When in Rome

Evan and I have been married 4 years and 8 months.  We've lived in 3 different states and 5 cities together.  Each time we move I make a mental list of all the things I want to do/see while living in that place, because who knows how long we'll be there before the next "adventure" beings.  Like in Tucson I really wanted to see the Kartchner Caverns and while in Phoenix I wanted to go to a spring training baseball game.  Well I have accomplished my "Detroit Bucket List."  I wanted to see a Lions Football game and go to the North American International Auto Show.  I know it is a short list but really sports and cars is what Detroit has going for it.  The auto show is a big deal.  We went at the perfect time, a Wednesday afternoon.  We found parking that was close, although not close enough for Autumn.  She started crying before we got inside because she was cold.  (It really is SO cold here).  We didn't have to wait in line to get tickets.  And we could wander around the place at our leisure without feeling like a pack of cattle (with a stroller no less).

Basically the auto show is just a bunch of cars.  I think every car company I've ever heard of (besides SAAB) and some I haven't heard of were there with models of there cars.  Some of the companies let you sit in the cars, some have free gifts, and some have activities for you to do.

It would have been even more fun if we went with someone who knew about cars!  Evan's BFF loves the car above, so we made sure to take a picture with it!  I think the majority of the people there were retired guys with there retired buddy.  I imagine Evan and Morgan in a couple decades wandering around the auto show together.

Autumn enjoying the stroller.  There were lots of things to look at!

Autumn the car model

This Toyota was pretty cool.  You could put your picture on the side of it!  See it's Autumn!  I think the point of this is so that you can impress your girl friend?  No I think it is an alternative to getting your Scion wrapped with your company logo.

For some reason Evan kept taking pictures of me in "mom" cars.  I guess it was because I was drawn to the mom mobiles, over the sports cars! (plus there weren't very many sports cars you were allowed to sit in!)

Autumn was afraid of the Michelin man.

I finally told Evan he could take Autumn out of the stroller.  She loved it...as you can see below

Last but not least Autumn loves escalators.  I however do not.  If you witnessed your younger brother, who didn't speak, get his Aladdin high top sucked into the escalator and seeing shear panic on your mother's face as she frantically tried to get his foot out of the shoe that was disappearing quickly before our eyes, maybe you'd feel the same way.  For now I just close my eyes (unless I'm taking a picture of course).  By the way my little brother survived, someone heard my mother screaming for help and shut off the escalator, or it had an automatic shut off, either way it stopped once we were on the last step right before he was to be sucked up under the escalator.

Kick Kick Kick

Autumn and I went on an adventure (I say this every time we leave the house) to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture festival.  It was a very popular Saturday afternoon activity.  It was warm (45 degrees) so the sculptures were melting!  However we had a good time with our friends, the Anderson's and we stayed mostly warm.

Monday, Evan had the day off so he swam with Autumn at her swim lessons.  He took longer changing in the locker room than Autumn did.  So besides being a tad bit late to the lesson (which is much better than last week when I forgot what time the lesson started) She had a great time. 

I love Autumns' swim teacher's swim cap.  I think it is way rad.  I feel very confident with her knowledge of water safety, children, and swimming.  She plays games and sings songs with the kids, and has them swim laps!

Reaching for the floating letters. Kick Kick Kick.  When I swam with Autumn I felt like I said, "kick, kick, kick" for 30 minutes straight.  And she did kick most of the time.  I wouldn't say she is a "fish,"  but she does like to be around people and do active things!

Back float

Reach Reach Reach

Eyeing the bag of letters that were put away.

See Autumn Grow

See Autumn bite a Cutie.

 See Autumn dig her finger in the Cutie.

 See Autumn peel a Cutie.

See  Autumn eat a Cutie

Repeat

It was this day that I decided to never cook dinner again.  I'm just not very good at entertaining Autumn and cooking dinner at the same time. (Geeze she had been complaining a lot lately!)  I usually wait for Evan to get home before I make dinner, but he worked late all last week.  I tried a recipe I've seen all over Pinterest for Mashed Cauliflower.  It didn't work.  It doesn't "mash" very well.  So after using my hand mixer and my Kitchen Aid I finally got it "mashed."  I ended up with mutilated, cold cauliflower all over the kitchen and a bunch of dirty dishes.  It tasted just like what you would think mutilated cold cauliflower would taste like.  And It didn't even look like creamy mashed potatoes.  

What it is suppose to look like:

photo source

What mine looked like:

AWW...but isn't she cute

The Little Things in Life

"It is the little things in life."  You hear this a lot mostly pertaining to how precious your little child is or the sweet thing your sweetheart did for you.  Well, this week I learned this also works for the little things that just piss me off and ruin my day, hour, whatever.

Friday I planed a cute "creative" date for me and Evan.  We were suppose to eat at my new favorite place.  When we got there they closed 10 minutes early.  Seriously?  Like lights off, grill cleaned, doors closed.  I was pissed.  Ruined the rest of the date.  Evan said he still had fun, but I was grumpy (didn't help that I was hungry because I refused to eat somewhere else).

Monday is swim lesson day!  An excuse for me to take Evan to work so that I can have the car and sluff off my cabin fever for just one day.  For some reason I was thinking the class started at 12:30pm.  So At noon I went to get Autumn up from her nap to drive the 15 minutes to the community center and have time to get her ready.  As I reached her bedroom door I realized class started at noon.  We missed the class.  UG!  (At least I didn't wake her up.)  On top of that Evan had a meeting 3 hours before his shift started so I had to take him extra early to work and it turns out the meeting was only 15 minutes long.  So he had to sit at work for an extra 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Today I made dinner.  I mean really made dinner.  I found a new recipe and made a nice dinner.  It was painful.  Autumn was not cooperating.  I was just getting over my frustration of cooking dinner when Evan came home and told me he ate at the hospital! UG! Really?  The little thing that really pissed me off was that I had sprayed Pam in a pan to grill some squash.  I hate cleaning that pan.  (I'm going to make Evan do it).

Sometimes little things like Autumn getting excited to see the neighbor's dog melts my heart, but then there are the little things like, the fact that Autumn refuses to wear her gloves which means we can only play outside for 10 minutes before she gets too cold and has a total melt down, puts me over the edge.

Monday ended up being a really good day despite missing swim lessons.  Autumn and I went to Target and even though they were out of what I wanted one of the workers was very helpful and friendly.  Then we went grocery shopping and stayed on budget, which has not been the norm as of late.  And we even got to go to the library before meeting Evan at the hospital and I found a book I'm really enjoying called "Annoying".  Even if we did wait in the car for him for 75 minutes . OOPS this was suppose to be the happy paragraph.  Oh well I tried.

I was always leery when a guy asked me to go on a "creative" date with him.  There is a fine line between way clever and way lame.  So my "creative" idea ended up being lame.  I thought it would be fun to explore our city a bit.  I see these green land markers all over town so I thought we should visit some.  Turns out there are over 100 in our city.  So I narrowed down our adventure to the historic district.  My little sister Hannah lives by the mantra that everything is more fun when you take pictures.  So that is what we did took pictures of ourselves in front of the green marker signs in downtown.

 I told Evan to "jump" so that the flash wouldn't catch on the fence thus highlighting the creepy graveyard.  Didn't work.

 Governor's Mansion.  It took us forever to get the 200 yards to this site, because Evan has an unnatural fear of getting a parking ticket so we had to circle the area forever until he found a suitable place to park.

 "Do a funny pose"

 Finally not so grumpy and willing to take a picture, or a thousand since jumping picture are quite difficult.

 Fancy pre-civil war funeral home

 "Downtown It's Happening" (What a lame city motto.  I thought Renton, Washington's motto was lame  "ahead of the curve"  because geographically it is ahead of a "curve" on the freeway.)

First post office, which is now someone's house.  Awkward.

Put this on the blog

I started blogging before I had a kid.  I did so, so that I could turn my blog into a book.  I love to scrapbook, but I thought it was time to go digital so I wouldn't have to print all my pictures.  Since starting my blog a couple unforeseen things have happened. 

1. Evan loves the blog and often asks me to, "put that on the blog" quite often.

2. It is easy to convince Evan to do something if he thinks we can "put it on the blog."  He is more willingly to go on a Saturday day trip to some random place if we "take lots of pictures for the blog."

Evan has asked me more than once to post this picture.  He thinks it is so funny because he says it looks like a football player's "defensive three point stand."

 On a somewhat related topic (consequently a somewhat unrelated topic) my new year's resolutions.  Last year I did not blog about my resolutions because it took me a while to pin them down, hence I have forgotten what they were.  (I do remember I wanted to run a mile without stopping, which I did.  Twice.)  Most, if not all, of these things I use to be really good at, but then Autumn was born.  I'm not blaming her, but I took the "I have a little baby" excuse to the extreme.  It is harder, emotional, to be a mom than I thought it would be.  I did not handle things well, for a very long time.  It is time to get out of "survival mode".  I have broken my resolutions down into four categories.
1. Blog
-Stop putting every single picture I take on the blog.
-Take pictures of myself. (vain?)  There are very few pictures of my mom from when I was a child.  I am just as important (all be it not as cute) as Autumn. And when a picture is taken of me I don't want it to look like the following...

 2. Mind
-A couple years ago I made a goal to read 6 books.  I did.  I would like to do that again.  I learned a lot that year, since most of the books I read were "self-help" books.  My favorite being, "The Gift of Fear."
-Learn how to use Photo Shop. Enough said.

This is another "put this on the blog photo."  Evan is very proud of his idea to put Christmas lights and our Christmas cards around our family photo mural.  I think it looks lovely as well.

 3. Body:
-Exercise.  I haven't figured out how to do this yet.  I hate jogging and even if I didn't hate it I don't have a jogging stroller.  So when do I work out?  During Autumn's nap?  That would limit me to staying home and doing the one Pilates DVD I have, since Netflix no longer has fitness videos on instant play.  I don't want to pay for a gym membership (and even if I wasn't cheap we share a car, and I would have to jog to the gym.  And we already covered how I hate jogging.)  Any suggestions?
-Drink 64 oz. of water a day.  I'm doing better at this since my parents gave me a new water bottle for Christmas.  Why is it easier to remember to drink water if it is out of a bottle opposed to a glass?
-Stretch daily.  Ugh how my body will thank me.

Another ploy to get Evan to do something with me.  My sister gave us  "At-home-Date-in-a-Jar" for Christmas. A couple weeks ago we did a 1,000 piece puzzle for a date.  I learned I am not very good at puzzles.  I kept putting the pieces together wrong.

4. Soul

-Go to the temple 4 times.  I think that is a realistic goal.

-Read my scriptures 5 days a week.  Also realistic. 

On another not so related topic: (but I didn't want to devote an entire post to my ranting) Pinterest.  Oh how I love thee Pintrest, and detest some of your users.  I wish you all would look at the website you are pinning! I hate when I click on one of my friends Pins that says something like "DIY ottoman" and when I click on the link it is to Amazon.com to buy that "super easy. super chic. DIY ottoman."   Similarly I hate "Pin now Read Later" descriptions.  If you haven't read it don't pin it.  I've had friends Pin porn sites because the picture was cute and they were going to "read" later, I'm pretty sure they never got around to reading it, but I did no thanks to you.  STOP IT!  Also you know you can change the description under the picture right?  I hate when a friend has pinned "Fun summer outdoor activities.  Max would LOVE this."  You don't have a kid named Max. Did you even look at this website (refer to above).  Then I look and you pinned it via my other friend, who I also know does not have a kid named Max. Stop it! Lastly, you do not need to pin everything your friends pin.  Pinterest was created as a place where you can bookmark all the things you love.  So while you're surfing the internet and you come across something for your "dream home" you can pin it and it saves in one location and you don't have to have a million bookmarks.  Just because your friend pins "take off closet doors and use as an office.  Such a good idea, I don't know why I didn't think of that."  The reason you didn't think about that is (well you probably didn't write the description, but I'll answer you anyway) is because it is a STUPID idea.  The reason people have offices, is so they can close the door.  No one wants to see your papers and junk all the time, and no one wants to constantly straiten their desk up.  Think before you pin.  When in doubt just press the like button.  You can still find it later, but without the commitment of adding it to your boards.  If you would also like to hear my opinions on modern day health care just let me know:)

Evan's Birthday

First here is a picture of Autumn.  Lately she has loved to dump out my hair clips and put them back in the container.  She is slowly tolerating letting me pin her hair back.  On Evan's birthday she asked me to put clips in.  She has about 5 in her hair right now.

On to Evan's birthday.  I love Evan's birthday.  He is like a little kid he loves his birthday.  This year I did a "jungle safari" scavenger hunt for him to find his gifts throughout the day.  For dinner he requested frozen pizza.  I'm not sure if I should be offended or grateful for this request.  The night before however we had some friends over and I made his new favorite, Green (chicken) Enchiladas.  

Looking for a gift in my closet

Autumn helping him open a gift

The final gift was tickets to see the play, "The Lion King" hence the jungle theme.  Unfortunately Evan's birthday was a bit of a let down this year.  I'm not sure if the excitement of the scavenger hunt early on in the day fizzed out or the fact that he missed Autumn's first swim lesson (he was truly sad about that) or the fact that he may have been a little home sick after video chatting with his family, but whatever the reason sometimes birthdays are just hard.

 

The birthday boy!  We realized I've spent almost a 1/4 of Evan's birthdays with him now (2 before we were married and five since we've been married).  Crazy right? Time flies when you're having fun.  I'm so glad Evan was born.  He is my best friend. He makes up for my weaknesses, he complements me.  I know understand the term, "better half."  He is perfect for me and I can't image life without him.

Some pictures are worth a thousand words

Autumn and I hung around the house today.  On days like today I often look at her after she is dressed and think, "who is your mother?"  You see it's cold here so I wanted Autumn to be warm.  I also wanted her to wear this dress which I find rather cute, but would not regularly be able to wear since it is cold out.  So I thought "hey, I'll put a long sleeve onesie under that dress and she will be just perfect.  Oh and look, poke-a-dots and poke-a-dots. Perfect."  Not perfect she looks like her dad dressed her.

Autumn's hair seems to be only growing in the front.  She also has two crowns so her hair just naturally falls in her eyes.  I think it drove my sister crazy when we went to visit because she kept putting clips in Autumn's hair.  Just recently Autumn has been tolerating hair accessories.  I did two ponies today.  It added to the "my daddy dressed me" look.

Autumn is becoming quite attached to her swaddle blankets.  I use to think parents imposed "security" blankets/stuffed animals on to their children.  And since I'm the middle child my parents just forgot to force me to be attached to some object.  I was so jealous of kids who carried around rags named "mushi."  I would pretend that my dolls were my security item, but then I'd forget about them, which defeats the purpose of a security item.  I don't have a real problem with her being attached to her blankets.  It is kinda cute.  My older sister still sleeps with her "doggie" even though she is married and has two kids of her own.  (She claims she stopped when she got married, but I saw her hanging around when I went to visit her.  She says her son was sleeping with it, whatever.)  I have however seen some unfortunate incidences with other's "security" items.  Like when my little sister lost "B" her blanket at one of my soccer games and was only left with "Blankie" the lesser blanket.  It was like a death in the family.  It was so sad, still is actually.  Whatever Autumn's disposition towards her blankets right now I think it is rather fun when she shows personality and makes choices for herself.  She doesn't usually have them out of her crib, but today was wash day.  Autumn kept pulling the blankets out of the wash piles and dragging them around the house.  She also likes to put them over her head and walk around like a ghost.  She thinks that is pretty hysterical.  Tonight, after the blankets were out of the dryer and I was folding the laundry, Autumn grabbed her blanket off the couch and put it in a small basket I was using for matchless socks.  She carried her blanket around in the basket for a good 20 minutes before I put her to bed.  Also very hysterical.

Ok so not quite a thousand words;)

SNOW

It snowed while we were North Carolina for Christmas.  I don't really like playing in snow so one day we went out to look at the snow.  Autumn wasn't too happy that I was making her wear gloves.

She was happy once she got one off.  Then she was sad again when she touched the snow with her bare hand.  She knows what she wants.

A few days later we went sledding with Evan.  I love that there are hills in our apartment complex because we don't have to suit up, sweat in the car driving to a hill, sled for a few minutes until we get cold, get snow all over the interior of the car and whine all the way home.  We sled for a bit then walked the 200 feet home.  And Autumn kept her gloves on the whole time.  I guess she learned her lesson.

 Autumn was not a fan of solo sledding.

 I'll keep practicing my action shots.

 Autumn much preferred to watch her dad sled.  She was all smiles and giggles watching her daddy.

She was content going down with dad.