Halloween and Bladen's Birthday

It's been FOREVER since I last blogged and we've had so many fun things we've done. This is going to be picture overload...

Bladen celebrated his 3rd Halloween as a DRAGON! I let him pick out his own outfit this year... thank heavens it wasn't Spongebob haha! We started it off by having his Halloween parade at school.

All suited up!

Patiently reading books before start time

Lauren and Bladen = classmates and friends in the Cheetahs room!

Bladen and Flat Stanley carving pumpkins

Our finished products!

Ready to go trick-or-treating for the 1st time!

Bladen ABSOLUTELY loved going trick-or-treating and would run house to house with Daddy chasing close behind!

All done and headed home!

SUGAR HIGH!!!!!

My parents came in on the Thursday before B's birthday to surprise him for his birthday! We told B he had a package coming in air freight and we had to pick it up from the airport (we never thought we'd get it past him since we only go to the airport to pick family up), but he ran around like a wild child waiting for his packages to be dropped off at the bottom of the escalators. When he saw my parents coming down he was THRILLED! He said there's my Nana and my Papa and then just started giggling his head off. He was SO excited to see them! I got to take Friday off of work so we spent the day just hanging out... me and mom spent lots of time shopping, Nate worked and Bladen and dad fixed things around the house (haha mom can't get dad to do crap around the house, but here he was Mr. Fixit).

Raking leaves and Bladen hiding in the middle!

Bladen and Papa painting the hitch on the truck (haha my child looks like a scrub)

Saturday we went to the Illini football game. My dad has never been and we all thought he'd hate it. He actually enjoyed himself, which is understandable because a game with 60,523 in attendance in not boring! Could not have asked for a nicer November day in Illinois!

Papa's already training B to stratch his back!

Sunday we had Thanksgiving for lunch and then headed off to Bladen's birthday party at the bowling alley! Bladen sang "Happy Birthday to Batman" ALL day and was SSOOOOOO wild and full of energy. He had a good time with all the girls at the party and came away with a HAUL of presents! Pretty much everything he got was Batman with the major item being the Batman Castle from Nana and Papa. Thanks to Auntie who veered from the theme and did dinosaurs :) I'm so thankful my parents were able to come out and spend Bladen's birthday with us... his Nana and Papa mean the world to him!

Eating Thanksgiving

Birthday boy playing air hockey!

Kendal Jenna and I

Bladen doing his annual Birthday Dance hahaha - he definately has rhythm and loves entertaining all the girls!

Bladen and his "sister" Kendal

The Party Crew

Setting up the Batman house with Papa

Bladen on his REAL birthday with his hat from school :)

Me and Bladen cooking Thanksgiving dinner this morning.... I am so grateful for my wonderful family, our health and my job so that I can put a roof over our head and food on the table! Happy Thanksgiving!

Fun Weekend

We have had a fun weekend so far and it's only Saturday! Friday night we ate Bladen's choice of Mac n' cheese for dinner and then watched Monsters vs. Aliens. On Saturday we woke up early and headed to the Illinois Homecoming game vs. Michigan State. Ohhh man the Illini struggle this year but you can't pass up 50 yard line, $50 tickets for FREE!

Then a half hour after we walked into the door from the game, we had a play date over at our house. We had 5 kids under the age of 3 running around like they were wild indians, but they had a good time gutting and decorating pumpkins... with stickers of course because paint or anything else would have been SO messy! Then they watched a Halloween show with apple juice, apply donuts and chocolate chip cookies. These kids have all grown up together so it's fun to get them together to do stuff and they are now at the age where they can actually play and have fun together.

They all were holding hands :)

Illini Fan Day

I took Bladen to the Illini Football Fan Day a couple week ago and I didn't know what to expect... he came out with over 100 autographs and LOVED seeing all the players on "his" team!

His shorts do not match his outfit, but I bought him this jersey 5 minutes before it started and didn't have time to change
This picture is hilarious! Bladen is flaring his nostrils and has the biggest, cheesiest grin! B was so excited to meet Zac - he is the son of a partner in my office!

One of the players WANTED to sign K's bum!

It was bright out so B couldn't keep his eyes open!

B's football was covered in autographs and then he got 3 of the best players and Coach Zook's autographs on his jersey.

Crappy Days

These last couple of weeks have been quite crappy around our house. Labor Day weekend, Bladen and I were wrestling and when I went to stand up, he ran up behind me and pushed me over and I fell from standing up to the floor with all my weight on my right hand... breaking the bone under my pinkie joint! Since my job consists of working on a laptop and writing all day, not to add that I am like a single parent having to take care of B at night alone, they decided not to put a cast on and put me in a splint instead. It's been so annoying to get anything down and I feel so slow!

Then the next weekend, I wake up at 2 in the morning with the worst ear ache in the world. I was up from 2-6 shaking and nauseous because of the horrible pain... let me just say I would have rather popped out 4 babies than having to do that again. I went the Dr. the next morning and she said I had the worst case of adult ear infections she's ever seen. Because the infection was so bad, she put me on some strong drugs, which included a potent antibiotic and steroids. I'm such a sissy when it comes to medicine anyway, I can barely take Tylenol without get sick, so the medicine knocked me on my butt for a whole week. I literally thought I was going to die. I couldn't stand up or lay down without feeling like I was going to pass out because I was so dizzy and I couldn't keep anything down. They finally pulled me off the steriod and put me on the lowest dose of antibotics. So after a week of being in bed and another week of no hearing... I'm finally back to normal :)

Cancun

Nate and I finally went to Cancun after having to reschedule 3 times since May! It was a really fast trip, but a much needed vacation. It was so nice not having to worry about Bladen since I knew he'd be happy and taken care of with my mom and Brandi watching him the 1st day we were gone and Brandi the rest of the time. My mom flew out to stay with Brandi and Tyler in Philly and toured NYC and DC the week before they came to stay with me. I got to hang out with them for 6 days before I left :) Mom had to fly back early to start work and Brandi had until Monday to start school so the timing was perfect.

This is the view of the ocean and the pool from our balcony

We stayed at the Moon Palace and it was SUPER nice!

Nate and I spend most of our nights on the balcony reading... I loved it in the hammock!

Day One - Our goal was to wake up early every morning so we could enjoy as much time there as possible! We woke up at 6:00 am and had room service breakfast on the balcony while watching the sun rise. We were then off to the pool for the rest of the day.

These things are kinda gross, but they hung out everywhere around the pool

This was after our first day in the sun haha... we were freaking whiter than a ghost and were stupid enough to only wear SPF 4 our first day and this was the result ~ fried and sore the remainder of the trip!

In the two pictures above we are on our way to a steak place for dinner. During dinner, I started feeling SO sick and the smell of the food was killing me. I had 2 bites of my steak and we had to leave! I got right into bed when we got back to our room, which was around 8. I kept waking up during the night thinking of the food we'd ate so far and I wanted to die.

Day Two - Nate ended up getting sick this morning so we both slept in until 11 and didn't eat anything the rest of the day! Once we got up and going we spent the day laying under umbrellas around the pool - no sun for us!

Day Three - We were up at 6 am again with our room service breakfast on the balcony. We then jumped on a bus at 8 for a 3 hour drive to Chicha Itza (one of the 7 Wonders of the World). I wanted to do something like snorkeling or swimming with the dolphins, but the snorkeling tour wasn't being offered and Nate really wanted to go on this tour so I gave in.

Cemetery on the side of the road

How convenient... our bus took a bathroom break at a big tourist trap, which ended up taking us another hour! The only thing I found that I liked was a really pretty necklace; however, they wanted $420 for it and I could buy a lot of clothes with that much so I turned it down haha.

They all said that their stuff was "unique", but everywhere you went everyone had the same stuff.

After 4 1/2 hours on the bus we finally made it to Chichen Itza!

The first Mayan pyramid

A tomb

Our awesome tourguide, Erik, and yes he pretty much talked over a microphone the entire bus ride there!

The second Mayan pyramid

An observatory

The last Mayan pyramid - notice that each one over the years got taller and taller... they wanted to get closer to their Gods.

This is me standing in the middle of one of their ball fields. The goal was to get the ball through that little hole above left of my head. Someone on the losing team was always sacrificed after the game.

This picture of me is SO not good, but I put it on here so that I could remember what a ronch (sorry no better word to describe myself) I was during the tour. As noted above, this was not how I wanted to spend my last day in Cancun. It was hotter than Haities and it was SO humid. I have never sweat so bad in my life. It had already rained on us once and there was no where to hide so we just had to stand there and get soaked (with a white see through shirt on no less) and then here Nate wanted to take my picture and I about bite his head off because I was miserable. After all my whining and complaining, I do feel bad because Nate really wanted to come here so I'm going to act better next time:)

A store on the side of the freeway on our way back to the hotel... not what we'd call WalMart and this was one of the nicer stores we saw.

A neighborhood - I've been to Mexico twice and both times its made me SO grateful for what I have.

After a 12 hour tour and being drenched twice by rain I was SUPER excited to be getting off this bus and back to the Moon Palace!

The next morning I was up at 3 am to catch our shuttle back to the airport at 4! Everything went smooth until we got to the American Airline counter and they asked us for our Immigration Form from when we flew in... hahaha we threw it away! Ooops... had to wait an hour for customs to open and it was only a little room in a secluded area of the airport. When the guy walked in he asked us if we knew it was $50 each and that it had to be "cash in bank" and that the banks didn't open until 8 and we had to board our plane at 6???? Hell I almost had a nervous break down... I just wanted to be home! After filling out another form, Nate asked if he should go reschedule our flight and he threw us the forms and told us to give them to the security people... WHAT?? He let us off... thank you, thank you, thank you was our response. Well once we got through security and to our gate I was sitting there reading the piece of paper we had filled out and he had stamped and in bold it says "issuance of this is free"... this guys tried to screw us over and we never even had to give the paper to anyone! If I would have paid the $100 I would have been SO angry! I'm keeping that piece of paper forever! I am so glad to be back in the US!

While we were gone Auntie and Bladen...

Went to the water park

Went to the park

and went to the mall everyday to play on the germ infested play place :) Thank you so much to my mom and sister for watching Bladen while we were gone!

Summer Activities

I can't believe it's already August... where did the summer go? It has been the coolest summer on record here in Champaign-Urbana so it hasn't quite felt like summer yet and it's almost over! I need a tan so bad for our Cancun trip next week, I know that's why the sun hasn't been out. Anyways, I thought I'd post some random pics of some fun things we've been up to:

The not so fun thing... we lived out of a cooler for a week and half - had to throw out $150 of groceries we had bought a day before the fridge died and ate out every meal since the only things we could fit in the cooler was water, milk, butter, ketchup and some juice (does appliance stores really not carry any fridges in stock...uugggghhhh annoying!)

We took B bowling for the first time... like our socks hahaha
Jill Jenna Me

We tried having him bowl with all our us but he got too impatient so we let him bowl 2 games on his own lane

Our family

At most points during B's games he had 2 balls stuck on his lane because he couldn't get them going fast enough!

Taylor Lauren Bladen at Lauren's 3rd birthday party

Black frosting all over his face from the LadyBug cake

Jenna and I decided to take the kids to the Carson & Barnes circus since it was only $5! Paid $5 extra to sit on the front row!

Jenna Kendal

Bladen Me

Bladen LOVED the elephants

Last Sunday, we went to Kickapoo State Park with Nate's lab group. We canoed 8 miles in about 4 hours. It was B's first time canoeing and he did pretty good the entire time. The only thing that sucked is we lost his sunglasses in the river!

The little trooper!

All the nerdy chemists! I really don't fit in!

Ready, GO!

I wish the water was actually going fast so I didn't have to paddle my A off for 4 hrs straight!

My mom and sister will be arriving tomorrow and Nate and I will then be leaving for Cancun on Friday so we have a couple of busy, but fun weeks ahead.

Last 4 days in Utah!

I figured I better finish blogging about our trip to Utah before it's too late!

July 5 - Dad, Mom, Brandi, Bladen, Kapri and I loaded up in the bus with Nick and LeAnne following behind and was off to Hogle Zoo.

Our first stop was the Bird Show. Uncle Nick gave B a dollar to give to this bird who would put the money in this donation box.

Next was the elephant show!

And of course we couldn't get by without riding the carousel twice!

All Bladen cared about was riding the train!

The girls!

We had such a good time at the zoo even though it was blazing hot! Bladen is obsessed with animals so he was thrilled to see so many of them. His favorite were the elephants.

After leaving the zoo, we headed towards the Lagoon campground!

July 6/7 - Good thing Lagoon doesn't open until 10 am... trying to get 4 girls and 1 picky 2 yr old ready in a small space took FOREVER (not including the time we had to wait for Uncle Nick to get out of bed and moving)! However, we made it there right around 10 and I must admit I was a little nervous about taking Bladen to Lagoon because I thought he would get bored and impatient waiting in lines, letting us do things we wanted to do,etc., but boy was I wrong... I forgot how many kids things they have!

We started out by taking Bladen on the Terroride. I thought he would get scared and not want to go on anymore rides, but he rode with Papa and Nana and loved it. Next we were off the bumper cars.

The first time he rode, he was a little confused but on the second try he did pretty good!

Papa drenched B in sunscreen before we left and by the time we got to the third ride we were already sweating and B started rubbing his eyes, which meant getting sunscreen in them and anyone that knows Bladen knows he HATES anything to get by his eyes because he thinks it's going to burn. So I ran over to a gift shop while they were in line and bought him these studly $7 glasses! We had no problems after that and he actually wore the glasses the rest of the day without throwing a fit!

Kapri was such a good sport to ride all the kiddy rides with B even if she didn't quite fit in them!

This is all of us older "kids" getting ready to ditch Papa, Nana and Bladen to ride the bigger rides. (Yes Uncle Nick shaved his head since he is pretty much bald anyways - sure didn't get my moms genes)

Of course he was happy as a lark to ride the train, especially with Papa. Bladen did not want my dad to leave his sight the whole trip and my dad was a good sport to do whatever B wanted to do!

Haha... B was the only kid who wanted to ride this ride!

This is a mini version of the Big Shot. I thought this ride would scare the crap out of him since it shoots you up and then drops you multiple times. While on the ride, he couldn't hold his head up and would shake like he was having convoltions waiting for the drops so I definately thought he would freak when we got off, but NO he wanted to go again... I talked him into riding the boats again :)

Late in the afternoon, Dad, Bladen, Nick and LeAnne went back to camp to take a 2 hr nap while me, mom, Kapri and Brandi rode more roller coasters and watched a show. We hadn't went on any water rides since we didn't want to look like complete crap walking around the park the whole day, but it was getting late so us 4 girls decided to go on the log ride. We get on our log and the log in front of us as a malfunction, so we get stuck in our log for 20 minutes... but that wasn't the kicker... me and mom were in the back of the log with Brandi and Kapri in the front so our log was pretty much sinking in the back with the front of the log in the air hahahahaha!! People probably thought we were real winners, but we thought it was funny and couldn't stop laughing at ourselves. We of course got wet on the ride and figured we might as well call the boring ones to come back over and go with us again. The second time.... it was even funnier!! Pri, Nick, LeAnne and Brandi went in the first log and hey they didn't get too wet, but here comes Me and Mom in the front of our log and Dad and Bladen in the back (opposite weight of our 1st ride). When we got to the top of the hill the worker said "You guys have the perfect set up to get SOAKED" and soaked we did! So next time you ride a log ride and don't want to get wet, put the heavy load in the back!

Since we were already wet, we decided to go on Rattle Snake Rapids. If you haven't been, you get in a huge, circular raft and go through river rapids, waterfalls, etc. All 8 of us piled in the raft and started down the river. Brandi was the first to get soaked when a rapid went up over the raft and down her back. Then it got mom, tried to get LeAnne and I but we stood up and shifted the weight of the raft and missed it. Then comes the huge waterfall, and with our luck the raft went right under it and everyone got SOAKED (LeAnne and I got it the least). After drying our eyes so that we could see I thought B would be freaking out because he was one who got it the worst, but he looks at all of us and says, "SHHHOOOOOOOOOTTTT, oh know!" and started laughing. It was SO cute!

The drenched bunch!

A view of the Lagoon from the Ferris Wheel

We were at Lagoon for a total of 12 hrs and all of us still felt like we didn't have enough time to do everything we wanted... oh well there is always next time! We all had a blast!

2 sleeping buddies after a fun and tiring day at Lagoon

I'm sorry to say I've given my child OCD - Clean Freak. There can be the tiniest piece of anything on the floor and he'll pick it up and throw it away and we (meaning both of us with our own vacuums) have to vacuum the house at least once a day! This is a picture of him helping Nana vacuum the bus before leaving the Lagoon Campground.

On our way home to good ole Cedar City

July 8 - On our last day in Cedar, Brandi wanted to take B swimming so we headed over to the SUU pool and they swam for a little over an hour. B is like a fish and could jump in "one more time" a million times before getting tired. Auntie is so good with him and they had a good time!

A year ago in August, my mom and Bladen dug up this tree on Cedar Mountain. My mom then brought it home and planted it in her yard and named it Bladen's Tree. As you can see, it's doing good and getting big. I hope each summer I remember to take a picture of him by it to see how much it grows in comparison to him!

I just want to say Thank You to my family for all of the fun times we had on this trip! It was so nice to have all 5 of us together again. With me in Illinois, Nick in Vegas until a couple months ago and Brandi now in Philly, we don't have much time to spend together so it was a much needed Family Vacation. We are hoping to continue a Family Reunion each summer, so Nick you better be thinking of our next summer's destination!