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.

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!

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

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!

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: