Volcanoes are Everywhere

When we were on our way to Salt Lake City and close to landing, EZ kept saying "Volcanoes!". Of course it didn't sound exactly like volcanoes and it came out of no where, so without any context I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then I looked out the window and realized he was calling the mountains volcanoes. I thought it was pretty funny and then when we were on our way home from Pittsburgh and landing in Chicago for our layover he kept saying volcanoes again. Now Midway airport is in the middle of crowded neighborhood with no mountains, so I was really confused. Then I looked out the window and there was this factory with a huge smoke stack and a large smoke cloud over it. I couldn't stop laughing. I wonder if EZ is phased by the fact that he sees volcanoes everywhere. Probably not.

Oh and I appreciate all the well wishes I received for my second cross country flight by myself. EZ escaped once or twice and had to be captured by strangers and then wrestled into the monkey backpack, but overall it went pretty smoothly and no worse than the first one. Luckily I won't have to do that again for a while.

Grandpa Steve

EZ absolutely loves his Grandpa Steve and had a blast at my parents house over break. (He used to be referred to as Bumpa Steve, but EZ has finally figured out how to say it correctly. I am not sure if I am happy about that or not.) Anytime my dad left the house EZ would stand by the window like a puppy and wait for him to come home and whenever he wanted my dad to play with him he would say "Come on Grandpa Steve. Let's Go". It was so cute and I know my dad also loved having EZ around. He loved EZ so much that he had a hard time telling him no.

Exhibit A: EZ's pack n play was in my parents room and one night my day went up to go to bed and there was EZ still awake. He stood up and said "downstairs" so even though it was like 11:00pm my dad brought him down and let him play a little longer. They went back upstairs and some of us stayed up talking. At about 12:30 all of a sudden I see EZ run by me and my dad following behind. According to my dad EZ had escaped. But EZ can't get out of the pack n play so how did he escape? Well Grandpa let him sleep in the "big bed" with him and when Grandpa finally dozed off EZ made a break for it.

Exhibit B: EZ came to me and asked to watch Charlie Brown Christmas but we were watching something else and I told him he had to wait. So he responded by asking "Where is Grandpa Steve?" and then took off looking for my dad, who sure enough turned on the movie for him in another room. From then on anytime I told him no he would ask "Where is Grandpa Steve?".

Even though EZ got a bit spoiled, it was great to see him have so much fun and we can't wait till my parents come to visit us, so EZ can have his playmate back.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was quite the adventure. We started it out opening presents with Grandpa Phil. EZ actually got his presents back in Texas before we left, but we wanted him to have something to open so we bought a couple books and a puzzle for him. Netta didn't get to open anything, but I suspect she won't remember to hold it against us later in life. It was really great getting to spend a week with John's dad. His has been battling cancer and just a few weeks before Christmas things were not looking good at all, but his treatments worked better than even the doctor expected and by the time we arrived he was doing really well as things considered.

That afternoon John took the kids and I to the airport to head off to Pittsburgh while John stayed in Utah to spend a couple more days with his dad before heading back to work. After the fiasco that was our trip to Utah I wasn't very excited about flying across country by myself with two kids. We had a three hour flight from SLC to Chicago and then an hour flight from there to Pittsburgh. The first flight went pretty well and I was able to snatch an extra seat for Netta and take this super cute pic.

When we got off in Chicago things got a little dicey. They were really slow getting our stroller so I was waiting on the jet way holding Netta, two bags, and EZ by his monkey backpack/leash. Well EZ got loose and when I caught up with him he sat on he ground and refused to go back down the jet way to the stroller, so I just grabbed the leash and dragged him all the way back on his butt. Of course people didn't help and just stared, but I couldn't have cared less what people thought of me at that point. By the time we got the stroller I had 30 minutes to get us dinner and get to the other concourse. Of course EZ decided at that point that he didn't want to walk anymore so that was a bit stressful and I had to scold him by whispering threats in his ear as forcefully as possible. We finally made it on the flight and I guess EZ didn't like the AC vent blowing on his face because I looked over and found this (and he wasn't sleeping).

Thankfully my dad works for US Airways so he was able to meet me and the kids at the gate. When we got to the house there was a slew of presents under the tree for us and EZ's first one was a little tikes guitar. Well I have said before how much he loves guitar hero so he went crazy when he saw this present. He as so obsessed with it that he wanted nothing to do with opening the rest of his presents.

Netta also got some greats presents. She adores this mirror my mom got her. It plays this song "Who's that baby looking in the mirror?" over and over and over again. While the songs gets annoying after awhile, I still love it because it is pretty much guaranteed to distract her when she gets fussy.

It was a crazy day with all the traveling, but it was worth it to be able to have great Christmases with both sides of the family.

Annual Brown Christmas Party

John's family has quite the Christmas shindig every year. It always includes a visit from Santa, a nativity and really good Mexican food. It was great to spend time with everyone and EZ couldn't have been more excited to play with his cousins. I kept waiting for him to get tired but he was going strong till almost 1:00am. We were really excited to get pictures of the kids all dressed up with Santa. Unfortunately Netta was not a big fan.

EZ's attitude improved immensely towards Santa. Last year he freaked out and kept crying and reaching for us. This year we were actually able to get a cute picture.

And here is our failed attempt at getting a picture of both kids together.

Like I said the kids always act out the Nativity scene. The youngest baby always gets to play the baby Jesus and this year that honored was bestowed upon Netta.

EZ got to be an angel and wear a nice shiny white dress. After putting it on he proudly announced to everyone "I'm a princess!". John tried to explain that he was an angel, but he just kept insisting that he was a princess.

You may notice in the back of the picture that the baby in the car seat is not Netta. She started freaking out and had to be replaced by her understudy Daphne who is a month older. All and all it was an awesome party and I am glad EZ is getting old enough to really start enjoying Christmas traditions like these.

Dancing Queen

While visiting at John's sister Buffy's house EZ had a seriously gross diaper that leaked on his pants and he had to borrow some pants from his cousin Libby. They were some stylish black leggings that made him look like quite the dancing queen. Please do enjoy.

And last but not least . . .

And here is just a really cute one of Netta trying out her winter hat. We wouldn't want her to feel left out. Our friend Emily gave Netta that hat at my baby shower and it was perfect for our trip to Utah.

Hindsight is 20 20

So yesterday we took off for Christmas vacation. Our flight left out of Austin at 7:30am in the morning. Austin is a really small airport and typically there is no line to check in or at security. We didn't think Thursday would be a busy travel day because you could still buy cheap fares as of 2 days ago so we thought the typical hour we allow would be plenty. Wow were we wrong. John dropped me and the kids off to go park the car and we got in line. We got in the southwest line and it took over 45 minutes in line just to check in! I have seen longer lines before and not have them take that long. I couldn't believe the line just wasn't moving. Finally John caught up with us and it was clear we wouldn't make our flight and I just started crying. What was really frustrating was that we had gotten in the line for people who needed assistance instead of the kiosk line because Netta is a lap child and they always tell us to get in that line in order to get her taken care of. Well about the time I started crying I realized the kiosk line was moving quite a bit faster. Maybe if I had gotten in that line we would have made it, but who really knows. Then I got really frustrated when I realized that the reason our line was moving so slowly is because it was filled with people who had missed earlier flights and were trying to rebook. Why hadn't someone been directing the lines and making sure people like us didn't miss our flight because of people like them? They weren't going anywhere anytime soon so we easily could have gone ahead of them and not missed our flight. By not monitoring the lines Southwest actually made their job harder because people missed flights who shouldn't have. 15 people missed our flight all of which were just stuck in the lines. One girl we talked missed the flight even though she got there 1 and 1/2 hours early because it took over an hour to check in at curbside check in, which she assumed was the fastest way. When she asked an employee for help he just said "That sucks" and even when she offered to pay people $40 to get in front of them in line they wouldn't budge. Wow. Tis the season to be jolly. Then southwest's system kept crashing while we were trying to rebook our flight and it took another hour and half just to get new tickets. The people helping us were really friendly, but still it shouldn't have taken that long. We weren't confirmed on a flight till 3:40pm, but we were standby on 10:30am flight. That flight was over sold but seriously by a miracle we made the earlier flight and despite a 2 hour delay in Austin and being stuck on the runway once we landed in Phoenix for about 20 minutes, we were able to make our connection and arrived safely in Salt Lake. When we got here 3 of our bags were already here, but one was still missing. Luckily that one arrived about 20 minutes later, so about 13 hours after starting our day we were finally done. I went back and forth most of the day between hating myself and hating southwest for what happened, but I have realized that we did the best we could with the knowledge we had and hindsight is always 20 20. We are lucky to have made it without further delays and I am just happy to be on vacation with my family.

Swing Kids

We lucked out and bought a house that came with a decent swing set. The only problem was it didn't have a swing that Netta could use. So in an interesting turn of events we got one for free from Target. Some of you may have heard of the seemingly awesome deal Target had were these $250 car seats were down to $50. Well I ordered one and then two days later I got an email from Target saying they had messed up the price online and that it really was $250 so they had cancelled my order. Well I thought that was really rude and I was quite annoyed with Target. Then about a week or so later I got another email from Target saying they were sorry and wanted to keep my business so they were giving me a $25 e-gift card. Cha-ching! I was pretty excited about that and I found a swing that was $25 and had free shipping and voila Netta has a free swing from Target. So here are some pics we took of the kiddies swinging while Meghan was here. As you can see they love it and I love seeing them have so much fun.