March 2012

You know that saying that "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb"? Well, that's exactly how it happened...

Devin and I thought that the last weekend in February was such nice weather, that we should go camping!  But, we needed to go to the temple, so we decided the first weekend in March would do.  Unfortunately a cold front moved in.  We thought, well, we're in Las Vegas - it doesn't get that cold here... and we went anyway...  It was sunny, but cold and EXTREMELY windy.  We arrived at Red Rock campsite and set to work with our tent.  

We couldn't get Becca to stop eating rocks and sand:

I almost took a flying lesson with our tarp:

Yes, I really was cold enough to look ridiculous:

And I made my child look ridiculous along side me:

That's not sand in her mouth, it's the food with which I was trying to distract her from eating the sand:

After we set up the tent, we wanted to start our fire going, but the camp manager still wasn't there for us to check in and buy firewood.  It was too windy to do anything fun outside, and Becca wouldn't take her afternoon nap, so we played some Skip-Bo:

The wind died down, the camp manager arrived, the Moore's checked in, an exorbitant amount was paid for a very small bundle of firewood, and Devin's magic Scout skills were put to work - PRESTO!  We had a fire for dinner - good thing too, 'cuz the sun was setting quickly.  Becca was enraptured by the fire and one of us had to keep hold on her at all times, lest she dive headlong into it:

Fortunately, dinner was a camping staple and not hard to make - Becca's first bite of campfire-roasted hot dog!

We also had some S'mores, naturally - that's half of what's cool about camping!  We did have a sad accident with the fire; apparently Becca wasn't the only one drawn to the flames - Devin's glove succumbed to the glorious beauty of the campfire and dove in, creating a strangely dirty-diaper-like smell...such a depressing loss.  I somehow managed to get a very tired little Becca to sleep, all bundled up in the tent.  Then I snuck outside to cuddle close to Devin in front of the dying campfire and eat I-won't-tell-how-many-more S'mores.  We climbed inside the tent to stay warm, but since it was too early to sleep, we played Water Works and more Skip-Bo.

Becca did well for most of the night, but both Devin and I got a turn to snuggle with her in our respective sleeping bag during the wee hours of the morning.  Sunrise was beautiful, and the rays of light did warm things up slightly.  However, the toilet seat was still frigid, the pumped water I cleaned my face with was icy (no exaggeration), and my fingers fought the numbness poorly as I helped with breakfast.  Devin battled the wind to keep the fire going well enough to cook our eggs and bacon - and he succeeded.

Notice he only has one glove on...

The original plan was to go on a hike after breakfast, but this poor snot-nosed kid was not going to have it.  Although I put about five layers of clothing on her, she couldn't keep warm enough.  We called it quits and broke camp to head back home.

Despite the cold, we had a great time and we're looking forward to going camping again soon - as soon as we find a local place that sells firewood at a reasonable price!  

On the way home we stopped and bought seeds, dirt, and planters to start our container garden.  Hooray!  We have faith that we'll have a more bountiful harvest than last year. 

To break our fast on Fast Sunday, we got together for dinner at the Mosley's.  This time, another couple from KHA, the Selu's, came as well.  The food was excellent, and we all had a good time chatting - it's fun to make friends with Devin's co-workers.  And good to just make friends, period.

One night, Becca disappeared and came back trying to put on one of Devin's t-shirts - it was pretty funny to see how pleased she was to wear it:

I finally got it on! (With Mom and Dad's help)

I don't know where she learned this classic model pose - it wasn't from me!

So big!

Her stance of preaching repentance

Hooray!

"Look at me from the side; do I look different to you?"

"Friends! Romans! Countrymen! O Sole Mio!"

We have such fun with this little girl

When we tell her she's cute, she puts her head on her shoulder like this

Playing with Dad

We were able to have the missionaries over for dinner again, but that was a little bit of a fiasco, as they called that morning wanting to come sooner than Devin gets off of work - he managed to leave early, but they still had to wait outside for awhile...I felt bad, but hopefully the dinner was worth it.

The Selu's joined us at The Cheesecake Factory for dinner - we wanted to properly thank Steve for helping us unload our moving truck.  Each of us ordered a different dish - fish, beef, chicken, and pork were all represented - and shared with each other.  And we did the same with the desserts, although we really shouldn't have, since we were already stuffed full from dinner.  The food was all excellent, and once again I was impressed by The Cheesecake Factory.  The Selu's have a son not too much younger than Becca, and also recently joined KHA and moved here, so we have a lot in common.  We enjoyed having a fun double-date out on the town!

To repay my friend who babysat Becca while we went horseback riding last month, we took her two year old son for a couple hours one Friday night.  It was his first time being babysat by someone other than family, and he's in the middle of being potty-trained, but it all went just fine.  Becca adores him - in fact, I think she has a baby crush on him - every time she sees him now, she follows him around, waving her hand in his face.  I don't think he reciprocates...yet.  She's very persistent.

Here's what Becca's usually like after waking up from a nap - plus more documentation of her current language skills:

Becca likes helping with food preparation, probably because she gets more food that way:

Daylight Savings Time!  It was about time, because Becca had been waking up with the rising sun at about five am, and I had totally had enough of that.  And we managed to not miss Sacrament Meeting this year! (Last year we totally forgot until Devin was about to open the chapel doors and I suddenly remembered and hissed "STOP!" before we walked in and looked like the silly fools we were).  Devin and I substituted in Nursery, and that meant we got to take Becca - which was fun!  She loved it - I loved it (I am not so secretly counting down the Sundays 'til she can go - July 8th! Her quiet skills do not yet extend to the third hour of church, so I don't get much out of Relief Society except embarrassment and lessons in patience). It's always amusing to watch kids of that age - and it was good to see what Becca needs to be working on before she turns 18 months old (a little more sharing, how to drink out of a paper cup without smashing it and spilling everywhere, and a lot of will power to avoid the temptation to eat crayons).  

We want to make a tradition of going on Sunday walks together.  Before Becca was born, we'd go a lot - leaving after dinner, and Devin would say as we went out the door "Kids, do the dishes!  Your mother and I will be back soon." Ha ha.  :)  This time, Devin tried to convince Becca she should stay (and do the dishes too), but she insisted on coming.  And she packed her stroller with some books for entertainment along the way.  

Becca loves to play with stickers:

Devin was working in Denver for most of March; his company calls it "shifting" - they needed someone from his area of expertise there, and the work load was low here in Las Vegas.  It was a good experience for him to learn more and to build relationships in the Denver KHA office.  But Becca and I missed him terribly!  He was gone pretty much from the 13th to the 30th (longer than they originally thought it would take) - but KHA paid for Becca and me to fly to Denver the first weekend, and he got to come home the second weekend (more on both of those weekends later!).  I was glad to have Becca to keep me company while Devin was away, that helped a lot.  I did get a lot done on my to-do list - focusing mostly on catching up this blog!  I am also so thankful for our cell phones, so we could talk to each other every night.

Becca still gets so excited for bathtime - she knows exactly what to do when I ask if she wants a bath; she runs to the bathtub and starts tugging on her clothes, trying to pull them off.  She likes to drink the bathwater (gross, but I gave up trying to stop her) - and she puts that blue bucket on like a hat by herself all the time.

Hanging out in her pjs:

Friday the 16th, Becca and I flew to Denver together.  I got a workout carrying everything that a baby requires.  She was a little rowdy on the plane, not wanting to sit still in my lap (don't blame her), but still fairly well-behaved.  Everyone around us thought she was cute.  She made the whole front half of the plane laugh - when we touched down in Denver, the flight attendant welcomed us and ended with, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!" - the man in front of us exlaimed, "YEAH!" and Becca immediately mimicked him with a loud, "YEAH!"  My romantic husband met us with a rose - we were all very happy to be together again.

It was very late when we left the airport, but we all hadn't had dinner yet, so we woke Becca up from her car-seat nap to join us for a yummy meal at Applebee's - my first taste of tilapia.  Becca hit her second wind while trying to get her ready for bed, so we video-ed her craziness for a bit:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We decided to press our Irish luck and go do something insane, like hold a tarantula!

I almost didn't have the courage to do it, but Devin persuaded me.  We sat and listened to a presentation afterwards about tarantulas, and it's a good thing that I learned after holding one, that a tarantula can blind you by shooting their leg hairs off!  We didn't get to see much else at the Butterfly Pavilion, but we thought it was worth it for the experience!

We hurried over to Denver Zoo to meet up with Devin's KHA counterpart in Denver, Curt, and Curt's three daughters; Amanda, Emily, and Danica.  It was an unseasonably nice day in Denver, so everybody else and their green-shirted dog had the same idea - I've never seen a zoo so crowded!  We spent most of the day at the zoo, and saw pretty much everything there - it's a nice zoo.  Amanda adopted Becca and lugged her around most of the time.  Emily had an encyclopedia of animals and if she could find the animal we were looking at in her book, she read us the whole page - it was very amusing.  

In front of the lion's den

We observed a curious creature in it's cage, called a Zook Eeper

Had to get Becca with the sleeping polar bears, since one of her favorite stuffed animals is "Ice" the polar bear

A wandering peacock was quite fascinating to Becca

Riding the boa constrictor

Refusing to smile

Sssslytherin fans...jk

Becca probably paid the most attention to the fish

Fish face

Hat sharing with Dad

Daddy caved and got ice cream...

...not that any of us complained...

...looks like Becca quite enjoyed hers, anyway...

...a good way to spend the wait time until the seal show started

That peacock decided to show off

What an interesting animal

Devin's artistic shot of the day

We were about to leave for Becca's nap, but she fell asleep on Devin instead, so we stayed

Curt invited us to come over for dinner so we could meet his wife, and we took them up on that kind offer.  We hung out, just munching on chips and chatting, while Becca played with their dog and kids.  Then the menfolk (and the kids, and the dog) went out back to grill, and Shalean and I stayed in to get the rest of dinner ready.  During and after dinner we had some good laughs playing "Psychiatrist" and "Johnny, Johnny, Whoop" and watching the trailer on YouTube for the girls' coming horror movie.  

Becca liked getting into all their stuff

She had some trouble walking in these

Sorry for the blurriness, this was the best of all the attempts

After attending Sacrament Meeting, we drove to the Denver temple grounds to shoot a few photos (Becca fell asleep and we left her in the car - 10 feet away from us, it's ok, we're good parents). 

We decided that enjoying some of God's beautiful creations was a great Sabbath activity, so we took a little drive up into the mountains to the Red Rock Amphitheater.  It was very windy, but we got out for some quick pictures by the amphitheater itself before driving around some more.  We think it'd be really neat to go hiking or see a concert here someday!   

We took Becca for a little dip in the pool and then hot tub, because the pool was a tad chilly.  She looked so cute in her swim robe.

Somehow, I didn't take any pictures on Monday.  Becca and I were just going to hang out together in the hotel room all day, but we ended up only doing that for the morning (introduced ourselves to Dora the Explorer and went swimming again).  Devin called and invited us out to lunch, and to join him on a project in Gunbarrel, Colorado.  It was fun to drive out there, and really interesting to watch Devin at work and even help him a little bit.  The project didn't take very long, and then we had the rest of the afternoon to drive around site-seeing.  We went out to dinner, and it ended all too soon - Devin dropped us off at the airport.  

The plane ride home went well - I got an extra seat to help me corral my child.  She stole the hearts of the elderly couple behind us and spent quite a lot of time on their laps for the last half hour of the trip - they told me they wanted to adopt her as their Henderson grandchild and had her calling them "Grandma" and "Grandpa".  "Grandpa" (I don't even know their real first names) was especially smitten and asked if he could take her golfing the next day...

Back to regular life, only without Devin.  We did nothing out of the ordinary.  I worked on the blog during my lonely nights and Becca's naps.  Becca did discover that peas fit excellently in her nostrils, and I crossed them off her menu for the next few weeks at least. 

The highlight of the day while Devin was gone was having family prayer and scripture study over the phone before Becca went to bed.  Becca would LIGHT UP whenever the phone would ring, or I would tell her it was time to call Daddy.  

She basically just repeats "Dada" over and over

She likes to give him kisses too

Saying "mmmm!" after a kiss

So pleased to talk to Daddy

This is what a phone hug looks like

She's getting so good at this, she doesn't even need her hands

The weather got much warmer here, and Becca put on a cute new summer outfit to await the arrival of her cousins, the Rogers'!

Serity and Ric brought their family down for a weekend and we had so much fun!  When they arrived, they needed a breather from traveling, so we just talked after a very short tour of our little apartment.  The boys were SO anxious to go swimming - they finally dragged us over to the pool.  Even though the temperature has reached the 80s for the last few days, they discovered that the pool was still too cold.  Stratton jumped all the way in, but Creighton only made it to his waist and Ric to his shins before they readily agreed to play in the hot tub instead.  The boys had a blast (only occasionally ruined by Mom's mandate to sit out of the hot water for awhile) and we girls were well amused with their antics as we sat on the side. 

Devin says this look on Keely's face is a preview of her teenage years

How fun to have a cousin to play with!

Just watchin' the boys

"Look who's here, Mom!"

Ric giving Creighton a swimming lesson

Stratton really liked "diving" from the seat

While Ric was occupied with another child, Creighton tried swimming on his own and I rescued him...twice - I knew I should've put a swimsuit on

Going for a leaf

It's okay, he can't read

Hands together is the correct form of cartoon diving

Warming up in her princess towel...

...complete with crown

the Hot Tub Gang

We enjoyed dinner together, and putting four small children to bed was a fun adventure.  Serity and I stayed up talking while waiting for Devin's flight to come in. 

All ready for bed - I couldn't get Keelian to stop bouncing...

...except for this one

Stratton is a great big brother and cousin, very protective

Stratton was telling his dad a long and complicated story...

...but Ric had had a tiring day (Stratton didn't even notice 'til he was done)

Reuniting with Devin was wonderful! Sharing a bedroom with Becca was not.  She was awake when I got home with Devin, and try as we might, she would not sleep with us in the same room - in her bed or our air mattress.  We finally moved our mattress to the living room and got something like three or four hours of sleep before she woke up for the morning.  Sigh...

But we had a stellar breakfast of fluffy pancakes and elephant snot, and then headed off on a day packed with fun!  First stop was the Flamingo's Wildlife Habitat.  It was very pretty and relaxing, and the kids really thought it was awesome. 

Pink Chilean Flamingos

This is apparently one of Creighton's standard poses...

Devin and I added a waterfall to our dream home list

 I told them to pretend to be flamingos...ha ha!

Making wishes in the fountain

I missed the shot of Stratton's wish - eyes squeezed shut and hands balled up tight

But you can kind of see Creighton's wish pose

This reproachful look is for documenting his wish pose, I guess

This is Keely's "I'm scared!" pose - there were fish way bigger than her in there!

We walked a ways to the fountains at Bellagio, but discovered we were too early.  Stratton had fun climbing though, on the way.

So, instead, we went to Circus Circus and watched a couple impressive circus acts (free!) and had McDonald's.

Trying to recreate one of the acts

Of course, there were rides other than Uncle Devin:

Poor Becca didn't get a morning nap, so she crashed on the way to revisit the aquarium and Bass Pro Shop at the Silverton (we liked it so much and knew the Rogers' kids would too).

Strange...this little girl is so busy petting that raccoon (yikes! rabies!) that she's not even noticing the giant fish that is about to steal her bait, and probably her pole too, judging by her weak grasp.  Keelian tried to warn her...

Yay for free crafts and a bench for the pregnant lady to rest on

True to their personalities, Stratton meticulously paints his sailboat...

...while Creighton's is a little more colorful and a tad less careful

Becca has developed a love for stuffed animals

Family picture outside by the stream

Gotta love these rambunctious boys

Here we parted ways - all the females went home for a well-deserved nap, and the males continued the fun at M&M World, the now-functioning Bellagio fountain, to see the lions at MGM (but they're gone! sad), and to New York New York to watch the roller coaster.  

We had a great BBQ (thanks to Ric for taking care of the meat!) for dinner and all the kids wanted to go swimming again too.

Bathtime with the three youngest cousins was very cute - and very hard to get them all to look my way.

Aunt Serity read stories:

And the adults stayed up playing Qwirkle! and eating peach crisp with ice cream...mmmm.  I won, but Ric would've if he hadn't missed seeing his chance at a DOUBLE QWIRKLE (sorry again, Ric).  Ser fell asleep on the couch while Ric talked to us about financial stuff (he's our financial planner and he's GREAT and so is his company if you're interested!).

We had a lazy morning before going to church, and after Sacrament Meeting, the Rogers' started the drive back home to Salt Lake.  Thanks SO MUCH for coming, we loved having you visit!  Please come again soon! And anyone else reading this is invited too.

Even the girls couldn't wake up Ric

At church

Devin thought he was supposed to teach that day at church, but unbeknownst to him, he had been released from his teacher's calling (which he is actually kind of sad about, because he loves teaching). We had the rest of Sunday afternoon together (kind of - I went Visiting Teaching for most of it) before Becca and I took him to the airport to go back to Denver.  And we were separated for yet another week.  Bummer.

Becca likes to feed herself with a spoon, and she's getting pretty good at it:

She's learning to smile for the camera, sometimes...

The cover for this chair was being washed, and when I set her on it, it reminded me of when Devin used to put her on that when she was a small baby and sing "You look so tiny in that chair" (his own creation).  She's not so tiny in that chair anymore!

Becca really loves to read now - hooray! It makes my little English-major-heart sing to see her reading; so, I'll gladly put up with reading her the same books over and over.

Her vocabulary grows every day, and it really impresses me how much Becca comprehends and how quickly she learns.  I'm starting to feel a little anxious about all that I need to teach her, now that she is not a baby anymore!  

Devin returned (again!) late Friday night, this time to stay for awhile - huzzah!  We got up very early to go to the 5K race Devin was competing in, as part of the city-wide "Corporate Challenge" (where different companies compete in all types of sports as an incentive to be healthy and to network).  Devin didn't do as well as he had hoped, and we'll blame it on 2 1/2 weeks of living it up on $60/day eating out and no time to exercise, plus five hours of sleep the night before.  Those are great excuses, right?  But Becca and I had fun cheering him on, and we're proud of him. 

exhausted

"Now pretend it was no big deal, Devin"

We made it home in time for some yummy pancakes during the Saturday morning session of the 182nd annual General Conference! We love Conference! In between sessions, we decided to go for a swim, since we heard they started heating the pool (which, by the way, was a gross falsehood).

Becca is so lucky to have her own personal swim coach.  She's working on kicking her legs:

Becca is a cute little monkey, imitating so much that we do.  This was a really heart-warming moment to catch her in, during the sustaining of the general officers of the Church (Saturday afternoon session of General Conference):

So. Yeah. That's pretty much how it went down in March with the Moore's.