Garage Wars and Star Tours

We've been going through quite a Star Wars phase in our household.  It all started while I was in Utah during August and Ryan downloaded a Star Wars video game to the computer.  How could I object?  It seemed like a good thing to keep him entertained while Willa and I were gallivantin' around.

Well, the video game turned into an interest to read some Star Wars books (which we are still judiciously checking out and returning to the library, now in audio format for his commute).  Eventually, Ryan decided that he would like to see all the movies again.  Surely, one ought to have the Star Wars series as a basic part of their movie library; it's like the regular library carrying the encyclopedia or Huckleberry Finn.  I, having never sat through a Star Wars movie without falling asleep, was fine with this.  It would be nice to get some more of the pop culture references.  We weren't too sure about stomaching the money, but we decided looked at Target and Best Buy to price them out; it turned out that we couldn't even find the DVDs to buy.  (We realized later that this was because they were about to come out on Blue Ray.)

This was all during our hot garage-sale pursuit of the perfect changing table.  I had seen a runner-up table at garage sale on my morning run and sent Ryan back to look at it.  He decided that it wouldn't work, but he came back with Episode I on VHS that he bought for 50 cents!  Well, we are cheapskates and this was a perfect deal!  A few days later at Goodwill (again, in pursuit of a changing table) we found a box set for $4!

See here, our VHS Star Wars collection!  It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that Goodwill has some sort of price fixing going on.  I mean, $4 for a box set when I can get one of them at a garage sale for 50 cents?  Sheesh, talk about overpricing!  Still, it was much cheaper than buying it all new so we bit the proverbial bullet and bought it.

Heretofore, we were very happy with our purchases!  We watched them and I stayed awake!  Most of my Star Wars knowledge comes from the Star Wars rap and so often during our watching I would say, "Uh oh, the rap says this!  Does that mean that....?!!"  Ryan and I were shocked at how used to DVDs we have become, the quality of a VHS is so far below a DVD; plus, the previous owners were not kind and did not rewind - the worst!

If you haven't seen the Star Wars rap, watch it here.  Now that I've seen the movies, it's even better! We got Deathstar, We got Deathstar.

Last week I passed another garage sale on my run and you know that I can't pass these things up!
They had a huge baby pool full of DVDs and... LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

 I mean, how could I not grab them up?  They were a dollar each, so four buckaroos total.  I mean, I'm totally fine with paying one dollar for a DVD, but puhlease Goodwill - I will not be fooled by you again into paying that much for a VHS.  I've got standards, you know!

Last night we watched Episode III where Anakin becomes Darth Vader.  That's drama, man!  How could he kill off all those Jedi, even the younglings?  It brings a tear to my eye thinking about it.  I also told Ryan that I enjoyed only having to get two glimpses of Jar Jar Binks' head and zero lines from him.  Ryan retorted that I'm finally able to use up all this Star Wars jargon and trivia that's never had any meaning to me. I have to say that he's right.  Who knows if I find Jar Jar actually that annoying, but everyone says he is and that's good enough for me.

I'll finish up with a quick story about my dad and me at Disneyland.  I was about ten years old and deathly afraid of roller coasters or motion-sick-type rides.  My dad and I were supposed to be meeting up with the rest of the family and I was just following him as he led the way.  We ended up standing in the line at Star Tours, but I didn't know what it was.  I kept asking my dad if this was a ride but he kept telling me that this was the way out, that we had to stand in this line to exit!  Behold my surprise when they led us into a room where we sat down and strapped on safety belts! I realized that he tricked me because HE wanted to ride the ride one more time!!!  Eventually, the line would lead to an exit, but not before we did the ride! In the end, it worked out and I enjoyed the ride (my motion-sick fears have always been more mental than physical), but still - it was so tricky and mean of him!  I think my siblings and I all have stories about my dad telling us something was the only way down, just because he wanted to go that way.  I seem to have a lot of vague skiing memories of going down a slope with snowplow skis, and my dad taking me somewhere way more difficult than I wanted to go by telling me it was the only way down.

Barfo

Yep, it's finally happening.  Senor Barfo has visited Willa and the results were not pretty.  Actually, this post is less about that and more about what a sweet little baby girl she is.  She was such a good girl yesterday and played happily all morning.  After her nap we left to run to the store and she just played and jabbered to herself the whole ride until we pulled into the parking lot.  Then, unexpectedly, there was a whole lot of Blagh, Blagh, ARgh, Argh... You get the idea.  I hurriedly parked and got out to see how she was.  Poor baby must have ralphed up her entire body weight in vomit.  It was truly disgusting and it covered her, the carseat, parts of the car, and pooled in places.  I hurriedly wiped her face and then jumped back in the car to drive home.  Believe me, it smelled pretty bad, too.

She started fussing pretty bad back there, but I started singing to her and she LOVES that.  By the time we got home, she was singing along with me and when I went back to get her, she smiled at me even though there was tons of snot coming out of her nose and she was covered in barf.  She's just a little bit of sunshine.  I'm sure a lot of it was that throwing up finally made her feel better, but even before that she hadn't been fussy at all.  She was a little whiney the rest of the afternoon and I'm home from church with her today (believe me, those kids at church don't want this), but overall she has been so good.  Today we've been visited by rear end of things, if you get my drift, but hopefully it will all be over soon.  I'm not sure how much more of this Ryan can take.  Since my job has been to bathe the baby when this happens, Ryan has done a lot of disgusting fluids clean-up.  

This photo is of her being smiley and cute while Ryan takes apart the carseat and washes the plastic parts outside.  There were pools of vomit on it, so only a complete take-apart and machine wash would do.  The other photo is from a few weeks ago when this busy bee found my phone in her crawling explorations.


Willa turns one this coming Friday.  Approaching the mark has been a little bittersweet for us.  Our lives have certainly been extremely happy and fulfilling with Willa, but it is sad for us to remember how different things were and how much time has passed.  Mainly, we get sad thinking about being in Los Angeles and that it's almost been a year since we moved away. We think about who we would invite for a little birthday party if we were still living there, maybe we would go to the beach or Disneyland.  I miss our birthing classes at the hospital and taking Ryan to get his tonsils out when I was 37 weeks pregnant.  Anyway, life moves on and you have to move with it!

Singing Time Pictures

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures, I'm not quite sure what is causing it except that I'm not very good at taking pictures and Willa is on the move.  Just pretend it's a special effect I've created with Instagram.

I think Willa has attack-camera-itis

One of her favorite things is to crawl very close to other babies, invade their personal space, and stare at them three inches from their face.

Ah yes, the toys

Not minding me and crawling across the room to probably steal another baby's toy

There's just enough structure for little near-toddlers; 10-15 minutes of singing, then playtime.  I'm excited to go again this week.

In other news, we had a really nice weekend listening to General Conference.  I feel like we tried to prepare for it a little more this go-around and we both got a lot out of it.  We also got our plane tickets to go to Dayton for Christmas.  If anyone else will be in this cradle of creativity, let's get together!  There's a Joseph Smith Birthday Party scheduled on December 23rd, you're welcome to come have some Golden Plates cake!

Nursery Lap Sit

So far, one of my favorite reasons to have a car is that I can go to the infant Mother Goose Lap-sit at the library.  We went yesterday for the first time, and it was so much fun that we went back again today and we're going tomorrow!  It's just for babies under 18 months and Willa was perfectly stimulated seeing all the other babies just her age.  We sang a few songs, blew some bubbles, then played with toys.  

I learned that I do not have a shy child.  Even though it was a totally new environment, as soon as they brought the toys out, Willa looked at me, at the toys, then immediately was one of the first babies to crawl over and start playing.  I feel like I was a little shy growing up, so I like that she sees what she wants and doesn't let fear get in the way.  I will take some pictures tomorrow to post, but she is adorable.

Lately, she also likes reading books.  She will pull out her books while I am doing something else and flip through the pages on her own.  She knows which way to turn the pages and she will turn backwards if she wants to find a particular page.  Sometimes if her little fingers aren't dexterous enough to get all the page turns she will get very frustrated when she can't find the exact image and page that she wants.

I just love seeing her personality come out more and more!  I love how she's starting to understand and communicate more.  When I ask her where Dada is, she looks at Ryan.  The other day she finally started saying her M's and yesterday she crawled to me and said Ma.  Of course, she probably had no idea what she did, but it seemed very deliberate :)!  When we go running, often I will talk to her from the stroller and say, "Mama, I'm your Mama.  Say, 'Mama'."

Drinking for a heavy water glass: note the spilled water on the carpet next to her, but nevermind - she knows what these things are for!

Playing this morning on the bed.  She got her baby monitor and thought it was all kinds of fun!

Run Ryan, Run!

Ryan is a very good runner.  We had only been dating about three weeks when I was going down to Moab with my family to do the half-marathon there.  At the last minute my brother Chris couldn't come, so I talked Ryan into coming and taking his place.  It was kind of hilarious because my roommate and I were doing the half, but everyone else was doing the 5 mile race.  That meant that Ryan had to ride the bus to the start with all my family and cousins whom he had just met the night before.  Anyway, Ryan ran the race and won the race.  It was pretty awesome because they actually had a tape up, so he broke the tape and they also put a lei around his neck.  Unfortunately, the bib number was under a different name.  So the race people kept calling "Chris Knoles" as the winner and Ryan decided to skeedaddle before he got into trouble so he basically just ran off.

Here we are on a hike later in the afternoon of the Moab race.  So young and almost in love.

These days, Ryan gets up about 5 a.m. to go running.  The other day he got up, turned off his alarm, left on his run and thought that it was strangely quiet outside and warmer than normal.  He did about seven miles and as he was coming home he thought that it really was too quiet outside, something was off.  He came inside, looked at the clock and it was 12:30 A.M.!!!  Hahahahaha!!!  He must have dreamed about his alarm going off, but he really got up and did his whole morning shebang!

While he was gone, I kind of noticed he had gotten up but figured that he must have just had trouble sleeping.  I also thought I heard the shower going, but just rolled over and went back to sleep.  In the morning I asked if he had gotten up during the night and he told me the whole story.   We have had a good laugh about it for many days.

And here is our baby girl!  Not running yet, but a very speedy crawler.

Dan, Dan the Handy Man!

Folklore and misty legends seemed to surround all the descriptions of Ryan's dad before I had even met him.  Stories about him attempting to build some sort of machine that would create holograph images of his children so that he could then use a laser to carve busts of everyone.  About moving a large roll of carpet to the second floor by hooking up a pulley system to the car and having the carpet pulled up the outside of the house and through the window.  Those are just two of my favorite stories and I think that in this case, the stories all seem to be true.  

It's not surprising that for his visit we saved up a few household projects that needed to be completed.  It was good to watch him in action and have Melinda explain the steps.   With his help we got baby locks on the sink cupboards, the dryer to (hopefully) stop leaving marks on our clothes, a quote for the AC in the car (I know all of you 'SC friends who drove with us to San Diego twice won't forget that clicking sound!), and the new changing table painted and set up.  

It was perfect timing for this changing table!  I found it at a garage sale for 20 bones last Friday morning.  Dan and Melinda arrived later that afternoon and plans were laid.  I was so excited when I saw it at the garage sale, I asked the lady to hold it for me for ten minutes while I ran home to get money.  I had Willa in the stroller and after our purchase (after I paid, she put it inside until we could pick it up that night) we went on an extra long run.

Here he is reading some instructions and thinking, the spiritual creation period:

                                      

Here is the changing table during spiritual creation phase.  Not to shabby, eh?  This neighborhood has the BEST garage sales!  We decided to paint this pretty thing white.

The physical creation begins.  He has lots of good ideas and advice.  For example, painting outdoors on our balcony = bad idea.  "Stuff" could blow into the wet paint and get stuck there.  Brilliant!  Instead, we put a drop cloth on the floor and on the kitchen table, then painted it up there.  

 The finished product.  There's a little baby with a naked bum in the corner :)!

Yay!  I'm still so pleased with myself for finding it and I think it looks so great!  We've been wanting something since we took down the pack 'n' play because she likes to do all kinds of rolling instead of laying patiently to get a diaper change, but they all seemed really expensive.  Overall, the cost of paint, paintbrushes, etc. more than doubled the garage sale cost.  BUT, the Dan added in his military discount, we added in a Home Depot gift card that we found from our wedding!!!, and then Dan paid for the rest because he is a sweetheart.  So really, it didn't cost us a dime more, but Dan and Melinda now own half of it.

Car! Car! Car!

Today I ran errands, with a car, while Ryan was at work!!!  From January-May, Ryan was able to take public transit to work, but he moved to a different job and there is no easy public transit to where he needs to go.  Since May he has been driving to work each day and I have been home with no car.  This job is about an hour's drive away (that's how big Houston is) and it's not feasible for me to drive him there.  We don't really want to buy a new car until we have a little more job security, and even then I think we'd just like to move really close to where he would work and continue with one car.

It was a struggle, but I think I did very well not being able to get out during the day.  The heat made it worse, since I couldn't even take Willa for a walk somewhere; however, we traveled a lot during the summer and I just got used to really being STAY-AT-HOME!  Thank goodness for our apartment's swimming pool, I think it kept both Willa and me sane.  One of the hard parts of not having a car during the day meant that I had to do all errands and grocery shopping during the evenings or on Saturdays.  This is not fun because that's the only time to be with Ryan!  It was so great to get things done today without having to crowd our weekend out!  Still, I learned a lot by staying home.  I think our grocery bill went down because I really had to plan out our meals for the week and then just go to the store once.

Ryan's parents got a new car and brought their old car out to Houston for us to use.  Thank you!!!  They drove in on Friday and flew out this morning.  Besides being excited about having a second car, we were thrilled to see them.

We got all kinds of projects done while they were here!  Plus, not only do we have a car, we have a baby gate around the harps, a new carseat, and a box of delicious German chocolate bars that Melinda bought at Aldi and brought down for us.  Does anyone else have Aldi?  I've only gone to it in Ohio and it is amazing, I wish they had it here!  You save so much time at the store by not having to make decisions.  I need ketchup, there's only one brand of ketchup there so there is no dithering about Heinz or Hunt's or Kroger's brand.  Plus, with all those less decisions, the store is small and it doesn't take long to walk through.

Here is Willa playing with a little toy that I found at a garage sale on our morning run last Friday.  I don't normally stop at every garage sale, but we've been in the market for a changing table and we finally had success!  Since I was already buying something, I decided that I might as well get something fun because who can resist that cute face?!  She has fun crawling in and out of the little door.  It was perfect timing for the changing table, too!  Ryan's dad was able to help with a weekend paint job, pictures coming soon!

Grandma Daniels and Willa.  We didn't get many pictures, but I think our Skype chats are doing the trick.  Willa wasn't very shy and had fun playing with grandma and grandpa!  She thought grandma was especially hilarious sometimes.