March 23...Ririe

The Bug found Papa's remote...and knows how to use it. Sorry if he messed anything up Papa!

Grammy singing "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" to her little munchkins. They LOVED it!! Giggled and laughed and loved to "pop" up with the "Sun-BEAM" part.

The Bug in the exact same rocking chair his daddy sat in when he was the same age...Grammy had to take a pic b/c they look so much alike and she has a very similar pic of Shayne in that chair.

And...Grammy reading "The B Book". (I have a better pic as far as the lighting and fuzziness go...but this pic showed how much fun they were having.) They loved this too, b/c Grammy makes it so much fun. The Bug loved playing with his Grammy...she is funny and plays fun games. These are Grammy's only two grandkids (for right now), so she was thoroughly enjoying it. She is such a good grandma...we love her!

March 23rd...in Ririe

The Munchkins found The Bugs "Tower of Treats" (as I like to call it), and brought it to Papa Pond to get snacks. PresLee loves her Papa, and The Bug warmed up to him...after getting treats. :)

The pic of The Bug standing at the piano is of him modeling PresLee's shoes. He would find them and demand I put them on...so I obliged. Isnt' he so cute in those pink shoes?!

The last pic is one of my favs of the two little munchkins. I love how PresLee is sucking her fingers...it's the same two finger's her mom sucked when she was little. I was watching them for a couple hours and it was so fun...for the most part. Pres was totally being so chill and just kinda laying around. I knew she was probably tired, but little did I know she actually wasn't feeling well. About 30 minutes after taking that bottom pic she started throwing up. The poor little girl threw up about every 30 minutes (sometimes she would go an hour) for about 9 hours!! Even after her poor stomach was empty she just dry heaved. It was a long night for Jonette who stayed up with her until about 3am. She felt much better the next day and was back to normal...but for a few hours that poor little girl was miserable. Lukily enough, The Bug never got sick. Good thing too...b/c he had been sick the few days before we left for Idaho with the same sort of g.i. bug(except he had it for almost 3 days)...maybe he gave it to Pres. Hmmmm...

March 21st in Ririe

The day after KayCee's wedding was Sunday and it was so nice to just relax. Jonette was watching Pres while KayCee was on her honeymoon, so we had two little 18 month old toddler's running around. We actually got them both ready and to church on time...amazing. And only had to bring three bags of snacks and entertainment to get through sacrament meeting. :)

After church we just did nothing really. Grandma Gerth came up for the wedding with Aunt Jodie Gerth and her daughter Melanie. (Jonette's mom, sister-in-law, and niece) They came over after church to eat and hang out for a bit before they left to drive back down to Draper. After that...we all pretty much just sat around and watched the munchkins play. PresLee quickly taught The Bug how to climb up on the coffee table. Up until this point he had never even thought about climbing on things...now it's another story. Thank you Pres! :)

The pic with Auntie Tay is after she had finished feeding them chocolate wedding cake. They were her best friends for a bit. They also loved hanging out with Auntie Tay when she was playing the piano. Poor girl couldn't play by herself. She always had 20 little sticky fingers trying to accompany her.

The pic of me with both of them on my lap is while we were watching Baby Signing Time on the little netbook I had. I purposely got the netbook for this trip. I put the Baby Signing Time videos on there to keep him entertained for the flight...and it worked. He sat on my lap for over 1 1/2 hours on the flight from Anchorage to Seattle (and even longer from Seattle to Anchorage). Awesome. And...he loved it while in Idaho too...and you can see we quickly got PresLee addicted to it too. :) It's crack I tell you...crack for babies.

The Bug totally impressed everyone with his vocabulary of signs. At this point he knew about 72 words...and he's added some since then. It was funny to see Uncle Dallan asking him to sign "car" or "hat" or "please" and "thank you". While I was there I started teaching PresLee to sign "thank you" and "please" too. It's so nice to be able to communicate with your toddler. Makes them much happier little people.


Anyway...this was our first full day in Idaho. As you can see we were all still a little tired but enjoyed hanging out.

The Wedding...March 20th

So, the biggest reason I went to Idaho this time was for KayCee's (Shayne's sister) wedding. She married her high school sweetheart, Kendal. He loves her little girl, PresLee, and she loves him...which is so awesome. KayCee has more than her fare share of heartache and trials in the last 18 months, so we were so happy she was getting married.

KayCee got married on March 20th, and The Bug and I flew into Idaho Falls that morning, after flying all night. (For a multitude of reasons, Shayne had to stay here in Alaska.) The trip was not our best...we had a 7 hour layover in Seattle. Not fun. It was even worse, b/c it was from 11:30 pm - 6:30 am. The Bug didn't fall asleep until about 3:30 am, and I never did sleep b/c I was freaked out someone would take my baby while I was sleeping. I started getting a massive migraine around 3am while trying to get a fussy 18 month old to sleep which was horrible. I finally just said a little prayer to Heavenly Father asking him to either make my migraine go away, or to help my toddler to fall asleep...but letting him know I could not deal with both the migraine and the toddler. 1000 mg of ibuprofen and a sleeping toddler later...I was feeling much better. I am so grateful Heavenly Father hears even the smallest prayers. :) The Bug slept from 3:30 until about 9 am which was when we had a short stop in Boise, before flying to IF. He slept the entire time I boarded the plane in Seattle, the flight to Boise, and finally woke up just before we took off for IF. So, when we landed in IF at 10:30 in the morning...I was pretty much wasted.

It was so nice to see Dana (Shayne's dad), Dallan (brother), and Tayler (sister) at the airport. You may ask why all three of them were there...so did I. They had all used the excuse to pick me up to get out of wedding "stuff". :) Too funny. The wedding was scheduled for 4pm, but we were to be at the church at 1:30 for pictures. So...after running a couple of errands we went home and showered and were at the church at 1:45. I still hadn't slept...at all. The Bug had only had about 6 hours of fitful sleep. We were having a great time. :)

We didn't even end up taking the family pics until about 3:30-3:45...just before the wedding began. At that point I was done trying to keep my exhausted little boy awake for pictures that we weren't in, so I put him to sleep. So, when we finally did take pics I was holding a passed out 18 month old in my arms. Great pic huh? :)

I ended up putting him on the floor of the mother's room and that's where he stayed for the wedding. He slept there for about an hour...poor kid. He had carpet marks on his face when he finally woke up. :)

The wedding was beautiful. They got married at the church, b/c they are still waiting for the letter ok'ing the temple marriage...which will be coming shortly. They had already set the date, so just decided to keep the date and get sealed in the temple later. PresLee was the little flower girl, but instead of throwing out the flower petals, she was stopping to pick them up and put back into the basket. It was so funny. You can see after the ceremony she was still totally enthralled with the soft rose petals. She kept picking them up and rubbing them on her cheek. I never did get pics of KayCee or Kendal...just of little Pres sitting on the floor playing with the flower petals. I did take a quick shot of The Bug sleeping on the floor of the mother's room too. I was too tired to care about any other pics...is that bad?


So that was the wedding in a nutshell. KayCee is very happy...and after spending a few hours with Kendal I can see why. He makes her happy...and he loves her, which is important. He also loves little PresLee, which is even more important.

We were so glad we could be there to support KayCee for her wedding.

But...I will tell you that The Bug and I slept good that night.

New Mess

Just when I thought he was done playing with the dog dishes...he discovered how to climb in and REALLY get into it. I had to move the water dish b/c he decided to use it to clean the floor. After I moved it he found the hole he could climb in. He thought it was great...until he couldn't get out. :)

These pics were taken just before we left for Idaho. Those pics are next.

My Easter Bunny

Yes, I'm back from Idaho.

Yes, it's been awhile since I've blogged.

Yes, I have many many pictures to blog.

Yes, I will be spending hours in the next few days blogging...but until then...I HAD to share with everyone what the Easter Bunny brought me.

The Bug and I got back home late Saturday night after a VERY LONG day of flying. Shayne picked us up at the Kenai Airport and after putting The Bug to bed (wasn't hard, he fell asleep in the car...it was a VERY LONG day of flying) Shayne showed me what the Easter Bunny had been working on at our house.

I was sooooo excited! This is the "utility" room at our house. It has our furnace and hot water heater...and now it has shelves for storage!!

For anyone who's been in our home, they know there is ZERO storage area. No closets. No drawers. No little nooks. Nothing.

Welcome to a typical old Alaskan home. They are weird...I mean unique. :)

So for me...THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL!! Shayne quickly organized what was already in there, but I have BIG plans for this room. My kitchen is going to LOVE this room, b/c it means I can empty some cupboards in the kitchen and put the things on the counters in those cupboards.

I am seriously so incredibly excited about this room.

The Easter Bunny worked very hard while I was gone. And...he did a phenomenal job!!

I love the Easter Bunny...

A Lot.

I know...I know...

It's been awhile since I've posted...and for me that's just craziness. I've become the blogging queen the last few months. However, I think I've taken 5 pics of my kid since the last post...again...Craziness!

I do have good reason. I'm insane.

For whatever reason I volunteered to help coordinate the boys & girls Regions Basketball Tournament that was held at Skyview this year. This was a HUGE endeavor! For the last 3 months, I've been writing letters to get sponsor money, going business to business to get advertisement money, and helping to coordinate all the concessions and hospitality room "stuff".

The tournament was held March 4-6th and I spent about 15 hours a day at the gym during those three days. Shayne watched The Bug most of the time, but he had games some of the time, so during those times I had him on my back in the backpack. The poor kid took naps in the backpack, had lunch in the backpack, and just chilled in the backpack, while I worked concessions and ran back and forth to the hospitality room.

It was craziness for three days. It is such a good thing he is such a good boy. He very seldom complained. And...he became such a daddy's boy...which his daddy was LOVING!

On Friday, I told Shayne that The Bug couldn't do another 10-12 hour day at the gym, so Karen Jones watched him for a few hours so he could take a real nap and play with toys and not be in the backpack or in the gym. She was a life saver for us that day!

Saturday was even more hectic, b/c The Bug decided to wake up at 3:00 in the morning with a very high fever, and if you've read past posts, you know he can have seizures if his temp gets too high. So, we were up for over an hour cooling him off, waiting for the medication to kick in so we could put him back to bed. He ended up taking a four hour nap later that day, while either Shayne & I stayed with him at home. He didn't have a cold and we ran him into the ER real fast just to have one of the Doc's peek in his ear's and they were fine. He did however, pop through his two bottom eye teeth the next day. Ya...all that fevering for teeth. Sheesh!

Shayne had to fly to Vegas late Saturday night for 5 day ER conference. I was supposed to fly to Idaho to visit family and attend KayCee's wedding the following Monday night, but I was flying on a buddy/standby pass and it didn't work out on Monday. The flights were too full. So we tried on Tuesday, but with the 15" of snow we had received over about 3 days it created avalanches on the road to Anchorage so the road was closed. It didn't matter anyway, the flights were full...again. So, Shayne told me to just wait until he got home and then we would both fly to Idaho for KayCee's wedding on the 20th...on the buddy passes.

But...that isn't working either...the flights are all full. So, now I've purchased a ticket with flyer miles and The Bug and I are flying down to Idaho by ourselves on Saturday, the 20th, just in time for KayCee's wedding. Shayne isn't able to go for lots of reasons...and that's sad for me. I'll be down there for about 2 weeks, spending time with both of our families, which will be fun. Shayne being here in Alaska...NOT fun, at least for me.

But...it is what it is.

So, that's why I haven't posted in almost a month. I've been a little preoccupied. (Did I mention that The Bug also woke up this morning at 1am and started throwing up every 20 minutes until 3am? Then woke up again around 7am and threw up again? Ya...been a fun day for me!)

But...the basketball tournament was a HUGE success! And...IT'S OVER!!!

The Bug didn't throw up at all after 7:30 this morning...Another success!

And...it's been getting up into the high 40's...so our snow is melting!

I love tender mercies.

So...that's our story for the last month. Hopefully, I'll take some fun pics while in Idaho and post them when I get back.

If not...I'm sure Shayne will be fishing while I'm gone...he should have some good pics to post. :)