Year in Review

2012 was a busy and great year!

We did a lot of visiting... more than I realized until I tallied it all up.
1 visit from friends
1 visit to Minnesota
2 visits to Houston
2 visits to Georgia
3 visits to Utah
6 visits from family

We ended the apartment-living phase of our life and bought our first wonderful home. We have slowly furnished and decorated bits and pieces and enjoy the time we get to spend working on our house.

Before

After

It might not look like much but we're happy with our progress! I especially love the curtains Stephen gave me for Christmas and the photos on the opposite wall. We're working on getting a photo from each of our "homes." So far we have (left to right) a picture of Sweden, fireworks over the Capitol in Washington DC, and Mount Olympus in Utah. We still need some cute pillows, a second chair, and TV stand but wow, it gets expensive quickly!

Before

After

After 5 years of wedding drought, THREE of our siblings got engaged :)

Stephen's cousin and her family surprised us and moved to San Antonio so we actually have family here! For the past few months I have enjoyed watching their daughter during most weekdays (lack of blog updates = chasing 2 toddlers around). I am back to just having Seth to watch, but it was a good experience for Seth to have a playmate around so much.

We lived another year as a one car family. Thankfully Seth and I had the library and park one block away to enjoy. We celebrated the new year with a new(-to-us) car, a 2011 Nissan Sentra!

We started to get to know and love Texas with multiple visits to the Alamo, La Villita, and the Riverwalk, eating lots of Tex Mex and B-B-Q, camping and paintballing in the Texas desert for Stephen, a day trip to Austin, visits to the San Antonio zoo and Sea World, and surviving our first HOT summer.

Stephen managed several school moves in the blistering heat, helped in the opening of a new elementary school, impressed his supervisors on some difficult projects, and was blessed with a raise. Later, he was given the opportunity to move from the charter schools' central office to the high school. He is very busy with longer hours but enjoys getting to know and help the students and faculty more directly and still loves his job. Despite his busy schedule he still makes time for family and we love when he is home.

We have no pictures of the man at work, but in this picture he's wearing his cool cardigan with the high school's logo and name printed on it.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving at home and really enjoyed making a delicious turkey meal together and spending the day as a family.

Seth learned to walk, talk, and sing and continued to be our pride and joy (separate blog post needed). He turned 2!

Stephen graciously gave up Sunday nights together as a family for 2 months so I could sing in a community production of Handel's Messiah put on by our church.

I'm sure we did other things in 2012, but it's about time I just make this post!

5th Anniversary Getaway

This past July was our 5th wedding anniversary! We wanted to do something special and tried scheduling an overnight trip to the beach in Texas or something, but it just didn't work out with getting Grandma in town to watch Seth. So when we bought some cheap airline tickets to Utah we decided to take advantage of the family babysitters. Destination: Logan, UT. I know I know... not exactly the most exciting anniversary destination, but it actually turned out to be perfect for us.

First up, a quiet, child-less car ride with beautiful fall colors and good tunes. We made a quick stop at Arctic Circle (fry sauce and huckleberry sundae!!!!) then...

Spent some time in the Logan Temple

We stayed in a really cute Bed & Breakfast called Seasons at the Riter Mansion. The owners were great and we loved the experience.

We ate dinner at Le Nonne, a nice Italian restaurant in an old historic home. Stephen surprised me and ordered a penne pasta with Gorgonzola cheese and pears! It was soooo delicious. I ordered ravioli filled with sweet potatoes and ricotta which was equally amazing. I read mixed reviews online about the quality of the food, but we would definitely recommend it!

When planning for the overnight trip, we decided to spend most of our fun money on Saturday's activity, so after dinner we were a little stumped about what to do with the night. There was nothing in the theaters we wanted to see badly enough to pay full-price movie fare for, so instead we decided to stock up on the snacks and buy a cheap movie from Walmart. Sad, but true: we went to Walmart for our anniversary. The movie we agreed on was Mrs. Doubtfire. I'd never seen it and it'd been a long time for Stephen. Unfortunately it's about a couple that gets divorced and STAYS divorced (hahahaha romantic, huh?), but we ignored that part and instead enjoyed Robin William's antics.

In the morning we got to enjoy the other half of the B&B: the breakfast!

It was hot chocolate, a delicious cheesy egg & ham breakfast casserole, grapes, and apples. Perfect for a chilly morning.

We spent the morning at the Farmer's Market enjoying honey caramels and fresh raspberries and then did some shopping.

We wanted to eat somewhere "local" to Logan for lunch, but we were too tempted by Costa Vida to pass it by. San Antonio may have Tex-Mex, but we have yet to find sweet pork to match Costa Vida and Cafe Rio.

Our main activity on Saturday was a 2 mile race called the Great Inflatable Race on USU's campus. We are NOT runners, but it sounded like a fun thing to do.

Changing in the car=awesome.

Stephen sporting his KIPP wristband and the great-inflatable-race bracelet.

We had some time to kill before the race started so we checked out this amazing used bookstore on Main St with literally tens of thousands of books (maybe more?). It was very entertaining.

Then, the race! It consisted of several inflatable and other obstacle course things. We had a bunch of fun obstacling and taking videos along the way. At the end there was a slip and slide with some pink jello-y stuff. Overpriced? Maybe a little, but it was fun to do something together and we laughed a lot.

Last but not least, we treated ourselves to some Aggie ice cream and headed home.

All in all it was a great weekend. The cool weather was a fantastic break from San Antonio's mugginess, the food was delicious, and most of all I enjoyed having time alone with my best friend!

Jargon

Today one of Seth's church buddies came over while his mom had a Dr.'s appointment. He and Seth had a grand old time running around, throwing balls, playing with trucks, and chattering. I like to think that my speech therapy ears can understand every toddler, but more often than not I am stumped by their crazy jargon. I imagine nursery leaders must get pretty confused by the barrage of different languages they hear every week. Seth's pronunciation is pretty clear, but there are several strange pronunciations he has held onto. I know I've written about some of them on this blog before, but there are a few new ones too.


Bee bo = Belly button. Thanks, Sandra Boynton.
Dave = Joseph Smith. What? I really don't get this one.
Do or Die! = "Doo-da day" as in "Camptown races sing this song Doo-da, Doo-da... Oh doo-da day!"
Mama Pots = President Monson. President = Pots, Monson = Mama. Flip flop the words and whala! you've got Mama Pots.
Mama Eyring = President Eyring. Logical, huh?
Monteydada = Snuggly bear blanket. Used to be snuggly monkey blanket, but we lost that one!
Noni = Moroni (I guess church words are tricky)
A dee sa pots = Silly nonsense phrase that may have once meant something, but now Seth says it just to get a laugh out of us.
Te tel = Temple.
Tee tots = Aunt Krista (it also used to mean chicken and kitty cat, but he has since developed those words).
Wefi = Nephi.
Yo yos = Yogurt.


If only we had known what "Do or die" meant when Seth repeatedly shouted it at the pool lifeguard over a period of 15 minutes. Maybe we shouldn't have egged him on with our giggles :)

Seth must miss his family because he always tries to find them when we are in public. He finally learned to say "Grandma" but is still working out the gender details. Unfortunately I don't have enough fingers to count the times he's yelled out "Grandpa!!?" to random women at the store.

Seth also likes to find friends and famous figures. Every little boy is "Ben," every old man is "Mama Pots?" (which he says *crystal clear* leaving poor old men everywhere wondering what mamapots means), and bearded men are always "Jesus."

I know this picture has nothing to do with this post, but isn't it awesome? We had a GREAT Stake Pioneer Day celebration.

p.s. I have given up on blogging about our summer trips and visitors but you can see a great album documenting the fun on my facebook. We are really lucky this year and will be seeing most of our families again this Fall so I'll try to be better and take pictures/blog about those adventures.