In Case You Were Wondering

We are still plugging away. Been really busy so I haven't gotten a chance to do a real blog update, but here's a quick one to tide over our faraway fans a.k.a. my mom. 

Took my T.E.A.S. test (Test of Essential Academic Skills) last Friday to get into a nursing program.  The national average is 73% and most schools just say you need a 67% or higher. I wasn't sure what to study since the subject matter was pretty broad. Now I realize I really should have known how to convert to the metric system since I bombed that section. I blame that on the silly American set up we have going on here :) Why don't we just all switch to meters like the rest of the world and get rid of this silly inches and feet nonsense? Anyway I got an 84% which I suppose isn't too shabby, but I was really bummed for a few days and upset at myself for not taking it more seriously. 

Then Friday night we went to a wedding that was absolutely gorgeous. Our friend Holly got married and her now husband Steve was just beaming during the whole ceremony. It was really cute! They had a pasta bar at the reception and my all time fav: Italian sodas! Mmmmmm. 

Then we left early Saturday morning to go to Santa Barbara to another wedding for a coworker of Matt's.  Matt's mom Carol came with us thankfully so she was able to watch S. for us during the wedding. The ceremony was on the rooftop of a hotel on what would have been the perfect day if it hadn't been so stinking hot! Santa Barbara usually stays nice and cool since it's by the ocean, but it had to have been in the 100's there that day. At their reception they had a photo booth that I think we utilized more than anyone else there!

Then this week we have been spending the majority of it trying to keep cool (Sunday was 113 degrees, I applaud my Arizonian friends who put up with that kind of heat on a regular basis. I felt like my brain was frying), getting ready for Sawyer's birthday and preparing an 8 minute speech that I have to give in my speech class tonight. Ugh. Speaking of now I need to go practice it just to be sure it's a whole 8 minutes and not 3 or 4. 

 

One More Week

Only 5 more days until Sawyer turns one year old and he already got his very first birthday card (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Hansen!)

We finally finished filling in his baby book. I didn't think it would ever get done because we never order prints anymore since all our photos are digital. The frame sizes in the book were really bizarre too so luckily Matt helped crop them so they would fit. We went through Sawyers whole last year in photos (all 3,000+ of them) and picked out our favorites. I wanted to have it done before his party so I can bring it and have everyone sign their name under the section about his first birthday.

I also came across these photos of Sawyer's grandpa Ed at age 1 and then a photo of Matt at age 1. Talk about similarity! And I don't mean just their features. They are both turned the same direction, wearing collared shirts, shorts, shoes and socks, and have their legs bent! I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do the same with Sawyer and then put them all into a frame. Matt and I attempted to take his photo the other day but he was so squirmy the one on the right was the best we were able to get. He's got the collared shirt, the shorts, the shoes and socks, but his head is facing forward. Now the question is, is it worth it to try again? 

What do you think?

Kidspace

Last night we took Sawyer to a kids museum in Pasadena called Kidspace that we heard about from his boss.

It's normally $10 per adult or child, but kids less than a year are free so we had to take full advantage since we only have 2 more weeks until that changes! 

Last night was Pirate night too so all kids were invited to dress up like pirates, come make swords and eye patches and the prices were discounted to $5 per person. 

If you live in the surrounding area and have children it's a must to go check it out! Sawyer was a little bit too young to enjoy a lot of the things, but we definitely plan on taking him back at around age 2-3. 

There were lots of activities to do outside. Running through fountains, playing in a creek, riding bikes around "streets" on the sidewalk. But out of all the toys guess what two things Sawyer enjoyed the most....

2 rocks that he found outside. 

Yep good thing he was free. 

He carried those two little rocks around like they were diamonds in the rough. 

They even made him lose his balance and crash, but didn't seem to mind. 

Going for a stroll through the gardens outside. 

We give Kidspace 2 thumbs up. 

 In case you were thinking Sawyer's chin is in desperate need of being wiped off in all the photos, he actually had a "Pirates" goutee drawn on his chin at one of the face painting stations. 

Play Day

 I remember the time when all you lived for was play day. Then you turn into a grown up and now it's pay day you look forward to. Sawyer has another 16+ years before he has to worry about that, or maybe only 8 depending on when we put him to work. 

One day a few weeks ago when it was way too hot to even think about playing outside we went to an indoor playground near us. 

There were all kinds of fun toys to play with. 

S took one of the cars out for a spin. 

Make sure you look over your shoulder before switching lanes. 

We met my friend Liz there with her two girls Kaylee and Phoebe. I worked with Liz at Cosmoprof when she was pregnant with Phoebe. Now look how big she is!  Liz and I both are currently trying to get into nursing school. 

This video is only 44 seconds long, but you may want to turn the volume down or you'll go mad during it's short duration. The kid running the front desk at the playground was unaware the cd that was supposed to be playing children's music was skipping.  

Cousins

"Cousin Jett, is it really YOU???" 

"I'm just not sure because the last time we met, you were so small. 

But then again, so was I." thoughts of Sawyer. 

Yep, there's no mistaking it. They are definitely family. They steal share toys, 

and even pacifiers. 

The friday after we got back from our vacation we got to hang out with my brother Ben and Chantal who were on their vacation in Palos Verdes. Ben had just gotten back from Afghanistan and we are very happy he's home!! But by how much Jett wanted to be held by his daddy when were there, I think he was even happier ;)

Their resort was amazing and we were able to use all the fun stuff there like the pool, 

and the slide. 

What crazy adults are waiting in line for the kiddie slide? 

Oh that would be Matt and I. Ben sneakily snapped a photo of us in line behind two little girls. 

After swimming we went to eat at where else, but.....(say it with me) Cafe Rio! No just kidding we actually for once didn't go there. Instead we went and ate our our 2nd most favorite place, The Habit. We had taken Ben and Chantal to the one in Santa Barbara before when we were both pregnant and Ben had been dreaming of it ever since. Their hamburgers are spectacular, not to mention their ranch dressing is heavenly. I think the people at the Northridge location actually know us now. That's just sad. Anyway, 

I tried to get a photo of the boys holding hands, but my timing was always off. They thoroughly enjoyed munching on fries together. 

With full tummies we then headed to the beach. 

Jett was in love with the sand! He couldn't get enough of it and kept wanting to put his hands and feet in it. 

My favorite nephew. 

He's such a cutie patootie!!

But how could he not be with such extremely good looking parents? 

Ben returned the favor and took one of us with the resort in the background. 

We ended out day together by swinging, well the boys did anyway. It would have been a tight fit for any of us to get our legs in there. 

We hope the Howell clan had as much fun with as we did with them. Thanks for letting us come play with you on the last day of your family vacation! 

Welcome Home Ben!

Without Further Adieu

I present to you our time in Sydney.

 It's only taken me 3 weeks to get around to finish posting about our vacation. So many other fun things have happened since then, but I know if I write about those first then I'll never wrap up our australian adventure. So lest I forget our wonderful time in Sydney, here is a detailed account of our time spent there:  

I think I left off with us checking into our hotel. Once we did that, we set out walking to try and find the Opera House. We had no idea where we were going except for Matt's internal compass leading the way. We ran into an elderly couple strolling ever so slowly by us. We would pass them and then stop to look at something or take pictures and then they would take the lead only for us to pass them again. Finally we struck up a conversation and learned the man was a retired doctor in Sydney, that they had lived in the states for a few years, and had traveled to Los Angeles quite a bit. He gave us super detailed instructions on where we needed to go in Sydney, how much time it would take us to get there and even wrote up a list for us on a map of what points we needed to hit before we left to go home. His wife was trying the whole time to get him to stop bothering us, which he wasn't, but she thought he was taking up too much of our time. In actuality we were really glad we had met them since after that we knew exactly where we needed to go and what we wanted to do. Now I wish I would have taken a picture with them, but I did keep the list he wrote for us so I can eventually scrapbook it. 

This was taken right after we had met the doc. 

We made it to the Opera House and explored there for quite a while. 

Once it got dark we decided to start walking back to the hotel, but had some fun changing the camera's shutter speed all along the way.

The next morning we left the hotel around 9 am in search of breakfast. We wanted to find a decent sized one so we would only have top buy one more meal during the day since food was so expensive. We meandered through the downtown area with our stroller amongst all the women and men in suits hustling to get to work. There we discovered a little breakfast joint with a HUGE breakfast platter! Massive. And delicious. We each got one, but we would have been better off just sharing. 

After breakfast we decided to walk through the botanical gardens. 

At one point Matt looked up into the trees and saw these.

Vampire fans eat your heart out....

there were hundreds of bats sleeping just a few yards above our heads. 

The gardens were amazing and we spent a few hours just walking through them taking oodles of photos. 

What a goofy goober. 

After trekking through every last street in the downtown area, every single path that wound amongst the botanical gardens and every inch around the opera house we hopped on a ferry to take us to Manly Beach. 

There we walked along the beach soaking it all in while savoring lots and lots of double coated chocolate Tim Tams that we bought earlier that day at a 7/11. Sustenance for all of our walking. 

Once we had our fill of all the sights that Manly Beach had to offer we boarded the ferry back.

 Sawyer was such a trooper the whole entire day. 9 hours of being out and about all while in the stroller for the majority of it and he was still a happy little man. 

Right after these photos were taken of him giggling, I put him back in the stroller and a group of Japanese kids around the ages of 14-15 saw him and thought he was the neatest thing they'd seen since Pokemon. They were making all sorts of silly faces at him, some a little more scary then they were silly, and getting the biggest kick of it when he would so much as crack one corner of his mouth up at an attempted half smile. We almost missed our exit off the ferry because they were so enthralled with him and wouldn't budge. I'm sure Sawyer still has their faces engrained in his brain since all of them were mere inches from his the whole time. 

We saw an incredible sunset on the ferry before we disembarked and got some awesome photos of it with the Harbour Bridge. Once we got back we were still itching to explore one last area. Across the harbor was Luna Park with all sorts of rides and carnival like attractions. We took a ferry over to check it out because who doesn't like an amusement park, right? Well, once we arrived to the other side this is what it looked like. 

Deserted.

We were the only ones there.

Which is why it was even more creepy when we came upon the entrance to the park and were all alone, with a big menacing clown face. Aaaah! The entrance wasn't even closed off so if we'd really felt like freaking ourselves out we could have stepped right in to explore all the empty rides. I already felt like we were in really scary horror flick just walking past it!

I wouldn't want anyone to have nightmares by leaving that image as the last one on here so I'll end with this photo below. Going to the other side wasn't a huge bust because Matt was able to take some really cool photos like this one and it was neat to see the whole Sydney cityscape all lit up. 

We got back to our hotel that evening around 9. We'd been going nonstop for twelve hours! Marathon training has been a breeze compared to the workout we had that day. I actually welcomed the thought of spending 12+ hours on the plane the following day because I could give my poor aching feet and legs a nice long break.
The next morning we left to go back home.
 Our whole vacation was amazing and exploring Sydney the last few days was the icing on the cake. Perfect, delectable, finger licking good icing.