Sunday, September 28, 2008

Funny Story

I forgot to write a funny story from my trip to Las Vegas a few weeks ago:

On the way home in the airport I had to get me and Dallen through security. I walked up to the lady working there and handed her my boarding pass and driver's license and she looks back and forth between the confused and starts reading the names-one has my current name and one my maiden name. Turns out that my new CA driver's license has my maiden name on it instead of my married name! (The CA DMV is a whole other story-ugh!) I had no idea-I hadn't noticed and apparently the airport in San Diego hadn't either. So there I was trying to explain that I am really Amber the name on the ticket and that the DMV made a mistake. I ended up having to show them credit card with married name on it and then they let me through.

Then I get to the actual checkpoint and have to take Dal out of the stroller, put it, my diaper bag, my shoes, etc. up on the conveyor belt. Someone helped me with the stroller but they put it on upside down so a toy went flying out of it to the wrong side of the conveyor belt so someone had to grab that for me. Then I got to walk through the metal detector and realize I left my boarding pass in the diaper bag that just went down the conveyor. So they had to call someone over check that after I got through. Then the whole line stops and they are yelling “bag check!” and I realize it is my bag they are talking about-or more particularly, my stroller. I had half a bottle of cranberry juice in the bottom of it that I forgot about and you can't go through with liquids. But, while they were taking the stroller off the conveyor belt, because it was upside down, everything that was in it fell out all over the floor! (Toys, papers, pacifiers, etc. At this point I just started laughing-there was nothing else to do!

This entry is brought to you by the letter F

It was F week for me and Jack-meaning our letter of the week was F this past week. There is so much you can do with that letter and we had fun (see-fun starts with F) doing things like finger prints, finger painting, coloring fire trucks and farms, and eating fishes (gold fish). But the real fun (Fun) came when we had our Price Family Fun party Friday night.

We had no plans this weekend so we improvised. Josh sent me a list of wacky ideas of things to do Friday night and I decided to run with it and planned our little party. (I have to say, my favorite on Josh's list of ideas was to watch the Presidential debates as an exercise in recognizing half truths, lies and distortions.) Anyway, after dinner (Food) we had Four Fun activities. First we drew pictures with our Feet of our Family. Then we played Find the Shoe, followed by a Wii Fit competition and then Cookie Frisbee (throwing cookies at each other to see if we could catch them in our mouths.) During all of this if we said any word that started with the letter F we emphasized it-such as f-f-feet. I am not sure whether you are all now thinking we are really cool or really big nerds!!

Other than that the week has been good. We spend most afternoons outside in our front yard because there is a wonderful breeze that is always blowing out there, we have shade in the entire yard and the boys have a fun friend 2 doors down that they love to play with. Our yard has become sort of a gathering place for people in the neighborhood which is great! At times we have 7-8 boys in our front yard playing (from babies up to 6 year olds) and I have gotten to know a lot of the neighbors better than I ever knew any of our WI neighbors the whole time we were there. I got some great shots of Dallen enjoying our "fall" weather (meaning that the temperature cooled down to 72 degrees and 20 leaves fell off our neighbor's tree).

Here he is in Nathan's "space man" hat. Nathan put it on him.

And here is my crazy kid just hanging out in the grass. (Jack was asleep-that is why there are no pics of him.) Nathan puts on these ridiculous navy blue sweats every single afternoon because they are a part of his costuming-some days they are racecar driver pants, some days they are space man pants, you name it, they can be it. He goes into crisis if he can't find them.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Crawling, Dancing, and Cookies

I always feel like my updates are boring if I have no pictures and I have none tonight. Sorry! I will take some this week.

Our big news is that Dal is officially crawling! Today is the day that he really got the hang of it. Give him a day or two and I bet he will be chasing his brothers all over the place and I will be wishing he hadn't learned to crawl.

We had a great weekend! Friday night was the Sock Hop at Nathan's school and we had a blast. It was a simple dance-in the school multi purpose room (which would be called a cafeteria but oh wait, we live in San Diego and the kids can just each lunch outside every single day!) with a DJ playing corny music like YMCA and the Hokey Pokey and it couldn't have been more fun. Me and Josh were the only adults out there dancing but we danced like crazy people with the boys. Nathan had a special dance that he was really intent on performing. It involved putting his hands in his pockets and bobbing up and down to the music (while wearing a zip down hoodie and his BYU hat-by the time I finally asked him if he wanted to take his jacket off his face was bright red and he was all sweaty).

Saturday we went to the San Diego Zoo. We didn't have a lot of time but we have season passes so we can go anytime we want for as long or as short as we want. Josh hadn't been there yet. We only spent about an hour and a half there but it was a really nice day (surprise!) and was just fun to be out doing something.

Tonight (Sunday) we baked cookies to take to some people at church. I baked a batch of Mrs. Field's chocolate chip cookies and headed out armed with the addresses of 7 families in the ward and a bunch of plates of cookies. We only made it as far as 2 people's houses because we stayed so long-which was perfect! It felt great to get to know some people. Tomorrow night's family home evening acitivity is going to be delivering some more cookies!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Crazy Southern Cal people and The Grocery Game

Hi again! Two blogs in a week-aren't you all lucky! I just had to write about a couple of things that have been on my mind this week.

First of all-those of you in WI will appreciate this-when I dropped Nathan off at school the past two days I think I was dubbed a "bad mother" by many of the people surrounding me who were also dropping off their kids. I had Dallen (and the other boys as well) dressed in shorts and a tee shirt. Heck, one day he was in a onesie. The weather was 68 degrees. I guess maybe that is borderline I should put pants on Dallen weather, maybe. But I kid you not-I saw people with winter hats on!!! No, that is not a joke. Most people had sweatshirts and long pants on, I even saw goosebumps on some of my mom friends. And one little boy and his dad with jackets and winter hats. I know people were eyeing me wondering how I could dare to bring my baby out in weather like that without a jacket and long pants, maybe even a blanket and a hat!

The other big news in my life is that I am saving tons of money on groceries! I always thought coupon clipping seemed like a waste of time but since we moved to SoCal and groceries are a lot more I decided to give it a whirl and I am amazed at how much I have saved! For example, on my first trip to a grocery store doing this I bought about $100 worth of groceries and saved $53!! Whoa! I am doing this through a site: http://www.thegrocerygame.com It tells you what is on sale and what coupons match the sales and then the idea is to buy stuff while it is on sale really cheap and then stockpile it until you need it. That way you never pay full price for anything! I am suprised at how much I am saving. I went to CVS last week and got 3 bottles of shampoo, 3 bottles of conditioner, 2 deodorants for me, 2 for Josh, 2 kid's toothpastes and a pack of gum for $18 plus $2 back! Just the shampoo and conditioner should have cost $18 so basically everything else was free! I am loving this but I warn, it is addicting! Anyway, I recommed trying out the grocery game. But if you do, make sure you say that I sent you. :) Use this email address (but put in email address format, not the way I am going to write it) as the referral email address: amberaprice at gmail.com

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Grandma Visit

It has been a while since I updated! Things have been busy this past week and I think I was just too tired last Sunday night to blog.


This week Grandma came to visit! She was here for a little over a week and we had lots of fun having her here and showing her around our new home. The best part of her visit was our trip to the zoo that we took just this past Thursday. How cool is it that we can take people who come to visit us to some of the nation's biggest tourist attractions? The day was perfect. We went Thursday because Nathan gets out of school early-so we headed down there early in the afternoon and spent about 4 hours there (it closes at 6). The weather was perfect and it was not crowded. We saw the Sea Lion show and rode the bus tour and then just walked around and saw the rest of the zoo. It was really great.

This is the reason I love Dallen. He is the sweetest, happiest baby-I wanted to get a picture of him and he just got so excited. Grandma is going to be thrilled that I am posting this picture of her half smiling but Dal was just to cute in it not to post. His arms are blurry because he was waving them so hard because he was so excited:

The two bigger boys really had a great time. The picture above is an unusual one. How often do we get a picture of Jack smiling at the camera and looking adorable and Nathan making a weird face? Usually that is flip flopped.

Other than that we mostly just hung out in our beautiful front yard with grandma, took her to a park or two, went to Carlsbad to the outlets, Carl's Jr. for lunch and just played with her. I was out of town for two days-which is why she was here when she was here-to watch my boys while I was gone. I went to Las Vegas with Dal in tow for a trade show for my business. I left early Tuesday morning and came back Wednesday night. Spent both days at the trade show (1100 vendors showcasing their products and trying to find people like me to sell them). Dal did great but I felt so bad for him because he barely slept for the full two days.

The best part of our trip to Vegas was that my grandparents happened to be there at the same time so we got to see them for a while too. They took us to dinner Tuesday night (along with my friend who was at the show with me-someone I actually met on the internet a few years back who also owns a business like mine). Then Wed. when we got done with the show they picked us up and took us back to their Condo and took Dallen swimming! He loved that! It was so much fun to see them.

In other news we are feeling pretty settled in here. Nathan is still loving school and Jack is enjoying doing things with me. I am still wishing for more friends here-I am trying my best to make friends but it is slow going. We had a family over for dinner Friday night which was nice. My neighbors are amazing and the ladies at school are still great.

Well, I better go get ready for the week ahead!