To Jillian Michaels...

You're insane, and I love you. Thank you for pushing me harder than I ever would have attempted to push myself.

Tulip Festival

Yesterday Noah and I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point with Grandma and Grandpa Patterson. He seemed to love being in the stroller for that long. He can't get enough of it lately, and tries to climb in it once in a while. We walked through essentially all of the gardens. It was a great day for it: warm with a slight breeze, and brightly overcast. It's possible that I was more excited about the daffodils than I was the tulips, I love them! They're such beautiful happy flowers. I really liked the hyacinths as well. They smell AMAZING.

The Daffodils - William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Doing things his own way

Noah has been crawling for about a month now, and for some reason, he decided to do it in an unconventional manner.

A Sunday Picnic

A few Sundays ago the weather was GORGEOUS!!! So we went for an afternoon picnic in the park that is just down the street. We had sandwiches, apples, and celery. Noah was gnawing on a slice of apple for about 10 minutes and made a fabulous mess of it. He went down the slide with Zander, and bounced on the frog with me. Then he proceeded to discover what was hiding in the grass. He found all sorts of interesting things in there. Dandelions, cigarette butts (ICK) sticks, rocks. It was a good learning experience for him though. He used to hate touching the grass, but now he's fine crawling all over it.

It was a fabulous afternoon out. We had a great time just spending the afternoon outside without time constraints, or worrying about the stupid weather.

Easily Entertained

Something in the water

In less than a week, we've killed 3 fish. I think it's time to figure out something else with them...

California!

This is a very detailed description of the trip that we just went on. I won't be at all offended if you scroll down without reading, and just look at the pretty pictures.

So our flight was Monday morning at 9:11....or so I thought. Turns out that it was arriving in California at that time, and it actually left Salt Lake at 8:30. Needless to say, we missed that flight. So they booked us into the next flight, which was later that evening. So we went and got some breakfast, went home, slept, hung out, went to Tucanos for an early dinner, then headed to the airport. We ended up essentially losing a day of vacation because I misread that stupid piece of paper. Originally we were going to go straight to Disneyland when we landed and get a good half day in at least. But it was actually kind of nice to have a day at home to sit around and do nothing. We had dropped Noah off the night before, so I had no obligations whatsoever.

Tuesday we slept in a bit, then headed over to Disneyland. We hadn't eaten yet so we got breakfast in the park, and it was actually pretty good. We hit up as many rides as we could, but it was St. Patricks day, and amazingly busy considering that's not exactly a major holiday. It was pretty cool to see the vast amounts of green wearing people wandering around the park though.

Wednesday we went back to Disneyland again. We slept in quite a bit, so we didn't actually make it over to the park until 11ish. We got some foods, and hit up as many rides as we could since we knew we weren't going to have as much time. Between the two days we rode Pirates of the Caribean x2, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones x2, It's a Small World (ugh), Roger Rabbit (BAD lines) Space Mountain x2, Thunder Mountain x2, The Magical Tiki Room, Star Tours, Buzz Light Year, Finding Nemo (waste of time), Soarin' over California x2, Monsters Inc, Bugs Life, Tower of Terror (HATED it), The Jungle Tour (I'd never done it before, I never need to do it again). That night the Wardles flew in to join us for the rest of the trip. On our way back to the hotel we hit up a Food 4 Less to get groceries so we could eat breakfast in the hotel. I like to think that we saved a fair amount of money by doing that.

Thursday, we got everyone up and out of the apartment relatively fast so that we could head up to Six Flags. After an hour and a half of driving we finally got there, only to find out that it was closed. Needless to say we were a bit ticked. We drove a long ways (not to mention flying) and had already purchased our tickets, and parking pass. There were some other people in our same situation sitting there in their cars not exactly sure what to do, and they said they found out that they are open on weekends only. So we planned to come back a few days later.

We hit up an In N Out while we were up in that area, just cuz we saw one and Craig had never been there before. Rather than totally waste the day, we figured we might as well do SOMETHING in the general area. So I looked at our handy map that the rental car place gave us and saw The La Brea tar pits, and they didn't look like they would be that hard to get to. So we headed into downtown LA to see what we could find. After driving around for a bit, and then asking for directions, we found it. It was actually pretty darn cool. The museum wasn't all that great, but I had no idea that there were any active tar pits ANYWHERE in the world, much less right in the middle of Los Angeles. One of the old excavation sites has since filled in with rain water, etc, and is this good sized pond that's got this nasty oil slick look to it, and has methane gas bubbling out of it. And then there are all of these other spots coming out of the lawn that are seriously little mini tar pits. It was pretty stinking cool. And yes, it was stinky. It smells just like road construction tar.
That night the four of us went to Bubba Gumps. We had a coupon from our hotel to get a free appetizer, so we figured we might as well take advantage of it. I think all of us were really pleased with our meals. It was one of my favorites over the whole week actually.

Friday we headed down to San Diego to go to Sea World, and man it was COLD. First thing we did was buy sweaters at the gift shop, which of course were painfully expensive, and I ended up having an allergic reaction to mine....dumb. Anyway, we headed over to see the Shamu show. we got great seats up at the top of the splash zone, totally assured by the lady sitting next to us that we wouldn't get wet that high up. she was very very very wrong. Zander and I didn't have anyone sitting directly in front of us, so we got totally drenched. And of course it was cloudy and cold and windy all day. My pants dried out fairly fast, but my shirt and sweater, shoes and socks were wet for a long time. Right about the time that my feet were finally starting to feel dry, one of the rays I was petting got excited and got my feet wet, again. Thankfully we were about ready to leave at that point. Sea World was a nice break for me and Zander. it was a much slower pace than Disney had been. It was nice to sit and watch the shows, rather than have to stand around in lines all day long. And I thought it was really cool to be able to touch the animals. We pet the bat rays, held star fish, and squished a sea cucumber. For dinner that night we went to the Cheesecake Factory. It was really really good, their hot chocolat was amazing. The menu was kind of overwhelming though, it's like 30 pages long. I'm not really exagerating there either.

Saturday, after calling them several times to make sure they were open, we headed up to Six Flags again. We got there about 30 minutes after they opened, and it was pretty darn packed. Evidently they are only open on weekends for the month of March, and then they're open every day. We got in line for Tatsu and found out that it was a 3 hour wait, which is absurd. There are very few things in life worth waiting 3 hours for. So we spent a whole butt load of money and bought a Flash Pass for the 4 of us. It essentially let us to the front of every line. Like a Fast Pass at Disneyland but WAY better. And it works for every ride they have. We rode literally every single roller coaster in the park, some of them twice. If we hadn't bought those passes we would have only done like 3 or 4. By the time we got out of the park and through traffic, why there was that much traffic at midnight I'll never know, we were too tired to worry about eating dinner, and we all just crashed.

Sunday was our day to go to San Diego Zoo. We didn't go though. Zander and I were both totally burned out from the rest of the week, so we sent Wardle's on down there by themselves. They got lost a little bit, but ultimately they got to the zoo, and had a grand ol' time. Zander and I slept in, layed around, got in the hot tubs, went to lunch and a movie, and had just a relaxed day. When Wardle's got back, we all went to McCormick and Schmick's for dinner. It was pretty good, not fabulous, and seriously overpriced. That and our waitress wasn't exactly nice. She was great up until she realized that we for sure weren't going to be drinking alcohol. If she would have been nice we still would have tipped her as if we had been. Overall though, I think that Red Lobster or McGrath's are better choices.

Then on Monday we all packed everything up and headed home.

Overall it was a fabulous trip. I'm glad to be home though. I really miss the humidity though.

Free Stuff

I love getting stuff in the mail, and even better if I don't have to actually pay for it! Stephanie was a bad influence on me last night and showed me a drawer in her house full of free samples that she's gotten. And I thought "hey! that's kind of cool! I like free stuff!". So today I found several websites that give a whole list of free samples of things that you can get. In the next month or so, I should be receiving laundry detergent, mascara, a granola bar, and two different lotions. Yay for free stuff!