Not only did almost everyone in his family have a cold, but my poor little nephew was diagnosed with RSV. We are still crossing our fingers that we don't get that one (for Lyida's sake).

Dispite illness we had a good Christmas. Kiera was more excited about the Christmas lights on the house across the street then she was about opening presents. Her favorite new toy I'd say was her shopping cart. Lydia got milk for Christmas.

Rain rain go away....

Little Kiera wants to play (and mommy wants to be able to run outside), rain rain go away.

(well at least it isn't snow).

I cried the day that I take the bassinet down

I don't like my babies growing up. Nope, not one darn bit at all. I took Lydias bassinet down today since she is outgrowing it. Babies grow too fast!!!

3.5 months later--

3.5 months later
35 lbs less of me
4 lbs more of Lyida
a lot of hard work in between.

fun and funny pictures

Homeless

Driving around lately I've seen a lot of homeless people with signs asking for help. I am always hesitant to give money to these people because I don't want to support drug habbits. I have seen a homeless person throw an apple that someone gave to him (obviously he wasn't interested in money for food). I do know however that there are homeless who truely need help and so I should respond to their requests in the chance that they do truely need it. The question I pose for you all though is: how? I won't give them $ because I don't want them to buy beer, I would give them a resturant gift card (like subway-- I could just keep gift cards in my car) but they don't have cars so they might not be able to get there if it is far away. So what about having little "homeless people kits" in my car with food-- but it would have to be food that will keep a log time and yet include all food groups(crackers, raisins, canned tuna?). None of these ideas seem very good though...so I"m asking for any suggestions.

Princesses

Kiera is into princesses lately. We've been watching a lot of princess movies lately. I'm noticing a theme: It seems like all of the princesses want to be something that they are not. So is that the definition of a princess?

We went to Arizona for Thanksgiving (2 of Steve's siblings live in arizona). We all ate too much of course but had a great time doing it.

We put up our Christmas tree and decorations today which is one of my favorite things to do. We also put christmas lights on our house. It is the first time we have ever done it. we are the only people on our street who have lights.

Steve took Kiera for a walk today and she found a puddle to play in. You can only do that in november in california!

TWO!!!!!!

Kiera celebrated her second birthday on saturday. She had the pleasure of sharing her special day with the BYU/Utah football game (which didn't turn out so well). I made Kiera an Elmo birthday cake. It was my first cake decorating experience and I think it went well since she recognized it as elmo at least. Kiera was of course afraid of the candles and nobody ate any of the cake (who likes birthday cake anyway? yuck!)

Here is a little about Kiera:
1. Afraid of everything that most kids like: disneyland, beach.
2. Won't eat candy or dessert.
3. Can identify and name #'s 1-9.
4. Can count to 20 all except 12.
5. Can identify all the letters of the alphabet.

It is interesting to me to see the different things that kids can do. Kiera is really good at letters and numbers, but yet I'd say that all of her friends her age can talk much better than she can. She is just starting to put 2 words together.

Anyway, it was fun to finally have a child who has some sort of idea that something special is going on for her birthday.