Moab

In February my dear old dad turned fifty so for his fiftieth birthday present my sister and I went in on a condo in Moab and last weekend was the trip. It was a quick trip, but we had a great time and it was nice to spend some time together as a family. Olivia was a great little traveler.

I love this picture of Livi with her sunglasses on!

Hiking at Dead Horse Point

Mom & Dad

Olivia loved playing in the dirt. Getting dirt and sand out of her hair is no easy task. There was so much dirt in the tub that night after her bath.

Olivia had a pretty sweet set up in this backpack. I need someone to carry me around in one of these things. Thanks for carrying her mom.

On the way home we got a little bored and decided to have a contest to see who could fit the most Cheetos in their mouth. My brother-in-law won the competition with 21 Cheetos, my sister came in second with 20 Cheetos and I gave a disgraceful performance and was only able to fit 11 Cheetos in my mouth. Luckily my sister couldn't figure out how to work my camera so there are no mortifying pictures of my participation in the contest.

Mom's Helper

While doing yard work last week I noticed we had a lot of ants in the yard and I'm paranoid about them getting into the house. I needed to mop the floor this morning anyway, but I decided to side the fridge out from the wall and get any crumbs that might have gotten under there to keep any ants away. I knew I would need something to distract Olivia while I was cleaning behind the fridge so I grabbed the swifer and made it Livi size. She loved it! She had so much fun dunking her mop in the water and siding it around the floor. We ended up with a little extra water on the floor and some wet pants, but she had a great time and I was able to get my chores done. I love that she is so happy to help! I want to encourage her rather than just try and keep her out of the way.

Wicked Good Time

Last night Dallas and I were able to so see Wicked. It was a great show and so nice to have a date night! It is always so much fun to go to the theatre and I can't wait to take Olivia to shows when she's older. Thanks for babysitting Halley and thanks for the hook up with the promotional code so that we could buy tickets without standing in the freezing cold.

Confessions

My name is Sarah Hamblin and I'm a brand snob. Ok, now that its out there let me clarify that my snobbishness has nothing to do with clothing or stuff like that, but when I go to the grocery store I have to buy all the stupid brand name products. Well, I'm starting my treatment and recovery today. My wallet has been hurting significantly over the past year with the huge jump in food prices and adding Olivia to our family and time and time again I see news reports saying that the first trick in slashing your grocery bill is to buy the generic brands. Well, today was grocery shopping day and I was determined to buy the western family brand items. I must admit that it made a huge difference. Stupid stuff like canned tomatoes, paper towels and pop tarts were drastically cheaper. I probably saved about forty dollars buying the western family stuff. I don't know why or how I became such a brand snob, but I'm going to try and put and end to it. There are a few things that I think I will always have to buy the brand name like cereal (sorry, there aren't enough varieties of the bagged kind) hot dogs, and cheese. So, that's the end of my brand snobbishness (except for makeup, I don't think I can fix that one).

My other confession this week, deals with last night's dinner. As a kid finding out that Tuna Casserole would be on the dinner menu was devastating. No offense mom, but tuna casserole was just not a favorite of mine. So as an adult and in charge of dinner at my home I swore I would never make tuna casserole. Well, last night after seven years of marriage I made the dreaded tuna casserole. I was practically out of everything (hence the grocery shopping today) and I needed something somewhat fast because I had to leave in an hour for the young women activity. So upon searching through the cupboard I saw a can of cream of mushroom soup with the tuna casserole recipe suggestion on the back and because Olivia loves noodles and it would provide some protein I went for it. Dallas also had childhood trauma involving tuna casserole so he opted for the frozen pizza instead.

Now you have some insight into the craziness around here. I gotta go finish my yard work.

Olivia Update

Its been almost a month since Olivia's one year check up, but I thought I'd post her latest stats anyway.

Weight: 21 lbs. (50th percentile)

Length: 30 inches (79th percentile)

Olivia's favorite food right now are bananas, mandarin oranges, french fries, any type of pasta dish and ramen noodles. We've also been sneaking into the Easter candy early and she seems to be a fan of the robbin eggs - Grandpa Jones will be so proud.

She loves to try and run over the dogs with her doll stroller (she laughs and laughs while chasing them around).

She loves to help around the house - she wants her own duster when I dust and she pushes her stroller around next to me while I'm vacuuming (apparently the stroller can act as both a dog torture tool and a vacuum). I fixed our sink the other day and Olivia had to be right by my side peering underneath the sink and jabbering away in her own baby language.

Olivia can now say "mama" "dada" "all done" "ruff ruff" (when asked what a doggie says) and she will tell you "achoo" when you sneeze.

This girl loves to be outside and she screams whenever its time to come inside - thank goodness its getting warmer out there. She also screams when I try to brush her teeth, she always wants to do it herself. Olivia also has some awesome dance moves! She loves to dance around and especially loves dancing to Beyonce and Brittney Spears. I need to get some video of her dancing to post

I know these type of posts are kinda boring for the average reader, but for my own journaling purposes I wanted to make sure I wrote this type of stuff down.

Spoiled Rotten

So as mentioned below, Thursday was Olivia's 1st birthday. We decided to invite our families over for dinner and have a little birthday party for Livi and goodness gracious this girl is so spoiled. She is also very loved. Dallas and I try not to go too crazy with the presents - we bought what we thought would be an appropriate amount of presents, but for some reason we didn't factor in all the other gifts our family would be showering her with.

This was my first attempt at decorating a cake other than just frosting a sheet cake. Its no where near perfect, but at least you can tell its Elmo.

The princess with all her toys. Dallas was especially happy to give her the pink and black baseball glove.


She started out pretty delicately with the cake...

And then did a good job of destroying it.

She loves to dance to the music that this thing plays.

The balloons were probably her favorite gift for now. She carts them all over the house with her.

And I'm not sure where I'm going to store this princess tent. Until we have a house with a toy room this may have to be something that is set up for the weekend every once in a while.

Thanks to all the family that joined us for her birthday. She is very blessed to have such great family in her life. And I hope you were able to remove your Sesame Street "temporary" tattoos ok. Dallas' cookie monster tattoo is still lingering on his arm. It might help if he showered though : )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVIA!

This year has gone by so quickly. I cannot believe that one year ago our sweet little girl was born and two days after that we got to meet her and bring her home. It is amazing to me how quickly kids develop in a single year.

We love her to pieces and cannot imagine our lives without her!

This photo was taken the day we brought her home from the hospital.

More Mexico Pictures

I've been waiting for the blog fairy to come and magically create a new post on my blog, but she hasn't shown up yet so I guess I'd better do it.

We came home from Mexico on Saturday and when we left Mexico it was a glorious 84 degrees. It was such a bummer to come home to 37 degrees and snow. We had a great trip and although I didn't get as tan as I would have liked, we were able to do some fun things and Olivia was a great little traveler.

I took about 120 pictures while we were there. I've come a long way in the picture taking department; we went to Mexico on our honeymoon and didn't even take a camera. Don't worry, I'm not posting all my pictures here, but here are some of my favorites.

I thought her face was too funny after tasting the lime.

Olivia sharing her dum dum sucker with me.

We went and saw the ruins at Tulum. It was really neat to see such ancient buildings and the coastline was beautiful. The temple is in the picture behind us. Many people in the church believe that this is the place where the Lamanites lived. It was really windy so my hair was not really looking so hot.

Olivia might be embarrassed by this picture later, but when she was waking up one morning her faces were way too funny so I had to capture the moment.

Olivia's favorite thing to do on our vacation was to push her stroller around up and down the hallways. She could have done that all day long. She would get mad at us when we would try and steer to keep her from running into people.

Sunrise view from our room the morning we left.

Pooped out after the day at Tulum.

We had a really fun time (other than my violent sea sickness on the ferry to and from Cozumel). Dallas even got a massage and a manicure and pedicure with me - it was included in the hotel package otherwise I'm sure he would never have done it. He definitely enjoyed the foot and calf massage that was part of the pedicure. I tried to take a picture of our freshly pedicured feet, but he wouldn't let me.

Viva La Mexico

We are in Cancun and the current temperature is 78 degrees! I know you are all completely jealous and might even stop reading at this point to avoid feeling even more envious (I would if it were me.) I know some of you might consider blogging not a very fun thing to do on vacation, but I have a terrible memory and I wanted to jot some things down while they are fresh in my mind.

After an hour delay at the airport we finally were able to board the plane and head on our way. Olivia was extremely tired when we got on the plane so a bottle at take off put her right to sleep. Unfortunalety she only slept for about half an hour (not nearly as long as I thought she should/would.) She did pretty great on the flight with only a few "freak out" moments and luckily our flight was not very full.

Our room is great and I'm loving the all-inclusive set up here. The view from our room is great, we have a view of the pool and then just beyond the pool is the ocean.

We have enjoyed hanging out by the pool the past few days. Olivia loves to splash in the water. It seems like it takes forever to get her in her swim suit and lathered in sunscreen and then she's in the pool for about twenty minutes and after that she's ready for a nap.

Vacations are a lot less relaxing with her around, but they are definitely a lot more fun. Traveling with Olivia is a lot like traveling with a celebrity. I don't think they see many black kids in Mexico because everyone we see just carries on and on about her. They are constantly coming up and touching her hair and taking pictures with her.

She's been a pretty good vacationer despite gettin three new teeth right now. And after months of cruising around the house with her walker and only taking two steps here and there our baby is finally walking. She started cruising around on Thursday and ever since then she's been walking around like a drunk person all over the place. She still falls on her bum quite a bit, but she's getting the hang of it.

We are having a great time, I'll try and post more pics soon.

Snow Day

I knew this discovery of Olivia's would happen eventually, and when it happened this afternoon I thought it was pretty funny so I decided to document it. Since getting up this morning Liv kept crawling over to our sliding glass door and staring out at the snow. She was so mesmerized I scooped up a bowl of the snow so she could "play" with it. She ended up eating some of it and dumping the rest on my floor.



Apparently the bowl of snow was not enough to satisfy her curiosity. So after her nap she took matters into her own hands.

So now she is mad at me because I won't let her crawl out the doggy door and play in the snow. My brother once used the doggy door to sneak out at night and meet up with his friends, maybe Liv is getting pointers from him!

Today

I thought I would post a blog about mine and Livi's day today. We certainly didn't do anything very fun, but I thought I post some of the pics because I think they're kinda cute.

She started her day by sitting in the toy bin and then proceeded to empty the toy bin one item at a time until everything was out of the bin and on my floor. We haven't yet figured how to get her to pick them up and put them in the bin : )

I started to do some cleaning so I turned some music on. She loves when I turn the ipod on. She immediately stops what she is doing and she has to get right in front of the little stereo thing and "sing" along. She also drums/pounds along to the music. In this picture she's jammin' out to some Fergie.

After some singing and dancing she "helped" me change the sheets.

And do the laundry.

Enjoying the finished product.

We certainly didn't have the most exciting day, but I'm glad I get to stay home and see that cute smile each day. Is it obvious that its the end of the month and I'm short on pictures to send to Livi's birth mom : )

Are You Kidding Me?

See I told you I'd blog more now that I'm home. Anyway, I wasn't sure what to title this post so I just decided to title it how I was feeling when this happened.

Yesterday three teenagers (who shall remain nameless) were hanging out at my house after school. While they were there I was unpacking my box o' crap that was a result of my cleaning out my desk at work. As I was unpacking I unloaded the picture of me with Vice President Dick Cheney.

I showed the picture to said teenagers and no one knew who it was! One said teenager said "is that some church guy?" and another said "no, I think its the governor or something." Hence the remark from me "are you freaking kidding me!"



Anybody know the name of a good private school? Geez, I think its awful you can get through the public school system without even being able to identify the Vice President of the United States of America. I fairly confident that had you shown me a picture of Al Gore in high school I would have been able to identify him.

I'm fairly confident that he looks the same in this picture as he does in all other media pictures and videos of him, you'll have to tell me if you think differently. I apologize for the weird picture, I was taking a picture of a picture in the frame.

Retirement

Yesterday I worked the my last day at my job. I'm actually really pretty sad about it. I have worked at this job for the past five years and with a lot of people and in the political area for the past ten years. I'm never really good at articulating how I feel, but leaving my job seems very similar to graduation high school - you know its good to be moving on, but at the same time you are saying goodbye to a lot of good friends and great memories. Some people think I'm crazy for quitting, but most people have been really supportive.

I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of nervous about being a stay at home mom. I'm so used to having the mom identity as well as my professional identity and I'm worried that I won't know what to do with myself when my only job is mom.

I'm happy that I will be able to stay home with Olivia and I feel so lucky that we are in a position to make it happen (especially in this economy.) I so grateful for Dallas' willingness to work so very hard and support our family.

Hopefully I won't go too crazy and hopefully now I'll have more to blog and pick up some other hobbies.

I Have the Best Neighbor Ever

Ok, I know some of you out there are thinking that you have pretty good neighbors, but they can't beat my neighbor/friend Lindsey Cook.

For the past month or so Lindsey has been watching Olivia on Mondays while I work. So in addition to her 3 year old (I think she's 3) and her 13 month old she's been watching my 9 month old.

So two weeks ago I arrive at her home to pick up Olivia and Lindsey hands me all of her stuff as well as dinner! She had made dinner for her family and a second batch for our family! I always feel like I should be the one bringing her dinner for doing us such a huge favor. She also gave Olivia a darling hair bow ribbon holder thingy with a bunch of hair bows on it.

I always feel so guilty imposing on people and I know I'm never generous or thoughtful enough. So I'm not sure if Lindsey even reads this blog, but I just wanted to give her a shout out and thank her for being such a great neighbor and friend.