Happy Birthday to Me & Our Country!

Wow this is definitely the longest I’ve gone without updating the blog. I feel like I have to choose between playing on the computer, cleaning, or vegging in front of the TV and sadly for all of you I usually choose the TV. Levi and me love 24 so we started watching the series from the beginning. Each episode is about 45 minutes, there are 24 episodes in a season and 8 seasons, which is roughly 8,640 minutes of awesomeness. We are trying to watch them less often but they are so amazing and always leave you on a cliff hanger, it makes it really hard to stop.

Claire is still our busy little bee. She’s getting around soooo fast now! She loves just going. Her favorite destinations are the bathroom, her garbage of icky diapers and the dog’s food and water. She has had so many falls, bumps, bruises, and scratches already, I’m getting worried that CPS will be called on us! She loves all things girlie-shoes, necklaces, earrings, hair. I think that the hair pulling is the worst but I’ve also had a couple close calls with my earrings almost getting ripped out. I should just stop wearing them but I absolutely love earrings so I guess I’ll just take my chances. She is talking up a storm. She says “mama” and “dada”, we’re still not quite sure yet if she knows what they mean. Sometimes she’ll be looking at them when she says them and other times she’ll just be on an endless loop for no particular reason.

Claire’s eating habits have drastically improved. She loves all fruits so far but she’s not super excited about veggies or meat but I can usually get her to eat a pretty decent amount. Her favorites are probably, avocados (she’ll eat a half!), banana yogurt, bananas, baby puff cereal, bell peppers (soft cooked of course) and yams. It is really fun feeding her now because she will actually open her mouth for the spoon and with any finger type foods she’ll feed herself, which she loves.
I am now in Young Womens (translation from Mormon speak: I now get to work with the girls 12-17)! I am so excited! We’ve already had some super fun activities and we have an awesome group of girls. I look forward to a lot more fun to come.

It was my birthday the Sunday before last. I turned 24, gosh I’m old. It’s funny how birthdays aren’t quite as exciting now as they were when I was a kid. I looked forward to them all year and then for months I would plan a great big sleepover and they were always such a blast. But I had a good time this year. The Friday before we went to the Spirit Mountain buffet with Levi’s grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins and oh my goodness, I am salivating just thinking about it. They have any kind of food you can even imagine. Levi’s Grandma said that it’s the biggest in Oregon. There’s seafood, Mexican, sushi, Chinese, soups, salads, a great big yummy dessert bar and everything in between. Saturday we went to Katie’s (my sister-in-law Jaycine’s sister) wedding and had a blast. She was a beautiful bride and it was just such a wonderful day! And then Sunday my parents came down and spent the day with us. Levi made an awesome breakfast of Gingerbread waffles, they were killer! And then my Dad helped Levi finish our deck. That was the best birthday present, I’m so glad it’s finished! Levi and Claire gave me a patio swing to go on the new deck, he is so thoughtful.

We just had the world’s busiest weekend. Friday night we stayed the night at Dan & Lacey’s and then got up super early for the Hillsboro parade. Claire loved it. She was so interested in it and was watching all the floats and people passing by us. She got pretty sleepy and fell asleep sitting up in my lap. I laid her down in her stroller and she stayed asleep for probably 45 minutes. I couldn’t believe it, there were marching bands, screaming, trucks honking their horns. My mom and nephews were in the parade with my mom’s friend who works for Aloha Garbage and that was really fun seeing them. Afterwards we had a barbeque at Dan’s parent’s house and had a great time there as well.

Sunday was the annual Long Family Reunion and the name pretty well says it all. We got there at about 9 and left at nearly 6. But we had a great time! We got there early to help decorate and then Levi was in charge of the horseshoe tournament. He was so cute with it; he made certificates and painted horseshoes gold for the winners. And of course he made an excel program for the tournament and it would calculate the winner; I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the Bingo game he made for excel. It’s pretty sweet but that’ll have to be another time, I’m too tired. There was such good food, I seriously could not stop eating. Last year I was pregnant so I could eat a little more, this year I was nursing so I could eat a little more, crap what am I going to do next year!?!? I guess my choices are keep nursing an almost 2 year old or get pregnant, lol just kidding! I love Levi’s gigantic extended family, they are so fantastic. It’s like the Mormon version of the family on My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Claire was in a pretty good mood most of the day but she was having a hard time taking her naps. I think she’s too worried she might miss something. We were so exhausted by the end of the day that we didn’t hang around for fireworks and we just sat around lazily the rest of the night at home. We figured Claire wouldn’t care much about fireworks this year anyway.

Enjoy some pics!