february

here is our february in review.  lauren works at amazon up in seattle, and she's been able to come to town every once in a while for either work, or play. 

 here is us out in beverly hills. we went to crustacean for dinner and got some sprinkles cupcakes for dessert.

we watched the kids play at the park by the pier.

 laur and i got to sneak away for a date night of mediocre ramen, yummy pinkberry and a movie before she had to leave. 

 the boys were getting their morning cuddles in before eli went to school. they were seriously like this for a solid two minutes... which is an eternity for these boys. 

 our first ultrasound of ezra when i was 8 weeks pregnant. it was shortly after this tanner and i told our parents our news. 

we got to hang out with jillian for a couple days. considering she was my bff since our wee toddler years, i'm glad she was able to spend some time with us.

 clippers game. i guess you can tell tell who's idea of fun this is...

a few posts ago i posted pictures from our other camera of the trw hike in malibu that we did. tanner and i wanted to break in our brand new hiking boots we bought for patagonia, and figured we'd do a nice easy hike so we could do it as a family. 

 isaac has always been an interesting one to discipline. most of the time when he gets in trouble its like he doesn't know it. i'll be talking to him in a stern way, or he'll be in time out, and he'll have a big smile on his face. it was frustrating in an unexpected way :).  anyways, in this picture, you see his 'i'm in trouble' face. this one was after we picked up eli from preschool, and isaac ran away from me. eli wouldn't come with me to chase him, so i had to leave eli out on the side of the street while i ran in and found isaac. he was already all the way in the back of the school at the playground area. but seriously, look at those sweet, sad eyes.

life sometimes is just hard for our dramatic eli :). sometimes all you can do is lay down on the side of the road and pout for a while. 

eli did two sessions of socceropolis with his friend brooklyn at clover park every friday. isaac had a very hard time staying on the sidelines watching his brother play, but eli loved it. he wasn't as aggressive as i thought he'd be. but he would act like he was playing defense in basketball and block someone with his arms up.

on the last day of his first session, his bff westin came to see him. we loved playing at the park with our friends that moved away.

february beach day fun.

i'm not sure when this ultrasound was since i didn't include the info in the picture. but since it was in february, i'm going to assume it was my 10 week appointment.

tanner and i went to argentina + patagonia with will and kristen the end of february-beginning of march. it was an amazing trip, and one that we weren't expecting to go one when i was pregnant, but oh well! a few posts back i started blogging about our trip, so after this i will continue on with that crazy adventure with a couple teaser pictures here.

 highlights of february: got to see lauren and jillian, went to south america for the first time, got to do an amazing trip with will and kristen (our go-to travel buddies), and got to see ezra for the first time in an ultrasound. a pretty amazing month.

January... we're starting from the beginning

its august. and i have 5 more weeks till we are going to welcome another little one to our family. of course in typical fashion, i have four pieces of paper lining the fridge as my master to-do list before our baby boy joins us, and although blogging isn't on the list, i'm going to make an effort to do at least a little catch up before life gets even more crazy. so we are starting way back at january (ps- the post below about isaac going to the dentist tanner wrote for business purposes... just so you few ppl know that still come check this blog)

after christmas we decided to get the boys some decent helmets for eli's new balance bike and isaac's new scooter. we also had to get eli some shin guards since he was going to start soccer soon. so a trip to  sports chalet was needed, and i think i could have stayed in there all day with these guys... they were very impressed :)

kristen and i swapped christmas presents this year. below is the beautiful gift i got straight from afghanistan where her and my brother-in-law Will were living. 

also because of the holidays, we got to see our bff's westin and courtney. here westin and eli and being their usual goofy selfs at cafe rio.

 before school started up again for eli we met some friends at the zimmer museum. dressing up like fire fighters was the boys favorite part.

 on january 9th we got to celebrate tanner's 31st birthday. eli and isaac helped me make the cake... which means we must love tanner a lot cause me baking anything is a vary rare occasion.

eli's first day of soccer. he played at our local park, clover, with his friend brooklyn. knowing eli's personality i thought he was going to be way more aggressive during the games. instead he actually liked playing more of a defensive roll and would totally get in the other kids faces with his hands up trying to block them from running towards the ball... it was pretty funny. he loved his class and did great. a couple weeks after this we actually bought him cleats. 

i got a new calling this month. i had been teaching in the primary for the past two years (sunbeams+ctr 4, then ctr 4+5), and knew what was coming. the last thing i expected though was getting the calling of gospel doctrine teacher. that seriously was my worst nightmare... and i may or may not have cried once because of it. i was overwhelmed and grew to love being in primary so much that i was sad to leave and actually have to talk to adults at church now :). we have been studying the d&c and church history, so its been really interesting and as long as i'm prepared for my lessons i actually am learning to appreciate this calling. however, as you can see from the picture below, trying to find good time to actually prepare is limited. here eli was playing football on my bed while i was trying to do reading for an upcoming lesson during isaac's nap.

isaac went through a few day stage of being in love with the singing group 'one direction' and would sit in front of the computer and watch their music videos over and over and over again.

we were able to sneak to disneyland for a 1/2 day with tanner. and i should totally start brushing the boys hair one of these days...

we started making the boys clean up their room every night before bed. i tried doing more of a normal chore thing where they can earn money, but they weren't too interested in that. but, pinkberry did the trick. so if they went to bed every night with their room clean we would get a treat on saturday. so this is their first one earned, and luckily from this endeavor (which has taken a break this summer) eli has become a good little worker. isaac on the other hand is still totally all over the place :).

lots of dressing up happens around here. i was sitting on the boys floor wishing i had recorded what they were saying. there was some good strategizing between captain rex and captain america.

eli seriously dresses up in multiple costumes daily. even if it is just a optimus prime helmet in his undies.

we got to run in the 2nd run for ruby race this year! i can't say i really ran the whole time, even though ti was just a 5k, but we still had so much fun despite being out of shape.

 post nap brother time

since we dont have a backyard, we play a lot in our parking lot. it actually is pretty great (as long as i stand in the entrance to make sure everyone stays safe from the cars that occasionally come) because then the boys have a lot of open space to ride their scooters and bikes. on this day, which was like many others, we needed to get out some extra energy before dinner, so we went out for a little while. isaac (and eli of course) love any potty word, so here isaac was yelling "poopy - pee! poopy- pee!" over and over again. i think our neighbors really love us.

we really like playing at this park by the pier. unfortunately on this day someone thought isaac was a girl, which was the second time that week. i guess this cute boy has a pretty face.

 quite play is definitely a rare thing around here. isaac was taking a nap, and i realized it was very quite so i sneaked into the back thinking i was going to bust eli doing something naughty. to my surprise he was pleasantly playing on my bed (the pleasant ended as soon as isaac was awake and that game was covering every inch of my room).

isaac and i walked to pick up eli from school, and decided to make a little detour on our way home and go to clover park. it was one of those great afternoons where the park was pretty empty, the sun was out but it wasn't hot, and i was very happy watching my boys play together and with life in general.

at the beginning of this month i found out i was pregnant, which is an exciting way to start off the year. well, that is the month of january courtesy of instagram.

Isaac's first trip to the dentist

After months of trying to take my son, Isaac, to see a dentist, it finally happened! This was his first trip and one that will be memorable for a couple of reasons. First, this was the most sustained period of seriousness Isaac has ever demonstrated. And second, this was hands down the easiest dentist visit experience I’ve ever had from start to finish.

Taking Isaac to the dentist was on my “to do” list, and I was getting very frustrated that I hadn’t been able to cross it off and move on to the next item. We switched insurance providers, and I didn’t want to make the appointment until I found out the specifics of our coverage (we had a bad past experience that included “surprise” bills showing up in the mail). In addition, in the past, I’ve lived in cities where we had a close dentist friend, which made things easy. That was not the case here in Santa Monica, which made the whole process more of a struggle.

Then, I discovered Brighter.com, a cool new website for residents of LA that allows you to browse dentists based on your schedule and budget. I just put in the appointment time that worked for me, the service that I needed, and it populated a list of dentists that had openings along with user ratings and reviews for each. And the best part…Wait for it…Brighter.com shows you exactly how much each dentist charges for the service!  So simple. So easy. I loved it.

The dentist was awesome and couldn’t have been better with Isaac.  He completely put Isaac at ease, explained what was happening during the cleaning and even adding in a little fun! Like any parent, I was so worried going into the visit that it would be a negative or scary experience for Isaac. But, the opposite was true. Isaac was a total superstar. His favorite part, of course, was picking out a toy after he was finished.

pregnancy numero 3

 i'm in my 25th week of pregnancy right now. and through these 25 weeks, i've talked here on this loved, but partly forgotten about blog, once about being pregnant. with out details. so, here i hope to document it a bit better. so lets get going from the beginning.

and i mean the very beginning.

we participated in the 2nd run for ruby, which was a blast. after which tanner and i donated blood (oh the things your husband does for love). for some reason, it took days for me to feel back to being somewhat normal... which obviously wasn't normal. curiosity peaked.

within the next week i went to the gym (applause welcome), and when isaac and i were walking home from our local 24 hour fitness, i was feeling unusually faint. a little faint would have been normal from my lack of exercise, but what i was feeling didn't seem quite right. curiosity peaked again.

as a side note, tanner and i have been blessed to conceive extremely easily. like, maybe too easily? eli and isaac were both surprises. at this point in time i had recently got off my birth control pills thinking we'd still wait a few months to start trying for baby number three, but alas, within the month (even with what i thought was detailed planning) little boy 3 decided to join us.

so anyways, getting home from the gym i decided, just on the off chance, to take a pregnancy test. knowing we were going to be trying in the next few months was exciting, since i've never actually planned a pregnancy, so i had ovulation strips and pregnancy tests already at the ready. and of course, i peed on that stick in isaac and eli's tiny bathroom and pretty much instantly could see those lines appearing. so much for planning... i'm starting to think that we might not get that true experience, which definitely isn't the worst thing.

is it bad that part of the reason i was happy about finding out i was pregnant was because i found out a few days before tanner's 31st birthday? he was out of town when i found out, and was going to come back the evening of his birthday. i had a gift from me and the boys, but seriously, tanner is the hardest person to buy a present for. he likes shopping for himself, so if he wants something, he gets it... leaving his uncreative wife to struggle to think of anything to gift him with. so finding out this news right before his birthday was a slam dunk :).

so... i waited for two or three days to tell tanner till he got back in town/his birthday. i believe he was in vegas for work, so he didn't arrive back home till late on his birthday. i told him he could open one present tonight, but should wait for the other for when the boys are awake in the morning so they could be there. safe to say, he was pretty excited about reaching into that little bag and pulling out the un-sanitized peed on stick. he first started talking about baby number three when isaac was only 6 months old. i told him to put a cork in that idea for a while, but consistently brought it up after isaac was a year old... and even more after isaac turned 2. so, he's been waiting patiently for me to be ready for this pregnancy for a while now.

anyways, i'm pretty sure i found out right at 4 weeks. it was hard keeping it a secret for the first couple of weeks as it always is. we told our parents around 9 weeks i think, and we told the rest of the fam around 10 or so weeks. at this point i just didn't really care to tell anyone, but figured in my 12 week i should get over it and made my little instagram/blog announcement. so here are some pictures to document this belly growth -

don't mind the bathing suit picture (lets just focus on the rarely cleaned room shown). but i guess as they say you show earlier and earlier with each pregnancy is proving true. at around ten weeks this is how much i was showing with eli and 20 weeks. 

my insta pic to show that tiny bump off for the first time.

yep, this room looks about right for eli and isaac's room. they are tornados that can strike at any moment. but here is my normal tummy at 14 weeks

but my stomach likes (more so then than now) to get crazy bloated. i was never to really figure out what i was eating to make my stomach get big suddenly, but here is proof of that (this was taken later on in the day of the previous picture).

at around 14-15 weeks i started feeling better. this pregnancy has been a lot like it was with isaac's. with isaac i had more close calls of actually throwing up, but never did with any pregnancy, despite feeling nauseous all the time.

 we drove to utah this day. for the first time tanner and i talked about names for this baby since, you know, we had about 10 hours in the car to kill. we found out a few hours after arriving to utah that we would be welcoming another little boy to our family! (and don't mind the weight gained mentioned on some of these pictures... i wasn't going to post these ones, but am too lazy to go back and change them... so you all just get to keep track of my baby weight gain with me i guess).

 i think this was 19-20 weeks. i'm proud of myself for apparently taking a picture every time i worked out... since its rarely been happening. i've been trying to walk eli to/from school as much as possible... so that counts, right? i also started feeling the baby move right before/around this time. the very first time was when i was lying on the boys floor in the middle of the night helping one (or probably both of them) get back to sleep. it was a faint flutter a few times in a row, but only days after that the fluttering was over and it was on to more noticeable movement. 

 at this point my stomach started cramping on said walks to eli's school. which is frustrating. this happened with isaac and eli, but definitely not this early on. so i walk slower, which helps a tiny bit... but i dont think whats going on in my belly appreciates pushing two boys in the stroller. but on we go anyways.

and here i currently am. this was a couple days ago, and i had my glucose test on this doctors appointment. i also stepped on the scale and saw how much weight i've gained, which may or may not have caused me to have a minor heart attack... but such is life i guess! my ankles and legs are starting to swell as well at the end of most days. 15 more weeks to go!

 i'm enjoying this stage of pregnancy before i get really big and uncomfortable. i can't say this baby is already hurting my ribs, but i'm definitely having uncomfortable moments with that already. he is nice and active so in the past month, tanner, eli and isaac have all got to feel him move.

we can't wait for baby number three to come this september. i just wish i knew where we would be living...but i guess thats a frustration for a different post, possibly.

patagonia (part one)

i'm going to break our mine and tanner's big trip this year up into three different sections: patagonia part one and two, and buenos aires will come later. but just for the sake of my memory before i forget, here was our basic itinerary from the very beginning:

thursday afternoon: tanner and i flew out of lax to buenos aires with a layover in lima. tanner's mom came down with the boys on thursday, took eli to school on friday, then the boys stayed in santa barbara the following week we were gone.

friday: we arrived in buenos aires that morning and amazingly enough, met our travel companions, will and kristen, in the immigration line at the airport. it was pretty fantastic timing. the rest of the day was spent in buenos aires (i'll come back to this day in a later post).

saturday: here is where the travelling got interesting, and where i will start to elaborate on our daily activities. we flew from buenos aires (gotta love being out the door at 5 am to get to the airport) to el calafate, which is still in argentina, but close to the border of chile. you can see below on the map how far south we were.

after we arrived in el calafate we rented a car in the cute, little travel town and made our way to puerto natales. it was about a 4 hour drive, which we made in a small car thats doors wouldn't quite seal so we had to talk really loud to hear to each other. will also had to open my door for me every time cause apparently i wasn't strong enough to pry the door open on my own. the car rental company warned us that we had to hold on to our doors when we were getting out, because sometimes the wind is so fierce that the doors can completely bend the opposite way they should when left open. luckily we never encountered wind that crazy. 

during our drive we crossed the border into to chile. we had to stop on the border in argentina, and also again in chile. we were told they were really strict on what you cross the border with, so i didn't pack anything with peanuts in it (one of the items they said couldn't cross), but they didn't really check anything so i was a little bugged (since i left most of the granola-type bars i bought for the trip + food at home since i thought i wouldn't be able to bring it into patagonia when i'd need it. and hello, i was 10 weeks pregnant at the time and food is a big deal :)).

we made it to puerto natales with enough time to rent some equipment: mess kit, the coolest tiny camping stove, and another warm fleece for me cause i'm always worried about being cold (luckily i didn't need it). we also were able to get all our information for the refugios we were staying at in torres del paine (the area of patagonia we hiked). we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some things, and grabbed pizza really quick to eat in the car as we then took our two hour car ride into torres del paine. 

the first map you can see again where el calafate is, then also where puerto natales is in chile, then where torres del paine is (yes, puerto natales is a little out of the way, but we had to stop there so oh well... it was totally worth it). the second map just gives you a basic overview of patagonia. its between argentina and chile, so you can obviously access it through either side, but we went in through chile for the "w" hike we wanted to do. 

we paid our entrance fee to get into the park, and after making a wrong turn eventually made it to our refugio late at night. we hurried and got ready for bed in our communal bathroom, then snuck into our room so we didn't wake up our two other mystery roommates. it probably didn't matter how quiet we were when we went in the room and blindly picked which bunk bed we wanted, because once will fell asleep his snoring could be heard for miles. seriously, its impressive.

sunday: we woke up and took our time getting ready for the day. it turns out our roommates were two older women, and when one of them came back in the room that morning and was going a little over the top talking about how great we were for being so quite last night, we knew she was lying and was probably as sleep deprived as we were. needless to say, they stayed in a different room the next night :).

above is the "w" hike in torres del paine, and from the different colored areas you can see how we split up the hike. on sunday, our first hike, we went up and down the right side of the w thats in orange. it was considered a hard hike from the reading we did, so i was a little worried about how my first trimester body was going to handle it. luckily zofran helped keep my stomach in check for the most part, and my biggest problem was fatigue. i warned tanner that i would need to probably go slow and take a lot of breaks. like the great husband he is, he told me he would stay with me the whole time and not to worry. and of course like the husband he is, stayed with me for the first maybe five minutes and then was off ahead with will for most of the beginning part :). but of course i had my amazing sister kristen with me who helped me out the entire way. 

the hike was naturally split up into three different sections (or maybe i just noticed as i was trying to keep my mind occupied on other things outside of my body) that we called: the plains, the forest, and the rocky mountain. so here we we go with some pictures- 

our refugio from kristen's bed

 we were heading to 'base las torres'. the air quality out there was so amazingly refreshing.

 once we hiked along the side of the mountain with views of the pretty river, we crossed it and took a food break. those pringles were a hot commodity in our group that we had to ration.

after our food break we made our way into the forest section (which i have pictures of, but not on this computer. most of the trees had black bark), then made our way to the rocky mountain section. 

i felt like i was really going to die at this point. i was contemplating whether or not i should sit and wait for the group to go to the top and come back, but i'm glad i stuck with it and made it to the top. kristen kindly had to put her hand on my back to help keep me going up the steep mountain.

 and we made it to the torres! it was very majestic. 

here we had our second lunch break. will and tanner put their feet in the freezing green glacier water (krisen and i had to be satisfied with just taking off our boots since we were wearing tights under our pants), and took a much needed rest. we were also feeling extremely fortunate about our timing since some people who came down the mountain about 45 minutes before we got to the top said they had to wait up there for two hours till the clouds cleared so they could see the torres. 

we hiked back down, and of course these two went ahead on their own so here kristen and i found them hanging out in our refugio room. totally hiking hours this day was 8 hours, but it took us longer with all our water/snack/food breaks.

we showered and changed into clean clothes. tanner and i brought a lot of freeze dried meals from rei, so this first night we had a pasta primavera and we all actually loved it. it was a great introduction into the life of eating freeze-dried foods. then we collapsed for the night.

sunday was a really hard hike day for me, but i'm so glad i did it and had such amazing company the whole time. as for the rest of patagonia... i have to wait for another post to get some pictures on our laptop, so monday, tuesday, and wednesday will be coming shortly (well, so i say now... but we'll see)!

map source 1, 2, 3, 4,