Oregon Overnighter

Two weeks ago Ethan and I did a quick overnighter down in Oregon. We had not been down since Christmas. I was also feeling pretty guilty... I missed every one of Lizzy's volleyball games, all of her swim meets, her winter band concert and her first track meet. Granted, some of that was just scheduling - we were down in Oregon a couple times, but her game or meet was away or the day before we could come down or the day after we had to go back.

But I made it to her Spring band concert!!

Of course, as luck would have it, I brought our camera with a fully charged battery - all ready to go. The problem? I left our SD card in the computer! Grrrr.... Happens to me way too often! But, with some careful watching and timing, I managed to get most of her solo. [She's the cute blonde rockin' her new specs!!]

Unfortunately, a good portion of the concert was not the most enjoyable. The music and musicians did great... it was Ethan. Ugh. This was definitely a "let's learn how to behave at a performance" concert. And we picked the wrong people to sit behind. Ethan swung back and forth between sitting nicely/quietly and loudly whispering/moving around. In about 1 minute intervals!! Very frustrating. But, I also know that this is how kids learn. If you don't expose them to these types of situations where they have to behave and be quiet they won't learn. It didn't help, either, that we had just been in the car for over 2 hours on the ride down and had to go to the concert within an hour of getting into town. But don't try telling that to the lady in front of us! Oh, no! It was obvious I was trying to keep him quiet when she loudly turned around and shooshed him. Really?! When there was a brief break to switch bands, she proceeded to talk about how ridiculous it was to bring kids to the concert, blah, blah, blah. Rude! Again, I'm sorry he wasn't ideal, but this is also a high school level concert. You did not pay to get in. Calm down. I was actually just getting ready to take Ethan to the back but part of me wanted to stay there and tough it out but then Ethan had to go potty, so my mom took him and then they stood in the back the rest of the time.

Rant over.

After the concert we went and got treats at Sweet Life Patisserie. Ethan got gelato. My dad got a slice of vegan German chocolate cake {did I mention he's gone vegan?!}. Lizzy got some chocolate pie thing and my mom and I shared some custard filled thing with a raspberry sauce and then she got creme brulee to take home and I got a lemon bar for later. We had happy tummies.

Lizzy had Friday off, so we got to sleep in and hang out. While it downpoured on our way down Thursday afternoon, Friday morning/early afternoon was fairly sunny. Which meant my mom insisted on a photo shoot in front of the blooming cherry blossoms. And then, of course, it started to drizzle! After our quick photo shoot, we loaded up the car, made a pit-stop at JoAnns so I could buy a paper cutter {I've been getting my crafting on - post with recent projects to come...} that was on sale and then it was off to the mall. Not my favorite way to spend my time, but it was still fun to be with my mom and sister plus I recently found a Victoria's Secret gift card with a good chunk of change on it so I loaded up on their heavenly-smelling shampoo and conditioner. Love that stuff. It smells fabulous and the conditioner is super thick and creamy... Love. It.

We ate a little dinner in the food court and then while Lizzy debated over which Hunger Games tee to buy at Hot Topic, Ethan and I left early to pick-up my Dad to go do my soda can refund. That's right. We may not pay a deposit in WA, but we save ALL our cans and take them with us to OR when we visit. Don't laugh, we hadn't gone in a while and have over $7. It adds up, baby! And we're saving it. Not sure what for, but we're saving it. :)

And that about raps it up. Just over 24 hours and we were back home again. Sorry there aren't any other pictures... The curse of the camera continues!!

November Recap

Continuing with my catch-up on monthly recaps, here's November....

* Date-night-movie-of-the-month: Crazy. Stupid. Love. Very funny and hard to go wrong with funny-man Steve Carell. And we are big Emma Stone fans. And Ryan Gosling's not so bad to look at either. Definitely worth renting if you want a good laugh!

* Sister-movie-night-out/Father-son-movie-night-out: One of the visits down to Oregon in November, Lizzy, Sean, Ethan and I went to the movies. Lizzy and I went to see Cowboys & Aliens. It was... interesting. Glad I didn't pay full-price for the movie. Not bad, just kinda weird. Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig made it better! Maybe a one-time see.
Meanwhile, my boys were a couple theaters down watching Lion King in 3D.Ethan loved it! I don't remember if he had seen Lion King before, but I know it was his first 3D movie. Afterward, he told me that he had to "try hard not to cry when the dad died."

* Uncle Tory came HOME!!!: Tory came home from his 2-year mission to Peru on 11-11-11. We were so excited to meet him at the airport!

How excited??

'This' excited!! Ha ha!!

It was so fun to see Tory hug and visit with his family after being away. We got to spend a little bit of time with him that weekend while we were down in Oregon. And, of course, there was some Sean/Tory male-bonding at the piano! "I'm sailing on........... I'm not a stranger..." ;) Saturday's Warrior is always a favorite.

Welcome Home, Tory!!

* The Rest of our Oregon visit:

Making pancakes with Grandma Julie.

While at the airport to meet Tory, we just happened to be there while the Oregon Duck football team was leaving for the Stanford game! Lizzy got pictures with #24 Kenjon Barner, running back, and #5 Darron Thomas, quarterback.

Mr. Cutie himself (he takes after his father!) after church on Sunday.

* Breaking Dawn: I got the opportunity to see the latest, second-to-last Twilight movie with a group of friends from our ward. They rented out a living room theater at the Beaverton Cinetopia and it was fun to see opening night. Although, I was undecided if I really liked it at first. It was really weird, especially where the wolves "talk", but afterward I felt strangely compelled to see it again - I didn't, though. Well, not until this last month (February) when it got to the cheap theater. I liked it a lot better the second time.

* Thurston's State Football Play-off Game: One of the boys from our old ward that Sean used to work with in YM (and that we were also friends with the family) played a high school football game (I think it was a state play-off game) at the Jeld-Wen stadium in downtown Portland. Another perk of living up here, we were only about 20 minutes away, so we got to go to the game.

Seriously, had NO IDEA there was a sports stadium right in the middle of downtown Portland! It was SO, SO cold that night. But it was fun to watch the game and cheer Stephen on. Too bad Thurston lost. :(

* November stuff I already blogged about:
- Pre-school (here, here and here)
- Thanksgiving weekend

And that's it for November! I don't even have some random Ethan pictures to show you.
Next up, December Recap... We're getting closer to 2012 stuff, yay!! :)

Oregon Visit - August 2011

Let's see... August 30th and I'm finally writing about things we did in August!! And what's sad, is that is actually pretty caught up for me! I will do my best to try and bust out posts about our August doings.

The first week of August, Ethan and I went down to Oregon to visit my family for a few days. I had not been down to Oregon since the end of May - a good 2 1/2 months and a far cry from my weekly visits for work last year.

Tuesday: Drove down and drove straight to my old hairdresser. I had not had an appointment with her since before we moved! I was desperate for a cut {read: my hair had not been cut since mid-February!} and due for a coloring. On a whim I called her the week before to see if she had any cancellations or a spare hour to do one or the other. What luck!! She had TWO cancellations. So I took the 2pm appointment on Tuesday and then Ethan and I barely made it out of WA by noon that day. Luckily, there was not major traffic hiccups so I made it to my appointment on time! My mom met us there and picked up Ethan and for the next two hours I sat back and let Terri work her magic. She colored it {adding back in some darker, golden blonde, as well as the usual platinum highlights} and chopped off a good 2-3 inches of dry, damaged ends. That night we went to Papa's Pizza for dinner and Ethan loved playing on the toys. Also, stayed up WAY too late playing the Indiana Jones game on the Wii.
Wednesday: Had lunch with Grandma Mary! I went and picked up stuff to make lunch and then we had chicken salad sandwiches, chips, grape tomatoes, lemonade and donuts. We ate our lunch leisurely (my mom, grandma and I) and then played Rummy. Yeah, Grandma beat us all!! It was really fun to get to spend the afternoon with her.

Thursday: Late in the afternoon I made the drive up to Girls Camp to visit my sister, Lizzy. This was her first year (excluding last year's Trek) that she was the solo Toftdahl sister there. It was also her 4th year. Anyway, I had had a request to help with some ideas for some of the stake adults and then got the ok to visit Thursday. I think my visit came with mixed reviews, but Lizzy loved having me there and that's what mattered the most to me! I was able to stay for flag ceremony and watched Lizzy help with 4th year news and it was also skit night, so that was fun.

Lizzy had something in lost and found and it was rumored she or a friend put it in there on purpose, just so she'd have to go up on stage. Her punishment? Butt-spelling her full name!

4th year news.

Skits. Lizzy's unit on the left and stake adults on the right.

Lizzy and I. You can see my new 'do here. Sorry for the bluriness - I had my camera set for a night portrait and then we took it under stage lights.

Friday: Packed up and went home - had to be sure to get home in time to pick Christine up from the airport! While I loaded everything up, my mom painted her toes so she could add some of my cute, new nail stickers. Then Ethan wanted in on the action, so he got one blue toenail with a yellow sun!
And this is Ethan getting ready to leave. He inherited some of Lizzy's old Build-a-Bears and ALL their accessories!
That night we picked Christine up from the airport and then headed to Klineline for a BBQ dinner with the Colemans. Told you we love that place!

Thanksgiving Weekend 2010

Our Thanksgiving weekend started with our road trip down to Oregon Wednesday afternoon. We made a quick stop to pick Christine up from a friend's house {she hitched a ride from some friends at BYU and got to squeeze in a car with 4 other guys as they traveled through a snow storm!} and then decided to also stop in Salem for Five Guys burgers because we were starving!

Ethan on the drive down.

* Thanksgiving Day *
Mom and I had stayed up late finishing up some of the dinner prep {I made grandma Sandy's rolls for the first time ever and had to shape them and put them in the pan and then leave them to rise overnight} and then Sean had some acid reflux issues and then Ethan woke up early plus my dad couldn't sleep {I think he said my mom was snoring} so NONE of us really slept well. It was a good thing no one was coming until 2pm because we were a little sluggish. Anyway, the first order of business was figuring out the table arrangement in the living room so we could all eat together. We ate with my mom's side of the family: 11 adults, 2 teens and 3 little boys. As expected, the food and the company were equally wonderful! After dinner {my rolls turned out great, by the way!} we had our now-traditional game of Bingo. Followed by couch lounging and goofy picture taking. * Friday *
Lizzy, Christine and I braved the cold, the crowds and the crazies to do some Black Friday shopping in the wee hours of the morning. We started at Target for DVDs, a hair straightener for Lizzy and a few other things. Next we hit up Walmart for a Shark steam mop for Sean and I {and a sunglasses pic w/ my sisters}. There was NO LINE at the check-out!! How is it that on BLACK FRIDAY, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, I don't have to wait in line and every other time I have to shop there the lines are horrible?! What's up with that?!
After an egg mcmuffin and hash brown breakfast run to McDonald's {where we got a good laugh seeing this in the parking lot and chained to the bike rack}we headed to the mall to see what other damage we could do! At the last store we went to, Lizzy pointed out this adorable hat she'd been eyeing. Of course, she had no money with her and asked if I'd loan her the $5 since it was half-price. I agreed and told her to grab me one while she was at it. Well, Christine saw it and decided she had to have it too! So we all bought one. Ha ha!!Seriously, we got so many compliments on our hats from random people!! One chick was even outside the restaurant we ate lunch at and tapped on the window to get our attention, point to her head and then the hats and give a thumbs up. Our second to last stop was Old Navy where we ran into both my mom and Grandma Sandy! Grandma treated us all to lunch at Mucho Gusto and it was fun to spend some time with just the girls. By the way, Sean more than willingly agreed to stay at my parents house to watch Ethan {and sleep in} while I got up to catch the sales. After we got home and after several failed attempts, Lizzy and I finally figured out how to curl her hair with the straightener. Granted, we had to sit down in front of the computer and watch the online tutorial while I tried to mimic on Lizzy's hair what I was watching on the screen but I only burned her once... maybe twice. And it was SO CUTE when we finally got it! That evening, halfway through the Oregon Duck football game we decided to go out to Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Chuck's house to watch the 2nd half of the game since they have satellite TV and my parents do not. Oh, and Sean and I also decided to stay one more night.

* Saturday *
Got to sleep in thanks to my mom and Sean. I was exhausted. Limited, non-restful sleep on Wednesday night and lack of sleep Thursday night led to me falling asleep on the living room floor with Lizzy Friday night. Once everyone else was finally going off to bed, though, I got up and re-crashed in bed and slept oh-so-well. :)

In the afternoon, we ventured out to go see Tangled, but the first theater we tried sold out of the showing we wanted while we were waiting in line. No worries. We killed some time with a visit to Santa {Christine was in stealth-mode and snuck this picture of Ethan chatting it up with Santa}!Then headed to the other theater to catch a later showing of Tangled and LOVED it!! Great movie. Highly recommend it for boys and girls, young and old.
And that's about it. We had a great Thanksgiving weekend and have much to be thankful for.

Utah - July 2010 part 3

Utah

July 2010
part 3: Cupcakes, Independence Day, Visiting Friends, BYU sisterly love and all the rest

Ok, so now let's go back in time a little bit. Sunday, the 4th of July {aka Independence Day}, and as previously mentioned, the first holiday my little family of 3 was divided. Me in Utah and the boys home in Washington {click here to read how they spent the holiday}. Sad. The day started with church at my Aunt and Uncle's ward and when we got home we started making BBQ dinner preparations. And here's where the cupcakes come in. My cousin, Niki, had baked up a couple dozen cupcakes and then gave us all a mini lesson on how to turn them into beautiful sunflowers or put that cute little swirly on top {proud to say that I already knew how to do that!}.Not bad for a bunch of amateurs! Of course, Niki got all fancy with hers and turned one into a pretty impressive panda bear. While decorating these bakery-window-wannabe cupcakes, I got a picture text from Sean of Ethan in his festive Sunday Independence Day attire.I admit, this probably wouldn't have been my first choice {sorry Sean}, but then again, I'm not sure I would've been this creative! I do love the red tie, white shirt and silver vest. And either way, he is such a handsome little dude!

So after we had a super-yummy BBQ dinner with everyone, my mom and sisters and I booked it over to West Jordan because I had a rare opportunity to visit my childhood and long-time friend, Jenny {the same Jenny mentioned in the previous post when recalling our trip to Raging Waters} - she had just had TWIN girls a few weeks prior. Yeah, I was in newborn-baby-holding heaven with little Audrey and Kinsey. Not too mention how great it was to see some old friends. Jenny and I are holding the twins, her dad and his mom are next [Gramma Barnes!!!], then my mom and in the front is Jenny's mom with my sisters on either side. Did you follow all that? We totally crashed the tail-end of their family get-together, but I didn't feel too bad because it was so fun to see everyone. Plus, I had permission from Jenny!

From there we went our separate ways... mom and I back to my aunt and uncle's house and Christine and Lizzy back to Christine's apartment in Provo. Lizzy thought she was pretty much the bomb-diggity for getting to stay in the apartment [two of Christine's roommates had already moved out, so there was a spare bed]. She kept saying that she can NOT wait for college.... to have her own place.... do her own grocery shopping.... cook her own food.... Ha ha!! I totally forgot how glamorous living on your own looks to the young-ins still at home!!

Monday Lizzy and Christine first went to the Freedom Run to try and cheer cousin Niki on, but she was lost in the crowd. They had a poster made and everything. Then they spent quite a bit of time in the pool in the a.m. while Mom and I pack up our stuff in Bountiful. That afternoon, Mom and I were dying to lay out by the pool since we had missed it, so Lizzy and Christine played some ultimate Frisbee and then met us back at the pool. As seen in the pics above, there was an awful lot of basketball dunking, handstands and overall goofing around. The joys of being without Ethan someplace warm and with access to a free pool!

That night, after Brick Oven Pizza for dinner {again, see previous "part 2" post} we met back at the hotel, along with Christine's friend Matt, to play games. Yeah, that ultimately ended in a wrestling match between my sisters and Matt.Tuesday was already covered, so now we just have Wednesday. Our bonus day since we were supposed to be driving back to Oregon. Once again, we decided to stay an extra day. We slept in and skipped the free breakfast because we were just too beat! Then we headed over to the BYU campus and got J.Dawgs hot dogs for lunch. YUM!! May I recommend the all-beef dog with special sauce, onions, a pickle and mustard. Did I already say YUM?!?!! With that in our bellies, we raced across campus to make it to Christine's ballroom dance class. I thought I was going to hurl. Especially when we had to go back UP the steps from heck. Unfortunately, Christine had to work that afternoon/evening. So the rest of us went back to her place and bummed around - which definitely included more pool time!! And once Christine got home from work, we had one last impromptu photo shoot... in our matching BYU tees.
The next morning we {the original 3 who started this trip} loaded up my mom's car and headed home.

Funny side story about me: My mom let me take over the driving for a while once we were in Burns. Me, having never drove to Utah, except while following my mom's car in April, failed to double-check with my mom to know which road to get on. She was out-cold the second she got in the passenger seat and I just assumed there was only one way to go out of Burns to get to Ontario. Yeah. I was wrong! Several times I was thinking that I didn't remember these white gate thingies, but mom just brushed it off and I kept driving. It wasn't until I asked her about an upcoming fork in the road that we realized something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I was in southern Oregon!! Well, after a bit of panic, we pulled out the map and figured out where to go from there and only ended up being about 45 minutes total out of our way with no back-tracking. Phew!!

Me at the concert, sporting a rockin' glow necklace. You know you're jealous!

Funny side story about Lizzy: One of the mornings she was at Christine's apartment she called me up in a bit of a panic. She was making brownies and needed 2/3 cup of something, but Christine was in the shower and didn't have a 2/3 measuring cup! "Relax!" I tell her, thinking her only options were, like, a 1/2 cup. "What measuring cups do you have?" "Well..." she says. "I've got a 1/4 cup, a 1/3 cup, a..." I stopped her right there, trying not to laugh to hard... "Just used the 1/3 cup twice!" Long pause..... "Oh." :)

This was taken of Lizzy the first night, just after we got to Bountiful. When she should took both air mattresses and doubled them up Princess-n-the-pea-like.

We got home late Thursday night, crashed, and the next day Lizzy drove back to WA with me and babysat while Sean and I went on our awesome 5th anniversary date night!

Utah - July 2010 part 2

Utah

July 2010
part 2: Seven Peaks and Christine's Birthday

I'm going to skip around a little bit here.... Christine's birthday was on Tuesday, so I'll get back to Sunday and [most] of Monday in the next [and last] post.

Monday night we went to Brick Oven Pizza in Provo, despite Christine's protests that no one really goes there, because it is one of my mom's old stomps and because they have really good pizza! Of course, Monday nights are free Root Beer nights, so we were all over that! Then my mom got them to sing to Christine for her "birthday" [a day early] and she got a chocolate mousse pie for her embarrassment. Lizzy and I thought it looked pretty tasty, so we ordered one to share. We only got about half-way through between the two of us, but it did not disappoint!

Tuesday, on Christine's actual birthday, we had quite the day! First up was the free breakfast buffet at our hotel, then we headed over to Walmart to restock Christine's fridge and pantry and Lizzy and I decided to get some party decorations to make her apartment a little more festive! Then, while Christine scooted off to class, we went back to her apartment to decorate, clean-up a little and I also baked her a batch of yummy, gooey, cinnamon-roll goodness. From scratch. And they were heavenly, if I do say so myself!

Later that afternoon, Lizzy and I met up with Christine at Seven Peaks, where she was scheduled to work, but was able to get the day off so we could stay and play!! I seriously don't know how families afford that place, though. Christine had free passes for Lizzy and I [normally we would've been $21.95 each plus tax], but I still had to pay for the locker rental [$6 including $2 refund w/ key return] and 2-person tube [$9 including $1 refund when tube is returned]. We were able to avoid the $5 parking fee since my mom just dropped us off. Plus, there is no outside food or drink {Side story: I thought I'd removed some granola bars and fruit snacks from my bag - turns out I still had a small, unopened box of granola bars I'd forgotten about since they'd been in there since I first packed for the trip. Holy big deal!! I really hated to just toss them in the garbage because, of course, our ride [my mom] had already left. They called over the head security guard who then all-but-escorted Christine to her work locker so she could put them in there. Sheesh. They are not joking about there no outside food policy! On top of that, I also had a bottle of nail polish in my bag and there's a no glass bottle policy, but they said they could put that in the front office so I could pick it up when we leave. Ay-yi-yi! Next time I'm making sure my bag has strictly a towel and sunglasses only in it!!} We did have a great time going down all the slides. I had not been to a water park in soooo long! Of course, all the ramps and stairs to climb to the top to go down the slides reminded me how out of shape I am. Ugh. Not a fun reminder!We went on all but the scary-steep slides. I'm getting too old for those, anyway! What really cracked me up, though, was Christine and Lizzy's resistance to go on them. Especially when I was Lizzy's age, I would've been doing them all! I distinctly remember a trip to Raging Waters with one of my best friends, Jenny, where I did all but the "Rollercoaster" {which apparently is now called Waimea} slide. That included the super-steep-go-down-on-your-belly Acapulco Cliff Dive!! Yeah, both of these slides require a 7-story climb and Jenny even did the Rollercoaster. I guess we were adrenaline junkies in those days. Back at Seven Peaks, we also did something else I never would've done in my youth... floated on the lazy river! I so enjoyed it, though! So relaxing floating along in the cool water with the warm sun bronzing up my skin. :) Anyway, I think our favorite slides were Cave-In and Vortex, both of which got ample screams from me!!
Can you tell this picture was snapped before we got started with the slides? i.e. Hair is still dry and looking good. Oh, and apparently I am the only loser in the family without white shades. Even my mom has a pair! Lame.

After the water park Christine dropped Lizzy and I off at our hotel so we could shower and make ourselves presentable for her party. She had quite the crowd there!Here they are all holding up 2 fingers on both hands because she was turning 22! Of course, it was still about 1000 degrees outside, which made it about 2000 degrees inside her apartment with all those people, so after birthday cake [DQ ice cream] and some chit-chat........ the gang headed outside to the sand volleyball pit to get their game on.Then, once everyone had left, it was present-time.See the rolling pin Christine's holding up? Yeah, I got that for her. Wrapped it all up... after I first used it to roll out the previously mentioned cinnamon rolls!! Oh, the love! Oh, and that's Matt, again, in the the star shades above. Anyway... Christine, I sure hope you enjoyed your birthday as much as I did!