The fourth

It's a little late, I know. But you know what they say...better late than early.

Oh they don't say that? I must have made that up. I like it. I'm stickin with it.

With the prospect of doing the Dirty Dash in Utah, I decided I might want to do a little run before then. To see if I would die. It's been about sixish years since I last ran a respectable distance. That ol c-section never did heal up well so I have resorted to baking as my form of exercise. It counts- I keep my flour on a really high shelf. So I started the day by running a 5k in Mexico Beach. Although I don't have a photo or a racing number or a t shirt to show for it, I swear I ran. That sweet little old city was simply not prepared for more than 35 people to run the race. So with hundreds of people in line to register and five minutes before the race, they just yelled "GO" and everybody started running. And you know what happened? I won the race. Okay, fine. I didn't win. BUT- I did save $10 bucks because I never had to register. So I got to be a loser for free. Awesome. I had to stash the money on my person while I ran because of the sudden start so at the end I had a soggy dripping bill. I stowed it away in my wallet for the next time I go to the post office and they act like I'm holding a dadgum knife to their throat to ship a box. ANYWAY, my time was nothing to be proud of but all my guts stayed intact contrary to the feeling I had while running, so I say it was a win.

Then we went swimming at the base pool. I tried to fight the feeling of how crappy it is to spend holidays separated. We hung out with the Kuczera's and the Baker's at the pool. Anabelle walked up to the DJ station and requested Queen. Furthermore, I might add that she did not disappoint with her white head banging dance moves when he finally played it for her.

Although I surely didn't feel like dragging three tired kids out late to see the fireworks, I decided I had to fight those feelings. I made a promise to myself that we will not sit at home just because it's harder to do things alone. Life must go on, and life must be fun, and we must still make good memories. Plus neighbor Kari was feeling sad because Ryan had just left so I invited her to come with us. It ended up being perfect. We had the perfect spot on the beach right by the Pier. The weather was remarkably enjoyable. And our kids had so much fun with each other. Lila sat on my lap and I was asking her the full name of each person in our family. She said them all correctly and then I asked what Maisey's full name is and she said, "Maisey Daisey". I guess I do call her that a lot. Anabelle LOVED the fireworks. She kept screaming and I kept asking her not to, and finally she said, "It's no use. I just can't help myself." Lila was a bit frightened by the noise and Maisey seemed intrigued and entertained. I think it may have been the best fireworks I have ever seen. Everyone along the entire coast was shooting them into the water so all you could see in either direction was fireworks over the water. It was gorgeous. I layed there on my back holding Lila and Maisey and wondering where you were at that time. Turns out you were on top of a cold mountain looking for a helicopter. I know you didn't get to BBQ or light a firecracker but really, your night was truly more patriotic. And there was no one I would have liked to go with more than Kari at that time. We layed there together missing our airmen and loving our country.

On our way to the car Anabelle said, "Dad sure missed some good fireworks". Sweet to see her thinking of you, even in her fun.

On the way home she was sitting in the back with Reese and Teagan and she started teaching them all about Jesus. All the things he created and how he loves us, in a matter of fact way. Then she started telling them about "Joseph Smith who is a prophet"...the kids sat silently and listened as did Kari. I wondered what she was thinking. Then the primary cd came on and Anabelle asked me to turn it up and again the Baileys just sat silently and listened. Not sure what she was feeling. It was neat for me to watch Anabelle share her feelings so easily and openly with her friends, with no hesitation. Oh that her boldness will remain intact as she grows, along with her testimony.

A good day indeed.




Red lips, blue eyes, white hair...what a patriotic head!!

People are people no matter how small

Anabelle loves her Pet Shops.

She loves her dress-ups.

But I think her very favorite toy is Maisey.

She does a very good job of helping with Maisey. She frequently rescues her from the stairs, someone who just turned three who hasn't mastered the gentle touch, and beads, bugs, or other chokables on the floor.

BUT, she still has a bit of a disconnect as far as the realization that, at the end of the day, MAISEY IS A PERSON.

I have found that I say that very phrase to her on a semi regular basis. She gets caught up in how cute she thinks Maisey is, combined with the (dangerous) fact that she can pick her up and maneuver her at will. She really enjoys that part.

She sometimes assumes complete ownership over Maisey, which in certain times can be helpful. Maisey will sometimes spend quiet time in Anabelle's room so that I can...blog actually. Which is helpful for me. Right up until her game evolves and Maisey is no longer part of it and she abandons her without another thought. Or when I hear screechy protests and know that I can expect to see Maisey in some sort of costume...or worse.

The other day I sat here at the computer and glanced up as Anabelle went parading her stroller down the hall.






Notice the poses from Anabelle. "What? There's a crumpled up baby in discomfort who is literally busting out of the stroller? Oh, sorry, I hadn't noticed, I was busy smiling and doing my signature flamingo leg for the photo".

Pat his cheeks and give him WHAT?

A great big basketball. And then some root beer. And then an AF license plate. And then a massage gift certificate. And a BBQ mop. And best of all a tie made into a snake.

It's always fun to celebrate Father's Day at our place, for Braden is very worth celebrating.

Because of him our girls will be musical.

They will know their way around the Home Depot. (Anabelle told me recently "I really miss going to my special store with Dad. The one where we go on all our Daddy-daughter dates. It has an orange sign and they sell lots of wood).

They can clean a rib like a full grown man.

And hopefully they have the tender caring hearts of their Father, which looks for the positive in everything and believes the best about people.

The reason its a good idea to marry someone awesome, is that you get to see all your favorite qualities about that person in miniature versions walking around in your children.

Also, its helpful to marry someone good looking.

My life is immeasurably blessed by Braden and both of our Dads who honor their priesthood. Everything else they do or have done for me seems to fall under that umbrella somehow. I count this as one of my most cherished blessings, for it brings much needed comfort, guidance, and direction.


We made him some bacon to eat while opening his presents. Because what isn't made better by eating bacon?

Anabelle drew this picture of him for his gift wrap. Spot on, right? Minus the different colored eyes and the pig nose. Hey he's gone a lot, who can blame her if she thinks her Dad looks like a sloth creature?

Trying to figure out my hand drawn clues that tell him he's going to a Real Salt Lake game with three of his brothers.

"Those are SHOES?!"

To cheer a Braden before he goes

The pool still gets visited regularly, even though you're not here to catch us...



<

The National Geographic's still get read even though you're not here to read them...


And the piano still gets played even though you're not here to play it...



(I like this one because she was rockin out to the music and it's like her body can't handle all the groovin her soul was doing).

Things are the same but it feels so different. We are missing you. Know that the girl squad will be saying extra prayers for you over the next few days.

Breaking News

I interrupt this string of past events that I'm trying desperately to catch up on to bring you real-time headlines. Maisey took her first real steps today. Legitimate, big, sequenced steps. Four of them. Kari was over with her kids and she had her fancy blingish phone out. And Maisey wanted that phone. So she walked to her and grabbed it. We tried for a good long while to get a video for Braden but of course she was done. We got a few of her taking just one step which I may upload if I find myself with an hour with nothing else to do. Ha!

The huge gummy grin may be the best part of watching her accomplish new things.

11 months for Maisey

You know when you are thinking up names for your baby and you try to think up all the things that ryhme with that name to anticipate the severity of nicknames that might loom in their future? We wondered if Lazy Maisey or Crazy Maisey would come her way. I think it will be Crazy Maisey.

I never did a 10 month post for her. Do you know why? Maybe because I was busy cleaning up toilet paper that she unrolled and ate. Or maybe I was comforting her after she climbed out of her crib and fell on her head. This girl is....ambitious? Driven? Persevering?

She knows when she's in trouble already. I hear her creeping up the stairs. I say her name. She gets a huge sneaky grin on her face and goes bolting around the corner as fast as she can to get away from me.

Right at 10 months she was standing up all the time. Now she has taken a few teensy steps here and there but can stand up and drink from a cup for long periods of time. I gave her the walker to try out the other day and she took off with it on the first try. She zoomed all over the house without batting an eye.

She says "Mama" when she feels like it and has said "uh-oh" a few times.

She has developed a funny habit of filling her cheeks up with air and then blowing it out.

Yesterday she played an actual game of physical hide and seek with Anabelle. It was hilarious. Anabelle would creep around and hide behind the sofa chair and Maisey would crawl around until she found her and then they would both crack up.

She makes everyone in our house laugh everyday. I just can't help but kiss her all over. She is a fun one, that's for sure.

Atlanta

If there's one thing we're figuring out about the military lifestyle, it is the need to jump all over any and all chances we have to spend time as a family. We have a lot of separations coming up, we just did one recently, and we're doing one now. Those things are hard on a family, and hard on a marriage. So we have made the decision that when we do get to be together, we want to make sure we're doing all the playing we can. So whenever Braden has a few days of "casual status", I plan on taking full advantage.

In between graduation and SERE, we took a few days and went to Atlanta. Why Atlanta? We don't know. Even after we had been driving for an hour we still weren't sure if we were going to Atlanta or Orlando. Because we're young and crazy like that. At the on ramp we decided it would be good to see our college buddies, Sevy & Dani Price so we went north. (Did we go north, honey?) Braden's favorite thing I've ever said is, "I have a good sense of direction, I just don't know which direction I'm sensing". I can drive anywhere and not get lost, I just can't tell you how to get there.

But I digress...

It was fun to see the Price's and their cute little girl.

We went to the Six Flags water park. Anabelle loved it. After we talked her into loving it.
Once she got over her initial sissiness, it turned into the "BEST DAY EVERRRRRR!!!
This was her best friend. For the two o'clock hour.


Lila led Maisey around for quite a while. They were both happy with this arrangement. It was cute to watch. Until we turned our heads for 2 seconds and Lila was gone. She had climbed up the playground and the only way to get down was to go down the slide, which she previously did not want to do. But what goes up must come down...

...and must expel the gallon of water inhaled on the way down. She must have liked it because she did it again.

But soon it became nap time for Thing 2 and Thing 3, and things started to fall apart. Braden and I shared a few "Why did we pay to come here with these tiny (TIRED) people?" glances. But just for that reason we felt the need to squeeze every ounce of possible enjoyment out of the day. Forcing fun? Maybe. But in the end it worked. I wondered to myself if one should have to work so hard to have fun on vacation. At any rate, we decided to have a family float on the Lazy River to re-group. It worked. And look what happened. Lila went to sleep. And after 30 minutes of this, so did Braden's arm.

I think he made about 9 laps around trying to let Lila sleep. But Maisey would not go to sleep. She fought it all day long and instead of drifting off to sleep like a little baby who swam all day should, she became crazier and crazier.

Until we decided it was time to go. And then of course she fell asleep.


That night we tucked our kids in bed (after 2 hours of trying) and went downtown to The Vortex. It is a restaurant from the show "Man vs. Food" that Braden likes to watch where this dude travels around the country and eats grotesque amounts of food in a single sitting, as a challenge to see if he can finish. So naturally, Braden wants in on this. He didn't order the burger from the show (it was $30.00!), but he did get the Double Coronary, pictured below.

This is two fried eggs, six slices of American cheese, eight pieces of bacon, half pound of burger, served between two grilled cheese sandwiches instead of a bun. He ate it all. And he was a happy man.

On our way out of town we decided to hit the splash pad at Centennial Olympic Park.


Anabelle was so excited. Until we got there and she realized it wasn't a pool. She wasn't going to be able to use her new Hello Kitty goggles that she had been wearing all around town like sunglasses. Despair set in. And then fatigue hit the little people. And Lila wasn't a fan of being hit in the face with high pressure water (why!?). So our children all began to cry like a bunch of .....well, girls. Should not be a shocker, but disappointing nonetheless. But we had paid to park and then walk them down there and we weren't going to just leave after 5 minutes. So I strapped them into the stroller, dumped a pile of snacks out on the tray, and Braden and I went to play in the water without them. After all, it was hot. It's Atlanta in June for Pete's sake. We stood close enough to them that we felt they were safe, but far enough away that we could only see them cry and not have to hear them. Girls, we're on vacation. There's no crying on vacation. But after a minute we felt bad standing there looking at them. Three hot girls crying pitifully. So we gave up and decided it was time to go home. But not before Braden walked 10 blocks to a gas station after our car wouldn't start because it was parched.

En route home, we stopped at Burger King to get some dinner. The girls played on the playground and laughed more in that half hour than they did that whole trip. I looked at Braden and Braden looked at me and we felt the waste of the money and effort we'd just spent slapping us in the face, just a little bit. Not that we regret the trip. It was a good trip. We had plenty of fun. BUT, we learned a few things...

1) Maisey is not a traveler. She basically took all the rules of traveling and pooped on them. She won't sleep unless she is in her own crib. It took her three days of doing this before she finally knocked out for a good nap. It makes me SUPER excited to be road tripping across the country with her in a few weeks.

2) Little people are simple people. If we had stayed home and played Candy land with them and bought them a tootsie roll, they would have been ecstatic. We came to the realization that our kids are too little to do such adventures with. So I don't want to hear any bellyaching the next time we announce we are going on vacation and we pull into Burger King.

3) Our kids do not eat fast food. They want nothing to do with it. Which is good! Except for when we're not at home and I can't exactly pull cous-cous out of my purse.

4) Pedestrians in Atlanta fear no vehicle. I saw crazier people there than in NY, DC, or LA. For real, what is with those people.

Highlights of the trip include:

-Going to Ross with only 2 kids while Maisey slept at the Price's. It was amazing how much easier only 2 kids is. Or maybe it's not having a mobile baby around. Either way, it was a fun outing (no offense 15 year old Maisey). Braden found some jeans he loves which he looks supremely hot in.

-After watching an old crippled homeless man scoot across a 6 lane highway, Anabelle assures us that she would never do that unless she was holding our hand. Lila, in her deep voice with her eyes rolled to the side of her head says, "We would nevo, evo, evo DO DAT!!" You had to be there. We told her to say it at least 15 more times on the trip.

-Playing explorer with Anabelle at the water park and seeing her find the courage to go down slides and do things that made her nervous.

-Eating the most delicious burgers of our lives at the Vortex.

All in all, a good trip. Always a good thing to spend time with my favorites.

Baby talk

What's that Maisey, you're feeling sad because you haven't seen Dad in a week? He's at SERE.

You know, SERE...Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape.

What is he doing there? Well, yesterday he learned how to escape in an urban setting, you know like on the Bourne Identity. I hope driving was not part of the course or our insurance is really going to skyrocket. A lot of the things he does there is classified. But if I had to guess, I would say that they're probably learning to make themselves a turkey sandwich and wash clothes so they can survive during deployments, and it's classified because they don't want their wives to know what they've been trained to do. Just a guess. Everyone who is a "flier" in the AF has to go to this training. In case his plane should ever...well... anyway, he's already been gone for one week, so just three more to go!

Yeah, you've almost got it.

I told Dad about all of your new tricks he's missing and it makes him sad. He's about to go into the field and we won't talk to him all week, can you show him a trick before he goes?
Yes, those are your chompers still hiding in your gums, but that's not really a trick...

Ahhhh, the ol' disappearing eyes. I think he taught you that one. How about your best Dad impersonation?

Perfect!

While you're here trying all sorts of delicious foods like blueberries and noodles, Dad is going to be eating bugs and MRE's, which to him have equal appeal.

Yes, you heard me right, I said eating bugs. No, I'm not going to give you bugs to eat, you can find those yourself. You want to recommend some of your favorites to Dad? No, I'm not continuing with this conversation Maisey, eat some Cheerios for crying out loud.


Sheesh, you don't have to be all huffy about it. You should be grateful for those Cheerios. You know some babies in Africa are eating bugs. Oh. Wait, there you go with the jealousy again.

You're not jealous, it just sounds good and now you're bored with your Cheerios? Sorry.

He also can't shower so I imagine he will smell something like, well you, after you've eaten some peas.

I know, you're tellin me.

What smells worse, Dad at the end of this week, or this inners of your neck?


I'm sorry, that was out of line. I know you can't help it.

What's the first thing you're going to do to Dad when you see him again?


Hey c'mon, don't cry and be mad at him. I know, he didn't even say goodbye to you. It was the middle of the night and I wouldn't let him wake you up. He doesn't want to leave us. He has to. C'mon, show Dad some love.

Ah, there's some kisses. Say good luck Dad, we miss you..