Time goes by too fast...

First of all, I can't believe Colb and I have two kids. We can't even remember what it was like without kids. I know we used to sleep in, go to a ton of movies, stay out super late, and pretty much do whatever we wanted. Think about all the free time we used to have! Of course those days are gone now, (and those of you who don't have kids should take advantage of it) but the funny thing is is that we can't remember doing any of those things. Sure sleeping in and seeing movies whenever is nice, but now that we have two kids, we can't imagine life without them. We wouldn't trade them in for anything. It is amazing how much love you can have for someone. You can't even explain it! I love being a mom and I am so grateful for my two kids. I just can't believe how big they are getting. Now I understand what my mom meant when she used to say, "You won't know how much I love you until you have your own kids." It is true!

Flowers

  Tate loves flowers. She loves to water them, smell them, and of course pick them. I thought Tate would have some fun planting flowers and I decided to put her in charge of watering them. 

After I put the soil in the pots, Seth started crying. When I came back to help Tate, she already started planting the flowers. She is so cute. She didn't know I was watching her, but she was going to plant the flowers without taking them out of the plastic containers. I thought it was the cutest thing. Since we have had the flowers, a morning hasn't gone by without her saying, "Mom, the flowers are hungry. I need to water them." Then she walks into the kitchen, grabs my pitcher, fills it up with water, and waters the flowers. I can't wait until we have a yard full of flowers that she can water for me. 

DREAMS DO COME TRUE...

Tatum's dreams came true when her Grandma and Big Papa took her to Disneyland where she was able to meet some of her favorite princesses. I will never forget the look on her face when she saw the Disney castle, Cinderella and Snow White up close. I seriously got tears in my eyes watching her. I knew she was so excited and couldn't believe that the real Cinderella was right in front of her. The longest line we stood in at Disneyland was the one to meet the princesses. We stood in line for almost two hours, but it was totally worth it. Tate was able to have one on one time with each princess. She talked to them, got her picture with them, and made sure to get their autograph. The line took so long that even Big Papa had to sit down and take a break with some of the girls. :)
Tate also had a blast riding the rides too. She even went on some of the big roller coasters. Her favorite ride was the tea cup ride. She just giggled during the whole thing. I forgot how much fun Disneyland was and it was even more fun being there with Tatum. It was such a magical place for her. She is already planning our next trip back there!
While we were in Cali we took a day to go to the beach. We ended up going to Newport Beach. We ate at this really good seafood place. Of course Tate downed her fish. I love that she loves sea food!! She ate Lobster, rice, and Salmon.
This trip was so much fun and it was a lot of fun going with my mom and Keith. I also love watching them with Tatum and Seth. They are so sweet to them and I know that Tate and Seth love them so much. (Especially since Tate talks about them all the time and Seth giggled the first time for my mom.) Thanks for being such great grandparents and thanks for such a fun trip!
 Princess Tate with Cinderella.
Tatum and Pocahontas.
Tate and Snow White
Sleeping Beauty
Big Papa taking a break from the princess line with some of the other girls. 
Tatum with Minnie

As you can see, Seth was really excited for the parade to start. 

We took about a million pictures at Disneyland, so I just decided to do a slide show instead of posting them all individually. So don't miss out on more cute pictures below!!!!

Riverfront Park

As you know, we are now living in Spokane, Washington. It is so pretty here. Spokane is covered with trees and The Spokane River runs straight through downtown Spokane. The river rises out of Lake Coeur d'Alene in the Idaho Panhandle, which we are about thirty minutes from.  We haven't been able to check out many places here yet, but we did go to Riverfront Park. This is a really pretty park. Riverfront Park surrounds Spokane River. I think there are five different falls to see. There are also many different bridges to walk across to see the different falls. We also rode the Skyride that crosses over one of the rivers biggest falls. Here are some pictures..

Spokane River

Picture taken from one of the bridges.





Sky Ride
The big Radio Flyer Slide
Miss Tate
Seth on the Sky Ride

The Knolls

We went to The Knolls while we were in Utah with my family. It was so much fun to just relax and ride around. Tate had a blast playing in all the sand. It was like a never ending sand box. She is now trying to talk us into getting her a "camping puppy" like Scout. 

Seth went for a wild ride on the dirt bike!!!! 
 Tatum loved playing with Scout. Scout is Jesi and Mac's new puppy. He is so cute. 
Jesi and Uncle Maccie
Little Miss Tate had a cute helmet that her Grandma and Big Papa bought her. 

Colby doing what he loves most, dirt biking! He is already talking about getting Tate on a little 50. 
So serious!!

This is how my camera got sand all in it. It took me about 30 minutes to get all the sand out of the lens. I love that girl!

BFF

Don't worry Annie, I would never forget about you and the time we had together in Utah! :) Annie, Alana, and I have been friends forever. I wish I could hang out with them more. We were able to get together in Utah, but not as much as I hoped for. Annie has the cutest little boy ever. His name is Boston. His hair is amazing as you can see. I put a bow in his hair one night while we were at dinner and Dave (Annie's husband) was not that happy about it. I thought it was cute. I won't post the picture on the blog Dave. Anyway, Boston and Seth are only 2 1/2 months apart and Alana is having a little girl in October. I am so excited about us having kids so close together. It will be so much fun, especially if I ever live in Utah again. Thanks for being such good friends, especially you Annie. Ha Ha jk Lan. I miss you guys a bunch!

Tornado Chasers

I am finally getting around to updating our blog! The past few weeks have been crazy!!! I am just going to start at the beginning, starting with our last night in Milwaukee and ending with our final destination....Spokane (with a stop in Utah on the way). The last few days in Wisconsin were spent saying our "See you soon's" to some of our closest friends/family. I am so glad we were able to go through the whole med school thing together. It made the four years go by so fast. We are going to miss you all!!! 

It is crazy to think that Colby and I had spent more of our time together (married) in Milwaukee than we did in Utah. It was kind of sad leaving because so many BIG events happened while living in Wisconsin. Anyway, back to our awesome story about our trip to Spokane. Keep scrolling down. I will give you pictures along the way. 

                                Me (No, I am not breastfeeding), Jamie, and Les 
Sam gave Taters a locket to keep close to her heart while they are apart. It has a picture of each of them inside it. It makes me feel so bad when she asks me if she can go play at Sammy's house. Tonight I told her that we are going to go to church tomorrow and she will be able to make some new friends. She asked me if Sam was going to be there. I told her no and tried to explain to her that he lives in Wisconsin and she told me that he could just drive here tomorrow after church. She also asked Colby today if Sam was going to come see our new house since she saw his new house. SAD!!!!!
The whole gang

Jared, Colby, and Jer-Bear

That next day, WEDNESDAY, ABF dropped off the trailer and we started loading the truck. Thanks for all your help Jared, Cameron, and Micah!!!!

ABF picked up the trailer that night and I can't even explain to you how loud Tatum started crying/screaming. She was so sad and confused. She didn't understand why this truck took her dollhouse, jeep, and all her toys. She literally ran outside and was screaming so loud that our cute neighbor Pete came out to see if she was o.k. We calmed her down with a 2lb bag of M&M's. That night we made it to Iowa City. 

THURSDAY....

We were on the road again that next morning and were excited when we reached Omaha, Nebraska. That meant we were half way to Utah. Colby's parents called us to check in and told us to be careful because there were severe weather warnings and tornado watches throughout Nebraska. We didn't think much of it at the time because the weather looked fine with blue skies and white fluffy clouds. It all started once we reached mile marker 280. 

Let me just tell you that we are now officially TORNADO CHASERS!!!!

Tatum had to go to the bathroom again so we decided to stop at the next rest stop we saw. Right before reaching the rest stop it started to get really windy and cloudy. Once we stopped the wind was pretty bad. Colby was getting Tate out of the car and was worried that the tree next to us was going to fall over because of the creaking noise it kept making. He ran her into the bathroom and as soon as they got back in the car it started to rain and get more windy. The first thing Colby says while pulling out of the rest stop was that the weather looked like tornado weather. Well it was!!!! The clouds started to get so low, I am not kidding when I say almost as low as some of the telephone poles, and it got so dark. I have never seen it get so dark so fast in the middle of the day. I have also never seen the sky look so scary before. You could see the clouds above us rotating and the clouds were moving so fast. The wind was blowing like crazy and it started to rain harder and harder. Then the "real" tornado chasers pass us on the road. Everyone on I-80 slowed down to about 25 miles and hour or slower because they couldn't see due to the rain. Then the rain drops got bigger and bigger and don't worry, turned into hail, the size of golf balls. 

I forgot to mention that we are in our expedition pulling our corolla. Anyway, people on the freeway start pulling over under the overpasses because they didn't want the hail to destroy their cars. We found a spot under an overpass with just enough room to cover our expedition, but not our corolla. There were probably about three other cars under the same one. We tried to drive out from under the overpass but we were now blocked in. We couldn't go in reverse because of the type of trailer we were pulling. We could hear the hail pounding our corolla. You could see the hail bouncing off the freeway. Two other cars decided to stop under the freeway in the slow lane to the left of us, which means they are making I-80 a one lane road. Diesels were flying by honking. Yeah, we decided and learned later that it is probably not smart to stop under a freeway pass when cars can't see where they are going and when you can't go in reverse, but what do you do, keep driving and get nailed by golf balls where it can destroy your car which means you will have to pay lots of money or stay under an underpass and risk the chances of getting hit by a tornado. Plus, we were just following the lead of the local Nebraskans!!! :) Anyway, we did both. Our corolla got nailed with hail and a tornado touched down within a couple miles of us while we were under the overpass. Once the hail stopped the cars in front of us started to pull out. We were on our way again. Then we came to a stop within five minutes of leaving the overpass. Two diesels got in a wreck because of the weather so we sat there for a bit while they opened up one lane. Right after opening the lane, the weather started getting bad again. The sky got all dark and it started raining again. Don't worry, a second tornado touches down another few miles behind us. It crossed I-80 and knocked down a bunch of telephone poles. We just kept driving to drive out of it and once we did the sky got so blue. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. 

We stopped at the next rest stop because Tate had to go to the bathroom again. We all got out and noticed about 8 dings all over our corolla. Then we noticed a hole in the back window of the car, but not just a hole, the whole window was shattered. We didn't know what to do with it and since the hole was in the lower back corner of the window we didn't think it would cause the whole window to blow out. But it did!!!!!! We were on the freeway and Colby looked back to check on the car and he saw the whole window blow out. He said it looked like a parachute. Now we were just hoping that nothing would fly out of the car window while we were pulling over. We stopped again to figure out what to do with our car. Luckily, we had the roll of plastic that we used to wrap our couch in the back of our car. So we wrapped our car since we had awhile until we were in Utah. We still had another night at a hotel and our corolla was packed with our bikes, helmets, etc. 

Tatum was super happy at the time!

We started driving again and in about ten minutes we saw all a bunch of the wrap flapping in the wind. AWESOME!!!! We pulled over again and Colb ran to the gas station and bought some duct tape. 

We were finally on the road again. We made it to our next hotel only about five hours later than we wanted. Once we got to Utah we had the window replaced. 

So that is our Tornado story. Even though it was a long drive with dents and a broken window we were glad nothing worse happened, such as getting sucked up by a tornado! :) 

 OH, but don't worry, our car problems don't end here.  We were headed out to the Knolls to go dirt biking and four wheeling with my family and a piece of rubber flew up from under neath the car next to us and hit our side view mirror and shattered the mirror on our expedition.  I just have to add this in too so lets just jump ahead for a little bit. We got home from Disney Land two days ago and the starter in our corolla is going out so the car wouldn't start in the parking lot. All I can say is $$$$$$.

Anyway, the rest of the drive from Utah to Spokane was beautiful. We love Spokane so far and are excited to be here. It is gorgeous here! I will post more pictures tomorrow of Spokane, the Knolls, and our trip to Disney Land.