Randomness!

So I really wanted to post pictures from Taryn's 1st Birthday, but alas Steve took the camera to scout camp with him. That post will have to wait! I know of a couple of friends who's husbands are gone this week too. One of them said that you are blessed with more patience for your children since you don't have anyone to spell you off. So far that is proving to be mostly true! Byron is in a phase I like to call "push all the buttons I can find, on Mom!" This phase has its interesting moments to say the least!

I actually chock my extra patience up to reading a blog more than Steve's absence. The blog is http://adailyscoop.blogspot.com/ I got the link from Megan's blog and got sucked in for about two hours on Saturday. It is a very well written blog by a woman named Stephanie. She had a baby girl (her fourth) on April 19 (I believe) last year. So three months before Taryn was born. Her name was Camille. She drowned on June 15th this year. She was revived, but did not recover, and died three days later. Her blog is inspiring and real. It was very thought provoking and put life back in perspective. There were a quite a few amazing entries! It helped me to remember to be more patient with my children and life. To stop and love them more, play more, hug more, kiss more and be more! I cannot imagine only having Taryn around for two more months. That would be so heart wrenching and devastating! I will love my babies more everyday. I was so touched by her profound words, and the reminder to cherish our children each day that we have with them. That has definitely increased my patience this week.

Also, my childhood friend Ann has a blog that I love to read! I agree with one of her recent posts in which she says that "blog land" can be a little too perfect sometimes.  Just another way to feel like I have to "keep up with the Jones'!"  She is so funny and real in her posts. I have been inspired to be a little more relaxed in my posts. I am rethinking what I want out of my blog. Originally I wanted it just to journal and document my cute family and all our fun goings on! But I think it is a really fun way to share random thoughts and ideas too!  I just want to share too!  So who knows what I will come up with! 

Too start off the sharing here is some random info. about each of my sweeties:

As mentioned above Byron has become and expert button pusher.  He actually seems to get a kick out of getting a rise out of people (do they all? Is that just human nature?), especially his sister.  He will hug and hug her until she just yells and cries and then tell me that, "I was just hugging her mom!"  He is very compassionate too (does that even work? :)  It really bothers him when she is hurt or sad, and he does his best to comfort her.  He loves to get Taryn up from her naps and get her a snack.  He is such an independent guy.  He loves to help in the kitchen.  He really enjoys baking right now.  He is very creative too, and it shows in his art projects, his imaginative play and in the excuses he comes up with when he gets in trouble.  Typical stuff like, "Taryn knocked it off the counter." "Lucky hit her."  The not so typical, "this little monster guy flew in a rocket and spilled the blocks.  I tried to shoot him, but he got away and flew out the window."  On the super hero front we have some bad news for Ele Vader (see earlier post)!  There is a new guy in town.  His name is . . .  Drum roll please!  The amazing and incredible --

THUNDER MAN!

According to Byron thunder man has fight special punch powers and is totally a good guy!  The two things on his shoulders are his bow and arrows.  That thing on his arm is a webber thing, so I can tie the bad guys up till the police come.  The police are good guys too, they are on my team!  Then if I tie them up and they get close enough I can punch them in the nose, or anywhere you want!

The clear thing in the back of my shirt is the shooter thing.  The orange thing sticking out of his pants (flashlight) is so that I can find my friends in a dark cave and help them.  You know I can go on adventures by myself, because I am four and I am not scared!  Good to know!

This is where I hide from the bad guys if they are really good at punching!  It is my ship too, because I built my ship out of a hiding place.  It is cool isn't it!  My ship also takes me to Africa, the Jungle or the Tiger Place!  I hide in my  ship and look out of it!  

Byron used pretty much every pillow in the house to build this impressive ship while I was washing dishes downstairs!

Oh my little Taryn!  She is so funny too!  She makes great attempts at speaking.  More usually sounds a lot like her "ma, ma, ma."  Done sounds like "da, da, da."  However, she does an amazing, "no, no, no" finger shaking at you and everything.  I keep watching all the other kids around to see where that came from.  I certainly don't say no and shake my finger, so far it is still a mystery!  The first time she did it was to her uncle Todd while we were in New York.  He gave her more enchiladas (after she said more).  When she wasn't eating any Todd told her, "Taryn eat your food."  She stuck her little finger out, wagged it back and forth and told him, "no, no, no, no, no!"  Karalee laughed so hard then, and telling me on the phone later that night!

That girl can out eat her brother, and does so on a regular basis.  Especially if pancakes are on the menu.  She can eat 5-6 pancakes!  And I'm not talking about cute little silver dollar sized ones either.  She particularly loves them with blueberries or chocolate chips!  I may have mentioned this before, but she is a yeller!  Particularly when she is in her high chair and you aren't getting her more fast enough!  Lately though she wants to be sure she is heard all the time, even her happy chatter sounds.  Am I really loud?  Is that were my kids get it from?  I'm not sure I want anyone to answer that :)

She knows the good stuff!  Brain freeze anyone?  Seriously, it is the same size as her, don't worry she was sharing with me!

Byron happily introduced her to cotton candy at the baseball game on the 4th of July!  No way she's touching my camera with that hand!  I love her big blue eyes!

I wonder what costumes and characters she will come up with!  I love my children!

NYC Monday!

So today we woke up a little late and got ready!  About the time we were ready to head out it started raining, actually pouring! So it slowed us down a little, but we got on the tour bus eventually.  It takes a while to tour this enormous city, but now we know what we want to go back to see and where to find it!  Here are some pictures from our tour!

Here we are chilling on the bus, bugging foreigners to take a picture of us together!

The Soup Nazi character on Seinfeld is based on a real guy and this is his first location.  Apparently Seinfeld made him famous and he now has a few locations!

At rush hour it is amazing the number of people who cross all the streets.  Waves and waves of them!  This picture doesn't do the throngs justice!

Steve's envy!  Yeah right, he is so glad that he doesn't drive in this city.  Pretty sure it would give him a heart attack!

This is one of my favorite buildings in the city.  It is the Flat Iron Building, because the top of it looks like an old fashioned flat iron.  It is considered the first sky scraper built in New York.  It reminds me of the Brown Palace in Denver!  Very cool architecture!

We had dinner at John's Pizzeria on Bleeker St.  It was amazing!  Truly tasty New York pizza.  Then we just wandered around more!  That is very easy to do in this enormous city!  Do I keep saying that this city is enormous?  Because it is, and it is amazing!

After dinner we went to the Eiffel Tower for sunset.  Unfortunately the clouds were back by then and visibility wasn't its best.  Here are some pictures we took up there. 

This one was taken on the ground:), and that is one tall building!

Sunset from the top!  This picture does not do it justice at all.  The sun was gorgeous and red!

When I uploaded these I thought this was the Chrysler Building, but I think it is the Clock Tower on the right.  With their roofs lit up it makes for an awesome night shot!

Here is a picture of the top from the observation deck on the 86th floor.  Steve has a picture crush on the American Flag!

What a cute couple!  Ok, so here is the real scoop.  The top of the Empire State Building is wall to wall people, at least a lot of people.  Not the roomy and romantic setting you always see in movies!  It was really neat to see how truly huge the city of New York is!

New York City!!!

Yeahhhh!!!  I'm in New York City, literally in Manhattan!  I can't believe it!  I'm here with Steve and my mom.  Steve has an ACN conference in New Jersey next weekend!  My mom is teaching a Mathematical Perspectives conference this next week.  So, we are crashing with her in her hotel room!  And boy did we ever luck out!  They had to upgrade us because they didn't have a regular one room suite when we checked in, so now we have a two room suite.  In NYC terms I'm sure it would be considered a good sized apartment.  We even have a little kitchen (in a closet)!  Very fun!  I think my favorite might be our very skinny little balcony.  

Even in downtown Denver, I've never seen so many trees on roofs, not to mention that the sea of buildings goes on and on in every direction!  Central Park is truly unbelievable!  My aunt Lara was right, there are literally places in that park where you can stand and not have any idea that you are in the middle of a huge city!  It is amazing.  Fireflies!  I saw fireflies in real life for the first time in my life last night! They are so cool and weird at the same time!  Steve caught one and he sat on my finger with his little butt lighting up every few seconds! They are funny little critters!  

Central Park on a Saturday night appears to be one party after the other.  We walked by the African drums and instruments party where people would gather and shake their thing.  Then around one statue there was a large group of couples dancing the Argentine Tango.  Apparently they hold dance lessons there every Saturday night at 7:30 with dancing after that.  There was a group of rock music roller skaters and roller bladders dancing it up on wheels.  A carnival was being held where the ice skating rink is in the winter!  It was culturally impressive and a lot of fun!

Now I'm sitting out on the little balcony and listening to all the sounds of the city!  The humming of window air conditioners, cars driving by, occasional horns honking and birds singing!  And then it started to sprinkle on me!

We went to church in a very interesting building.  It looks like it used to be a church from another faith, and we bought and converted it.  It looks just like a normal chapel on the inside.  That was really interesting because there were two wards meeting together at the same time.  One of the wards was a singles ward.  It was great, two converts and the ward mission leader spoke.  One of the converts just got baptized and she was Jewish before.  Her talk was fascinating about the similarities between the Jewish and LDS faiths!

Then lunch at an amazing turkish restaurant (very similar to Greek).  Yum!  Best hummus I've ever eaten!

Later Steve and I took off and headed down to Times Square, on our way there we ran through a little rain.  That is Steve standing in the rain and sun, I don't know if you can see the rain in the picture though!  We were trying to catch the last tour bus of the day.  We missed it, but we got to cruise around and check things out.

Here I am at Times Square!  Lots of lights, but not at all like the strip.  Way more moving words and advertisements.  It is a really cool place.  So much energy and so much going on!

This city is so overwhelming! So many things to see and do! We came back up on the east subway, so we walked to the hotel through Central Park. It was nice to end the day somewhere quiet and peaceful!

Another Silly Byronism!

So we have been a little disappointed lately that Byron hasn't said quite as many funny things.  Either that or we are getting immune to the hilarity!  Well last night he came up with another one.  I picked Byron and Taryn up from Karalee's house after mutual and we were driving home.  He saw the temple lit up on the hill and said, "hey mom, there is Brittany's Temple!  I saw Brittany's temple!"

I smiled in the front seat and asked, "who's temple is that?"

"Aunt Brittany's"

"Why is it Aunt Brittany's temple?"

"Because it has horns," was Byron's observant reply.

"The temple has horns?" I asked.

"Uh, well, they are not horns.  Um, it is Brittany's temple because of all the shiny, um . . . balls.  It is Brittany's temples with lots of balls."  BALLS?!?  What is he talking about?  He is one cute little crazy!  (Unfortunately I may have to admit that he gets that random weirdness from me!  Don't get me wrong Steve is really weird too, but I probably donated the randomly weird gene!)  Just had to share!

Memorial Day Weekend!

So the original plan was to go camping all weekend.  Byron and Steve had been looking forward to it for weeks.  Weather sure can change our plans.  It has been unseasonably cool in Las Vegas this year.  Nothing that we will complain about, except for Memorial Day Weekend!  It got down to the mid 70's here in the valley.  That meant that Mt. Charleston was low to mid 50's during the day and mid 20's at night!  We just didn't think it would be such a good idea to take a 10 month old and have her sleep in such cold weather.  So the compromise was that we would go up to Mt. Charleston on Memorial Day itself for a campfire picnic!  When we got to our spot Byron asked, "uh, mom, where is the tent?  Where am I supposed to sleep?"  He really, really wanted to stay and camp!  Luckily we will be camping in a couple of weekends to make up for it!  We were all a little bummed that we didn't get a mountain weekend.  We sure had a lot of fun for our one day though!

Byron & Steve cooking the grub!  Byron even helped flip a burger and it didn't even fall in the fire!  Anything dad can do, I can do too!

"What?  Do I have ketchup on my face?  Why are we eating outside?"  Taryn was super fun!  She wanted to check it all out, but she wasn't sure she should crawl around in the dirt!

Here is a fun action shot of Byron hitting the baseball around with dad after a tasty meal!

Taryn and I kept each other warm, and Byron wanted in on the action!

"Oh my gosh, dad!  I have to tell you a secret!"  Okay, really she was doing the "Wah-wah-wah" sound by hitting her mouth!  Daddy sure thinks her trick is neat!

Like father, like son!  Can't have a fire without roasting some tasty mallows for a 'smore!

Sorry, I couldn't resist this tasty picture of my hot hubby!

Yes, we were there together!  Amazing isn't it?  We propped the camera on the back of the truck for this shot to prove it!

Taryn touching snow for, well I guess it was the second time.  She did get to see and feel snow in South Jordan, UT in March!  She was a little more into it this time!

Byron thought there was going to be snow everywhere when we got up to "the mountain".  We had been telling him how cold, rainy and possibly snowy it was all weekend, every single time he asked, "when are we going to go camping?"  Or, "is it time to go camping to the mountain yet?"  So he was a little disappointed that there wasn't snow at our "camping place".  We drove up to the Lee Canyon Ski Resort (resort is an awfully big word for that little place!)  We found one of the last mounds of snow that was close enough to hike to and played on it for awhile.  That seemed to satisfy!  Byron had a blast, he was the king of the snow hill, made a few snow balls, and found a snow slide!