on the news

Elise and I were on the news! A man in our ward is a consumer reporter ("Consumer Bob") for NBC in San Diego. He called a couple weeks ago and asked if he could interview me for a piece he was doing for the afternoon news. Apparently all of his friends/acquaintances end up on his segments at some point. Anyway, you can watch it here. If nothing else, you can check out my 7.5 month pregnant belly, since we don't seem to take pictures anymore. ;)

Lest you think we have no savings, they did cut out the part where I talked about how our checking and savings accounts get the same interest rate, so we keep everything in checking in order to access it as needed.

another photo dump

Since I only seem to post pictures about 6 months at a time, it must be about time for another update. :) Mostly pictures from my phone again, but I'll try to put up better (more recent) ones soon.

 11/28/14 - Family hike at Rocky Mouth Canyon while we were in UT for Thanksgiving. I was about 4 months pregnant at this point.

 12/15/14 - I can't remember for sure, but I think this was the first time I ever gave Elise her own bowl of cereal and trusted her to eat it herself. She ate like a champ!

12/24/14 - New Christmas jammies! (The picture's a bit blurry if you enlarge it, but my pants and Elise's sleeper have penguins.) 

1/9/15 - Passed out on the couch because she wouldn't sleep in her bed for her nap. I suspect it had something to do with the whole "bed rest" thing I had just started. (We may have had her mattress on the floor so she could get in and out without me lifting her). 

1/16/15 - We met the Jacksons at Disneyland. Elise LOVES Minnie. (I'm about 5.5 months pregnant in this one.)

 1/23/15 - Playing outside in her jammies and Sunday shoes.

 1/24/15 - After her first haircut (besides a bang trim I did previously)! I was so sad we had to cut off the curls, but she had a gross baby mullet.

2/2/15 - We were about a month into the bed rest at this point and needed every possible opportunity to get outside. She spent a long time throwing Mickey in, climbing in after him, handing him back to me, climbing out, and repeating the process.

2/2015 - Diana offered to take Elise to the Safari Park with her boys so I could rest like I was supposed to. (I could sing Diana's praises all day - Elise loves her and so do I!)

2/9/15 - Just playing with the tupperware - taking it all out and putting it back. I wasn't even mad because she was happy and entertained. Also, she gets some crazy hair when she sleeps, and I don't always bother to comb it. 

3/3/15 - It was an awesome day for fashion at our house. 

 3/6/15 - Thoroughly enjoying her banana milkshake.

3/8/15 - This girl LOVES shoes. More recently, she has even figured out how to tromp around in Daddy's sneakers, and she thinks it's hilarious (it is). I don't know how I got lucky enough to catch this pose either, but she's certainly struttin' her stuff. 

 3/17/15 - Finger painting! I didn't trust her with clothes on, or inside, for that matter. We got some Vitamin D instead. :) She enjoyed it for a little while then decided it was actually more fun to play with the cups and lids.

 3/25/15 - What's around her feet, you ask? Oh, just her potty seat. Don't worry, I wiped it down (she's never successfully used it anyway) but not before she put it on her head as a hat. (She also has a pajama shirt from the laundry around her neck.)

a picture explosion

We're long overdue for posting pictures. Here's an old one I found and some from since we moved to San Diego. (I'm trying to be better about updating but have been mostly unsuccessful in my efforts for consistency thus far.)

5/18/13 - In all of our time in Columbus, we had never been to see the Santa Maria downtown. Some friends told us about the Pirates Weekend, so we went down to check out the ship and the gun battle. Elise slept the entire time, including during the gun battle (while we were on the ship). This was the best pirate-y outfit we could come up with for her.

 

9/4/13 - It seemed like all of our cute pictures of Elise were in her bathing suit for a while. What a problem. ;)

9/6/13 - Brian and Elise at the beach (Torrey Pines) the Friday before Brian started his job.

9/13 (my camera decided you have to set the date every time you turn it on now, so I don't know the date; I think it was sometime in September...) - Elise decided she loves eating paper. I have since learned I probably shouldn't let her. (Can you see the ink on her face?)

9/13/13 - We met Brian and Kate in LA and got to see the space shuttle Endeavor.

9/14/13 - I was trying to get a picture of Elise wearing the shoes Marsha (neighbor in Columbus) gave us. You can't see them that well, but they're pink and sparkly.:)

9/28/13 - We went to SeaWorld for Brian's annual work outing. This was just before she fell asleep (poor thing was exhausted).

10/4/13 - Watching BYU football with Daddy. :)

10/5/13 - Getting really close to rolling over onto her stomach. For a while, she had to have the right motivation (in this case, tags...on the changing pad...).

10/6/13 - Starting August or September, I decided to try something called baby-led weaning. Basically, you give them fry-shaped pieces of fruits and veggies to gnaw on. She apparently loved the cucumber. She generally likes whatever chunks we give her, although it went poorly one time when she actually got a piece of pear off but didn't chew it enough before swallowing. (She's starting to figure out chewing now.)

10/15/13 - We went apple picking in Julian, which inspired us to make caramel apples for FHE the next week. The apples we picked were tiny (but surprisingly delicious), so these were some I bought.

10/18/13 - I found her this way during a nap. This was one day after the pediatrician expressed some concern that she wasn't consistently rolling onto her stomach yet. (That visit is a whole different story.) It was as if Elise was saying, "Mom, don't worry, I'm perfectly normal."

10/19/13 - Our adorable little ladybug at the PQ1 Trunk or Treat. We were hoping she would have learned to crawl by then, but no such luck. The Halls (in Columbus) gave us her costume before we moved because they knew Brian had been coveting it the year before when he saw Lydia wearing it. ;)

10/19/13 - Family Halloween costumes - snail, ladybug, and lawn gnome.

10/29/13 - 7 months old! She was 18 lbs, 13 oz and 27" at her appointment about 2 weeks before.

11/1/13 - Eating an Asian pear in her walker (which we use as a high chair since I need to clean up and cover the one I bought). She loves Asian pears and sometimes screams at me if I take them away.

11/8/13 - We hiked Iron Mountain on one of Brian's Fridays off. Brian carried her the entire time in the Bjorn, and she slept most of the way up. I forgot to grab a hat for her, so we bought bandanas. It's surprisingly difficult to tie them on a baby - it kept popping up and looking like a KKK hat (I swear we're not racist!).

11/8/13 - Om nom nom. Brian's hair was pretty gross after this.

 11/8/13 - More Iron Mountain.

11/16/13 - Brian set up his hammock on our balcony and took a little nap with Elise.

housing

I meant to do a video tour of our temporary housing, but then we moved in/got settled and I was too embarrassed with all the stuff laying around. ;) I was cleaning the other day and decided to take some pictures, so these will have to suffice.

Our current apartment, provided by General Atomics, is a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom walk-up. There's a 2-car garage with a huge storage closet and a full-sized washer and dryer. The temporary housing company furnished the apartment - couch, table, tv, beds, crib, etc.
 

 

 You can see the landing/stairway that goes down to the front door and garage (on right).

 Love this kitchen! There's tons of storage space (we don't have our stuff here, but it's still nice to have).

 

 The second bedroom was furnished with 2 twin beds. The crib was originally in the master with us, but we moved it because I don't sleep well in the same room as Elise. (Note the baby on the bed - doesn't come standard with the apartment, of course. ;) I was washing the crib sheet, so she was napping on the bed.)

 

 Nice big master bedroom. Excuse the bed, I was washing the sheets.

Master bath.

Other side of the master bath. I was standing in the walk-in closet to take the picture.

After about 2 weeks (it seemed like months) of searching for a place to rent, I finally found a place that fit pretty will with our specifications. It's in the same ward that we live in now (I really like this ward, and while it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be in a different one, it's nice to be sticking around), it has a washer and dryer, it's a little closer to Brian's work, it has 2 bedrooms (not necessary, but a definite perk), it's well within our housing budget, and I think we'll manage to fit in the space (833 sq ft - we had about 1400 in our townhouse, including the basement, so hopefully we got rid of enough stuff). We've already talked to a realtor and mortgage broker, so the plan is to rent for the short term and save some money every month to put toward a down payment. I haven't seen the lease yet, but the property management company said it would be a 10 or 11 month lease so that it ends at a better time of year for the housing market. That's fine with us, since we originally wanted a 6-9 month lease but couldn't find anything cheap enough for the short term.

You can see pictures of our new condo here. There used to be a video walkthrough on that site, but I guess it's been taken down since the property is no longer available.

We can move in on October 15th. We'll have our stuff delivered there. We never had it delivered to our temporary apartment because we didn't want to have to move everything, including the piano, by ourselves when we left. It's been a bit of a hassle not to have certain things since we didn't pack for 2 months, but we've done our best with what we have. I won't lie, I'm excited to have something to wear besides the 5 shirts I packed. ;)