Happiness

Things that are making me happy today:
-Having 2 weeks off from teaching YW and planning/executing YW mutual activities.

-Today on the way to the Children's Museum Weston told me his favorite band was The Headlights. And The Beatles. Also after Rainbow Connection by Kermit was over he said, "Great song Kermit!" and clapped. :) Love that kid.

Check out that treat bag he got at school for his friend, Hailey's, birthday! Yes, that is a full size Snickers you see.

-Exercising! Loving the elliptical, and a few ladies in my ward have started doing different work out videos a couple mornings a week together. It's fun!

-I just found out today that preschool is going to be completely free next year. Hooray for living in the ghetto?

-This adorable baby's smiles.

Of course, this was literally seconds before she spit up all over me and the couch.

-Looking forward to the Oscar's this weekend. We will be eating spinach & artichoke dip and homemade potato skins.

-My goofball two year old. I am savoring his last few weeks of being two. He really is just the cutest kid right now.
-Working on my blog books. I can't wait to get 2009 and 2010 printed! I think I'm going to use blog2print this time instead of blurb. I just don't have time to go through and format 2 years worth of posts.

-The sun. Well, it was making me happy. It looks like this weekend's storm clouds have now moved in.

-Getting to visit with my friend, Tara, while the kids played at the Children's Museum. I think we are due for another girl's night.

-Having the furnace tuned up without it being proclaimed dead and in immediate need of a replacement. I'm afraid to get it tuned up every year for fear that we will be told to replace it and we just don't have $4000 on hand.

-Talking to all my sisters and my mom this week.

Family Time!

This last weekend we had more visitors! Ian's parents flew in for the long weekend. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed some down time too. The kids were so excited to see Grandma and Papa. We picked them up from the airport on Friday and lunch time and went straight to In N Out. Once we were all full of burger goodness we checked them into their hotel then came back to the house to play. Grandma and Papa brought the boys puzzles and new sunglasses! Davin was pretty good at putting together the puzzles. After dinner we all went back to the hotel to swim. I just sat in the hot tub and it was fabulous. I had missed being able to soak in a hot tub for the past year.
Saturday morning we drove downtown and went to the Clark Planetarium. They always have cool shows playing. This time we saw an IMAX 3D movie called The Legend of Flight. It was pretty cool and showed the process of developing and building a plane. Then we wandered the Planetarium and checked out the exhibits.
Grandma and Papa treated us to lunch at Chick Fil A, then we all went home for naps. Saturday night we took advantage of the free babysitters and went out to dinner with some old friends, the Marshalls. Ian and John knew each other from Oregon, were roomies in the dorms at BYU, and John was a groomsman at our wedding. I keep up with Amy and their kiddos on their blog, but we hadn't seen them in person for years. We had a great time visiting and joking. We had a delicious dinner at Market Street Grill then played a game of pool over at Ian's work. It's always nice to get out without the kids and to get out with friends is even better. It reminds us that we haven't always just been parents, you know?

Sunday was good. I didn't have to teach and I canceled my presidency meeting, so we had a nice, long afternoon to relax, watch movies, play games, bake cookies, and put together a yummy dinner. It was great just spending time together. Unfortunately Denny wasn't feeling very good, so it's a good thing we had a slow Sunday afternoon. Talia worked on being cute all weekend and the boys got in some good play time with Papa. Monday morning we went and swam at the hotel again. The water was pretty warm and it felt good to swim. I don't think I had been in the water since the end of last summer. Sigh.
Once we were all showered and dressed we went to lunch at Kneaders. Later that afternoon Ian and Weston took Grandma and Papa back to the airport. I'm so glad that I have such great in-laws who love me and the kids and always make such an effort to see us and to make it fun. Thanks Jim and Den!

Ian and I also spent part of our long weekend watching some Oscar nominated films. As you know, I love to watch the Oscars and I prefer to have seen as many of the best picture nominees as I can before the big night. In case you don't have it on your calendar, Oscar night is this Sunday, Feb. 27th. :) For a list of all the nominees, go HERE.

We Have a Winner!

The saga of the baby monitor has been the second most intense and frustrating thing about the last couple months (the first, of course, being my own journey of finding balance and happiness in my life). Here's the back story: Once upon a time we were young recent college grads who had a bouncing baby boy. A family member gave us a monitor as a gift. It was great! We used it constantly until one day, when our second bouncing baby boy was about a year old, it started to die. I found a Graco monitor on Amazon for really cheap, so I bought it. It worked fine, but the minimum volume was much louder than mute. This was fine with a one year old who already slept through the night, but I knew it would be a problem with an infant, so we figured we would get a better monitor when Talia arrived.

A couple weeks after Talia was born I got really fed up with her sleepy grunting waking me up in the middle of the night when she wasn't really awake, so the hunt for a new monitor began. Price wasn't really an issue since we were gifted a large gift card from friends at Ian's work. We still wanted good value though so we started with the Fisher Price Lights and Sounds monitor (incidentally this is the same one we had originally). The new model of it was horrible. Wow. Lots of static. You could barely hear the baby cry. We didn't even use it for a night. We left it on for an hour or two before deciding it wasn't going to work.

The next day I went back to Babies R Us to return it and try a different brand. We went with the pricier Summer Infant Slim and Clear monitor. This one was digital. It had no static interference and let us hear baby clearly. We actually used this monitor for a few weeks before we nixed it. The problem was that the power indicator light was a very bright blue LED light. It was like having a nightlight on our dresser every night. Another thing I didn't like about it was the volume control was a plus and minus button instead of the traditional dial. The quietest increment before mute was not very quiet. I could hear too many sleeping baby noises and the crying was very loud. The volume control buttons also beeped when you pushed them to turn the volume up or down. Lame. Don't they have actual parents test these products?!? Back it went.

Next we bought the Sony BabyCall monitor. This analog monitor seemed to work pretty well when we first plugged it in, but as we moved around the house the receivers kept randomly beeping. It was the out-of-range alarm. We do not have a very big house. There is no way the receivers could be out of range anywhere inside our house. We think the signal was being blocked by our bodies or something. It's also possible that we have too many other devices on analog signals in our house. Ian thought maybe we had gotten a bad set since the BabyCall was highly rated and we really wanted to be done with monitor shopping. We exchanged the monitor for another one of the same at Target. It was worse. It beeped non-stop. I couldn't even leave the receivers on. Sigh.

Yesterday we returned the second BabyCall monitor. The only monitors at Target that we hadn't tried were the Graco Digital Connect and the First Years Two Receiver monitor. We bought them both because we were so sick of buying and returning. We hoped that one of the them would work well for us. We plugged in the First Years monitor first hoping that the cheaper one would do the job. After one night using it so far, so good! We are going to use it for a week or so and make sure it continues to work well, but I think it's going to let us hear Talia when we want to and allow us to turn down the sound when we don't want to hear her. It is simple and has minimal static. Hurrah! A winner at last! I am so glad that the hunt for a baby monitor that will let me sleep more soundly is over. :)

We didn't even take the Graco Digital Connect monitor out of it's box. It probably would have been another overpriced failure though. When I looked it up on Amazon for this post I saw that it was rated with only one star by all 8 reviewers. Not a good sign. I guess the moral of the story is you just have to try all the monitors at your own house to know if they will work for you. Also, don't believe the saleslady at Babies R Us who tells you that you get what you pay for when buying a monitor and tries to get you to buy the $200 one.
Sidenote: I had a few people recommend the Summer Infant Day and Night Video monitor to us. I really didn't want a video monitor and that's the reason we didn't try it.

Head Above Water

I have had a couple days this week where I actually feel like I am getting the hang of this mother-of-three thing. Days where I wasn't clenching my teeth all day. The kids napped. Talia went to sleep for the night at a decent hour. I went to sleep at a decent hour. The house got sort of clean. Laundry got folded AND put away. It felt good. I also managed to spend some time on my elliptical and take Talia to the doctor. I did completely forget to bring snack for Weston's preschool class on Tuesday, but that was the only major oversight so far this week. Go me.

Tuesday was Talia's 2 month check up. She is doing great. She was not a fan of her shots and she kept trying to take her nap during the exam, but overall she was good. She is another petite little Bowles child, but the doctor proclaimed her healthy and thriving. Yay!
Talia's 2 month stats:
Height: 22 inches (45th %)
Weight: 9 lbs. 4 oz. (20th %)
Head: 50th %

Today my 2007-2008 blog book arrived! I am so excited about it. I love having a solid copy of my life journal in my house. It's so fun to flip through it and have all the stories and pictures right at my fingertips. It makes me anxious to get 2009 and 2010 printed. I think we will use some of our tax return to do that. It's a little pricey, but I think it's worth it to have this keepsake. I just know the kids are going to love looking through these books when they are older. Weston already didn't remember a lot of the people and stories from those years. Can't blame him too much though, he was only 18 months old at the beginning of the book. It has Davin's birth in it, which is so fun to read about and look at his early months. It makes me remember how fast this baby stage goes and that it does, in fact, end.

Worst thing about this week (besides completely spacing preschool snack) was that I had to unexpectedly spend $650 on new tires and getting my car's alignment fixed. Sigh. Things like this bug me. Part of me is glad that it happened now because we have tax return money to pay for it, but the other (I must admit, bigger) part of me is bummed that once again we won't have any tax return left over to save. Boo.

To end on a happy note, here are a few pics of the kiddos. Weston took the ones of Talia and his coloring page. I took the one of Davin and Talia on Valentine's Day in their cute red outfits. :)

Valentine Visit

This weekend my mommy flew in for a weekend visit. I have been so looking forward to it and it was just as much fun as I was hoping. Less restful, but lots of fun. :) We started the weekend off with a trip to Discovery Gateway. It wasn't too terribly crowded, and yet we still lost Davin for about 5 minutes. It was more like he wasn't where we thought he was, but then we found him at the water table completely soaked. We took a break and grabbed lunch at the food court and some goodies from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Seriously if you haven't tried their Apple Pie caramel apple, you should. We went back to the museum to play for another hour and it was pretty empty by then. I think our next trip will be in the afternoon. It seems to be the less busy time to go.

Friday night Mom and I went out to do some shopping. We were pretty successful. We shopped for the kids, a baby shower gift, and some grocery and Valentine stuff. I love having a shopping buddy. Saturday morning we went to my friend from home, Lana's, baby shower. It was a blast. Her sister had it decorated so cute. The food was fantastic, and it was so fun to catch up with some of the girls from my home stake. We somehow didn't get Lana in this picture, but here is the group from Fullerton. (me, Mom, Jamie holding her daughter, and Louisa holding Talia)
Mom was awesome and babysat for us Saturday night so Ian and I could go on a date. We hadn't been out without Talia since she was born, so it was really great. We went to dinner at a new (to us) restaurant downtown called the Copper Onion. It was yummy, but less of a fancy, romantic atmosphere than Faustina. After dinner we went and saw True Grit. We both really liked it. I'm trying to get all my Oscar nominated film watching in before the show in 2 weeks. I still have The King's Speech and The Social Network on my list to watch.

The boys in their new jammies that I got while shopping on Friday night. Have I mentioned that I LOVE Carters fleece pajamas? Well, I do. The boys are all sprawled out on their Grandma B quilts. :)

Sunday mornings are always a little hectic and this weekend was no exception, but we all made it to church on time. Talia got to debut her first dress! Grandma B and Grandpa Bob gave it to her, so it was good that she wore it while Grandma was here. I couldn't get over how adorably girly she looked.
I sang in a trio in Sacrament meeting. It went pretty well, despite the song being a super schmaltzy piece that went too slow (all music in our ward is played at funeral march speed. Sigh). After church we changed into our comfy clothes and watched movies and relaxed. I even got a little nap in! One of the men in our ward does woodworking and he makes these rocking horses. He gave one to us! It is so cute and Davin loves it.
This morning we had a Valentine's Day breakfast since Mom was leaving today. It was a lot of fun. I made heart shaped pancakes and sausage for breakfast and we all exchanged Valentine gifts. The boys each got a Star Wars coloring book and a new red and gray striped sweater to wear from Ian and I. Grandma got them a small box of chocolates and a hand sanitizer in a glow in the dark holder. Talia got a Valentine's outfit from us. Grandma B got Talia sunglasses and this great headband, but she will have to grow into both. :)

Is it just me or does she look like the Chiquita Banana lady here?

Baby diva.

I got Ian a pair of Converse sneakers. I think he likes them and I was glad that they fit. I never know what size shoes to get for him! He had a big secret thing that he went and picked up on Saturday afternoon and hid in the garage. I had no idea what it could be. Turns out he bought a massage table! The kind that can fold down and has a hole for your face in it. I'm pretty excited to try it out (aka get a massage)!

Anyway, we are all having a nice Valentine's Day. I was sad to say goodbye to my mom, but we did have a great time and she is coming back in April during her Spring Break, so I guess I will survive that long. Weston came home from school with a sack full of Valentines and treats, which he is being very good about sharing with his brother. I am planning a nice pork chop dinner and FHE tonight, and an early bedtime for the kids. Wink wink. Hope you are all enjoying your day of love too!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have to end the post with this photo of my cutie in her new headband smiling away.

Kinda Boring

I apologize if this post is not super exciting. We have actually been having a much quieter week! I have done hardly anything and loved every minute of it. Actually we have been playing a lot of Plants v. Zombies. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but it's an addictive little computer game! Weston loves it so much that I had to make a rule that he can't talk about it at the dinner table otherwise our dinner conversation only consists of what new plants he got and what each zombie can do, etc. As a result dinner is a little quieter. And that's ok.

I did have the young women over last night to decorated sugar cookies and make valentines for the less active girls. It was fun, but a little hectic since Ian is out of town (he went to CA for a presentation and will be home tonight) so the kids were running around wanting to be part of the action too. On the plus side I got to eat some sugar cookies. I think I'm going to make more to decorate just with the kids this weekend. Valentine's Day is usually my sugar cookie holiday, so I have to get my fill for a whole year. :)

I forgot my camera when we went to the Treehouse Museum for Weston's birthday outing, but my friend, Jackie, took some pictures for me and just emailed them.

Weston riding a horse in the rodeo area. Note the color coordinated hat and sweater. Definitely on purpose.
Davin in the rodeo area. Jackie and I thought it was pretty funny that almost every other person in the audience mural is doing something with a cell phone.
Kyle, Claire, and Weston in the fire truck.
Playing dress up. Weston did NOT want to take that space suit off when it was time to move on. :)
And finally, a few more pictures of baby Talia! I had to snap a picture of her in her first pair of jeans. They're actually more like jeggings, but still.
Wearing her Daddy's Girl outfit for the first time the day daddy left for CA.

I feel like I am spending this whole week just waiting for my mom to get here! Tomorrow night I get to pick her up from the airport. I am so excited!

This Crazy Week

I have been meaning to post for days now, but I have had a very hectic week. I spent all day Monday and Tuesday preparing for our Young Women New Beginnings program. It was a lot of work. It was exhausting, but it turned out pretty good. We had 3 of the 4 incoming beehives there with parents and most of our current young women there. We did a cooking show theme with one of my counselors putting together a fruit pizza using the value colors and talking about what each value means. We also, of course, introduced the new beehives and I did an overview of the YW program. Anyway, it was short and sweet and now it's done. That's the main thing. :)

Anyway, I took Wednesday "off" and just hung with the kids and didn't really do much. Then Thursday and Friday were spent getting ready for my friend's baby shower that I threw at my house this morning. It was also very nice. I love doing brunch showers. They are so easy and most people are available mid-morning on a Saturday. I made my grandma's souffle, muffins, and a fruit plate. It was pretty and delicious. I got lots of compliments on the food. We didn't play any games, just visited and opened presents. Even though only about half of the people I invited came it felt full. I guess that's the perk of having a small house. Anyway, again, now it's over. Whew! Now if I can just get through my YW lesson and presidency meeting tomorrow I will be ready to relax for a few days and enjoy my mom's visit next weekend!

In other news, I got a new toy! I bought this elliptical machine last weekend at the Icon Fitness scratch and dent warehouse. I love it! It has been really great being able to hop on for 15 minutes during the lulls in my day. It makes me feel like I finally have a fighting chance at making regular exercise a reality. I truly enjoy exercising (most days), but it is just so hard to get all ready and go to the gym during a time that Ian is actually home. Having the elliptical in my living room, although not great for my general home decor, reminds me to use it. If it was in the garage I have a feeling I wouldn't use it as often. Out of sight, out of mind, you know? So, yeah, so far I love it!
Finally a new picture of Miss Talia. She is such a doll. She wasn't particularly happy when I was trying to take this picture, so no smile, but her smiles are truly precious. I am loving dressing her up and then getting her to smile at me. I am planning on getting a picture of her with her brothers next time she wears this outfit.
In the midst of all my crazy running around this week, it was freezing cold. Like high of 10 degrees kind of cold. And my preschool carpool buddy was sick, so here's hoping for a slightly less hectic and warmer week!