Random Thoughts....

I love bath time!! It's the one time both the kids are totally happy and entertained. I thought the one of Dustin holding Liz is so cute. He just started hugging her as soon as I broke out the camera! This blog is mostly random stuff I guess. I haven't posted a blog in a while and these are some of the things that have happened since we hiked the butte, plus some random Jen thoughts. One of the things I wanted to mention was that we took a trip to Portland to go to IKEA. SO FUN!!! IKEA is one of my absolute favorite stores. We just got up one weekend and said, "Let's drive to IKEA!" So we packed the kids up and got out of Dodge! The kids were really good in the car, and as soon as we got there we all had to find the family bathroom so we could change diapers and all that good stuff. I mention this only because the family bathroom at IKEA is so amazing. For one thing, there's cute decorations all over the place. On the walls, hanging from the ceiling...what store puts decor inside a bathroom!! There's also a play area with chairs and toys, which kept Dustin entertained the whole time I was cleaning Liz up, and a nice step stool so Dustin could wash his hands and get on and off the potty. There's a big chair in the corner, a diaper changing station with free Huggies wipes, and a dispenser that dispenses free diapers. FREE DIAPERS!!! I never thought such a thing could be possible in my lifetime. There's also free bottle warming, and jarred baby food! We had so much fun just browsing around. We left with toy boxes, kitchen utensils, mixing bowls...that store is dangerous!!!

Here's a random thought. I am having the hardest time getting Liz to drink her bottles. It's like she started solid foods and has no desire to drink from a bottle at all. She'll only drink 4 ounces max. I've tried cutting back on solids, I've tried spacing out longer feedings, I've tried skipping solids all together...nothing works. She went from drinking 30 ounces a day to around 16. Anyone have any ideas?

Dustin is at a really fun age right now. His speech has really taken off and he's repeating back everything we say to him. It's a lot of pressure knowing that he picks up on everything I say and do!!! Some of my favorite things he says right now is poo poos, o.k., anku mommy (thank you mommie), ere'dit go (where did it go), and my most favorite thing he does is sticks out his hand and says, "hand?" when he wants me to hold his hand. Love it.

I also wanted to say how grateful I was to go to the temple last weekend with four other couples from the ward. It was so great to see familiar faces and it made the experience more meaningful in a way. The temple has such a wonderful feeling about it. It's impossible to leave the temple in a bad mood, and sharing it with members of our ward family made it that much more enjoyable. I felt so much love for everyone. Dustin watches Cars constantly and Filmore sums up my feelings perfectly with his line, "There's a lot of love out there, y'know." Sigh, I never thought animated movies would pop into my head to describe a temple experience. I guess that's the mommie brain in me.

On a last note, since the weather has been so crazy, I've been desperate to come up with inside things to keep Dustin entertained. And one of my strong suits is not arts and crafts...at all. But, Dustin and I pulled out the glue and finger paint and made a rocket ship together one cold and rainy afternoon. I had to post it because it is so rare that I do anything crafty. Here is Dustin "helping" me.

And here is our beautiful creation.
(I told you I wasn't crafty!)

True Eugenians

I've heard several times that you're not a true Eugenian if you haven't hiked Spencer's Butte. And I am happy to announce that after over 2 years of living in Eugene, we finally hiked the Butte. And not only did we hike it, we carried both our kids on our backs the whole way up and down in true Eugenian style. As you can see, we had Dustin in the backpack, Liz in the front pack, and Tim and I huffed it the whole way up the mountain. The kids were amazingly content riding their taxi's to the top. They were a good workout for us. I was a little surprised that you actually kinda rock climb at one point, which added a level of difficulty with a kid throwing off my center of gravity. But, it was totally worth it to see the view at the top. We all sat and had some snacks and let Dustin climb around. It was such a clear and pretty day, we could see everything. Just beautiful. The way back down, however, was another story. We decided to go the opposite side of the mountain and be adventurous. Within the first 5 minutes, we lost the trail and ended up having to repel down a very steep cliff of mud!!! Yikes. All I can say is that we must have some good guardian angels taking care of us because we all made it down safely in one piece. All in all though, definitely a worthwhile Eugene experience.

This nice little cliff was what we had to go down to get back to the trail! I swear it's even steeper than it looks!