Tierra Montessori School

This morning we went to Ethan's new preschool to take a tour and meet the staff and teachers. We are really excited he will be able to attend this school and know he will really thrive there. It's very structured and its educational activities are based on the indiviual child's needs and abilities. There will be 18 kids with two teachers so that is really nice. He will go twice a week, Tues and Thurs from 8-12:30. Each day he will have math and language workshops, circle time where they do the calendar, story time and group activities. He will have three personally based workbooks that he will do throughout the morning. There is of course free play time, snack, outdoor play and he will eat lunch there as well. It's a cute little school that they just finished remodeling inside and out. They have shaded outdoor benches for snack and lunch and lots of fun outdoor equipment. The only thing I wish the morning session had is reading, writing and spelling workshops, which they do in the afternoon session. The teacher said she would give me those books which is very nice since we're only paying for the morning session.

Ethan doesn't really understand the whole preschool thing yet and seems a little timid when I talk to him about it. When we were there this morning he did seem to enjoy it though. We played with some of the toys and read books while we were waiting for the lady (who was running late) to show us the school. While I was reading to Ethan I had four other girls and one boy hover over me to hear the book as well. We were definitely the main attraction! After seeing the school, I told him it would be so fun playing with kids, working on numbers and letters, and so on to get him excited. I said, "Ethan, won't this be fun?!" and he says, "No, it's born!" He was trying to say it's boring and shortly after he said that he corrected himself. It was cute! He starts this coming Tuesday and we are excited to have a preschooler!

Tanner Baby

We love our little Tanner baby! It's fun having a baby around the house. He adds a lot of joy into our family. The only thing I wish he did more of is sleep - for some reason mine don't seem to sleep as much as I would like. I would love a solid night of sleep but know that day will come at some point. Tanner's sleeping is still pretty inconsistent and I hope to change that soon.
We started feeding him solids a few days ago and he seems to really enjoy it. He is a good eater who takes it very seriouly. He didn't think rice cereal was all that great, but what baby does? It's like paste! Once I mixed it with vegetables and fruits he ate it right up. He still loves his milk though and nothing can top that!

Last week he started blowing raspberries. It's cute to see him randomly blow bubbles and express himself more. Tanner has the funniest fake cough that makes me laugh every time because it is so exaggerated but yet it's just how he coughs.
He has been playing in his jumper a lot lately and is really starting to enjoy jumping. He also likes to jump on our laps when we are holding him. He likes to spin one of the toys on his toy saucer because it makes lots of noise. He still likes to be held a lot and be in all the action. He is very content sitting outside in the shade while Ethan rides his bike in the backyard. He loves attention from Ethan and lights up when Ethan will come and play with him. Tanner is such a cute little baby!

LA Zoo

On Daddy's day off we went to the LA Zoo. It was 105 degrees out so we only stayed a few hours before we felt like we were going to melt away. Ethan enjoyed it but we didn't get far enough up the hill to see the really neat animals such as the elephant, tigers, and bears. Also, due to the heat they had several exhibits closed. We got an annual pass and can take people for free so it will be fun to go with family and friends who come up to see us. Come one, come all!

You know it's hot when...

...your peanut butter is turning into soup.

...your little baby has sweat dripping from his head.

...your chocolates are already melting in the mid morning.
...Ethan needs to wash his hands because they are sweating so bad. He thinks the trains he's pushing are hot, causing the sweating.

Needless to say, I turned on the air. Today really didn't feel that bad to me, but the high for today came in at 98 degrees. For some reason it is almost always cooler outside than inside our home. We really start to feel the heat around 1-3pm, during nap time. Turning on the air takes the edge off, but it's still warm even with fans going throughout the house. Tomorrow the high will be 108 and Wednesday 104. Towards the end of the week it will drop to just below 100. Wish we had a pool!

Today we signed Ethan up for preschool, two days a week, on Monday and Wednesdays. It will be nice having a routine during the week and some time to get errands done with Tanner. We have been practicing writing letters. Ethan really likes writing the E and the H. The larger E in the picture above was written by Ethan, all by himself. I am pretty impressed with his writing abilities.

This afternoon while feeding Tanner, Ethan went into the bathroom to wash his hands. He shut the door, which is never a good thing, so I called his name and told him to open it. He was not responding to me so I asked him what he was doing. He likes getting into our floss, tooth paste and has tried getting into other things, like Jared's cologne. He came out of the bathroom brushing his hair. I said, "What were you doing?" He said, while smiling really big and brushing his hair, "I'm charming!" I could smell him from a mile away and knew he had gotten into the cologne, when he was telling me that his skin hurt. We told him not to get into the cologne because it's for big boys and it could make your skin hurt (we said that to have a better chance of him leaving it alone). Well, I guess that didn't work because now we have an empty bottle of cologne and a headache from the beautiful aroma of our house.

Jared is enjoying residency so far, but he is definitely working hard and has some long hours. Tonight he is on call so he will be gone at least until 10pm. He is leaving around 5-6am for work so on average he puts in around 13 hours. He gets Wednesday off this week and has to work overnight call on Saturday. In a few weeks he will be on a rotation where he gets weekends off, so that will be so nice. We are going to try to do something fun and new on his days off. This week we might go to the LA Zoo.

6 is bliss

Happy 6th Anniversary to us! I am grateful for my many blessings the last several years while being married - great husband, two cute boys, our health, done with medical school and now onto a new adventure with residency, and still going strong and excited for many more happy years of marriage.

This is a low key anniversary. Jared had to work and since we are watching Joy we ended up coming down to Orange County on Thursday. Jared and I will celebrate this week on his day off.

Today we hung out at Leslie Collier's beach club in Rancho Santa Margarita along with Megan Albertson and Nicole Meisenback. The club had a sandy area that leads into a shallow pool area, perfect for little kids. Ethan enjoyed playing in the water with the kids. After naps we went into the spa for a few hours. Ethan was so cute with me and Tanner. He kept giving us kisses and hugs while swimming around. Later we went on a walk around the block which was really enjoyable with the cool weather. We've had fun in Orange County but are excited to see our Daddy tomorrow!

4 months old

Discovering his toys

Jumperoo!

The boys enjoy the spa

Today little Tanner is four months old. We love having him as part of our family. It is fun to see him learn and grow. He is starting to reach for objects he wants a little more. He will eye them and try to figure out how to move his hands around them. He loves breast milk and we might start rice cereal soon. At the doctor the other day he weighed 13 pounds 7 oz. This week we are going to see how he likes the jumperoo and toy saucer. He is starting to jump up and down on us a little bit and loves to be held. He loves looking at himself in the mirror and loves people to give him attention. We still have to work on getting him to sleep better, but he is such a cute little boy and definitely a crowd pleaser!

The five cousins

The boys love to play with Daddy

Travel Town Museum

Yesterday we had a great day with Daddy at the Travel Town Museum. It's a free recreational park within Griffith Park that displays all kinds of trains that you can ride, climb on, and just look at.

Ethan loved it; he was in heaven! He was running up and down the tracks, so excited about each train. He was telling us what kind of train they were and if they had a caboose or not. He would say, "This is a locomotive, and that is a coal car." He was so happy and super good.

The park has picnic areas where we ate lunch and kept cool from the summer heat. We will definitely go again. It's nice it's free because they could make some good money off of people.

All aboard! Daddy and Ethan rode the train around the outskirts of the park. We love having Daddy home with us. In the evening we played outside and rode bikes.

Happy Birthday Laurie!

Happy Birthday Laurie! I hope you have a great day. Thanks for being a great sister and leading the way for us siblings. It can be hard to be the oldest and have to experience everything first but I am grateful for your example over the years. Here are some of my favorite attributes about Laurie:

Mother, go getter, amazing writer, creative, hard worker, friend, thinks of others, strives to develop skills, always trying to do better, oldest child of five, understanding, wife who works so hard for her family, chocolate molten is a way to her heart, pretty, compassionate, giving of her time and means to siblings, talk writer :), good example, loving, smart, ambitious, strong, always has great advice

Happy, Happy Birthday Laurie Dear!

The Invaders

Tanner has had a fever since Friday evening and as a result wakes a lot more in the night. He ended up in our bed with us last night and for his nap today (since he sleeps better in our bed) so that we could finally get some much needed rest. I don't know why people let their kids sleep with them. I don't get much sleep and they end up taking most of the bed. This picture was taken during nap time when Ethan came in to wake us up. He climbed on the bed and ended up falling right back to sleep on our bed. This has never happened and probably never will again so we had to get a picture. All four of us were in bed but Jared and I quickly made our exit. Cute little boys asleep! Hope Tanner starts feeling better soon so we can all sleep in our own beds.

Trip to Utah

I am back from Utah and had a great time visiting family and enjoying the Utah atmosphere. I love going back to Provo to visit the BYU bookstore, Deseret Book, the craft stores (Quilted Bear and Robert's...they are so much better in Utah), Temple Square, Dillard's, Cafe Rio, the Creamery and all the Utah attractions. I feel at home in Utah in some ways ever since we lived there when we got married. Tanner was a great traveler as usual. This was his third trip in his short little life - trip up the coast, Lake Powell, and now Utah. He is the traveling man!

Our trip started early Saturday and we made it in good time with a few stops along the way, one being at the outlets in St. George. The outlets are always good to me. We don't always stop but when we do we are always glad we did. We went to The Children's Place and got some amazingly cheap clothes!! They had really nice shorts for $2.99 and some shirts for $1.99. The prices were unbeatable. Once we got to Provo we met up with Doug and Heather and went to Quilted Bear, Robert's and tried out a cupcake shop called The Sweet Tooth Fairy. We have heard great things about it so we split their Vanilla, Strawberry, Grasshopper, and Peanut Butter cupcakes and got a few cupcake bites. We liked the cupcakes a lot better than the cupcake bites but it was fun to try something new. In the evening we went back to swim in the hotel spa. We were happy to be in Utah!

Sunday we went to church with Heather and Doug in the early morning so we could meet up with our cousins Carrie and Bonnie in the afternoon. We met at Carrie's apartment in South Jordan and had a really nice visit with them. Bonnie had a little girl, Abigail, the same day as I had Tanner. Carrie had her little boy, Colton, two and a half weeks later so it was fun getting our new babies together. Our visit was very nice and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. I think everyone is ready to move on from the drama and build a relationship again. I haven't blogged about the relationship between my mom and her sisters before but there was a falling out around the time my grandparents health started to decline. Jealousy and other worldly matters caused some division and unfortunately the relationship among the cousins suffered because of it. It's been several years and I think the families are ready to move on which I am very happy about. We had an amazing relationship with our cousins growing up, playing with them almost everyday in the summer so I hope to build that bond back up. Christina, my other cousin (Carrie and Bonnie's sister) has just moved to LA around the same time as we did so I hope to have her over from time to time.

Later in the evening I thought it would be fun to surprise Joel and Carly with a little visit from Tanner boy. Since they didn't know we were in town I decided I was going to leave Tanner in his car seat on their front porch and ring the door bell and go hide. I rang the doorbell and ran downstairs to wait. I heard the door open and shut quickly. I knew they just looked and shut the door. I couldn't believe they left him outside like that without looking or anything. I ran up and rang again. This time no answer so I did it again. Still nothing! After the third time I stood in front of the door and yelled to them to open it because it was me. Carly looked through the peep hole and show me standing there and quickly opened it. It was pretty funny because Joel was on the phone with the cops and had to tell them "oh wait, nevermind, everything is ok!" It turns out Carly was the one who answered the door but got freaked out when she saw two little feet sticking out of a car seat. Not too long ago she had received an email saying don't respond to the door if there is a baby left at our doorstep. Rapist were known for doing that and then attacking. It gave us all a great laugh!

On Monday we went to Salt Lake City where we met Heather for lunch at the Nauvoo Cafe. Heather is working in the church office building for the Ensign for the next few months. She got to walk Temple Square with us and stop in the distribution center. I was able to get some neat books/ideas for FHE that Ethan should enjoy. We left Heather and went across the street to the new Deseret Book and spent lots of time there. It's so sad they took the Deseret Book in California away from us last year so we had to get our shopping in while we were up here. I got Ethan a few church books, a primary CD to listen to while in the car, and got a good book to assist with my lessons for my new Valiant class. We then went to the Church History Museum which was really neat. It was fun to learn about the construction of the tabernacle, see some artifacts from the Prophets, see pictures of Joseph Smith throughout his life, learn about Nauvoo, the printing of the Book of Mormon, the Pioneers and so on. There is so much to see and way too much for one day if you really look at everything. After the museum we got Heather from work and went down the street to The Hatch Family Chocolate shop. A few days before we left for the trip, while feeding Tanner I turned on the TV to TLC and saw a show for the first time called The Little Chocolatiers. The show is based out of SLC at the Hatch's chocolate shop and since we were going I thought it would be fun to stop in to try their chocolate. The show is about this married couple who are both little people that make hand dipped chocolates. While there we saw the husband and I really wanted a picture with him but couldn't even bring myself to bring a camera into the store. Heather and I ended up sharing a frozen hot chocolate which was good but in the end made both of us feel sick to our stomach because it was too rich. Mom had an ice cream cone. We went and didn't even try a hand dipped chocolate, maybe next time. It was a fun experience though and I felt like I was meeting someone famous. After our adventures in Salt Lake we went back to Provo and met up with Laurie to shop at the mall. It was a packed day.

Tuesday we got together with the Brooks and went to Olympic Park in Park City. I rode the Alpine slide with Evan which he seemed to enjoy. Last year we went to Olympic Park as well and I went on the zip line. It was my first time on the alpine slide and let's just say I'm glad I went down with Evan so I didn't have to brake because he is too little to want to go slow or know any better. It was fun but I like something with a little more of a rush. Throughout the trip we did lots of shopping at places like TJMAX and Michael's for home decor for Heather's apartment. We shopped a little bit in Park City and headed back to Provo for dinner at the famous Chuck-A-Rama. Later in the evening we went to the BYU bookstore which is always one of my favorite things to do. I found lots of cute and cheap books for Ethan. We ended the night was a nice dip in the spa.

Wednesday was my last full day in Utah and was spent finishing up our shopping at Tai Pan Trading - potentially a husband's worst nightmare but a woman's shopping dream. I got a cute halloween decoration and was amazed with all the decorating options. On our way home from Sandy we stopped to visit with Grandma Green so she could meet her fifth great grandson on the Fisher side. She seemed to be doing well and this home is definitely the right place for her. We had a nice visit and then made our way home to make dinner at Heather's apartment. Thursday morning Mom took Tanner and me to the airport for Tanner's first airplane ride. He did very well and everyone commented on how good and cute he was. We were excited to see Ethan when we got off the plane. He looked so big and more mature. It was such a fun trip and I am grateful to everyone who made it possible.