Wow another month over and while there didn't seem to be anything big during the month I sure have a lot of pictures!
The month started off at John's parents as they were heading back to Idaho. So we were over there a few nights for dinner and such.
One Friday I had hurt my back I think from riding the spin bike at work and I was having a hard time sitting at work so I came home early to lie down. Since I was home I went and got JJ early and met Jim and Chris and more for the Friday fish fry. JJ did pretty good considering we had to sit there for a long time before hand. He didn't make it through the meal but he made it about an hour before he'd had enough. I need to remember next time I want to go just for the clam chowder.
I had ordered JJ a chair for outside because he always wants to sit on the hot tub steps. So now he has his little Adirondack chair. One weekend was our community garage sale. We weren't really planning or ready to do a yard sale but since I'd been working on the office and wanting to get rid of the desk I wanted to get it out there to sell. So we spent a Saturday morning trying to sell some random stuff. We were able to sell the desk so that was the best part. JJ had fun that morning playing with his cousins and checking out all the animals at the neighbors house. They have dogs, chickens, a turtle and who knows what else. It was fun to talk to them a bit more.
Here is JJ practicing his somersault I guess. He started just putting his head on the floor and looking at us and laughing. Who knows sometimes what he's thinking but it makes me laugh.
Pretty sure it was the same day we did the garage sale that Nick was talking about wanting a steak so we invited him and the kids over for dinner; Shar was gone. So we did some steaks and asparagus and who knows what else. The kids watched Frozen with JJ. Then Ashton left and the girls played ring around the rosie with him. They were really cute.
I'm not sure about these pictures below but I'm sure he was watching Frozen in all of them. We watch that movie several times a week, sometimes several times a day. We've tried Monsters, Inc, Toy Story, Despicable Me, Tarzan, Aladdin, and more and nothing interests him like Frozen.
JJ has been showing us things he's learned and we didn't know he knew. For example, he will take his dirty clothes and put them in his clothes hamper...along with my shoes, his shoes, and random toys. He will take his dirty diaper and throw it in the garbage, same principle; along with napkins, kleenex, and iphones.
He loves his tv chair. Whether he is flipping it over on himself, reclining in it, or just kicking back and watching Frozen it's one of his favorite things right now.
I had enough of my grey hairs and had a hair appointment. I went more all over dark again and I'm liking it so far. John got the rest of the stuff moved around in the office the way we want it for the most part. I'm so loving having the huge desk gone. I feel like we have a lot more space in there.
The other day we were sitting here and I saw a large bird on our wall. At first I just caught a glimpse and wasn't sure what it was so I jumped up to get a better look and it was a roadrunner. I've seen them before in Arizona but most the time I'm in a car driving by and don't get a good look. So I liked that it was just sitting on the wall for a minute that I could look at it.
That same day we decided to venture out with JJ for some food. We don't go out much anymore because it's hard to keep an 18 month olds attention long enough to order food, wait for food, and then eat food. But we've found that if we can go somewhere that you get your food fairly quick and bonus if they have a patio because he loves being outside. So Paradise Bakery does wonders for us. Not only was he not throwing a fit he was eating really well. Midway through the meal John and I looked at each other and said, this is going better than I expected. Since lunch went so well we wandered down to the pet store to see the puppies and then let JJ try out the kids toy area. He stood around not sure what to do at first and then he started to play a little. He really badly wanted to climb up this one and slide down the other side but it took him a while to try it. He liked it once he did though! There was one or two kids I thought I might go crazy on for pushing or trying to abduct him but overall it went well. Of course there was a small meltdown when we went to leave. Because dad is a sucker we went to the Disney store after the play area and let him pick out a toy. He picked out a Minnie doll and he loves her. And he wouldn't put her down the rest of the day.
Bart and Stephanie came for dinner that night also. I was making lasagna to take to Juan and Kerry since they just had their little girl and made some for us too. I decided to try this avocado salad thing. It was pretty good. Then like good fat kids after dinner we went to Frost for some gelato; JJ took Minnie.
Monday the 14th was JJ's 18 month mark and his 18 month checkup. I got that cute picture of him peeking around the aquarium at me BEFORE the appointment. Once we headed back to the exam room there wasn't much smiling. His numbers were 24 lbs/54% for weight; 32.25 for length/45%; 19.5 for his head/95%. The dr said everything is looking good and he didn't get any shots since we were less than so many days from his last shots. I don't know, but I was glad to not have to do them.
On Tuesday we took Juan and Kerry the lasagna and saw baby Maylee. She is such a cutie but I didn't get any pictures. We ran to Chik-fil-a for dinner and again JJ did really well! He went into their play area but I don't think he ever made it to the toys before he got startled and started crying.
I got this picture of him on St. Patrick's day that morning and he was still tired as you can see. I loved his shirt! So stinking cute! That night we walked down to Sonic for dinner. We've found we like to do this as well because Sonic meets the criteria of fast food and outside. I get a kick out of JJ there because he easily clears the ordering board but he walks under it like he has to duck.
When we got home that night we was in the dog's room playing and he spilled some of his milk. John came out of the laundry room and said something about it and I went to see what was on the floor (I didn't know it was his milk) and he came barreling out of the room. We went to get paper towels to wipe it back up but he came running past with the kitchen towel. JJ went in the room and wiped up the mess and then went and put the towel back. John and I pretty much sat there stunned and laughing about it. I don't think he's learned that at our house.
Stephanie and I decided to take the 18th off and have some fun. We started our day off with a workout at Orange Theory. This is my proof that way back when I wanted to try Orange Theory. I even tweeted about it to a local radio DJ and he said he'd go too, but I never made it back in October of 2013 because shortly after that I found out I was pregnant. I haven't been since I had JJ because I have a hard time finding an hour plus to myself to go workout. Stephanie has been going for about 2 years now and has wanted me to go for a long time so we finally did it. I tried to cash in on JohnJay's promise to go with and he asked us where we were going but I think he's still on the air when we went. Oh well, it was a good workout and allowed us to go 'guilt free' to Shake Shack.
Shake Shack is new to the Valley and it's big back East I hear. Doesn't it look delicious? It was. It was totally worth taking the day off and driving to Scottsdale for.
It's well documented that I have a major love affair with salsa; specifically with the salsa guy who comes to my work once a month. Well I found out that he comes to the Gilbert Farmer's Market. So I was very eager to get out there and restock. It was a nice little farmer's market with a bunch of different booths. I think we'll go back again soon and spend a little more time. JJ liked playing in the water though. He had so much fun with it that we decided to run to Target to get him a pool.
Ok it's sort of a long story BUT when we got hockey tickets back in December we did a flex pack with 10 tickets. You can take 10 people to one game or 1 person to 10 games or however you want to use the vouchers. So we purchased 4 tickets, Nick and Shar got 4, and Kim bought 2. We went to the game in December; the 6 of us, then the 4 of us went in January. There is our 10 right? Well.... when we went to pick up the tickets in February they handed me the 4 tickets for that night plus 4 more vouchers. I knew/assumed what had happened was that when my sales rep put the 4 tickets for the February game at will call someone was supposed to pull the 4 vouchers but they didn't. We looked them over and didn't really see any way to track the tickets to us so we made plans to go to another game.
Well we got out to the ticket booth to trade in our vouchers and got told they were no good. We played dumb or got lucky and some of the sales rep were there and asked what was going on and took the vouchers and a few seconds later we were upgraded to the 6th row center ice with club level access. It was freaking awesome!
We decided to check out the club level first where we ran into Tyson Nash, one of the Coyote broadcasters and a former player. They offer a buffet on the club level that is a little pricey but we decided why not! Besides that plate of food is better food than the supreme nachos I would have gotten. We spent the first period or so up in the club level and then went down to our seats. They were awesome seats up there but I feel a bit too disconnected from the noise and action. The ice seats were great and the crowd around us pretty rowdy so we had fun.
The next day we put out JJ's pool for him. It was definitely cold water and it took him a while to get used to it, but eventually he was pretty much all in.
After the pool and a nap we went for a bike ride to the dollar store for some stuff and then to the park after that! He had a good time climbing around and sliding!
My next picture jumps a week. So let's see during that week we got another granite guy to come give us a quote (yep we're back to that. Been working on this since at least July). I had applied for a different position at work and I interviewed with HR and the department managers and then got an email saying they cancelled the job opening so that was great.
Anyways, last Saturday we had Uncle Nick come watch JJ so we could run and pick out granite. Stephanie and Bart met us to help decide and to bring the donuts. We went a different direction than what we'd picked before. We need two slabs and since we were at the salvage yard they were afraid the two slabs they had wouldn't be similar enough because they weren't cut near each other. They got them out for us and then put another color side by side, etc. But we left there with 2 slabs of granite paid for! The picture below is not our slabs...well one of them is... stay tuned!
I also had been meaning to plan a game night since it's been 6 months or so since we did one. I put it out there to a few people and not only was everyone available to come but we got surprised that some extra family was going to be in town that same time. So I scrapped the game night and we just did a get together the Saturday before Easter. It was John, JJ, and I, Nick's family, Erica, and Nathan, and Sophie, Bryan, and Alex, and their 3 kids, and then Taylor, and Jordan, and Dwight, Misty, and Dexton, and Stephanie, and Bart. 23 people just like that! We just planned for burgers and hot dogs with some sides and dessert. Then my mom suggested that I do an Easter egg hunt and I thought that was a good idea. It's not easy to do an egg hunt here because I was afraid anything chocolate would melt. So it wasn't the best egg hunt candy wise.
I think everyone had fun.... I know I enjoyed visiting with everyone. The food was great. Kids were good (although JJ got really tired and had a hard time going to sleep, but he survived). I absolutely love Bryan and Alex's kids they are so cute and fun to talk to. Miss Sophie too, she was enjoying taking over JJ's chair. I'm just glad it worked out that everyone could see everyone while people were visiting.
After the egg hunt we came back for brownies and ice cream. They were so good. And yes Stephanie, I noticed that you left a small mountain of brownies on my counter. I passed them out to people leaving rather than eat them all. We had a fire to do s'mores but we just never made it out there.
Easter itself was really quiet for us. We didn't even do a basket for JJ. He got some cute clothes from Aunt Stephanie and he did get a coloring book, crayons, and a baseball bat from the Easter bunny.
We spent some time out in the yard that morning. Then JJ took him nap AKA mom took her nap. When he got up after 90 minutes I was surprised but what surprised me more is how grouchy he was. Well he threw a fit and I was ignoring him and he fell back asleep for another hour on the couch while I ate Life cereal and watched Frozen.
Then when he woke back up in a good mood this time we ate dinner on the back patio. I had done a beef roast and we had some leftover other stuff and it was our little Easter dinner. As we were finishing dinner Nick text me that they were going on a bike ride so we went along. We went about 5 miles but we cut it short thinking JJ was about to fall asleep. It was perfect weather for a ride.
To finish out the last week JJ has taken an interest in his Mickey ears. He likes to put them on for short periods of time or put them on me. Crazy that they fit him now.
We had a really rough week with daycare. I don't know what was going on but I was picking him up and he'd either had a nap very early in the day like 9 am, or a 20 minute nap, or whatever. He was just exhausted when I got him and we spent I believe 3 evenings with me sitting in the car after we got home while he took a cat nap. The problem with a cat nap for him is that he wakes up even grouchier. By Friday we spent an evening with him in the living room crying because he was so tired and didn't know what to do and me in the kitchen crying because I knew he was just so tired and didn't know what to do. So we had a talk with daycare about his nap schedule and the following week was a 180 in difference. Then the last week of the month we were at every other day of good naps versus bad naps. So here was one day where we were sitting in the car while he sleeps.
Oh yeah... I decided to run for the board on our HOA. I don't know why I did it. Probably because John kept saying he was going to and then when the form came out to run he didn't do it and then they were asking for some more people to do it so I just impulsively submitted my name with about 15 minutes left. I feel so grown up!
Anyways, we recently met one of the current board members and he recruited us to help pass out flyers for the community BBQ. So we spent an evening walking around passing out flyers. JJ loved it because this dumb black cat kept following us and he thought that was hilarious. Or when I would walk down the sidewalk towards him he'd yell HI! Whatever makes him happy.
