Viva Las Vegas

To celebrate 10 years together, Brock took the little fam to Las Vegas last week. It was nice to get away for a few days. We stayed at the Golden Nugget. The pool at the Nugget has a cool water slide that at one point actually goes through an aquarium filled with sharks! Brock, being the super cool dad that he is, took Sam down the slide. When I say took, I actually mean he put him on the slide by himself and sent him on his way since there are no trains or lap-ridding allowed. Sam came shooting out the bottom head first, huge grin, and floaties in place. The head lifeguard was not too pleased. #1 you have to be 48" tall, #2 you have to be able to swim without floaties. Sam does not fit either description.

We also walked the strip a little while we were there.
Hope Wonder Woman likes getting felt up. We went through the M&M Factory- 4 floors of very cute stuff, all M&M, all over.
We checked out the LIONs at MGM, very cool.

The male lion was huge, at one point he was buggin' the female and she did not put up with him! Even though he was at least 2x her size, she was like--
"O no, u di' n't" (that's my African lingo). After their little Lovers Quarrel, they went and layed down above one of the walk ways. It was cool to be able to get so close to them.

Don't the kids just look so happy!

Thanks for the trip babe, I needed a little vaca.

The Sniff Test

On Monday afternoon I made some chocolate cupcakes. On Tuesday morning, while I was getting ready to go to an all day class for work, I kept getting a wiff of poop. Sam had had the poops Monday evening and had crawled into bed with us during the night. So since I keep smelling poop, I start sniffing. I smell the bed, his pjs, everywhere I can think to see where this smell is coming from. In the meantime I take a tide pen to a stripe of chocolate that is on the front of my jeans- stain resolved. Okay...I can not figure out where the smell of poop is coming from so I have Brock do the sniff test on me before I leave just in case. He smells my shirt- no poop, he smells my back pockets- no poop, we are just about to give up so I can get to class, and I have him smell my chocolate stain.


Chocolate or poop. Chocolate or poop.


Yup, it was poop.

I quickly changed my jeans and left for class. Thank you Brock for the sniff test and Thank you Samson for getting poop on me. I wish it had been chocolate.

Cali ART Trip 2010

My mom and I just love to travel. This year we took the college art trip down to LA again and we took Allison and Christian with us. They were both surprisingly well-behaved! We went to several places and the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We visited:
The Huntington Library
The Norton-Simmon
The J. Paul Getty
LACMA
Redondo Pier
The Getty Villa
Disneyland
Forest-Lawn

Here are some highlights from the trip!






We bought Alli her "Jesse Friend" that she has been asking about since Christmas when Buzz and Woody came to play. Alli was finally tall enough to go on Splash Mountain ( a moment of silence please) and she "tolerated well" as we nurses would say. She was scared but felt safe with me. The reason you can't see us in the pic is cuz we are in the very back- that is her leg in the upper left corner. Alli's favorite place was probably the beach at Redondo Pier. She kept saying, "Mom, I gotta stay in this dirt." Instead of satisfying me with a little vaca- this trip made me just want to go again. I think that is what seeing so much art does. You get a taste and then you want to take another bite. There was an exhibit on Leonardo Davinchi (spelling?) and it was just amazing. That man had some talent. The Chinese Gardens were open at the Huntington, which we had never seen before- beautiful water feature. We really had a great time and Alli was such a good girl. She is turning out to be such a good little traveler- hallelujah!

Playground built by Grandpa Bartell

As most of you know we received some $mula$ the end of Feb, for well...a little service project I did. We decided to buy a playground for the kiddos and Costco had an awesome one on for $999.99. We bought it and brought home the 5 boxes and found that we had to completely assemble it down to the screws and shingles and all. Grandpa Karl was totally awesome and came down on his days off to build the monster and yes it took several days. Now it is all finished, the kids love, love, LOVE it. They play on it everyday, weather permitting. Thanks so much Pop, I love ya.



There is a slide, a swing set, a rock climbing wall, and more. The older girls love to play on it as much as the little ones do. Jordan has had several sleep-overs out in the club house. We are so glad we bought it, and so happy Grandpa helped us (or did it all basically) put it together.