Birthday cakes, a trip to the zoo, and big news!

I am in total shock. My baby is two! We celebrated Sayer's birthday last weekend in total style. We were lucky enough to have his Grandpa and Grandma Lilya in town for the week, who have been living in Alaska for work since April, and they decided to take all of us on a trip to the Hogle Zoo. Sayer loves all of his cousins and since they're pretty much the only kids he spends a lot of time with, they're all his pals. We had some fun times!

*Warning* This post contains a lot of pics. Sorry. It's my first kid and all.

Sayer and his cousin, Maddie. She's about two months older than Sayer and they are the best of friends.


Is it just me, or does he look unimpressed?


Cole and Ridge are especially good friends to Sayer. They all spend a lot of time at Grandma's together and all weekend Sayer wanted to know where "Widge" was if he couldn't see him!


I just love how he's sitting in the wagon!


All the grandkids, minus one. It was lunchtime, which might explain the look on Sayer's face.


Grandpa and Sayer waiting for the bird show to start. I guess now that he's two I'm running out of excuses to let him keep the dang binkie


After the bird show, they brought out a special bird who was taking donations. It would take them right out of your hand and put them in the donation box! Here's Sayer's turn.


Grandma and Ridge the Zookeeper



After the zoo, Grandpa and Grandma took us to the This Is The Place Monument. I love Church history but I've never been here, so this was a treat for me!

Brigham Young and Joseph Smith-these are two of my favorite prophets to study and learn about. I got chills reading about them planning and envisioning the Saints settling here.


What a view!


We got back to the hotel and had some fun in the pool for awhile, and then had a pizza party for Sayer. The pizza was from Pier 49 Pizza and was yum! Grandma was a little concerned that she'd only been able to find a pink cake for Sayer, but I don't think he minded.







By the time we headed home, Sayer was worn out.


The weekend was a good one; we had a lot of fun and Sayer got a lot of new toys. When we got home, we had another surprise waiting: Grandma and Grandpa McBride bought Sayer a new pool, and they had it set up for him to swim in when we got there!





Sayer and Aedan had a lot of fun playing together. Before we knew it, they both had their clothes and diapers off and were skinny dipping! We couldn't convince them to get dressed again. Sayer even played on the swings with Grandma in the buff.



So here we are with the terrible two's and more fun news. (Oh, my gosh, that rhymed. How pathetic.) Are you ready for this??? Sayer is going to be a big brother!

We are expecting baby #2 the first week in February. Everything looks great so far and we are excited (and maybe a little crazy).

We're very boring, really

I just realized that I haven't blogged in like a month. That is so weird for me! It's mostly due to the fact that we haven't been doing much of anything, and partly because I don't have any new pics to post, which drives me nuts.

Life tends to be a little boring for us this time of year. Most of our summer fun happens in July-August, and believe me, we're looking forward to it. My parents have been gone a lot for business trips, and Jake's parents have been in Alaska most of the summer for his dad's job. Since we don't do much outside of our families, this equals BORING! Jake has been busy finishing his brother Jason's house and helping my parents get ready to add on to their house, and all of this of course is in addition to his full-time job. What a man, baby!

Sayer is driving me CRAZY! I guess it's a good kind of crazy. I can't believe he's going to be two in a couple of weeks! The kid never stops moving. His bedtime went from 8:30 to 10:30 and it's all we can do to get him to sleep then. His vocabulary is amazing. These are some of our new favorites:

• "Coons" (cartoons)
• "Samat" (sandwich-usually in conjunction with "Peen", which is peanut butter :)
• "Mahee" (Handy Manny-the least annoying cartoon on Disney and fortunately, Sayer's favorite)
• "Sing" (Swing...our church building has nice swings out back. We walk over there a few times a week to swing, but now when we walk to church Sayer gets all excited and thinks we're going to swing. Pretty sad when I have to tell him that instead we get to go sit quietly and listen to grown-ups talk for three hours.)
• "Peesa" (pizza! his favorite!)
• "Cweam" (Ice cream. Of course.)

My life is about to get a little busier. I have been called to serve in the Mia Maids in our ward! I'm pretty intimidated because not only do I not know ANY of the youth in our ward, but our Mia Maid class is so big we have to have 3 leaders! I was actually pretty excited; serving in Primary for so long left me ready for a real change. This should be really fun. I'll let ya know how it goes.

I'm gonna go gray and have wrinkles before I'm 30!

We have had an eventful couple of weeks! Jake got nine days off from work, lucky dog, and I've had him pretty busy with "honey-do's" for most of that time. We are hitting a lot of milestones with Sayer and I've started to realize that (almost) two-year-olds require a LOT more attention than even a newborn! Or maybe it's just MY crazy (almost) two-year-old.

The parenting books call his type the "spirited" or "difficult" child. I call him hell on wheels! I constantly find him climbing the drawer handles, after I have put all of the chairs up on the table, to get to the knives or the phone just because he knows he can't have them. It took him ten minutes to figure out the childproof doorknob covers I put on in an attempt to keep him out of the bathroom and away from my makeup!

To make things even more interesting, Sayer learned how to climb out of his crib AND open his bedroom door all in the same week. Goodbye, bedtime! Not that this is a huge difference from before. Sayer used to go down for the night very easily, but ever since our moves we've had a hard time getting him to bed at night. But NOW, instead of just letting him cry himself to sleep, he can get out! His new bedtime routine is laying in bed with Dad (it HAS to be Jake, he doesn't want anything to do with me at night) until he falls asleep, when we carry him to bed. He has been waking up in the middle of the night and climbing in bed with us, which is not too great for our sleep because of course, he has to take up half the bed. I am currently trying Diana's "Super Nanny" trick that she used with Hallie. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated! I am going crazy!

This has led to a milestone in Sayer's life! We started to worry about him getting hurt or breaking the crib, so we've converted it into a toddler bed with the guard rails. Sayer was excited to help Dad:





He is also having fun "helping"with yard work. My two boys both love their Texas hats; if you know Jake at all, you know that he doesn't buy a hat unless it's a Longhorn hat. He doesn't even support the team; he just likes the hats! What a poser :)



I get to watch Hallie and Dewey every once in awhile, which is so much fun for us! My mom bought Dewey, Aedan, and Sayer matching pj's, I got some cute pics of Dewey and Sayer in their cute pj's. Some day, this is going to make a great yearbook pic, or blackmail; I haven't decided which yet.


I love these two! They are so cute and so much fun to have over!


Life gets more and more interesting every day. I complain a lot about Sayer, but I am really totally in love with him and I love watching him learn new things. His deductive skills are better than mine some days and he is a genius at finding solutions to problems like, oh, how to get his pacifier off the top of the fridge (yes, he did manage this one-my final hiding place he couldn't get to!). He definitely keeps me on my toes!

Update...wow, that title sounds so lame

No new pics today, just a few quick tidbits of fun for the Lilya family. First of all, Jake has switched jobs YET AGAIN. As of today, he is now working for the railroad again. He's worked for the railroad on and off for almost four years, but it's really hard on us because it usually requires him to be away from home. With the construction market so down, we knew he was going to have to do something. He started bidding for positions and finally got word on Wednesday that he'd caught a bid for a position in Pocatello. So he will be close to home and working one week on, one week off, which will give him time to finish up the jobs he's been working on and do a few things on the side.

The CRAPPY part...we were asked to speak in our new ward on Sunday. Jake had to call and bow out, since he will be working, but I'm still on the hook! And this isn't the first time he's done this...when we were asked to speak for the first time in our last ward, he had to work unexpectedly and I had to speak by myself! When he found out about the job, he told me, "The Lord really blesses people, doesn't he? ...especially people who don't want to speak on Sunday!"

Punk. I'm so telling the bishop.

Jake's birthday, and what we've been up to

Today I fall under the classification of "bad wife". Jake's birthday was Thursday, and I'm just now blogging about it! In my own defense...okay, I haven't really been that busy. Just dragging my feet.

Jake turned 24 this year! It's funny how laid back he is about birthdays, because if you know Jake, you know he's not laid back about ANYTHING. But he's very easy to please when it comes to his big day. The first year we were dating, I took him to dinner for his birthday and he wouldn't even let me pay! I can't ever get an answer beyond "I don't care" as to what he wants for a gift.

He had a pretty good day this year. He went snowmobiling

and got a Coldstone cake.

This was about the only thing he'd specify that he wanted on his birthday. Cost me an arm and a leg, but hey, April 16th only comes around once a year, right? We had his brothers and their wives over to share, but I was too busy eating to take pics of the fun!

Here's my useless facts about Jake:

• He's a hard worker. Since we've been married, he's had three full-time jobs and millions of on-the-side jobs. He's been laid off more than once, but he never sits around for long-he usually finds something to fill the time off within a day! And even when he has days off, he's usually helping somebody with a project or working for some extra cash.
  
• He can't sit still. He loves to be around lots and lots of people, and I don't, at least not for long. Wow, how do we ever survive?!?!
• He gets his feelings hurt VERY easily. Sometimes, my family or his will be making fun of him for something (he's an easy target), and he'll hunch up his shoulders and say "That's fine", or "I ain't scared", or, our personal favorite, "Amy, get the kid!" Fortunately, he has about a two second retention and then he forgets the offense.
• I'm about 97% sure that he's secretly afraid of snakes. (See below for reasoning)

We had the chance to go to a really cool concert Friday night. One of my favorite bands is Sugarcult, and they played at ISU for really cheap! They're not very well known; click here if you want to hear some of their music. We bought stadium tickets for only three dollars each, but ended up on the floor within twenty feet of the stage. We also ran into some friends while we were there, which made it even more fun! It was really great and gave us a chance to have a "date night" without worrying about Sayer.

Sayer is really enjoying having space to play at our new home. The other day we had temps in the 60's, clear skies, and no wind, so I took him out and let him work off a little energy.


A couple of houses down from us, there are some teenage boys who jump on the trampoline and do tricks. Sayer loves to watch them. He'll poke his head through the fence and yell at them. It's pretty funny. At one point, he even tried to scale the fence!




We have a really nice front porch. Sayer loves to play on it...


Even when he falls over!


Oh boy. I don't even know what to say about this one. Notice the football lying abandoned in the background.




At long last, here's some pics of our new digs. The shop/garage is Jake's favorite part.


Lately, Sayer has become really interested in his "cahs". He lines them up all day long.

He has the funniest vocabulary. Here's some of our favorites:

• "Poon" (spoon)
• "Bama" (grandma)
• "Bopa" (grandpa)
• "pea" (please)
• "nnnNO!" ...(no explanation needed)
  

We are also discovering that living in the country does have its drawbacks! Today, we were outside cleaning our vehicles out and just generally enjoying the sunshine. I saw Jake peering at something in our flower beds, and went over to investigate.

SNAKES!!!!

Okay, so they were only water snakes, but snakes all the same, and there were several of them.

Jake's reaction: Staring at them, scratching his head.
My reaction: BLEAUGHCGHWOEIUFH!!!!! (Roughly translated: Get those slithery, slimy monsters away from my house!) It reminded me of a certain incident with a certain godsister and a big snake in an old building by our houses. Remember that, Em? You ran away and I was too scared to move! I think I still have abandonment issues ;)

And mind you, this flower bed is right against our house, next to our door:


You can't see them in this pic because I was too chicken to get closer, but they're in there. And the reason I think my husband is a chicken: I immediately snatched Sayer and flew into the house. Jake followed a little too quickly, and then when I told him to go back there and get rid of them, he said, "They're not going to hurt us". I told him to just pick them up and put them in the canal, and he said, "I am NOT touching them." So yes, I think my husband is a closet snake fearer.

So the snakes won. Lovely.

405th Battalion

My cousin Landon and his friends were deployed to Afghanistan a few weeks ago. My aunt sent us a link to a slideshow that was done for the Salt Lake Tribune. It's amazing! You can see my grandma with her hand over her heart, and another with her hugging Landon. There's also a few with Landon and his friends being hugged by my cousin, Cody, who is Landon's older brother and a veteran of the Iraq war. Check out the slideshow! It's only about a minute long, but it's really cool!

http://166.70.44.68/multimedia/2009/405th%20back%20to%20Afghanistan%20SS/index.html

Huh WHAT?!?!? You're how old?!?!?

Today is my 22nd birthday! Holy smokes, I'm old! Okay, okay, so I can hear the howls through about a thousand computers right about now. So I'm not old by most of the world standards. But I feel old! Six years ago, I was turning sixteen and was very excited to be old enough to date. Four years ago I was eighteen and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life after high school.

Two years ago, I was twenty and was miserably six months pregnant. I don't remember much of that birthday, naturally. Today, I'm 22, married, and a mom. I don't think I ever thought this was where I would be in my life at 22. But I think I'm okay with that!

I've had some birthday adventures all ready. Saturday night we had a birthday party with Jake's family. Jake's birthday is next week and his sister and her husband's birthdays were last week, so we celebrate them all together. Jake was excited because his mom bought the two guys a "Cars" cake!

My wonderful mother took me to dinner last night, just the two of us, and we went shopping afterward. We went to Ruby Tuesday (my new favorite restaurant, by the way-I recommend the garden bar!!!) and just talked and laughed and had fun. We like to gossip and be catty and it's lots easier when we don't have those pesky husbands around accusing us of being judgmental. Dang men.

Our family has a traditional birthday song: "Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!" I've had this song sang to me at least once every birthday for as long as I can remember. Jennifer left me a voice mail this morning singing the song. Kandice coached Ky into singing it on video, and sent it to me this morning. It's hilarious!



Totally made my day. Hope the video works. Anyways...thanks to all of you who've sent me texts or called me today. It's great to hear from all of you; thanks for remembering lil' ol' me! As for the REST of you...where've you been?!?!?! Ha ha, I'm just joking. Seriously, it's been a good day and a great year. Lots of changes: new house, raising a baby into a toddler, new job for Jake. We've had challenges and trials and lots of fun. Tomorrow I guess I'll wake up and see what I can create with the next 365 days.