Wild Animals

We have had another nice week. San Diego really has been a great place to live so far. The only downfall is missing our WI friends so much! Other than that this place is great!

Nathan still just adores school and everything relating to it. His "low point" yesterday (when we played high point, low point at dinner) was that he didn't get to go to school! He just comes out of school in such a great mood everyday and he is already learning so much! Me and Jack really are enjoying going to pick him up everyday and having time to play on the playground and I like getting to know the other moms and things as well.

Yesterday we went to the Wild Animal Park (affiliated with the San Diego Zoo). We have been there twice now. It was great-we didn't go until after 6:00 p.m. so it was cool and the sun was setting before we left so it was really pretty. We have season passes so we can just go like that anytime we want. It is only about 15 minutes from us. We went to "The Poop Show" while we were there-Nathan really got a kick out of that! The boys were so sweet with each other-they walked around holding hands and talking. Nathan, being the crazy kid he is, wanted to wear his backpack the whole time so we let him.



I also got to go to the temple yesterday. That was wonderful! To drive 20 minutes, do a session and drive 20 minutes home is paradise after the 10 hour days of driving to Chicago and trading off with the kids and things. Plus, San Diego is the most beautiful temple I have ever been in. It is astounding-I just love it.

Tomorrow we are going to buy a grill! That was one of the things we (ok-I) really wanted to get when getting to San Diego so we can BBQ all year! So we plan to get one tomorrow and spend the evening BBQing, slip n sliding and planting some flowers.

Dallen has some new tricks-he dances, he can get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth and will be crawling any day now and the poor kid is cutting at least 4 teeth! (Might be 6 even-I am not sure yet.)

Here is a picture or two from our beach trip last week. We love the beach!

Our first "real" week

Well, we have lived through our first "real" week here-Josh started work and Nathan started school and things went great!

Nathan started school Tuesday and I don't know if I have every seen him so happy. He just loves it. He comes out of school each day in such a good mood. He has found friends, loves his teacher and is enjoying learning. I am a little concerned that he may be talking too much in class or something. I hope that he is behaving well. I keep reminding him of all the rules-I just hope he is being a good boy. When he gets out he has just been so sweet to Jack and so happy. I think not being together all day is really helping their relationship. Here is Nathan on his first day:
We drop Nathan off at school at about 8:00. That means we have to be out of the house by about 7:50 and not only that, but we have to actually walk Nathan onto the playground and stay there until he lines up and walks to class, so we have to be presentable. This has been no small task to get myself dressed and presentable, Nathan totally ready for school, and Jack and Dallen dressed and hopefully fed before we head out the door. Two days have gone well so far, two days could have been better. I am finding that I like being ready that early in the morning though. Usually we come back to the house right after dropping Nathan off so I can eat breakfast, make beds or whatever, but then we are ready for the day and can head out right away if we have errands or do something fun around the house if we have nothing else going on.

Oh and here is the cake I made to celebrate Nathan's first day of Kindergarten. Made me feel like a pretty cool mom. I always wanted a cake like this when I was a kid and I can't even remember if my mom ever made me one. I know she made me lots of other cool cakes but wouldn't you know all I remember is wishing for a school bus cake?

Jack and I have started doing our preschool-Letter of the Week. We did the letter A last week and had a lot of fun. More than anything this just give Jack a chance to feel like he is doing something special too because he is a little jealous that Nathan gets to go to school and he doesn't and it gives me incentive to plan fun activities for me and Jack to do together. For the letter at we cut out pictures of animals, went on an A scavenger hunt, did apple stamping and practiced writing the letter A. Jack is waiting for the letter D though because he remembers when I did this with Nathan and knows we made doughnuts that week. Jack has been in such a good mood since we got to San Diego. For the past two months he has been hard to deal with-throwing tantrums left and right-just grouchy all day everyday. But all of a sudden he is a sweet and fun three year old. Still opinionated and stubborn-he will always be that way and I sort of love that about him (ahem since I sort of know where he got that) but just fun to be around and cute.

After school we pick Nathan up (at 2:30) and since it is always beautiful weather, we stay after and let the boys play on the school playground. The nice thing about this is that I have found a few friends on the playground for myself. One mom has a boy in Nathan's class that he is friends with and then she also has a three year old boy and a baby girl. She and I have sat and talked after school while our kids played a couple of times. She seems like a really great person with similar standards and things so that has been nice. Also we have met two neighbors who have kids in kindergarten as well. One of them lives just two doors down and has a boy in Nathan's class. So that has been nice.

Yesterday we went to the beach again and had a really nice time. We didn't get there until about 4 pm and found that it was packed with people but it ended up being fine. Jack actually got in the water this time and had a blast with Nathan riding the waves. They also built a big sandcastle with daddy and had a great time. Dallen was a challenge there because he is starting to get around and to know what he wants. He wanted the sand and he wanted it in his mouth and if we put him down on a towel he was able to get there. Yes, he did manage to get a mouthful of sand at one point. (Sorry Pam-I know you are going to have a hard time reading that!)

Josh bought a used baby grand piano this week (with money we had specifically for that). He has been sitting here playing beautiful music while I type and it is really nice. It feels fitting for him because music is a big hobby of his and he hasn't been able to enjoy it for many years because we haven't had a piano and because he can't play his trumpet a lot of the time because it is too loud when people are sleeping or because he is worried about the neighbors hearing it. So I am happy that he has this piano now.

Month in Review

Well, it has been quite a month and there is too much to try to write in detail about it all so I figured a nice month in review overview would in order. We left Madison on July 20th-I guess I did update a little while we were in Denver but I didn't have pictures to post then. Now I do. We really had a lot of fun in Denver-swimming was the thing we did the most of. Although we seem to have lost Nathan and Jack whenever we were in the pool and ended up with these two strange masked men:

Nathan actually believed the goggles gave him super floating powers and refused to believe that his new found ability to "swim" actually came from him, but was determined that the goggles were making him float. (He really was "swimming"-putting his head in the water and doing a doggie paddle sort of swim which is huge for this kid who a year ago didn't want any part of his head going anywhere near water.)

And of course Jack wanted to swim in the pink boat. I asked him yesterday if he wants me to get him a pink polo shirt to wear to church and he got so excited!

Dallen loved playing with his cousin James who is just 9 months older than him. OK, well he was oblivious to James, but Jack loved playing with James, much to James' chagrin. Dallen did enjoy his Grandparents though. Nathan and Jack had a fun water fight with Grandpa-the wettest one wins!

After Denver we drove to Utah (that took 11 hours when it should have taken 8!) and spent a few days there. We stayed with Josh's grandparents there and had a lot of fun. We hiked the Y (bad idea-it was hot and really hard), went to the Brick Oven, toured the almost finished Draper temple (my brother is the project engineer on it), went to a fun park, ate at Smart Cookie, saw family, and tried Cafe Rio for the first time (and loved it!). It was a really fun trip. I think the highlight for the boys were the diggers that were working on the road right behind grandma and grandpa's house the whole time we were there.

Next it was on to Vegas for one night. We met up with my cousin and her family at a splash park and had pizza and played. That was really fun! It was fun to see them and the boys had fun playing! I couldn't take pictures of any of this because I left my camera in Denver-whoops!

Then we got to San Diego and moved in beginning August 8th. We fell in love with San Diego almost immediately. The area we are living in is absolutely beautiful. The whole city is so pretty and nice. The weather is blue sky everyday-although it has been a little humid and warm.

We spent the week dividing our time between getting moved in and settled and having fun as a family. We unloaded Friday and unpacked (like a mad woman I might add) on Saturday. We were probably 80% done with boxes being unpacked after Sat. Then we spent about 7 hours cumulative between me and Josh in the DMV this week getting cars registered, driver's licenses and registering to vote. We have also seen to everything we needed to before Josh starts work-insurance, groceries, registering Nathan for school, that sort of thing.

When we weren't busy with all of that we went to the beach (oh it was wonderful but again, I didn't have my camera!), checking out Point Loma and seeing the big military ships and planes come in and out, and visiting the Wild Animal Park (we got season passes to it and the zoo). We also went to a park nearby and went out for fat free frozen yogurt that was free because we had free coupons!!

So it has been a fun week. Josh starts work tomorrow, Nathan starts school Tuesday (full day kindergarten-the school district just switched to full day!), and me and Jack will start a little home preschool doing a letter of the week. I hope it will go well. Our ward has been great so far-very welcoming and friendly with tons of activities going on. We had a ward party last night which was really nice. But believe me we are missing our friends in Madison quite a bit. I kept thinking about all my friends at bookclub this past week and wishing I was there!

Here are some pictures of our house. There are some things that are great about it and some really not so great! It is old and dingy in some places which was disappointing. BUT, it is huge compared to what we were in-we actually have empty space leftover even with all the unpacking done (although I have declared that no one is ever to buy my children a new toy ever again because they have way too many) and very light with natural sunlight coming in and the backyard is great with a wonderful view and a nice dirt box for the boys to play in. Oh and Dallen started babbling this week which we all just love and he learned his first trick-if you as him to go crazy he will shake his head back and forth.

We have been enjoying the Olympics but that makes for some late nights staying up to watch it. Oh, and we have lost Nathan again but we have found this creature called Super Snood: