For Such a Time is This

Some of you may have already seen this. I loved this video and am impressed daily with the remarkable young women that I am blessed to spend time with. Enjoy!

A little bit of pampering!

Here are several fun pics from my Mother's Day weekend... Kevin & Andrew pampered me on Saturday and Sunday!! I felt so lucky.

It all started with sleeping in til 9am on Saturday

Then the boys went to breakfast and left me for a two hours at our house so I could get some work done... and they came back with gifts for me!

Andrew bought me a puppy! (the best kind...) Just watching him play with "Banana" was the best present ever! (he started saying, "anana" so we decided to call the puppy, "Banana")


Andrew loved leading Banana around the house either by his leash or tail (btw, Elise I think he is trying to compete with your pregnant belly).


Andrew also gave me a cute Elmo card and a Mrs. Fields cookie sandwich. We also celebrated Mother's Day with a trip to Bennigans for a delicious potato-filled lunch.


On Saturday afternoon we had a family trip to the mall. Kev & Andrew got me a box of yummy chocolates. Andrew wasn't convinced that the mall was all that cool though (since it was his 2nd visit of the day), so he screamed every time we walked into a store (except the chocolate store). It was seriously so funny... so we obviously didn't stay too long.


On Sunday I got to sleep in until 7:30am (which is late for a Sunday when we have church at 9am). We also got to church early... which was a nice present... since it rarely happens.

This cutie pie just kept us entertained all day.

Later in the day I was surprised with a few more presents. I couldn't believe all the pampering! Kev got me a Mrs. Fields Mother's Day cake card... mmmm!

and he gave me some fun gift coupons... the best was the diaper free weekend!
I will be using them soon!

Kev also made me homemade three cheese manicotti for dinner and peanut butter bars for dessert. Mmm!


The last little gifts were just fun ones that were part of my "Blogger Survival Kit," since Kev loves our blog and wants me to keep it up.

A light so I can blog in the dark :)... since my Mac doesn't have a backlit keyboard

Snacks to help me when I blog... and pain reliever for when my fingers get tired of typing


Lastly, I got two fabulous presents from my super mom & dad! My dad sent me a gift certificate for a trip to the spa and my mom sent me this beautiful Lladro of a mother and baby. It is so precious. I put it on my dresser right next to my bed so that I can be reminded of how lucky I am to be a mom every morning when I wake up.


We ended the day with a family walk and park trip. Kev hates going on walks... so this was such a nice sacrifice (it was one of the gift coupons he gave me).



These guys are too good to me! What a great day! I feel so blessed to be the mom of such a darling little guy!

A good find

There are a few things that I hate to buy online... running shoes are one of them. I usually try to buy new shoes every 4-5 months (or after around 400-500 miles) because mine get so beat up. Typically, by the time I am buying new shoes, I can't wait much longer (like more than a day) because my feet start hurting.


Usually I go to my favorite overpriced running store at the mall (Lady Foot Locker), and my shoes either costs $130 or they don't have my size... or they only have ugly colors. I finally switched over to Asics from Nike because every time I found a Nike shoe that I liked they would discontinue it. It was so annoying!

Yesterday after we grabbed cookies and Andrew covered himself in chocolate, we went to Lady Foot Locker and the sales girl showed me a whole new sale section... where they had my shoes for $49.99 instead of $130! I almost bought three pairs.


I already can't wait to go running this afternoon!... and Andrew loved the box, of course... so we all lucked out. I'm sure there are tons of good online places I could find these cheap shoes all the time... I need to start planning in advance. You'd think I'd have this figured out by now, since I've been running for almost 15 years. Either way, it made my day and gave me a nice early Mother's Day present. :)

Highlights

Highlights from last week:

- no need to clean my apartment


- losing weight (tends to happen when people around you are throwing up...) :)
- the look on people's faces when they came for an apartment showing and heard that we had the flu... you would've thought we had leprosy or something...
- the little guy just sat in the jogging stroller without complaining while I ran each day
- didn't have to share my chocolate with anyone
- wearing pjs all week

Highlights from this week:

- this happy smiling face

- hours of shopping at the mall and Santana Row
- Mrs. Fields cookies to keep Andrew and I happy at the mall- I think we need to go back again tomorrow


- tons of free time to work and clean during the day because little man will happily play with his toys independently
- eating way too much food at In-N-Out and Cheesecake Factory

I am so happy everyone is 100%+ better at our house now! Hopefully it'll stay that way for a week or two.

Taking it easy

I think these pictures do a good job showing what our day was like today.

Here's the happy exhausted boy... notice the mismatching pjs :)

He's worn pjs all week and has gone through most of them several times a day. This morning I couldn't find any matching bottoms that were out of the dryer. What a perfect outfit for lounging and watching movies!

I love these pics of Andrew lying down watching his movies. Usually the little guy is running around and doesn't really sit down to watch... let alone lie down.



This is where he stayed the entire time I got ready today. Surprisingly, I missed his usual attempts to steal my brush and hairdryer.


Little man did get excited about exploring the fridge. He's figured out how to get the water to come out of the Brita filter and had fun pouring it all over the floor. I think I started some bad habits this week. He threw his cheerios all over the carpet on Friday and thought it was sooo funny. I was happy to see him smile and laugh and so I encouraged it... and now he's having fun throwing even more food (blue popsicles were his favorite). Good thing we didn't let anyone come see the apartment this weekend!


This afternoon we went on a little walk around the neighborhood and Andrew-man got to do some exploring. It apparently tired him out... so we watched some more movies when we got home. It is pretty weird to have such a cuddly, clingy, tired kid. I'm trying to enjoy the cuddliness while it lasts :)


If I'm stuck in our house for most of the day much more I think I'm seriously going to go crazy, so we're hoping for a fully recouperated crazy boy by tomorrow.

Synchro-filled Saturday

Today I went up to the Avery Aquatic Center at Stanford to watch one of the girls in our ward compete in the 2009 U.S. Synchronized Swimming National Championships. It was threatening to rain the whole time... but held off... and I had a lot of fun watching the competition.


Here are the Santa Clara Aquamaids (the team I was cheering for) starting their final team performance. They did an incredible job and got higher technical marks than some of the other teams they were competing against- Stanford and Ohio State were the other main contenders. They also had one guy on their team... which was unique.




They scored high and received a lot of applause.


The girl I was cheering for won the bronze metal in the solo competition.


And the silver in the duet competition...



and then her team won the gold metal as the best team at the meet! Congrats Aquamaids!


I was so impressed with the amazing athletes that I was able to watch this afternoon. I can't even begin to understand how they do such crazy routines and stunts in the pool. This was such a fun way to spend the afternoon. I love having Stanford University so close by because there are always so many cool sporting events going on.

Rough Week

We've had a rough week at our house... probably the hardest one we've had since Andrew was born. Poor kid was pretty sick and then Kev got sick too. I'm pretty sure they both had the flu. I was fortunate and didn't get anything... so I spent the week taking care of both of them. I cried a lot because Andrew was so sad, lethargic and uncomfortable. Kev was too... but he wasn't screaming, writhing in pain, crying, etc. since he's a little bit more capable of dealing with illness. I just watched this video over and over again during the week and prayed for my happy, fun little boy to come back. This is us playing around last Sunday night before he somehow got violently sick on Monday night.



After almost a week, he's finally back to playing with his toys, eating a little food, and running around like a crazy kid. I'm loving it!