Popcorn Popping

We've been very stressed out lately, driving around the entire metro area looking for a new home, so we haven't had a lot of time to just hang out and play, but I caught a video of Anna being cute this morning. I thought you would all enjoy seeing it.

For those who are confused about our move, here's a quick summary. Our house is too small, and we are tired of all the "accessories" to condo life (i.e. neighbor noise, parking lots), so we sold our condo planning to buy a home. However, with the down market, we are losing too much on the sale, so we are planning to rent a home for a year or two until we can buy. It's not the way we planned for things to work out, and we love our ward up here in Bothell, but we are excited to live in a real house with no noisy neighbors upstairs or down (except our beautiful noisy girls), and renting doesn't really bother us for now as long as we can get closer to work. So if anyone knows of a great place to rent with at least 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, let us know. It also, PLEASE, needs to be clean. That's the biggest problem with most of what we've seen so far. Some places are just... OI. Yeah, horrible.

In other news this week, Mariah has all of a sudden gotten two teeth (one on top and one on bottom), and the other two are coming in very soon. She's been very crabby, but I'm just relieved she's finally going to be able to chew things. Oh, and here's another cute picture of Anna this week. She was so sleepy that she fell asleep while we changed her diaper. We just left her on the changing pad because it was so funny. :) Have a great week!

Portland

We've been back from our trip for almost a week now, and this is the first time we've had a chance to update the blog.  We had a great time, although Mariah had a hard time being confined for so long on the train.  So here's some pics and summaries of our activities.  

Here's us at the bus stop in Mill Creek.  We got a ride to the stop, and took a bus to the train station.  Here's us on the bus.

Then we rode the train.  Anna decided this train's name was Aero and Bull (two of her trains). 

Here's a picture of our hotel room and the massive donut Adam found at the VooDoo Donut shop.  SO GOOD.

Anna's favorite part of the hotel we stayed in was the round pillows on the beds. 

Mariah was just happy to be in the hotel because it meant she could crawl around on the ground instead of riding in the stroller or the frontpack. 

This is the girls in front of a Stegosaurus at the Dinosaur exhibit at the carnival on the waterfront.  Anna was excited when she learned that the Stegosaurus is Uncle Nate's favorite dinosaur. 

One of our favorite parts of the trip was riding all over downtown on the Portland Max Line, a light rail train system. 

We also rode the MAX to the Children's Museum, and here are some pictures of Anna's favorite activities: the water tables and the kid-sized grocery store. 

 

My favorite part of the trip is one we have no pictures of because we forgot to bring our camera.  The night before we came home, we met Claire (a BYU roommate from ages ago) and her family at Powell's Books and had dinner at the mall.  We had a grand old time catching up, and the bookstore was the biggest I have ever seen.  Imagine room after room full of new and used books piled at least 12 feet high--oh, it almost makes me cry.  *sigh*  Anyway, we had  a great trip, but it was good to get home.  And now, we're selling our house.  We've got and accepted an offer, and we're almost done with all the inspection stuff, so we're getting close.  The close date is currently July 10th, so it's coming up soon.  We're very excited.  I'll give more info later.  Bye. 

Memorable Memorial Day

We've had an adventurous weekend that you all should know about, so here we go.

Anna: Yesterday morning, we were awakened by Little Miss Anna walking into our room. For those who know anything about kids, that shouldn't be surprising, but for those who know anything about our little kid, that will be shocking. She's 2 1/2, and she has never once gotten out of her bed by herself. She's had a toddler bed for nearly a year, and every morning, she wakes up and calls out, "Mommy, come in!" when she's ready to get up. Well, the darling girl learned how to open the door handles in our house last week, and yesterday morning, she finally figured out that she can just come into our room when she's ready to get up. So yes, we are very proud. However... this morning, Adam almost jumped out of his skin when his alarm clock went off and he opened his eyes to see a little girl staring at him 5 inches from his face. Ah, yes--it's a whole new world.

Mariah: I can only imagine the trouble we are getting ourselves into with this whole crawling gig. Already she's managed to knock over several plants, chew up several pieces of paper, and make her big sister afraid of her. She's crawling like a pro now, and we're relieved that she's figured out how to crawl even on the hard floor (before she would just sit and fuss as soon as she got to the laminate), but she's about 12 times more curious and 42 times less inhibited than Anna ever was, so trouble is on its way, and its name is Mariah. The video at the bottom of the post matches this theme.

Adam: He hates me. Oh, and his paternity leave started today, so he's very happy to be home for four weeks.

Sarah: I bought a new car. Thus the hatred. Okay, go with me on this. I've wanted a new, bigger car for a long time. I'm tired of having my wonderful-but-tiny Civic stuffed to the brim with junk every moment. I'm tired of not being able to have another single living creature in the car with us. I'm tired of not even being able to carry two strollers AND three grocery sacks at the same time. I'm just tired of a small car. Adam, however, is in love with our Civic and is very afraid of gas prices (and reasonably so). Well, yesterday our friends were showing us their new car and telling us about this great deal they got, so after we left our Memorial Day BBQ, I talked Adam into "just going to LOOK at some vans." I swear, my intentions were pure--I just wanted to look. But we made two mistakes: we went looking during a big sale weekend, and we gave in and took a test drive. Anyway, long story and FIVE HOURS later (our girls were exhausted), and we were walking out of the Honda dealership with keys to a new Odyssey minivan. We did put on quite a performance, too, the two of us--I'm sure you can imagine the kind of agony a spontaneous decision like this caused for two people who are completely incapable of making any kind of decision without two to three weeks of discussion/research/rehashing. Adam has spent the last 16 hours re-running the numbers in his head to make sure that we really got a decent deal, which he decided we did, so I think it's okay, but we are both still shocked and horrified by our lack of planning.
So, we have a new minivan, I have my space, and Adam lost his beautiful, beloved Civic (we remain a one-car family). Good day for me, and hopefully... eventually... he will decide it was a good day for him, too. Of course, we had to take the van back in this morning to have the stain repellant and LoJack installed, so I can't take any pictures to post, but I'll post some later this week. It's kind of a pretty grayish-green. And now, we are van people. And all you SUV snobs can go... drive your SUV's. *bat my eyelashes*

By the Way...

By the way, here's another Anna/Mariah combo. This is Mariah now and Anna on June 25th of 2006. Enjoy.

Snoqualmie Falls... and Other Stuff, Too.

This is a video of Mariah's crawl/walk. It's the best video we've gotten so far, and I love the way she stands with her rear up in the air, so you get to enjoy it, too.

Last week, Adam's Dad and Stepmom came to visit, and although I was just as terrible as usual about taking pictures, we DID remember to take some during our outing to Snoqualmie Falls. It was a gorgeous hot day, so the river was running high and the Falls was the biggest I've ever seen it. The spray was huge--nobody could even go down the trail to the bottom because the water was spraying so high. It was amazing, and I'm glad we saw it, but since half the outlooks were soaking wet, the visit didn't last very long. But it was still fun. Here's a few pics.

Now Grandpa and Grandma Swank are on their cruise, and I hate them for it, but it was really fun to have them here. I'm going to go on a cruise someday, too. Hem hem, Adam.

Crawling/Jumping Practice

Here's a video of the girls goofing around last week. By the way, there's a mention of getting an offer on our house, which we did, but things fell through. Therefore, we are STILL on the market. *sigh* We've decided to give it about another month and then we're done. I'm tired of spending my whole life keeping my house clean just so strangers can walk through it for 10 minutes and decide not to buy it. Okay, so I'm making it sound worse than it is, but still. Enough is enough.

In other news, this week Mariah learned to sit up, but she still can't make those front arms move to get her crawling. We're just holding our breath (half excitement, half dread). Anna is in love with jumping now that she can finally do it. Mariah's favorite foods are officially banana, cheerios, peas, and sweet potato. Anna's favorite foods are candy, chocolate pudding, milkshakes, pizza, hot dogs, and smoothies. It's amazing how much can change in two years, isn't it? And not necessarily for the better.

One exciting development this week is that Adam found out that he is much closer to finishing his project at work than he thought he was. That means far fewer nights of working at home past midnight. It's a good thing he got a Nintendo DS for his birthday--now he actually has time to play it. He also learned how to make some great whole wheat breadsticks on Sunday: add too much flour. I'm gonna try it next time--breadsticks I've made according to recipe have never turned out as well as his "mistakes" did. He seems to have the baker's touch. I told him that he should be the at-home parent and I'll go get a job. He was a little too okay with that.

Have a great week.

You See That Big Excavator?

That has been Adam's favorite Anna quote this week. "You see that big excavator? You see that big truck? You see that big toy?" It's really cute when Anna says it. Not so much when Adam says it.

In a few hours we'll post a video of Mariah's bath time. We tried to keep her modest for all you with naked-baby-phobia. She kicks through her entire bath. I have to use the shower curtain as a guard to keep the bathroom mostly dry. She doesn't care whether the water gets in her eyes or up her nose--she just wants to kick. Funny kid.

We've had kind of a long week. We've been stressing about the home we want to buy as well as the home we want to sell--all the decisions sort of took a toll on us. I've been trying to keep the house clean (and we did have two showings this weekend, so that's progress), so that's been hard on me and on the girls. We've also had a hard time running errands because Mariah's nap schedule has been mixed up. Mariah's been really fussy anyway, and we think we finally figured out that it's because we switched her formula. Being inexperienced in the use of formula, we didn't know that one brand vs. another could really make that big of a difference. Adam has had a lot to do at work and been facing some confusing issues with the programs he's writing, so he's been under pressure, too, and spending a lot of time working after hours. The stress of the week peaked on Thursday night for me (church meeting I forgot to dress up for... emotional breakdown in the car... 'nuff said), so the weekend has gotten better. But in the midst of it all, there were a few highlights.

1) Anna made her first visit to the playland at the grocery store. She loved it! Not that she's ever been hard to deal with at the store, but I think she'd definitely much rather play than ride around in a cart with me. Plus, it tells me that she's growing up a bit, which is encouraging.

2) Yesterday, Adam and Anna biked over to the mall, and Mariah and I met them there. Anna loved the ride in the trailer, and once there, she loved the indoor playground. Adam showed her how to climb up and slide down, and she was thrilled. I've never let her go in because I can't help her AND hold Mariah, so it was perfect to introduce her to it while Daddy was around. Besides, Daddy is a lot more... ahem... DARING than Mommy is, and it's good for her to learn not to be scared of things. Even if it gives me a heart attack.

3) Mariah is within days (possibly minutes) of crawling. She's up on all fours constantly, she rolls around like a champ, and she can sit when she wants to. Just yesterday she started a new thing: if a toy is just out of reach in front of her, she gets up on hands and knees, pulls back, then pushes forward like a slingshot, letting her arms go out in front of her, to try and grab it. Her belly flops on the ground, and she always looks a little pained, but it was worth it if she got where she was going.