Double Date Weekend

Scott and I got lucky last weekend and got to go on two date nights in a row. On Friday we went to the San Antonio Temple. We love having a temple so close, and we love having good friends to trade babysitting with (Thanks Kate!). It's always so nice to go somewhere so peaceful and get a break from everything. 

I was just noticing in this picture that it's true what they say about married people looking alike. Crazy huh? I don't think I realized how much Scott and I look alike until I saw this. 

On Saturday we went to Harry Potter 7 with our friends, the Livseys. Definitely my favorite Harry Potter movie. It was awesome. It took me forever to get on board with the Harry Potter craze, but I'm glad I finally decided to read the books because I love them now. I'd seen the movies prior to reading the books, but I didn't really enjoy them until I had read all the books. I'm amazed by J.K. Rowling's imagination. After Harry Potter we had dinner at Red Robin. It was one of those awesome weekends that only come around every once in awhile. I loved it. Spending some family time at the pool earlier that morning was like the cherry on top of the sweet weekend. 

Boston's "Nap Time"

I know my last post was about all the cute things Boston does around the house, but I forgot to mention some of the not so cute things he does around the house as well. He's cute, there's no doubt about that, but I wouldn't want Boston to grow up with skewed perception of his childhood thinking he never had a terrible two moment his entire life. 

Lately his 2 hour nap destroy-his-room time has been one of those not so cute things. This isn't the worst he can do (wipes torn up and strewn about are one of his specialties), but it's what his room looked like today after an afternoon of unsuccessful nap time attempts. I try my best to wear the kid out, but some days I'm the only one getting worn out. We spent the morning in the hot sun at Sea World. You would think that would knock the kid out by 2:00PM, but he was bouncing off the walls all the way up until 7:30PM when I put him to bed. At least he went to bed with no complaints. That's one good thing about skipping his nap time. Some days we wonder if he's done with naps, but he's 2 1/2. There's no way he can be done with naps! Right? Please tell me that's right. We know he's tired. We can see it in his eyes. He just has a hard time winding down. Once he winds down though, he's out for a solid 2-3 hours. 

The kid breaks everything. It's one of his favorite hobbies. Whenever he makes something in nursery or at the library it's like, "Look what I made mommy!" Now watch me rip it up!" I was telling Scott it must be a boy thing. I can't see a little girl tearing up one of her prized colorings. Can you? 

So much for this container. It went out with the garbage tonight. I liked that container. It was the perfect size for all his car toys. If we had an extra room I'd probably put all his toys and books in there and leave nothing but his bed in his room. Ha ha. Maybe then he would take a nap. 

Actually, I'm sure he'd still find something mischievous to do. Now I know what people meant when they said kids are expensive. Our dining room table has fork holes in it, our blinds need replacing, our laptop cord has been used as a rope too many times, our walls have been used as his canvas during meal time and need re-painting. The list could go on, but hey, these are just material things. We know he's worth it. 

That's a priceless smile if I ever did see one. His smile is contagious. I'd say that's a fair trade for a messy house and broken stuff.

Around the House With Boston

I wanted to do a post about some of the cute random things Boston does when we're hanging around the house. 

This arm wrestling match was pretty cute to watch. His self-esteem went through the roof when he beat his dad a few times. 

Another thing that I think is so cute is when he wants his toys and stuffed animals to eat with him. If he's holding a toy and I ask him if he wants to eat, he says, "OK. Elmo Wanna eat? OK." Notice that Elmo has a bib on just like him, except it looks more like a blanket on Elmo. I love it when he talks to his toys like they are real people. It always makes me smile. 

He not only talks to his toys, but he puts them in "time out" as well. This really makes me and Scott laugh because he acts the exact same way we do when we put him in time out. If one of his toys bumps him on the head or hurts him somehow he says, "Time out! No hit!" Then he walks to his room, puts the toy in there, and closes the door. He waits a few minutes and then opens the door back up and asks the toy if it will be nice, and then gives it a hug. It's hilarious, but you have to see it in person to get the full effect.

Boston also loves making huts out of blankets. We usually do it over the couch, but one day he crawled under the table, and it gave me the idea to make a hut out of the table. 

I thought this was such a good idea and that it would surely keep him entertained for at least an hour...

No such luck. It was a fun five minutes though. Maybe I'll try it again and hopefully with better success next time. I need ideas on how to keep a two-year-old entertained around the house. We're always going places because his attention span and energy don't fit in our apartment for very long. Maybe I just need to be more creative though, so please share some ideas with me if you have any!

Boston's absolute favorite thing to do around the house right now is watch Disney movies. He's a little too into movies, so we try really hard to limit him to one movie a day. That's another reason why we don't stick around the house too often. I get tired of hearing him beg for movies every second we are at home. As soon as he wakes up, he starts asking to watch a movie. We recently joined the Disney Movie Rewards club, mostly because we were so sick of watching the same five Disney movies over and over and over again. Our six new movies that we got when we joined the club were A Bug's Life, Princess and the Frog, Hercules, The Incredibles, A Goofy Movie, and Emperor's New Groove. 

Boston usually gives his favorite Disney movies nick names for the first little while until he learns their real names. Here are some of the current nick names:

Froggie=Princess and the Frog

Goosie=A Goofy Movie

Ants or bugs=A Bug's Life

Po=Kung Fu Panda

Peter Man=Peter Pan

Horsie or Tanya (his attempt to say Tangled)=Tangled

Fishie=Finding Nemo

Meremere=Little Mermaid (He also calls King Tritan "Ho Ho" because of his white beard.)

Since I usually only blog about the bigger things we do, I thought it would be fun to do a post about some of the little every day things too because those are sometimes more fun to look back on than the big things. We love having Boston around the house to make us smile and keep us entertained!

4 Years

It seems like the years are flying by even faster now that we are done with school and have a two-year-old to keep us busy. At dinner Scott asked me which year of our mariage feels like it's gone by the fastest, and I said definitely year 3 to year 4. I don't feel like it's been a whole year since this day!

It was Scott's turn to head up the anniversary plans this year. (We decided on anniversary number 1 that we'd take turns planning each anniversary.) We went to a cute restaurant called Scenic Loop Cafe for dinner. We both decided the food was "Master Chef" quality. (We've been having fun watching the Master Chef show together lately.) We will definitely be eating there again! 

Scott got mahi mahi stuffed with goat cheese, wild rice, and a sweet potato with an amazing sauce on it. The description of the sauce sounded weird on the menu, but made us really curious about how it would taste. I think it was a maple jalepeno sauce. Sounds really different, but I'd go back to that restaurant just to get one of those sweet potatoes. It was probably the best sweet potato I've ever tasted. The mahi mahi was dang good too. 

For the first time in the past 4 or 5 times we've gone out to eat, I didn't get fish. After I tasted Scott's though, I wish I would have. I wasn't very hungry, so I got the summer berry salad which was really fresh and really good, but next time I'll make sure to save up a better appetite so I can get what Scott got. 

Trying to decide if I needed a pool hat. I'm going to stick with sunglasses and sunscreen for now though.

After dinner we walked around the outdoor mall by our place called La Cantera. While we were walking around, Scott and I commented on how nice the weather felt. Then we realized how much we've adapted to the Texas heat since moving here last year. It was probably still in the 90's, but we didn't get sweat dripping down our back the second we stepped outside, therefore the weather felt really nice. It's funny how everything in life is so relative. 

Delicious gelato topped off our night out before we headed back home to catch up on the previous night's Master Chef episode. We were grateful to our friend Stacie for watching Boston for us! We are so blessed to have so many good friends in Texas! 

We can't wait to see what year 4-5 will bring us!

Not Everything is Bigger in Texas

I don't know if it was the lack of family, or the lack of fireworks, or both, but this year the Fourth of July felt more like a fun Saturday than a national holiday. This was our third time celebrating Independence Day in San Antonio, and I've come to the realize that although a lot of things are bigger in Texas, the Fourth of July isn't one of them.

There wasn't one drop of fireworks in San Antonio this year due to the drought. Don't worry, we weren't completely deprived. TV fireworks are better than nothing right? We felt really cool watching fireworks in our house at 9:00PM. Ha ha. I've realized that my Independence Days will never be the same again, but that's OK because they're fun in a different way now. 

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining too much because we really did have a fun day, and I loved having an extra day to hang out with Scott. I just get homesick every 4th of July because I miss the pretty green Utah grass, the family BBQ's, the firework shows that seem to last all month, and the perfect summer night weather. 

That being said, we are enjoying being able to start our own family traditions on holidays now. On the way home from our bike ride, Scott and I were talking about how even though it's sometimes hard to live far away from family, it is really good for our own little family to be able to spend quality time together. 

We decided to put our Texas State Parks pass to good use, as well as our bikes, and head up to a state park we'd never been to called Guadalupe River State Park. 

It was only about 30 minutes or so from our house and we are excited to go back with our swim suits next time so we can wade in the river. It's a perfect place to play in the water with toddlers because it's really shallow.

We rode our bikes around the park for a little while and checked out the campsites so we could find the best spots for when it gets to be camping weather (in November). There were a lot of people camping that weekend, and I don't know how they can stand to camp in this heat! 

When we couldn't take the heat beating down on us anymore we found a shady spot for Boston to play in the dirt and collect sticks and rocks. He prefers that over playgrounds, although he did swing on the swing for a few minutes. 

This was our little bench where we had a mini picnic, and Scott contemplated life. 

On our way home Scott made the mistake of pointing out this self serve frozen yogurt place called Kuhl Yogurt. I made him turn the car around right after he pointed it out. 

Self serve frozen yogurt has a way of putting a big smile on your face. Good thing it's kind of expensive though, otherwise I would eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

Boston sure did do a good job looking adorable in these pictures, especially because these pictures say nothing about how he was really acting at this frozen yogurt place. He was way past ready for his nap, and actually being an emotional mess the entire time we were there. Good thing we have a fast camera because I was able to capture the 3 seconds that Boston wasn't throwing a tantrum on film. 

It was all worth it for the deliciousness of that frozen yogurt though. 

After we got Boston a much needed nap, we had our good friends, the Reeves, over for a BBQ and pool time. 

Boston and Kylie are definitely water babies. They love the water, and spend half their summer in it because it's so much more fun than getting bum burns down the hot slides at the park.

My one attempt at trying to make this 4th of July feel a little more like the 4th of July (besides listening to country music all day) was to buy red, white, and blue popsicles. 

If you want to know what swimming in this pool felt like, just imagine taking a warm bath with a heater blowing on you. Ha ha. Since when do swimming pools make you hotter than you were before you got in? This pool is extra warm because the hot tub water flows in to it. It was nice back in March, but it's a little too warm now. 

It will probably take some more adjusting to get used to Independence Day the Texas way and not having my familiar childhood traditions anymore, but all in all it was still a really fun day!

Caught Sticky Handed

I was making Boston a peanut butter sandwich the other day and left the jar a little too close to his high chair. I started making my own lunch, and when I turned back around this is what I saw. He's a clever little guy. Every time I make him a peanut butter sandwich, he usually just ends up licking the peanut butter off the bread, so when I left the jar too close to him, it only took him about 5 seconds to realize that this was a lot easier. It caught me off guard for a second to see a sticky mess, but then I started laughing and quickly grabbed my camera. I had to get a picture of that guilty, but cute and content look on his face. Love this kid. 

Over Two Years Later...

Boston's friend Kennedy came over to play yesterday so her parents could go to the temple. Once a month we swap kids and each take a turn going on a date to the temple. We love having good friends here in Texas that we can do that with!

While Boston and Kennedy were playing, I was noticing that Boston is now bigger than Kennedy, even though Kennedy is 6 months older than him. That reminded me of the first time Boston and Kennedy hung out together... 

Kennedy was Boston's first date at just under one month old.
(Side note: Scott and I were shocked when we saw how brown Boston was. We didn't even realize how bad his jaundice was!)

Boston was kind of scared of girls back then. Ha ha.

But, the tables have turned now. 

Not only is Boston the bigger one, but he's also taken a liking to girls. His two best friends are girls now. 

He does his best to impress them.

We've known Zak and Kate (Kennedy's parents) for 3 years now. We lived by each other in Utah, and we also lived by each other for the summer that Scott and Zak did their internship at USAA. Zak accepted a job with USAA the following year, and then we followed them back out to Texas a year after that. It's crazy how many random connections we have with these guys, including a mutual aunt. However, we aren't cousins because Kate's aunt married Scott's uncle. Anyway, we're glad we've followed them across the country a couple times because they're great friends both for us, and for Boston.