apartment tour

Tomorrow is very special because we get to celebrate the day when our little Clara joined our family. We are so excited and we have been prepping like crazy to get ready. One of the things we have been working on is cleaning our house really well.  As a result, I was finally able to snap some pictures of our apartment.  So, here it is.

Our bedroom

This is the view when you walk in the door, and then the pictures work their way around the room clockwise.

 The living room. 

 The bathroom

Busch Gardens

I guess it's about time I wrote about our Florida trip.

We flew to Florida on Sunday. The flight wasn't as easy as the flight with our little 4 month old baby to and from France, but it went okay. She did sleep some of the way, and we were able to have a seat between us for the longer leg of the journey, which is really nice. We flew into Tampa. We arrived pretty late, then it was another 45 minutes or so to our condo, so we were beat when we finally arrived.

On Monday, we (Z's parents, Megan and Jeff, Zack, Clara, and I) decided to try out Busch Gardens. This theme park is animal themed, so we started our day on the safari ride.

 After that, we spent some time riding roller coasters while Clara hung out with Grandma and Grandpa.

 They headed to the kids' section of the park, which was Sesame Street themed.

 Clara had a great time watching the show with some of her favorite characters, including Elmo.

 The rides were cool, but we also spent a lot of time just walking around looking at things.

 Elephants

 Lion

 This meerkat guy was just chilling up on this mound in that exact position for a long time.

 In the afternoon, Clara got tired enough that she even took a nap in her stroller. 

Later in the day, she was awake again, and she and I spent some time together while everyone else enjoyed a ride on the Cheetah roller coaster.

 I got this shot of everyone else on the coaster. They are in the back 3 rows.

As the day wound down, we hit up the sky ride. We could look at the animals from above and just relax a little.  

 Waiting while others rode the log flume.

All in all, we had a really great time, and I was surprised by how well Clara tolerated a day at a theme park. She really is such a good baby.

April date

For this month, I bought a Groupon deal that included a gift card to a restaurant at Thanksgiving Point and admission for 2 to the dinosaur museum there. We actually ended up doing a daytime date since it was spring break and my mom was available to babysit in the middle of the day, so maybe my info sheet should've said lunch and lizards or something like that instead of dinner and dinos. In any case, we ate a TON of food at lunch in order to use up the gift card. We forgot to snap a single picture of this part of our date, but we started our meal with a flatbread and some pita with cheese dip. For the main course, Zack had meatloaf and I had a sandwich.  We polished it off with some chocolate cake. We had a good time and really enjoyed ourselves, but we mostly thought all the food was just okay. Not really delicious. We probably wouldn't eat there again.
After eating, we hit up the dino museum. All the pictures are cell phone pictures, so forgive the less than stellar quality. They are also in a kind of random order.

A big dinosaur

 fossil thingys

 head butting match

 I'm going hunting

 ARRGGGGHHHHHHHH!

 

 Dinosaurs are cool

 and scary!

 shark bait

 that's one big turtle

 T-rex

 raptor

We had a great time. Thanks to my mom for watching to baby. I guess this date was extra appropriate because Jurassic Park was just released in theatres in 3D, so of course we have to check that out. We are going tomorrow night. Yay dinosaurs!

Matthew is home

Last Tuesday, my baby brother came home after spending 2 years serving a mission for our church in the California Roseville Mission.  Mom and dad went and picked him up from the airport, then the rest of us surprised him when he arrived home.  We all had a big barbeque with cake and balloons and the whole bit, and Matthew got to meet his nieces for the first time. Clara wasn't so sure about Matthew at first.

She has been warming up to him since then though.

We are so happy to have Matthew back. It is so fun to have our family all in the same place again.

Happy Easter

March date night

Since the baby came, we haven't been doing so well in the dating department.

So for Valentine's Day, I took an idea I'd seen on Pinterest. I planned a date night a month for the rest of the year. I put these in envelopes, 1 for each month. Zack gets to open the envelope at the beginning of each month, and we go on that date sometime during the month.

This month was our first envelope date. I made up this little sheet to put in the envelope explaining what we would be doing.  I would've included the tickets to the game in the envelope too, but there weren't paper tickets. I just had to swipe my credit card at the door to get in.

My brother and sister in law were kind enough to watch our sick, grump baby so we could go enjoy the Jazz game. We decided to root for the 76ers in honor of our love for Philly.

Go Sixers!

We enjoyed some popcorn and churro. Yum yum.

In the end, our decision to cheer for Philadelphia was in vain. The Jazz kicked butt and the Sixers looked awful out there.  We still had a blast though, and really appreciated getting out of the house and just spending some time together.

Catch up

Hi guys.
We're still here.
Just living that normal, every day, boring kind of life.
It seems fun to us but when it comes to letting other people know what's going on, it seems really run of the mill.
First of all, I got a job.  I was kinda dragging my feet about job hunting for a lot of reasons. Job hunting sucks, for example. Also I didn't really want to go back to work quite yet.  I guess I was hoping Zack would find something amazing and high paying and all that wonderful stuff. But it just didn't go that way, and it became clear that one of us was going to have to earn some money soon. So I reluctantly hit the pavement. Luckily, the hunt wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. I went into the place and applied on Monday, interviewed on Wednesday, and got the offer by the end of the week. Also, I interviewed for a prn (as needed) position, but they actually ended up offering me regular part-time, which is really a lot better with the baby. It makes my schedule much more predictable. So for the past couple months, I have been working at this rehab/long term care center pretty close to where I live.  It's going well so far and I am happy to be able to help us stay afloat while Zack keeps looking for the opportunity that's right for him.
We are FINALLY, 5 months later, starting to feel really moved in to our apartment. I just need to snap some pictures, and I will write a post about that soon.
We leave in a week for a vacation in Florida. Yay!
And what would a blog post be without an update on our baby?  She in now 10 months old. We mostly call her Boo Boo these days. She is in such a fun stage. She crawls really well and pulls herself up on just about everything. She is so curious and likes to be right in the middle of everything. She likes to play with just about anything, especially if it's not a toy. She still sleeps like crap, waking up every 3 hours or so at night. We've tried a lot of things to stop this with no success, so I think we've mostly just accepted that it is what it is and she'll sleep when she's ready.
She's our happy girl.

She loves to look at herself in the mirror.

She also loves it when we put water in straws and put a little in her mouth.

So precious when she actually sleeps.

Valentine's Day

Momma's sunglasses

Eating spaghetti

In her "baby prom dress"

We love having her in our family.