two new tricks

The other day I tried putting Zeb's feet up to his mouth to see what he thought about it. Now he won't stop. he's obsessed with his toes. He'll rip his socks off and nibble on them at all times of the day! He can't do it with pants on cause the pants squeeze his belly too much and he can't breathe. It's really funny.

Trick number two is not such a cute trick. The little wombat is still mixed up with daylight savings and has been waking up before seven everyday...plus a wake up between 4 and 5. It may be a result of being sick and trying to get back on a better eating schedule or a result of the time change, probably a little of both. It's making me nutty! luckily I have the best husband in the world and he helps out immensely. I am just not a coherently responsible parent at four AM...or at six for that matter :)

this may be a redo for some of you.

I've been tagged by two people (amie, a month ago, and lindsay n) so I figured I had better respond. I was tagged back in the beginning of our blog so many of the "facts" about me are the same but there are lots of new readers to the blog since then... so happy reading :)

1. I have been in fifteen car accidents. I have never been driving in any of them! The most recent involved a white trash couple (the man had no shirt, only sandals, holey jeans and his pregnant wife with him on a motorcycle. and of course neither had helmets). The worst was when I was thirteen. We were in Idaho at a family reunion and were hit by a drunk driver. Our car rolled, my cousin flew out, and my dad gashed his head so bad we could see his skull.

2. I would rather have a baby (with an epidural of course) than get a cavity filled. I had to be sedated to go to the dentist when I was younger. Having a baby includes gifts, visitors, meals, and a baby.

3. Kent and I have decided that instead of a funeral, the first to die gets turned into a diamond that the living spouse gets to wear! Really. we are serious. It costs about half of a funeral. Our original wish was to keep each others skulls but we can't find any place that will preserve just a human skull...I guess the defleshing/debraining is too intense.

4. I have a small obsession with entertainment news. I check People.com at least once a day to look at photos and read the latest dirt on celebs. They intrigue me (I have NO idea why!).

5. At BYU I did a research project on Urine therapy. For part of the research I drank my own pee for ten straight days. It wasn't bad at all. Urine is very sterile.

6. In college we woke up to find a dead cow in our living room. We were in the newspaper, on CNN, on the news in Idaho and Utah, and even made the Late late show with Craig Kilborne. It was so fun! We have left our legend at Ricks college! People still talk about it regularly up there. I get stopped all the time and people ask "weren't you the girl with the dead cow in her living room at ricks?"

I'll tag Laney, Lindsay D, Jill L, Julie S, Keriann F, and Brittani C. You have to post 6 interesting/unknown facts about yourself and then tag others.

tonight on the news!

Kent and I were yelling at the television! I cannot believe that we have come to the point where we blame others for EVERYTHING. What ever happened to agency and personal accountability? The segment was on the number of fast food restaurants in America. There is one for every 1500 Americans and it is causing obesity. Oh gag. In South LA there is apparently some major problem because so many fast food restaurants are opening! Some registered dietitian stated that these restaurants are "making healthy living difficult" and "if we show people all of these restaurants they will believe it is all they are entitled to eat." Kent and I found this ridiculous! I'm sure the employees are going out and dragging people into their restaurants kicking and screaming and then shoving french fries and hamburgers down their throats! How can she state that they are making it difficult to live healthily? These restaurants wouldn't be opening if we weren't going into them!! I certainly hope that we aren't stupidifying ourselves so much that just because we see lots of fast food we think that it is all that we can eat. South LA wants to enact ordinances called "healthy zoning ordinances" that put a moratorium on fast food restaurants. I only hope that we don't have to turn to the government to parent what we eat. My goodness people. We are fattening ourselves up - not the restaurants!

so the picture doesn't look too tasty....

Thanks to some inspiration from Lindsay next door I tried making Ravioli soup. I really didn't follow a recipe though. I used the regular chicken stock soup base and added until I ran out of things to add.

The picture doesn't look amazingly appetizing because I forgot to take a picture and this is actually "day old soup". Lots of the juices were absorbed by the raviolis and veggies! Kent gave the soup "a surprising ten". I guess he was very hesitant about the raviolis but loved it in the end. It has gotten quite chilly and soup is the best fall/winter meal!

So, here's the recipe (with what I remember!).

1 small yellow squash
2 small zucchinis
1/2 an onion
1-2 cups carrots
1 stalk celery (I hate celery so I only put in the one stalk)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 shredded chicken breast
1 package wheat/spinach/cheese ravioli (really you can use whatever kind you want. I found them in the fridge section of the grocery store near the cheese and there were 2.5 servings in the package)
4-6 cups chicken stock (I just used water with bouillion)
1 small can tomato sauce
salt and pepper
oregano
parsley
basil
garlic

I sauteed the veggies (minus tomatoes) with the garlic in a little bit of evoo while I got the stock and seasonings boiling. I added the veggies and boiled until tender (7-12 min). I then added shredded (cooked) chicken and the tomatoes and tomato sauce. lastly I added the raviolis and boiled for 7 more minutes. It made 4-6 servings.

Serve with bread/rolls!

yes, we are documenting our entire lives via blog.

Tonight we cast our ballots! it was really great to vote on issues that I really felt strongly after being here such a short period of time! I'm glad we made it in time to support the parks, library, and COSI. Oh, and since neither Kent nor I could decide on a second school board member we both wrote in our neighbor, Eric Dockter, as a candidate. He likes kids so we figured he'd do a good job.

Zeb also voted. After fulfilling our role as good citizens we decided to reward ourselves with a treat. Baskin Robbins does one dollar scoops on Tuesday nights! mine was absolutely disgusting and I threw it away. Thank heavens it was only a dollar. It was all freezer burnt and nasty-o. Kent thought his was quite tasty.

Downtown Detroit

Detroit is a little dilapidated for a big city! There are lots of huge abandoned buildings and very scraggly looking businesses. We still enjoyed driving around the city and trying to maneuver our way around all of the one way streets. I get into these laughing fits when we get turned around. I laughed so hard that I was crying and poor Kent had to pull over and look at the map because I was of no help. We were actually trying to get to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. We opened a new checking account with a bank here and they gave us twenty five dollars for doing it! we decided to splurge :)

Little Z was just happy to get out of the car. He really enjoyed Hard Rock. I think that all of the music and lights mesmerized him.

Here is the rugrat after a taste of lemon. It's pretty fun to have our own baby to try these tricks on!

Elections tomorrow! (I FIXED THE LINK)

To whom it may concern (toledoans that read my blog):

I've been trying to figure out all the info I can about the elections tomorrow... and here is a lot of what I found! I believe that we are in district two and will be voting for City Council, School Board, Judges, a budget amendment, and the four levies (all are replacement levies except for the COSI one, it would be a new tax). The following link is a voter's guide that has a lot of info from The Blade. Some of the articles are biased but at least I got all of the names and positions so that I could do my own research.

I don't think there are any other issues on the ballot for us. If you know of any or have any other info, let me know!

Click here for the guide.

Elections are tomorrow and the polls are open from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm.

what a waste of daylight savings.

Apparently Toledo is one large pool of infectious disease right now. Everybody STEER CLEAR! The kids are sick and are spreading the virus like wildfires in California!

Last night Zeb woke up EVERY single hour. The poor little rugrat has some terrible stomach problem. The diarrhea has slowed down immensely but he has decreased food intake again and his stomach is making all sorts of terrible gurgglings and splats. Every hour last night he'd start to moan (he still isn't crying at all) and we'd have to pick him up so that he was in a vertical position. His stomach would make all sorts of terrible noises settle down and then he'd whine back to sleep. It is sad. We have been the lucky ones though! Two of the neighbors have had to take their little guys to the ER! and those with older kids have had terrible vomiting! Most of the kids are feverless so maybe it's the rotavirus. Whatever it is, it stinks! and WHAT A WASTE OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS!! it's like the hour never existed.

at least zeb is still cute huh?

We were out of the country this weekend.....

After the museum we decided to step out of the country for a bit! we crossed the River and ventured our way into Canada! Kent had NEVER been! who hasn't been to Canada!?!

We took the underwater tunnel over and then the bridge on the way back ($3.75 each way!). Kent had a bit of a hard time at the border both entering and exiting the country. I tried to explain that he needed to be very concise to the border patrol but he really just didn't want to I guess. Coming back into the US was most difficult. First off the man asked what our citizenship was. Kent paused and mumbled a bit until I yelled.. "U.S.! we are American citizens". The man then asked what we had been doing in Canada and Kent replied "nothing really". Not the best answer to US border people. He asked again "what was your business in Canada?" to which Kent replied "we just kind of drove around. I wanted to see what Canada was like". We finally made it through after a lengthy conversation about how we just moved to Ohio and Kent had never been to Canada and we wanted to check it out and blah blah blah... I am surprised that they didn't search our car! luckily we had Z's birth certificate and our passports. Apparently they aren't necessary until 2008, but considering our hazy answers to the questions, the documents were good verification that we truly were normal US citizens.

We couldn't believe the thick accents that the Canadians just over the border had! It was outrageous! Really we didn't do much, just drove around like Kent had said. We did get a good couple pictures of America and some good Canadian candy(Smarties and Aero chocolate!). We almost bought ketchup chips but decided we'd just end up throwing them away. The little city of Windsor doesn't really have that much to offer! Not even a cool Canadian souvenir store. We were pretty disappointed. I wanted a Canada t-shirt or something! even our pictures are pretty dull. We've got to go to a better part of Canada! The skyline of Detroit was pretty and at least Kent can say he's been to Canada and Zeb can say he's been out of the country!

Our adventurous day...PART ONE

Kent didn't have to study today because of his test at the end of last week. hoooooooray. We decided to celebrate and do something new. Being in a new place leaves so much to be discovered! we ended up going to Michigan. Detroit to be exact. They have so much to do there and it is only about and hour and fifteen minutes away.

Part one of our post will be our first activity, the science museum! Remember how we bought that California museum annual pass? It got us into the Detroit museum today for free.

I cannot believe how much Zeb loved this place. We tried so hard to get him to smile for the pictures today but he rarely would look at us. He was in such a trance because of everything around him. The place is insane! Colors, sounds, lights, and everything a little child could ask for.

It was major sensory overload. We all loved it. I can't believe Zeb's ability to take everything in, he really is growing up.

They had a fabulous exhibit called animal grossology. It was all about poo, vomit eaters, blood suckers, and so forth. Zeb especially loved the dung beetles. Kent and I liked the spot where we had to suck blood out of this giant human arm into the bodies of ticks and leeches.
The picture with the penguin is the exhibit all about poo.

The downstairs was devoted almost entirely to physics. Kent and I share a mutual disdain for pyhsics but it was cool to see experiments about all things we learned from Dr. Chenworth (Zak, you would have also loved it). Here I am with a zap running along my face. Sorry it's so dark, we had to turn off the flash.

Zeb threw up all over the foot of this dinosaur. He is eating much better now but we have to feed him in increments. If he takes more then four ounces at a time he can't keep it down.

These final mini shots are of the outside of the museum, the dueling dung beetles, and the men's bathroom. Instead of a picture of a man or woman, they show an X and a Y chromosome or two X's! I loved it. For any people that come and visit, they also have the BODIES exhibit here! We have already seen it so decided not to pay extra, but it is MUST see for you all who haven't yet.

For me, blogging is akin to journal writing. It has become such habit that I cannot go to bed without a post. It really is a good way to talk about what has happened today, show gratitude for the things and people that I have, and just express myself. I've always always loved to journal write and I really really like to blog.

So as boring as it is to all of you (although it can't be THAT boring because you are all here reading it), here is today's post.

I caught the rugrat in the act today. This time he wasn't nearly as stealth. We were preparing to head out to get Kent from school and Z tried to slither his way out of the carseat again. It appears as though he got stuck on the dismount. In the bathroom he was able to teeter the seat forward and slide out. Not so lucky in the living room.

Future Doctor...it looks like zeb is getting in more studying than his dad!

Zeb got up early again this morning and wanted to be around people so I stuck him with his studying dad! Poor Kent had a giant test yesterday (on Halloween!) and then a beastly cumulative final today! He got up to study much before many of you in the mountain time zone went to bed! But, HOORAY, block one is over and Kent gets his dead body in a few days!!! Anatomy starts up tomorrow. I am so grateful for such a hard working husband.
Zeb loved studying with his dad. The rugrat gets so excited when Kent gets home everyday. I cannot make him giggle like his dad can. He really gets all bouncy and jumpy when Kent comes through the door. He is almost as good a dad as he is a husband. I told him he's not allowed to be as good to Zeb as he is to me! :)

and for a feeding update on Zeb, he is still not eating so we took him to the pediatrician today. I'm sure that they thought we were paranoid parents. He was laughing and flirting with the doctor. He was rolling around and showing off all of his usual tricks. It was ridiculous. Luckily the doctor stayed and chatted awhile (she was Muslim and we got to chat about our religions a bit! she was so nice) and got to see one of his symptoms in action. He was undressed down to his scivvies and as Kent was placing him back on the table, he EXPLODED. I am not joking. I have NEVER seen that much liquid come out of something that small. It was UNREAL. He exploded all over the floor, all over the table, all over Kent, EVERYWHERE. It was as if the diaper was non existent. I have no idea from what orifices the poo was coming (In reference to the diaper. I know where poo comes from). Kent finally put him down and he continued to erupt. I was giggling because I couldn't believe it! Boy, does this kid have the runs. The diarrhea was astounding. We wanted to snap some pictures but I was giggling and Kent was trying to clean up. Plus the doctor was standing there. How do you explain that? "um..this is for our blog!?!?" We decided it was not the time nor the place for pictures.

The whole time Zeb was just smiling away like nothing was happening. The doctor could not believe how happy and cute he was amongst the chaos. She said her days would be a lot easier if all of the kids were like this when they were sick. He has a bug I guess. We just have to wait it out. If he stops drooling or becomes listless we are in trouble, but until then he's good.