DISNEYLAND

Teagan and I were SOOO excited and lucky to be able to go to Disneyland yesterday. My mom was able to get a free ticket and so she let me use it. We marched right in and went to take our picture in front of the huge castle and my camera wouldn't work. AHHHHHHH! It said "card error." I took the card out, blew on it, blew in the camera, and repeated those steps multiple times but nothing would work. This has happened before and I can usually fix it by just blowing on the card, but it wasn't working.

I decided that a broken camera would not ruin our day so we proceeded to begin our adventure on Dumbo. Once we were on the ride I realized that I couldn't accept the idea that we would have no pictures at Disneyland so I leaned over to Teagan and asked him if he thought we should pray that the camera would be fixed. He replied with an enthusiastic "Yeah!" So while in air we said a little prayer that the camera would get fixed. After the prayer I took it out and it turned on and worked like nothing was ever wrong! So when you look at these pictures, I hope you're as grateful for them as I am!!!!

Casey Jr. Train Ride...so fun!
Storybook boat ride. All the people on the boat were exclaiming how cute he was so of course he flashed that handsome smile to win them over even more!

I do not like the teacups in my old age. Just a little to round and round for my brain, but little Mr. loves them so we went.

He was trying SO hard to turn the wheel, funny boy!

He loved the carousel and whinnied like a horse a lot of the time on the ride! I thought his horse had a scary face, but he insisted on using that one. :)

Of course the all time favorite ride is Buzz Lightyear. The second I told him we were going to Disneyland he started making gun noises and found his buzz lightyear action figure. He was so excited and continued making gun until we actually went on the ride. We were lucky to have SHORT lines for every ride so we rode this one 5 or 6 times throughout the day.

I think his favorite part was the HUGE Buzz that talks to you while you wait in line. We would just hang out in that room while Teagan stared, awestruck at his hero.

We got to visit toon town which was so fun for Teagan. He loved exploring and climbing on everything.

We went into Micky's house to explore and kept seeing signs that said "this way to Mickey." I didn't actually think Mickey mouse was going to be in his house!!!!! I was every bit as excited as Teagan to meet him! Teagan LOVED Mickey. He gave him a hug and mostly just smiled at him every time he moved. Can you imagine being a little kid. You see this Huge happy looking stuffed animal that is alive, what a dream come true!

PS- do you like the awesome camera holder belt attachment I was using, it was so convenient, and attractive!

He loved playing on the cars in toon town and hung out there for quite a while.

I couldn't get pictures of everything since I was the only adult. Here are some other highlights:

-After each ride ended I would ask Teagan if he liked it and he'd reply "YEAH!" Most the times he wanted to go again and again.

-I found out that teagan made the height limit for the Matterhorn so we rode it. For those of you who don't know, it is a pretty fast roller coaster. Afterwards I asked him if he liked it and he replied "nope." Then I asked him if he wanted to ride it again and he said "nope, nope," and started making the gun noises for the Buzz ride. Apparently he isn't ready for roller coasters yet. :)

After we'd been there for 4 hours or so he started really needing his nap. I knew it was time to go when I asked him If he wanted to go home and he could hardly keep his eyes open enough to say "nope." I asked him if he wanted to go on another ride and he said "yep." About 10 seconds later he fell asleep and continued to sleep for 3 hours!

We both had so much fun together, it would have been fun to have Zac and my mom be able to come too, but we were thrilled just to have the chance.

My mom gave me an early birthday present of upgrading my ticket to a season pass so I'm SOOOOO excited to be able to back again. There is so much that we weren't able to do and I can't wait to go back. THANK YOU MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm SOOOO excited!

You get into Disneyland for free on your birthday so I think we'll go on Zac's birthday and hopefully save enough to upgrade his to a season pass too!

I think I might have overused exclamation marks in this, but I couldn't hardly help myself. :)

Ladies Man

Most of Teagan's charm comes from some of his great skills...

dough rolling skills....

using plenty of cheese skills...

Basketball and dancing Skills...

being tough and saying sorry skills...

The skills could go on...this kid is unstoppable.

He's already figured out the way to a girl's heart. Today in church he kept giving stickers to a very cute 6 year old girl. Then he'd grin at her, giggle, and run back to get more stickers for her. My little boy is a cute one.

PS- This is what me and Zac's pizza turned out like....I am not going to be modest, it was incredible!

Deep, dark, intimate secrets shared only via private blog

Not really, my blog will be exactly the same, except there won't be any wandering eyes anymore. :)

I had some pictures and funnies I've been waiting to post so I'll just do it all at once.

We went to Carlsbad Beach Saturday partly to play and partly so I could have a pretty place to do my run. While I was running Zac taught Teagan that being buried in the sand is really fun. When he wasn't chasing waves, Teagan was asking to be buried alive. It was pretty cute to watch the boys play!
Teagan got this cute kitchen/ play house toy from my Dad and Beth. It sings so many songs and teaches so many words. He is seriously learning a lot from this fun little thing. He now recognizes circles, triangles, and squares and tries to say the words for them. He loves to hear the abc's and listen to the oven count.

Isn't his apron cute! My mom found the most adorable pizza making set for him and it came with an apron. He loves to "make" pizza and cook it in the oven. I also have a bunch of decorative rock/jewel things that he uses for food. He puts them in the pans and cups and gives them to me to "eat." I love that he is using his imagination so much with these new toys!

Somehow I can't find a picture of him with all of his new hot wheels gear, I need to take a picture and post it cause it's pretty fun. He got set up in the car department by Zac's family especially. He has this cute little suitcase that he packs around everywhere just in case he needs to get a car out. Then my mom got him a ton of track so we build fun tracks and he LOVES putting the cars down. He actually sets up cars on the track so that when the cars goes down it crashes into other cars.

Thanks everyone again for the fun presents for Teagan, he is still floating on cloud 9 with all his new toys!

But it seems that when daddy comes home he is no longer interested in toys, he just wants to mess around. Here is one of my favorite games they play. Teagan puts a blanket over his face and tries to catch Zac, my favorite part is when he peeks. hehe

I know I did a post about how Teagan's improvements in talking a little bit ago. Here are some of the recent developments:

-He uses slight variations of the sound "cuck" to mean: truck, broke, yuck, book, duck, cup, and milk...I can actually usually tell which one he means, talent! It can become very frustrating at times!

-He will say yellow, blue, and circle pretty clearly, and he sometimes even uses them correctly! He tries really hard to say triangle, but doesn't care for any of the other colors or shapes.

-He says grandma ALL the time. He has a truck he calls grandma and a blanket. Lots and lots of random things are called grandma...I have yet to figure out why.

-this is nothing to do with talking, but we watched a 11 month old little boy a week ago who was still mostly crawling. Teagan thought he was trying to play doggies. He spent the whole night crawling around like a dog trying to lick the other little boy and me! Ever since he will sneak up and lick me, of course I squirm and freak out so he giggles and giggles to himself....Zac also think it is hilarious. I do not see the humor!!!

That is the excitingness of our lives. I've started reading "The Host" so I might not be blogging for a little while. Happy day to you all!

Private Blog

Hi Everyone, thanks for reading, I love your comments and it's fun to share my thoughts. I don't mind sharing thoughts with the world, but I don't want to share family things with the world anymore. I'm actually going to start a new blog since my husband is the administrator for this one.

Please leave your email if you'd like to keep reading my blog and I'll put you on the list. I'm serious this time and will be changing it on Tuesday morning. Thanks everyone!

I still have the list of emails from when I tried this last year. I sent an email to everyone who left their email originally so if you don't get one please leave it here!

Melissa

Blogworthy thoughts....maybe

Sometimes I go throughout my day and think of things I'd like to write about on my blog, but I never get around to it. And technically, I don't know that they are interesting enough to put on here, but I like to get my thoughts down so you can choose to read or not to read.

Thought 1:

Exercise vs Living an Active lifestyle

So I've started training for a half marathon, whew! My plan is to run for 30 minutes Monday-Thursday, each week increasing the speed by .1 miles per hour. Then on Saturdays I do a "race" that is a little longer. Each Saturday I increase the distance by .5 miles. This week I was running at 5.1 mph and I'll do a 3.5 mile run tomorrow. I'm sharing this because I'm very proud of myself that I've stuck with it for 2 weeks and I'm anticipating a round of applause :) just kidding.

Anywho, with all this exercise I'm hoping to trim up a bit to fit into some pants my lovely sister gave to me that are a little too tight. So far I'm doing great, I've gained 2 pounds! I know, I know, don't expect results for 4-6 weeks and it's probably muscle, I'm really not that worried about it, but I have figured out why my results are going the wrong way.

I'm not living an active lifestyle anymore. Exercise? yes. Active lifestyle? no. The active lifestyle involves taking stairs instead of the elevator, parking the car far away from the store, eating salad instead of mac n cheese, pushing your kid around the Zoo instead of watching a movie with him, playing the Wii instead of watching a movie, eating at home instead of at McDonald's, slowing down on dessert, trying to get 3-4 veggies and 2-3 fruits each day....you get the idea.

An active lifestyle alone isn't going to make the difference for me, but neither will just exercising. They are a team! Sadly, I can't let either one go. I like the idea of running for 30 minutes and then eating whatever I want and being lazy, but the exercise won't do any good like that. So I'm going to try to do both now....goodbye candy, hello walking everywhere.



Thought 2:

Wake Up Call

So it seems that the world is slowly moving towards an "it's all about me" trend...who am I kidding, it's not very slow. There are so many self help books and speakers and clubs and the media really pushes the idea that you need to take care of yourself first and make sure you ensure your own happiness...

I have to come to a little realization that there is a better way.

Most days I'm able to go running and I downloaded talks from my Church's general conference to listen to while I run. You can download all of the talks as MP3s for free here. The talks are so fantastic and better than the self-help stuff you can buy, even if you aren't Mormon. Most of the things they talk about are very general and could apply to any religion. Service, temperance, love, repentance, charity, the life of Jesus Christ; these are some of the topics you might come across.

So each day I get 30 minutes of physical and spiritual rejuvenation and it makes a huge difference for me. I'm having a really hard time getting to the point here. Here it comes:

Yesterday I was listening and between two of the talks was the song "Have I done any Good." The words to the song really struck me, part of it was that the singing was incredible, but the other part was that the words rang very true.

You can watch/listen to it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zLbSoLmZ_o

1. Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad
and made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.
Has anyone’s burden been lighter today
Because I was willing to share?
Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?
When they needed my help was I there?

[Chorus]
Then wake up and do something more
Than dream of your mansion above.
Doing good is a pleasure,
a joy beyond measure,
A blessing of duty and love.

2. There are chances for work all around just now,
Opportunities right in our way.
Do not let them pass by, saying, “Sometime I’ll try,”
But go and do something today.’
Tis noble of man to work and to give;
Love’s labor has merit alone.
Only he who does something helps others to live.
To God each good work will be known.

Text and music: Will L. Thompson, 1847–1909, alt.

The chorus is my favorite: "Then wake up and do something more, than dream of your mansions above." I can just hear my dad saying "wake up girl" when I do or say something a little ridiculous.

It's so easy to get caught up in the "me me me" attitude and feel sorry for yourself. I do it all the time! Especially as a stay at home mom. You get lonely and jealous of all those other girls becoming doctors and having these incredible careers and then you remember all the "house" stuff that you're behind on and something just doesn't seem right. With an attitude like that it's easy to get discouraged.

WAKE UP GIRL! This life is not about what you can get out of it, it's about doing things for other people and serving and making other people's lives a little better. When I am focused on what I can do for others, especially Teagan and Zac, I find that I love them more, I get so much more fulfilment out of life and I feel so much better about myself. The key to happiness is not earning 5 college degrees and making millions, it's about making the people you love happy. It's about putting your own wants and needs aside to make the life of someone else better.

So instead of blogging I think I'll "go and do something today."

Pictures From Christmas!

I was excited to find my camera cord in one of our suitcases yesterday so now I can post some pictures of Christmas time:

The first day we went out into the snow, Teagan was very unsure about all these puffy hot clothes.
Aren't we a beautiful family...ha! Thanks Dad and Beth for all the snow gear!

When Teagan saw the four wheelers he was so excited and kept asking for more while crazy grandpa took him for a ride! (Note, when we arrived the snow wasn't deep enough for the snow machines, but by the time we left it had snowed at least another foot!)

He also got to ride with Grandpa Durtschi in the big tractor. He LOVED it. We forgot to take him to the Semi Truck and let him toot the horn, maybe next time. :)

We had a Christmas Eve dinner and program with my side of the family. It was so fun! Teagan nearly fell asleep on Rachel listening to the stories. He loves "The Night Before Christmas" story and perked right up for it though, for some reason there is no picture of him excitedly asking for Beth to read it again.

Christmas morning was with Zac's family and was so fun, Teagan gave the best reactions to all of his presents, thanks everyone for spoiling my child! He LOVES all his new toys and play and plays with them all day.

He got some sort of car in almost every present so now when he says presents he says "car!" He was very excited to help every present be opened.

That night Teagan got to see his cousin Tay again and they had so much fun together. They are pretending to sleep in Grandma and Grandpa Daniels' mini tent. I think they were watching a movie. They were so funny together; making faces at each other at dinner and laughing, running around wildly and taking bubble baths.

We managed to throw in a family picture after church on Sunday. I'm kind of impressed at how well we coordinate considering that is wasn't planned.

Here is Teagan in a shirt that Zac wore as a little guy, I LOVE it! I wish I had the picture of Zac wearing it for his 18 month pictures. They actually look less alike than I was expecting.

My camera stopped working for a week and then magically fixed itself at the airport getting ready to fly home, bummer right?

Here Teagan is enjoying grandpa daniels for a few more minutes before we take off.

The little stinker turned two on our trip so we had to buy him a return flight home. It was nice having an extra seat and extra bag allowances!

Teagan has decided that it's time for his back mollars to come in. The drooling has been taken to a new level. I feel like I'm changing his shirt all the time.

That is Christmas in a nutshell. Thanks to all of the family that made special trips to see us. We LOVED our time with all of you and are excited for you to come visit this year. ;)

He Speaks!

I've been waiting anxiously for Teagan to start talking and it seems every other kid in the world that is his age is talking in sentences, but I've been patient. We went to Idaho for 2 weeks and he hardly used any words while we were there, but then we got home and something magical happened. He is suddenly interested in talking. He is repeating everything and trying hard to pronounce words correctly. It's like something clicked in his brain. In just a week he has gone from saying his basic 10 words and a few signs to grouping a couple words together and trying to say everything! I still can't understand everything. He is patient with me though and repeats what he's saying over and over until I can figure out what he's saying.

I always thought it was strange that he was so quiet when Zac and I are both pretty talkative, but it just took time. He is constantly blabbering now. He still gets shy and quiet when other people are around, but when he's with Zac and I he doesn't stop. It is so cute. I'm so proud of him and it is so fun to be able to talk back and forth with him. Whoo hoo!

Home is Nice

I haven't done my blog in a very long time, so I planned a time slot tonight to do a huge post of all of our fun in Idaho, but I can't find my camera cord. Apparently we remembered to bring everything home besides that.

Since the time was already set aside I'll write out the captions to the pictures now and add the pictures later.

Here are some of the highlights:

-Teagan LOVING the airplane rides, he thought the luggage carts where train and he "toot toot"ed at them.

-Us seeing snow for the first time in almost 2 years, a happier reunion than I expected. I actually enjoyed the snowy, christmas feel for the first 10 days or so, then I got cold and couldn't seem to get warm.

-Going on four wheeler and snow mobile rides with Grandpa Durtschi. Teagan LOVED this and kept asking for more. Unfortunately he got sick after his first day of snow play and ended up with a nasty eye infection and cold...only one day of snow play for him, what a sad thing.

-Zac got to go snowboarding with my little sister up at Targhee.

-Zac started the P90X videos with my dad...it only lasted a day though, 1.5 hour workouts every day just aren't reasonable!

-Getting a Wii for Christmas from Zac's parents and playing matches of tennis, ping pong, and Frisbee golf every night. Me, Zac, and his little brother, Jesse beat Mario too...we probably spent a little too much time with the wii, but it was SO fun!

-Getting taken out to lunch and dinner by both families, what a treat!!!

-Teagan seeing every living grandparent and great grandparent that he has, except my mom, who we get to see this weekend!

-Swimming at the Jackson pool with lots of the Durtschi family.

-Eating way too much fudge and laughing way too hard playing apples to apples and 5 crowns

-Celebrating Teagan and my nephew, Ethan's birthday at Leo's place with most of both families.

-Blowing up our gingerbread houses for New Years Eve.

-Teagan discovered bubble baths at Grandma and Grandpa Daniels' house, he now starts asking for "bubbles" anytime he gets bored.

-Realizing how much we've missed having all of our Idaho and Utah family close by. We LOVED spending time with everyone. It was so relaxing and fun. There's something special about time spent with family.

-Teagan sleeping for 3 of the 4 hours home from Vegas!

-Arriving home and unpacking-I have to admit that living out of a suitcase isn't exactly my favorite thing, but it's one of those sacrifices that is worth it. :)


When I figure out how to get pictures onto the computer I will post pictures to verify all of the events that took place in the last 2 weeks. My camera broke for the second week, and then miraculously fixed itself last night at the airport...go figure. Hopefully pictures will be up soon than later! Happy New Year everyone!