Random

This commercial reminds me of Scott. 

Because Scott wants what he does for work to sound really cool.

Because he likes the suave people.

Because he can follow what this “rocket surgeon” “does.”

Because he knows all those engineering terms, but he says that combined it isn’t really anything.

Because, sometimes the simple things in the kitchen are claimed unknown despite how super smart he is.

The end.

Dear Quincy (finally)

November 22, 2013

My Dear Sweet Quincy,

You are a bubble of energy, friendliness, and fun. You love to climb on chairs, tables and desks as well as find a way to get to any technology you possibly can. If your eyes spot the iPad you beg and beg to hold it, you want complete control of the iPad. That is unless it is locked, then you will take my finger to push the numbers trying to get me to unlock it for you, somehow you know with your almost 15 month old brain how that works and you can’t do anything else until those numbers are pushed. You seem to like having background noise and will point to the computer or iPad and do your little squat dance to get me to turn on music. I agree, with just the two of us all day it can get quite. When you’re ornery for no reason we call or facetime family, you like, shearing the phone ring, hearing voices, seeing other little kids, and holding the iPad pushing all the buttons.  The other option for ornery Quincy is to go outside, you still love it, you like being in the stroller, but you LOVE getting to walk yourself and pull me to whatever you want to explore.  Often you purposely fall down so you might get a chance to walk without holding my hand. Little Q , you are always pulling me somewhere even when we are in the house, mostly to get you something or somewhere you can’t yourself. Usually it is the fridge. I feed you well, but you are often picky and somehow always wanting more food.

We talked with Papa Allen a few days ago and he told us about the family 3^rd Sunday dinner. It made me cry when he talked about the kids playing together. I am sorry we don’t live near family and you can’t run around with your cousins and get to be great friends with them. You love being around other kids but don’t have that chance often enough.

I am getting worried to put up the Christmas tree with you around, please be good to it. I even made kid friendly-unbreakable ornaments but I can just see you pulling pines off all the time and having a tree topple over.  

I love you! I love that you will hold my hand again and snuggle with me. I love watching you sleep. You are my little angel!

Love always,

Mommy

Here are some of the latest and greatest pictures of what you have been up to.

Exploring, look mom, a stick!

I don't know how to add videos. Why is it so hard?
Q doesn't let daddy lay down on the floor anymore (even when she doesn't want to ride his back she makes him sit up.)
This is the  regular series of events: daddy lays down, Q goes over pulls on his hair and pushes him up, signs please and climbs on daddy's back, then enjoys a little horsey ride. 

This picture was just a few days ago, soon after Scott got home from work Q was able to get his cover off the table and put it on her head, just like daddy. She has done this a few times since. :)

Happy Veterans Day

Scott is in the Military, which means he gets Veterans Day off as well as some nice benefits sometimes. There are a handful of restaurants that will give a free meal to veterans and active duty military, we had to take advantage of a free meal. Texas Roadhouse gave a free lunch, are just down the road, and I read that they were a smoke free restaurant (a rarity in Charleston county) so we thought we would go there. We got there ½ hour after opening and they already had and hour long wait. We decided to go a little farther away from the 2 bases and head to TGI Fridays instead. We shared a great burger, an appetizer trio and survived without Q making too much of a mess or running away from us.

After lunch we went to pass off another item from our Charleston bucket list, visit Angel Oak. Angel Oak is a huge 600 year old oak tree with its branches reaching everywhere and growing into the ground. The tree is on James Island, which is kind of a long drive, 35 minutes, for just a tree but I am glad we did it once, plus we got to see more of Charleston.

We took some nice pictures, marveled at the tree, looked at the great photographs in the gift shop, and Q was happy to find another girl her same size. The 2 girls touched hands, and didn’t want to leave the other even though they looked like statues in a trance staring opposite directions.

We had a great day playing together as a family. 

O-Deck

Scott finished his train up for his second division for teaching a new subject, Math and Physics and now is teaching officer students rather than the enlisted students Scott was teaching in the heat transfer-fluid flow division before. Yesterday, November 17, was his first time teaching officer students in their preschool. Congrats on making it to the O-deck way to work hard. Yay for no more Saturdays of going in to the office or longer weekday evenings! 

Goodbye Pei

 Pei has been a great friend for Quincy and I and we have been able to be good friends to her while he husband has gone through power school. We have also been able to help her learn about babies and get used to some of the little things since she will be having a baby in March and never held a baby before Quincy. We had a nice farewell lunch with Pei at Kenan’s favorite Mexican restaurant down the road.

Goodbye Pei, thanks for the walks, the fresh air, friendship and tastes of China. 

Busy life and bed bugs

WOW it has been a full life. I needed to blog long before all this happened, but I didn’t and then all this happened:

·        Bedbugs.

o   I started getting lots of unexplainable bug bites, however it was only me.

o   I wondered if we had bed bugs and but couldn’t find anything.

o   I found 1 bug on the wall and it was confirmed by pest control that it was, they couldn't find any more bugs either but said if there was 1 there more and it needed to be treated. They breed like wildfire and I didn’t want it to spread or have Scott or Q get bitten.

o   I had to prepare for treatment, which is A TON of work, almost like moving out of the bedrooms and drying ALL your clothing blankets etc to kill and bugs or eggs.

o   Treatment was going to be $400+ and there was no guarantee, just that TON of work 3x.

o   We didn’t feel like there was a $400 problem, so we bought a $30 steamer and did the work ourselves. Probably 20+ hours.

o   We only found about five little bedbug friends or varying sizes in a little group under our bed

o   Bed bug detecting canine came and didn’t find anything and no more mysterious bites. Yay!

o   Having bedbugs was a a pain, but I think that it was an answer to prayers, a strange one, but an answer all the same. I wanted to come up with a project to work on with Scott something we could do together, well this was it.  

Steaming away.

Bathroom full of all our clothing after heat drying

·        Me time

o   Between everything I had a burlap wreath out on the table I was in the middle of making and I really just wanted to finish it, so I did. (At least the base, I still need to make it look fun now.

·        Guests coming into town, I didn’t want to spread the problem, and we were going on a cruise.

o   We were on a quick time line and I had to turn my house upside down, and put it all together again so that the house was decent for Julie to watch Quincy

o   Stress.

o   We bought bedbug covers for our beds, steamed our bed one more time, and placed them late the night before Julie and Dillon arrived

o   Hurry put all the bags or clothes from the guest bath into our closets and empty a bag or 2 so we could have clothes for our cruise.

o   Clean the bathroom, kitchen to be at least respectable, forget about the detail and organization I would have liked to have done.

o   Grocery shop to make sure there is food for Q and our guest, but wait the government is shut down and that means the commissary is closed.

o   Pick up guests from airport

o   Enjoy Julie and Dillon (yay so glad to see Dill again now he is home from his mission in Russia)

o   Get in lots of hugs with Q before we leave and make sure everything is good and Julie knows what she needs to know for Q’s care

o   Try to get Julie access to the base in case she needs to take Q to the health clinic. Red tape, grrrr.

o   Take our company to see at least something fun in Charleston before we leave. We visited Charlie the alligator, but he was hiding. All the baby alligators however were walking up the hill from the pond thinking we were going to feed them, (I counted about 14 babies.) It was a little nerve racking because they probably could have fit through the fence.

o    Make dinner and have a few freezer meals already to go for Julie

o   Finish cleaning, and packing for the cruise.

Scott and Dillon, doing what brothers to best, sit next to each other and read sports on their iPads.
Of course Quincy wanted in on the action too. 

·        Cruise

o   5 days of relaxation-finally! With a long blog post of its own.

·        Return home (Wednesday)

o   Take Julie to see Mt. Pleasant and the beach town

o   Have BBQ pork from the freezer for dinner

o   Take Julie to the airport. Quincy cried a little, she had some much fun with Nana who spoiled her.

·        Sick Baby

o   Notice a little rash on Q’s foot as we were driving around town the night we got home, followed by throwing up, and a fever in the middle of the night.

o   Continuing Fever as well as additional bigger bumps appearing all over her body.

o   Took Quincy to the doctor and she was declared to have a virus similar to hand, foot and mouth. 

Crusin' to The Bahamas.

Living in Charleston with a cruise ship port 20 minutes away we knew we had to take advantage of an cruise especially with the non-peak prices being under $200 (before the expensive taxes and fees) and not having to pay for airfare to get to the port.

Here is how the week went: Thanks to “Aunt” Lali, who works for Jet Blue she got Julie (Nana) and Dillon to Charleston on standby through the Vegas airport. After a red eye flight our guests arrived Thursday morning. Scott was at work so just Q and I went to the airport and the drive home was a little worrisome-Quincy screamed the whole way home. Quincy is over her mama’s girl attachment and at church she wanders to almost every person in the building but Scott and I. I think her walking makes her feel safe and in control of the situation, but if she is strapped in a car seat staring at a new face with no familiar face she gets worried which is what happened driving home from the airport. When we got home she was attached to me for about a half hour then opened up to Nana and Dillon then it didn’t take long for her to be best friends with them.  Whew! I didn’t want to Julie to have to be with a screaming baby all week. Quincy fell asleep in the carseat on the way to drop us off at the cruise ship and woke up with us gone. Julie’s report at the end of the week was good. Q was great and I think the 2 of them had a great time together (and Dillon the first day.)

 

And so we began our first cruise together. We enjoyed the activities put on by the ship, the song and dance shows, the Hasbro Game Show, minute to win it games, watching a few minutes of an art auction, listening to live music, playing mini golf, siting in the hot tub, and going down the waterslides (which I always get stuck on and have to push myself down and they hurt my back, yet it is still fun.)

Food was an activity in and of itself we had a great time and enjoying chocolate milk, soft serve ice cream, and food without having to think about what to make for dinner or cleaning up afterward! None of the food was great but there was a good variety and we got to try foods not in our normal diet such as alligator, shark, duck, frog legs, lobster, and I am sure there are 1 or 2 other things I am forgetting. As a general rule for dinner I enjoyed 2 appetizers, a main course, followed by 2 desserts. Mmmm. I did look up one carnival cruise line recipe, a dessert, or course, when we returned home. The bitter and blanc bread pudding was my favorite thing I ate all week.

Our room with the little port holes to look out

Pizza and an ice cream cone, what a life!

Another activity that deserves its own paragraph: stairs. We walked so many stairs that week! From our room on floor 5 to breakfast to 10 then an activity on 7 and mini golf on 12 back to lunch on floor 7 or 10 and …. Well you get the point.

The Caribbean is so beautiful and clear! Now i know why everyone loves it!

The cruise was a 5 day cruise with 2 days on different islands of the Bahamas. Day one we were in Nassau the capitol I had a really cool double snorkeling excursion picked out but a week before we found out we couldn't do it so we went to the island not knowing what we would do thinking we’d pick up on a tour or activity somewhere. Just after getting off the boat we met a tour guide who sold us on his tour to see a fort, the Queen’s Staircase, Paradise Island with Atlantis, and drive by communities for upper, middle, and lower class. The Queen’s staircase took 6000 slaves and 16 years to carve, with one stair per year of her reign I believe. It was carved as a war escape route for the British. Perhaps the best part of the tour was that our tour guide’s name was Quincy. Yep. No wonder he sold us on his tour.

With our Nassau tour guide, Quincy.

The Queens Stiarcase, Nassau

 Day two on shore was Freeport, we took a historic island and snorkeling tour. On this tour we had couple for Murray, UT on the tour. The tour was very interesting and snorkeling was okay. I was frustrated with the equipment, didn't know how to use it and it was hard to enjoy, I finally got the hang of the idea and once Scott and I gave up on the in the water tour knowing I would be way behind everyone it was fun- too much swimming to get to the good stuff though. We tried a Bahamian food staple, conch, a big snail they cook in almost any way. In the form of a fried fritter with fry sauce it tasted good. We also went to some cave where locals hide during hurricanes, it a little rain forest with lots of vegetation, Scott liked the hermit crabs that were there.

Tons emptied conch shells by the lake shore,

Lookin' good in our Snorkel gear

Fresh water caver used as a refuge during hurricanes.

Here is some of what I learned between the 2 tours:

• The Bahamas is a new country 40 yrs old next year, prior to that it was Britain land.
• It is also considered new land (a few hundred thousand years old,) because the land came up out of the ocean.  Because of this people were excited to establish the new land until they got there and realized there were no animals or vegetation to eat since it is new land.
• The word bahamas comes from the Spanish words baja mar which means shallow water.
• Because of the shallow water and the only thing to sustain the people was the ocean (fish etc) the first settlers began to purposely shipwreck other settlers by having the light houses on, but when ships got close they turned off the light. Resulting in the beginning of piracy in the area, thus the Pirates of the Caribbean.
• A Bahamian settlement, called the Caribes, believed the saying “you are what you eat.” So if they wanted to be a great fisher they would kill and eat a great fisherman. That is where the name Caribbean comes from, beware of the Caribes.
• The Bahamas is considered a third world country because the majority of the people get water from pumping at a well outside.
• Americans spend about $1.6 billion a year in Bahamas’ tourism, so they are pretty dependent on us for survival.
• I guess water is so clear because of the sand there. Scott says, “and boy is it clear!” 

Lower class housing, you can see a boy with a cart full of water containers from bringing them back from the well. 

Traffic laws are "suggestions" we were driving across the bridge at least 45 mph with the van door wide open.
When the drive decided to close it he just quickly pressed his breaks.

Another quick funny experience, our first day on the boat Scott and I walked past a lady who just seemed to be enjoying watching everything going on then she stopped us. She said something like this, “you look familiar, where are you from? …Do you know a Thomas Monson?” I guess it is their roundabout way of asking if we are also members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and do it in a not so blunt way, just in case. I guess we just had that LDS look.  I promise, we are doing good out here!

Did I mention the water spout? (aka tornado on water) We watched the little tornado about 20-30 minutes from beginning to end. It started a good ways away from us but got close enough for some good photos. 

We had a great time I am glad we went, I wouldn't want to do a cruise very often, but every once in a while it is nice to have a vacation to just relax, have fun, and not go go go (like in DC or when we go to Europe.) We came home with 2 small souvenirs, a shell Christmas ornament, and a swimsuit wrap/cloth. Spent a total of $500/person on the 5 day trip, which I fell is an awesome deal. I spoke with a friend who did the same cruise and spent $800/person, so figure we can allow ourselves Europe in a few month (if we use Space-A flights) and we will have another great deal!