I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so

We picked up our exchange Miki on July 24th and she was with us till August 6th. We had so much fun with her. She was a super sweet girl and her English was very good for only studying it 3 years. I studied Spanish 5 years and mine wasn't even comparable to Miki's English. The one downside to having Miki come stay with us was that we had to have Claire in our room and move our spare bed in from the garage and clear out Claire's dresser. So it was a lot of work but such a wonderful experience. M-F she was in school from 9-5 and everyday I tried to fix a nice breakfast and dinner so she could experience as much American food as possible in such a short time. Every evening after dinner we had something going on; we went to both Salem malls, mini golf, Walmart, Dollar Tree, Silver Falls, Mollala Rodeo. And then we would come home and have dessert and play board games or watch TV. It was an exhausting 2 weeks! We also took her "camping" (we stayed in a guest house of our friend's aunt and uncle's) and she experienced her very 1st (and 2nd) smore, she loved them. We thought it was really funny that she didn't put any topping on her pancakes or french toast, no wonder Japanese people are so skinny. It was also super interesting to learn about her culture. Here are some of the things we learned; only the driver and front-seat passenger have to wear seatbelts, they go to school for 6 hours Monday-Friday and a half day on Saturday, they only get 6 weeks for summer break and even then have a couple hours of home work a day, they don't say anything when people sneeze, they dress very modestly-no tanktops, leggings under short shorts, etc, and they seem to be extremely environmentally conscious, they bike/walk or take the buss/train most of the time. Oh and her Mom goes to the store every single day, oh my gosh, Can you imgaine!? I hate the store and try to go a max of twice a week! But she bikes there so I'm guessing it would be super hard to buy very much food. At 20 you are considered an adult and that is when you can smoke, drink, drive a car, and they have this big party just for the 20 year olds in January at an amusement park, I'm jealous. We already miss her so much and wish that we could have kept her! She has a great sense of humor so she fit in quite nicely with us.

Claire had her 9 month appointment last Friday. She is 29.25 inches tall (95th percentile) and weighed 19 lbs 3 oz (58th percentile). I remember at her first couple appointments I was so worried I was going to have an oompa loompa baby since she was 90th percentiles for both but thankfully she has thinned out so much. The Doctor said she looks great and is doing very well developmentally, yay! Claire also learned how to wave bye-bye and clap and they're pretty much the cutest things I've ever seen. She especially loves doing them for complete strangers like at the Sayonara party the last night Miki was with us. We took Claire (she's wearing a Jimbay-probably didn't spell that right but it's the baby equivalent of a kimono) and the whole 2 hours she was waving at the crowd and clapping. She was totally showing off. We were dying laughing, it was so stinkin cute! I so wish we would have had our video camera!

Oh a much more depressing note Eric (my younger brother) left for the Marines on Sunday. He is going to bootcamp in San Diego, CA for 3 months and then he'll be home for 2 weeks and then he goes to infantry training for 1 month at a TBD location. After that he begins schooling for the diesel mechanic program. It was really hard saying goodbye. On the one hand we'll get to see him every once in a while and he can talk and email but on the other it is for 4 years! That's such a long time! Claire will be almost 5 by the time he's done. I think it will be good for him though. He is extremely intelligent but he is just not much for regular school so this will provide an excellent alternative and he'll be able to have a great career once he's done. I just hope this experience doesn't harden him. I'm so proud of him for serving our country!

Eric with all of his neices and nephews

Claire's 1st 4-wheeler ride-she loved it!
Last night together at the Sayonara party
Her smile takes over her whole adorable face, I can't get enough of it!

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!

Rocking, Rolling. Crawling, Standing!?

Yes that's right Claire has been doing all sorts of crazy stunts these last couple of weeks. She can do a couple crawls in a row (lucky for us she hasn't really taken off yet) and then we were shocked Friday morning when she was standing up in her crib crying for us. Friday night was so hard to get her to go to sleep because she just wanted to keep practicing her new found skill. She'll pull herself up and then just get the biggest smiles on her face like "Look what I just did!" We're really trying to get our house baby-proofed because even without full-blown crawling she manages to roll, army crawl, scoot and lunge wherever she needs to go. She also can go very easily from crawling position to sitting and back again. It is just amazing watching her try so hard to make her body do what she wants it to. We knew from when she was in my belly that she would be a feisty one and she is definitely proving us right!

Claire is still not super interested in food but she is doing a little better. We give her either oatmeal or rice cereal and a fruit puree in the morning and then a veggie and meat puree for dinner.

I also had to give Claire her first hair trim the other day. She had these super long scraggly bangs and then a super long hair over one of her ears. So I dampened her hair, strapped her into her highchair and did my best. Her bangs are a little boxy now but at least they're better then they were. Next time I will have to try to taper it a little more. It is so hard to cut a moving target!

So to catch up; we had a blast Memorial day weekend. Levi had a 4 day weekend so Friday we just bummed around the house and I was able to run some errands without Claire which was nice because I was able to get so much more done but the whole time I felt like I was missing something. Saturday was a super busy but fun day! First we headed out to Vernonia for Levi's extended family get together. The weather was a little cruddy so we didn't do much but it was really nice to see everyone. Then Claire & me went to my parents house for a good friend's (my sister-in-law's sister but we call ourselves sister-in-law-laws) bridal shower. The weather was really nice from then on, thank goodness. After that Levi's Dad brought Levi back for Zenna's (our neice) 2nd birthday party. I really can't believe she's 2, where has the time gone!? My Mom made matching party dresses for Claire and Zenna, they are too adorable! I made her a pinata and it was so fun watching the kids go to town on it. Zenna especially loved hitting it with the tennis racket since the bat was a little too heavy for her. A couple times the pinata swung back and hit her and knocked her over, we couldn't help giggling. The burger picture is the burger that Colin ate; 2 patties, egg, cheese with a side of heart attack. Then after that we visited Levi's family because Janet had just had surgery. We are so glad that it went well and that she's feeling better now. Levi and Hayden were being really mean and trying to make Janet laugh, which hurt really bad. We ended up not getting home till midnight, it was the world's longest day.

That Sunday I wasn't feeling good so Levi took Claire to church all by himself, I was so proud. I guess all she wanted to do was blow raspberries on the pew in front of them. Then Monday some friends from church invited us over for a BBQ. It was so nice to be home a couple days and get to relax, that doesn't happen very often!

Then this last Saturday we went up to our friend's Dan & Lacey and Levi helped them with installing some sod. They seemed to have a blast while they were working. And Dan & Lacey made some amazing food for us! I volunteer Levi's services anytime for good food! ;) Just kidding honey.

Then yesterday my parents, Jay and the kids came down. They are such a hoot. Rayden is Mr. Competitive when it comes to anything, Kolten is a little clown and Zenna is a wonderful mother to her little baby doll that she takes everywhere with her. She was giving her a bath and tossing her up in the air just like her Daddy does. I don't think I've talked about it yet on here but my brother and SIL are moving to Colorado. Colin is actually already down there, he left last week. He was offered a really great job that he just couldn't pass up. Jay has to have baby #4 here so her and the kids won't be leaving till the beginning of August. We are so sad! Jay is Claire's only aunt and the kids are her only cousins and it'll probably be a while before Eric or Levi's brothers have any. They are hoping they will only be gone a couple years, I sure hope so too! I'm seriously considering kidnapping them and not letting them go!

Well I better go get something productive done while Claire is napping.