Playing catch up... kinda

 Oh boy.  Six months gone since the last post.  And it was a such a busy summer! We had a string of visitors (and hardly any pictures to show for it), and also took a little trip to Portland to meet this little guy (and see his mom and dad... and all the other members of my family).  We were privileged to be part of his sealing to his parents in the temple.

 Oregon waterfall... can't remember the name of it.

 Multnomah Falls.  I wanted to make sure Adam got to see this area.  Especially since the only other time he's been to Oregon was at Christmas when there wasn't much greenery.

We went to the zoo where the hippos showed their best side.

We also had these crazies taking photos everywhere :)

That trip to Portland was in early June. Following that trip, we had Adam's sister and a couple of her kids visit for a few days.  We tromped around the city and sadly took no pictures!  On the day they left, we had our next visitor arrive later the same day.  Adam's friend Ryan came to stay for a week.  Another unfortunate incident of taking no pictures.  A couple of weeks following, my dad came to stay for a couple of night.  Again, no pictures (well, on our end... dad took plenty)! But we should really get better at documenting our lives.  

In the meantime, I tried growing some herbs in our window.  The started growing and it was exciting!  And then after a while, I didn't show enough love and they died.  No fresh herbs for us.  But let's be honest, I'm not sure they would have thrived growing in these starter pots inside a semi humid apartment.

On the 4th of July, we decided we should go see the fireworks! Turned out to be an awful idea.  Seeing the "best fireworks show in the US" is the worst experience you can have trying to see a fireworks show that, frankly, was not that spectacular.  You have to arrive early to even get a decent place to sit/stand, it was like 100º out with like 90% humidity and there's not even any grassy knolls to sit on.  Everyone is herded into gated sections of a highway they close down and you can't even leave or they won't let you back in! It was a lot of sweaty bodies packed into one long stretch of road.  We left out original spot to get some ice cream and sit in some a/c before going back to a place further away from the show but closer to the time they would start.  This was the view... a raised road was sorta blocking part of the view.

In September, our little nephew came to visit from Portland (with his parents), and we had a great time with them!  We did my things we hadn't yet done (and lots that we had done too).  Once again, we didn't take many pictures (but they did... and we have them somewhere...)

Right after they left, we received another visitor... this one uninvited, unwanted, makes messes, poops on your floor, avoids all traps, and chews through your food (in this case, just dried beans).  A single mouse. Don't know if you can see it the crumbles but he's been hanging out behind the bookshelves, eating dried beans, which you can see scattered on the floor and in crumbs.

We have set all kinds of traps (snappy ones and sticky ones) but for some reason we got the smart mouse who has not touched any of them.  We've chased it around, made barricades to trap him (twice now) but he's so quick and there's always a weak spot that he finds (we were SO close to catching it yesterday but he disappeared somehow).  Once he got to under the sink so we plugged all the holes up with magazines and boxes (yes, things it could chew through...) and set some traps in and hoped for the best.

 Unfortunately, there was a large opening under the cupboards that we didn't know about and so this attempt was unsuccessful. But we closed it up and left it blocked up so that he has one less place to hide.  Any ideas on how to catch him????

And lastly, this has also been happening... (this is my "Look what you did to me Adam!" face).  Haha, it's just a joke of course.

We're having a baby in January! And it's a boy Grigglet!  Here he is at 9 weeks.  I don't know what I'm looking at either.  The doctor said, there it is, and I said, I don't know what I'm looking at.  She pointed out a blinking light and said, well that's the heartbeat.  

Here he is at almost 12 weeks. Finally, a shape I can distinguish!

Here he is at almost 19 weeks.  The hospital here doesn't give us very good ultrasound pictures.  I feel like I've seen better ones... but oh well.

And here he is at just over 22 weeks. This was our follow up anatomy scan since they couldn't see all the angles of the heart they needed to see.

This was taken 10/18, two days from 27 weeks (third trimester!). Not much has changed since week 23 (that's the yellow shirt picture)

*blink* and there goes April...

April whizzed by somehow.  We hardly took any pictures.

Except this one...

Pretty funny picture, yes?  One day we found this little guy behind the cold water knob in the shower.  The antennae were just moving around.  Sometimes there was just one out.  Sometimes both popped out.  Sometimes they disappeared but then they'd come back.  Kinda gross.  We didn't know how to get it out and we didn't want to spray it because we didn't want a dead cockroach just sitting there.  

Well, that plan backfired because the next day, those once spry antennae were droopy and lifeless.  And we still didn't know how to get it out.  So we just let it sit there over the next few days.  Until it was finally discovered that the one piece moved away from the wall.

In other news, I finally found a permanent full time job.  Yay!

welcome spring!

Well, winter is over and spring is here.  Although, I don't remember seeing much winter this year.  Hope we don't see much summer either.  I'd be happy for spring or fall weather all year round.

Anyway, March was somewhat uneventful.  But we did have a couple of celebrity sightings this month, but no one too exciting.  So not exciting that I didn't even notice till someone pointed them out.  

We did have our cub scout pinewood derby.  It was a stake event although a lot of the cub scouts in our stake are just members of our community and not members of the church.  Here are some of the cars that competed.  There were a a few more that came later but these are the majority of them.  We had 2 boys in our pack win trophies for design.  That one with the pac man characters on a skateboard won 3rd place design in the Bears.  And the one on the right with the lights around it won best design over all the cub scout cars.  You can't see, but it also has a small compartment with water that you drop dry ice in to make it smoke.  Pretty high tech stuff.  Anyway, we were really happy he won best design because every other year he's competed, he's won 2nd place design and he was determined to have the best design since this is his last year to compete.

  One of our leaders and his son, pictured here, made this cool ghostbusters car.  The car did fairly well placing 3rd among the Wolves.  Unfortunately, this kid is only 5 and not a cub scout, which our leader  fessed up in the end because he felt bad.  They were racing for fun and it just ended up being one of the faster cars... oops.

They gave all the kids those rubber bracelet things and this is what some of the kids (from different packs) were doing with them during the race...  I was laughing so hard.

 Oh, what?  You want to see a close up?

We also visited the Natural History museum again and was able to see some other exhibits we didn't get to last time.  I think this display was in the hall of Pacific Peoples.  I can't remember what's going on here or what the figures mean but I thought they were humorous.

We also visited the Highline park one day.  It's not really a normal park you'd picture. It follows an old elevated railroad track that transformed.  It's about 15 or 20 blocks long.  So most of it is like a pathway with some wider areas to stop and sit or stand, or sometimes just benches along the sides.  And they had vegetation growing all along the path.  It was pretty cool.

Here you can see some of the old tracks.

And here you can see that they just built around the tracks.

We were there long enough to see the sunset behind New Jersey over the Hudson.

 We also did something cultural by going to see this play called Galileo.  F. Murray Abraham played Galileo.  I know you don't think you know who that is, but you do.  He played Salieri in the movie Amadeus and won an Oscar for it.  The stage was really small and round and the audience was wrapped around three sides of it so there were really no bad seats and we had a clear view.  It was about Galileo's life and condemnation by the Catholic church for his scientific beliefs.  It was really enlightening.  Worth a watch if you get a chance.  Well, if you like that kind of stuff.

And that wraps up the month of March.

it's leap day!

Leap day is upon us. Are you wearing your blue and yellow today?  Did you cry for candy?  Did you see the episode of 30 Rock last week and maybe you know what i'm talking about?  Well, whatever, it's not that important.  What's important is what is going on with us.  That's why you're here right?  To read about us (it's not that exciting). 

Let's see.  We got haircuts!  Yay!

We walked down 5th Ave one day and came upon this....

Whoops.  Not sure how this happened but I know it happened a few minutes before we walked by because we could hear the sirens on their way to the scene shortly after we passed.  

We were actually on our way to our first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  However, that museum is SO big that we only saw most of one section in a couple of hours.

While searching for the washroom, we were in the Egyptian section so we went and took a looksy at this tomb.

But most of our time was spent in the Roman/Greek art.  

After a couple of hours we were pooped.  So we left and walked through Central Park and saw this tree with a built in seat pretty much.  It doesn't really look it, but it was kinda high off the ground.

On the 16th, we went to a taping of the daily show with jon stewart.  It was really fun to go to a live taping.  They were so good at it that they did the whole show without having to retake anything.

We were #107 and #108 in line.  This was the ticket we waited for.  A badly cut piece of yellow paper.  I know, super official looking.  Then we had to come back an hour and half later to get seated.  We didn't get to choose our seats, but when we finally got into the studio, they sat us in the second row!  Sorry, no pics allowed inside.

Anyway, those were the highlights of February.  Sorry we aren't very interesting people.  Maybe  March will be different.  Meh, probs not.  haha.

there's no title for this post

Oh my.  It's the last day of January.  I best be getting on with a post...

One day I was wearing these socks and when i took them off, the shape stayed.  Looked so weird I thought I'd take a picture.  Weird, right?

Does someone need a haircut?  Um yes... it's just that we've not known where to go in this city to get an affordable and good cut.  No worries, we've got appointments later this week.

 My hair is getting way too long too... And my arms got chopped off.

 Over Christmas, dad was here and we went to the Natural History Museum one day.  It was so cool.  And SO big that we didn't even get to see everything.  This was the dinosaur exhibit.

 This one too.  Look at the size of that mouth!

My, what an iddy biddy head for all that neck...

Here's dad taking a picture in the African animals section.

 Giant squid, probably straight from the 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea movie.

 Here's a real slice of a tree.  Maybe it's not as cool in a picture but I was blown away!

 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  A place that is WAY too overcrowded.  And cold.

 This is about as close to the tree as we got because of the hoards of people all over.  There wasn't much else to see anyway.  Except the rich ice skaters.  Who paid $75 per person to skate.

 World Trade Center Memorial.

 Really cool monument.  But this place made me really sad after a while.

 The Brooklyn Bridge.  We're so hip.  Haha.

 This was carved into a wall in Central Park.  We just thought it was neat.

 Here's an Egyptian Obelisk.  A real one.  Imported from Egypt.  In 18something.  A long time ago.

 Here's dad taking a picture of...

 ...this great skyline by the Belvedere Castle in Central Park!

This the sleeping arrangements you can look forward to when you come to visit.  Dad was a real trooper.

 Ok, here are the apt pics I keep promising.  There's not much to look at.  I am standing in our bedroom door.

 And this is standing by the front door.  Sometimes we use that ball as a chair.

 Here's our room.  Yes, our curtain is a black trash bag.  It came with the apartment!  And it keeps the cold out (kind of).

 Here's our bathroom.  It is like a hallway... That sink on the right side is about where the other wall goes to.  Eww, the tub looks dirty, I think we need to go clean it... pronto!!!