I love AZ. I’ve made Dave promise that we can winter somewhere warm and sunshine-y when we are retired. I just about have him sold on it, thanks to the Arizona sun.
Eze was a champ on the trip down. Our seat neighbors had many compliments for how well Ezekiel flew. It WAS his 4th flight in one year, so maybe that had something to do with it. It took us quite a while to get down to my grandparents’ place, so we ate supper about 2 hours later than normal. I was very nervous about that, but Auntie Yaya (my sister E) kept Ezekiel occupied in the back seat and even had a string cheese in her purse for him to snack on. Totally saved the day. He is OBSESSED with each and every “taptah” (cactus), and that was what occupied him during the drive.
While we are down here, we are staying in a fifth wheel camper that some of my grandparents’ friends own and rent out. They are graciously letting us stay there for free. So kind. It’s great to be able to have our own little spot to chill out, especially with Eze who can tend to get easily overwhelmed. My grandparents are loving having Ezekiel down here. Especially Grandma Lu (Mama Lu is what Ez calls her) – she loves kids, and she and Eze have a very special bond. Yesterday we went swimming in the pool in their park, and Eze would swim a little bit, and then jump out to go check in with Mama Lu and Bampa Lu who were sitting in the shade, then climb back in the pool. It was super sweet.
I feel so blessed that we get to be down here making great memories with my grandparents that Ezekiel will talk about for weeks to come. I’ve been able to help my grandma with some of her cares, and we’re even going to paint nails today. Maybe I should open a spa 
It’s been incredibly special for me to be able to help them out, and last night I even got to drive them over to where my grandma is having her therapeutic radiation treatments.
Today my sister E and her hubby J will be done with her conference, so we’ll pick them up at lunchtime to come back to my grandparents’ park. They’ll stay with my grandparents in their park model. Then tomorrow my dad flies in and will stay with my uncle until my sister goes back home. With a few new family members added to the mix, we can ensure even more memories and lots of laughter. I’m looking forward to that.
Today we leave for AZ at 2:15. I have no idea how Ezekiel will be on the plane. This is our 3rd airplane trip with him, and he keeps telling us that he is going to be scared and cry on the plane. Criminey. We have toys, games and snacks packed in his diaper bag that we’ll take out one at a time. We also packed my laptop with some DVDs (or BDBs, as Eze calls them), and the iPod also has his music and some videos on it. Plus, we are flying down there during nap time, and we fly home during bed time. We’re hoping for at least a half hour nap (and peace) during each trip. We shall see.
Ezekiel also is getting over a cold right now. It has a nasty naggy, hacky cough along with it. Of course I’m starting to get it as well. Grrr. I’m trying lots of different things to hopefully stave off the cold for our trip. We don’t need to bring a cold down to my grandma as she starts her therapeutic radiation treatments this week. I’m thinking of finding a health food store down there to find some silver something something to take. Katie gave me that advice when I dropped Eze off at her place this morning. She is amazing at knowing the different kinds of home remedies and natural remedies are out there, and I love doing that rather than medicating.
Lastly, Katie gave me a great idea for next year’s Halloween costume… Eze is absolutely in love with Curious George right now, and wants to watch it every day. So she gave me the idea of making him the Man With The Yellow Hat for next year. LOVE it!!
I’m bringing phloggy back (to the tune sung by JT)…
Eze's "man bag"
This was a week before Halloween. We put the costume on and he refused to take it off until bed time.
And yet another "man bag"
Our friends' have great taste... and Eze has some strange faces.
My sister C and one of her beautiful creations in ceramics class
Niece G took this pic of me and sister C
Eze the butterfly
...with cousin H
...and his magic wand.
Tomorrow we leave for AZ for our vacation to see my grandparents. I’m looking forward to being in hot weather, after moaning about being chilly this morning. Who knows if I’ll have internet access much down there, but I’ll post pics when we get back!
Today when I picked Eze up from Katie’s house, she told me this story:
Eze: Mommy angy eye (angry eyes)
Katie: When did Mommy have angry eyes? (thinking he’d tell her about this morning when he touched the space heater in his room after we’ve told him 118 times not to touch it, and mommy was not happy with him)
Eze: Mommy angy eye bootball (Mommy had angry eyes during the football game). Mommy keeeeery eye! (Mommy scary eyes)
Katie: What kind of eyes did Daddy have during the football game?
Eze: Daddy appy eye! (Daddy happy eyes!)
We are amazed that Eze totally understood that Mommy was sad about the outcome of the Packer/Viking game, while Daddy was thrilled. What a smartie boy.
I got a phone call from my sister E tonight that her husband J was having her check our blog throughout the day to see what Eze was for Halloween. I laughed and apologized for not posting sooner. I didn’t realize these pics were in such high demand
Eze the Giraffe (the morning costume)
Eze and Daddy before the fun run on Saturday morning
Sprinter Dave
Happy to be finished! 27:47 - he kicked my time's patootie from last year
Sleepy giraffe
Eze the Duck (the evening costume)
Jazz hands!
Wit-o-weet!!!!
Whatchoo lookin' at, cat?
Mmmmmm... mold (we carved our pumpkins way too early this year, and they were black inside by the time Halloween rolled around)
Happy Halloween!!
We have a fun weekend ahead of us. Tonight we are staying down at my parents’ house (even though they are down in AZ seeing my grandparents). I feel like I’m back in high school again with the house to myself, except instead of a raging party, we’re having my sister and a couple of friends over and we’re playing Rock.Band Beatles edition. Wow. Hard core, right? And who am I really kidding? The biggest party I had growing up while my parents were out of town was like 12 people, half of who I kicked out when they started chewing tobacco partway through the night and spitting into my drinking glasses. Gross.
The reason we’re staying down there is because Dave is running the Halloween 5K that I was supposed to run tomorrow. I’m out of commission with this darn left hip. So instead, Eze and I will be on the sidelines cheering him on. This man makes me jealous because he never runs, and was never a runner in high school. But I know that he’ll go out tomorrow and kick my time’s patootie. He’s got the perfect body for running. Yep, jealous.
Then tomorrow afternoon/evening we plan on going trick-or-treating with Eze, and then hitting up the pizza place in town with Nik, Aaron and Sam to see our very good friends who have been living and working in a faraway country. I’m excited to see them, and for them to meet Ezekiel.
Then next Wednesday we head down to AZ for a week of sunshine and grandparents. We’ll be there for six days and I’m really looking forward to seeing my grandparents, and making some sweet memories with my grandma. I don’t remember what the last thing is that I updated about my grandma’s situation, but her brain tumor is inoperable. She is at home now, after spending some time in the hospital and in a skilled-nursing facility. The doctors tell us that we have just months left with her, so we are anxious to get down and see her and love on her. We had originally bought tickets to AZ for February, and luckily we got flight change protection on the tickets when we bought them so that we were able to change them to next week for only the difference in the price of the tickets. We are planning on being down there at the same time as my sister E and her hubby J, who live in Portland, OR. I miss them very much, so I’m excited to spend some time with them while we are down there as well. The things I’m most excited about? Playing a few card games with my grandparents, swimming every day, eating ice cream every night before bed (it’s a ritual that my grandparents have been doing forever and ever), and watching Ezekiel put a big grin on my grandparents’ faces.
I COO!!
Tonight Dave and I got to go on a date night. Ahhhh, bliss!!!! Neighbor friends Nik and Aaron watched Eze for us (thanks again, guys!!!!), so Eze got to play with Sam all night and they had a great time. Nik was looking cute as ever tonight with a paisley sweatshirt on that framed her baby belly (she’s due in January). Ezekiel must have talked with her about it because here is the conversation we had after we got home tonight:
Eze: Mommy baby. (points in my direction)
Dave: Show us where there is a baby.
Eze: Der. (points at my boobs)
Me: Mommy has a baby in her boobs?
Eze: Yah.
We guessed that Ezekiel must assume that any woman who has a part of their body sticking out (i.e. pregnant bellies or boobages) must have a baby in there. I nearly peed my pants laughing. He is such a funny boy. We talked more about Nik’s baby, and how Sam will have a little brother. Ezekiel insists that he is also having a “wittoh bwodah”, and that he will be a “boor bwodah”. It was kind of fun tonight because when we were talking about it, we got to tell him about how Sam grew in Nikki’s belly, but Ezekiel grew in his birth mom’s tummy and we adopted him. Any chance we get to talk about his story is so important, and I love when it just comes up naturally like that.
Oh, and no there are no babies growing in my jumblies or in my belly. Just to clear that up.
Eze and Sam, the soon-to-be big brother
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been going to yoga (goga, according to Eze) classes. I had been going back and forth about joining a gym. I cancelled my membership to a different gym when we got the referral for Ezekiel so that we could save some money, and just ran outside and did exercise videos in my house. As fall and winter started creeping up on us this year, I started asking around about ideas for things to do when it’s frigid outside. People kept telling me to get a membership to the community center/gym in town. It has a lap pool as well as a kids’ area in the pool, a play area with tunnels (similar to a Mc.Donald’s playplace), a running track, etc. And then there is also a cardio/weight-lifting room and other adult places to work out. I kept hemming and hawing b/c you have to sign up for a whole year. Finally my friend A convinced me by telling me that she goes to the yoga classes there and aboslutely loves them.
I signed up and went to my first yoga class that weekend. It was love at first pose. I had only done yoga with videos before that, but being in an actual class with other yogis (LOVE that term), and the teacher ensuring that you’re doing the pose right and giving lots of encouragement makes a huge difference. I love trying to push my body to hold the different poses, and concentrating on what muscles are working, and which ones I need to relax. One of the teachers has us try new poses at each Tuesday night class (classes are two days per week), and I love that too. Plus, when I’m finished I feel refreshed and relaxed, but I also feel like my muscles got a great workout.
I’m glad I’m into this yoga class because last week I was running on the treadmill, and decided I was going to try and break a 30 minute 5K. I have never run that fast in any of my 5K races, so really pushed myself hard that night. I got home and felt worse pain in that naggy old left hip than I’d ever felt before (but I made the 5K in 30:02 – yay!). So once again I’m off of running or biking, or doing any excessive repetition like that with my hips for a few weeks. For the most part, I can still do yoga. There are a couple of poses that I need to modify so that I don’t hurt my hip more, but I’m so grateful for yoga to keep up my workouts.
This week I also started swimming again. I swam in high school, and was glad that I’d joined this gym so that I could start swimming laps again. I use a pull buoy (a flotation device that goes between your thighs to keep your legs buoyant) so that I’m not putting too much strain on my hip by kicking. It’s been years since I swam laps, so I was glad I didn’t drown my first night back. I forgot how tired swimming makes me, though. Something about the chlorine makes my lungs feel a little heavy, even days after I swam. I also forgot how much I love the smell of chlorine on my skin. Call me crazy but it’s one of my favorite smells.
Oh, and back to the yoga, Dave got Ezekiel a book at the library last week called My Daddy Is A Pretzel. It’s a book about yoga poses, and it’s super cute. Ezekiel is now in love with this book and every time we read it, he and I do the poses together. He is SO good at yoga, it’s amazing. I am quite envious of his downward dog pose. And his tree pose is just about the cutest thing you’ll ever see.
Eze playing with J (his mama is the one who goes to yoga too). I love that in this pic, Charlie the dog is keeping a close eye on Eze b/c he's messing his dog toys.
On Word.press I can see how many people visit my bloggy each day. Not as cool as Google.Analytics, which shows where they’re visiting from (it won’t work with my blog (boo.)), but still fun to see. Anyway, this morning I logged on and already my stats for visitors has doubled its normal number. I wonder what that’s all about? Well, to any of you new peeps, thanks for stopping by! We love knowing that people are reading our stories.
This morning Ezekiel woke up at 5:45 and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Awesome. I’m brought back to the days when I used to party late into the night and then have to work the next day. Except there was no partying going on last night, unless you count watching Biggest.Loser while eating egg rolls a party. And instead of being in an office working, I get to be in my cozy house cleaning and playing with my crazy two-year old today.
It’s official, Eze has a crush on Abbie. Background: Abbie is the oldest daughter of Katie, who watches Eze every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning. It wouldn’t actually be his first crush, remember the librarian?? So anyway, yesterday when Dave picked Eze up from Katie’s house, she told him that Eze and Abbie were sitting at the piano and he put his arm around her. Today when I picked him up, he had to give everyone a hug before we left, you could feel the love oozing from him for all those girls. So sweet. Then at lunch today, I asked him what he did at Katie’s house. He told me, “Ee-ee a Abbie ugg, and Ee-ee a Abbie, and Ee-ee and Abbie. Abbie tute”. (Translation: Eze and Abbie hugged, Eze and Abbie, Eze and Abbie. Abbie is cute). He had the sweetest, glazed look in his eyes while he was saying it. AHHHH!!!! Love it. Oh, and he has the cutest little two-year old stutter going on when he’s telling us things lately.
Today when I picked him up from Katie’s house, he came to the door with a swim diaper over his pants. It made me giggle, and when Katie told me the randomness of the day, I giggled even more. Apparently he had found this swim diaper, and put it on over his pants. When Katie changed his diaper later, he insisted on having the swim diaper put back on over his pants. He didn’t take off that swim diaper until bathtime tonight. It was hilarious. Also throughout the morning at Katie’s, he put on a headband and a barrette and called himself, “cowboy”. Then he put on a pink baby sock over his sock and carried around a Minnie Mouse purse. I love this boy.
This was before we left for Katie's house today, he was in such a great mood from the moment he woke up this morning. He filled up this bag and carried it around like a handbag to Katie's house.
Goofball Diaper Boy
Hy-yah!
No idea what this pose was all about
He was convinced he was going to wait right there until the banana bread we made today was finished baking. A whole hour.
Peeeeez?? (If you can believe it, I didn't even ask him to pose. This boy is gonna win some Academy Awards)
