Crashed!!

So I, Brad, had just finished uploading the final video and pictures all ready to post a beautiful blog and guess what happened?

The Laptop went white and then a pretty little file folder appeared with a question mark.

So we take it to the nearest mall... 10 miles away and they have an apple store. The apple guy hears about our mysterious question mark icon and he frowns and says, "umm that's bad. Do you ever back up your files?"

And so it turns out that our hard drive got busted and we need to install a new one!

So I went to the Fry's Electronics a couple days later and I bought one. But the trouble is that our screw driver's too big for the little laptop screws. So then I think, "hey, that's about as small as eye glass screws!" So now i'm at school and I rummaged through my 2 thousand dollars worth of equipment and I found this flat head tiny screw driver! So hopefully that will work!!!!

I'll go home today and try and get the new hard drive in! And then we'll just have to re-install all our programs. They're mailing us the soft ware now. So yeah. That's all fun stuff that's causing the current "no picture dilemma"

But here's a good question:

How's school Brad?

Well seeing as how the Single greatest reason for us to move to Houston was for me to attend school here I'd say yes that is a very appropriate question!

School is good. I started monday. The first day I was introduced to 3 classes and one lab. The second day I was introduced to 3 MORE classes and one more lab. And today I get introduced to 2 MORE labs.

So I'm learning about the EYE right? Here's the specific break down:

Class 1: Optics (a physics class about light)
Class 2: Neuro Anatomy (I have to learn what every piece of the brain is called and how it works)
Class 3: Optometry (I get to learn the basics about how to act around patients, and how to collect their history and start testing them)
Class 4: Vision Science (I learn about the structures of the eye ball, its anatomy and how light is absorbed, transduced into brain signals, and interpreted
Class 5: Physiology and Molecular Biology (This is hard stuff about genetics and bio chemistry YUCK)
Class 6: Anatomy (This is a physician's version of College anatomy except we don't have to learn about the limbs. YES!)

So yeah. My point is that learning to become an eye doctor is complicated. I'll take many many semesters just like this in the following years from now. I'm pretty much finding out why everyone wants the pay of a doctor but Nobody wants to do the work. Ug it's like 25 credit hours and none of it's easy!!! Completely different from the U of U for sure!!

I do like however my classmates! There's no bullies, or pot heads. No smart aleks, or air heads. Everyone's got integrity and confidence. Everyone's kind and quick to smile. Everyone's ... almost as nice as BYU students actually ha ha ;-)

There are 3 other church members in my class, they all went to BYU. I get along with those guys the best since we all sit together near the back of the class.

But anyways classes start at 9am and go till noon, and then we have labs from 1pm until either 4 or 7pm depending on the day. Wednesday is my long day, that's why I'm typing this now.

So here's the problem though... I need time to study and so it's not a good idea to study at home because of Isaac the crazy baby. So I've opted to study at school. I don't don't EVER EVERY want to drive home during rush hour. So that means if I'm here at school, I need to either leave by 4pm or wait until 7:30pm to leave. The traffic is SO BAD from school to my house that the travel time triples or worse during rush hour!!!

And what do I then do about the morning commute? Well I just come early before rush hour!!! I leave my house at 6:00am. (that's 5am in Utah) And I drive for 30 minutes. Then what do I do? Well, I'm really happy about this! I go to the AMAZING GYM that's across the street from our optometry building!! It's the university fitness center and it has tons of courts and pools and bikes, and an indoor track and weights and racket ball and pretty much everything.

I pretty much have learned that when I'm fat and lazy my brain gets tired easily. So if I keep myself healthy, exercising everyday, I'm gonna have a SUPER BRAIN!

But yeah, I'm really happy about this gym and being forced to use it in order to avoid traffic is the best motivation ever.

I do feel bad for Amy cause she's told me she's a little jealous of me getting a free gym membership, and getting to socialize and stuff. As hard as school is I do feel a little bad for her. She's stuck at home and starting to create imaginary friends cause she has no one to talk to. So the moral of the story is. Call Amy during the day and that will make her so so happy!!

love you all!
have a good week!

hello?

Hey!
Well Janet told us she read this blog, and I think my mom read it too... maybe my grandma Geddes read it... but besides that NOBODY COMMENTED or mentioned anything!

We'll keep blogging this month... but maybe we'll switch to simple emails unless people start liking the Blog.

So our dryer had tons of problems but I managed to learn how to fix them all. Now our dryer works great. And then the Washer broke last night!! HEADACHE!

So I called up the guy and long story short we managed to buy a Kenmore Washer off of him for 60 bucks more and he drove all the way to our house, diagnosed the problem with our washer and he hooked up the new one and hauled off the old broken one. It turns out that for a number of reasons the transmission broke.

But yay! we're up and running again!! We were gonna spend today getting ourselves some Texan drivers licenses but it looks like ya gotta get your car registered all Texany first! So we'll do that later I guess. Our car expires in September.

Well... I have one last orientation dinner tomorrow, then I have Saturday free. Then I have Sunday to pray, and then all heck breaks loose and school begins monday.

It looks like Amy and I decided on me leaving every morning at 6am so that I miss rush hour, and then I come home AFTER rush hour at about 8pm. Everyday. So I'll be packing breakfast lunch AND dinner! I'm really wanting to get all my studying done at school so that for the 2 hours I'm home everyday it'll not be bothered with homework.
Wish me luck in finding someone to carpool with k?

We found "our" library. It's beautiful and wonderful. Isaac's playing in the kids room now. That boy is drinking a TON. I punched holes in his bottle lids so that he isn't sucking every second of the day. With the holes he chugs and then stops to breath.. like us adults ya know? But man Isaac is totally filling up his diapers like crazy. I think I've been peed on 2 times in the last 2 days from him leaking out the sides.

Sorry no pictures. Life is just too busy still. We're almost done re organizing the house and decorating it so it looks picture worthy. Maybe next post like saturday or monday you'll get pictures!!

With Love
-Brad and Amy

Texas

Texas!!

Howdy Folks, Weall in Texas now! What a horribly busy week we’ve had. And this is our first official blog update to you Utahns.

Remember though, we expect to be receiving updates from yall too ok? Don’t just read about us without telling us about your lives too ok?

Alrighty, well believe it or not, this is Brad and I’m writing this blog post on Microsoft Word and NOT on the internet. Sadly we have no internet by our house. This means that if we want to update our status or check emails we have to drive 10 whole minutes and considering our budget and the heat outside I’m afraid we won’t be online to tell you about it immediately. It may take a few days ok.

So one week ago we went with Tracy and Valerie to their ward and after sacrament Amy and I said goodbye to our baby and drove off!

There’s a hundred ways Houston is different from Salt Lake City and it was fun to drive there because we got to see all the changes one at a time.

We drove south on I-15 until Spanish fork where we headed off more Westward to Moab. I really wanted to explore Canyonlands and show Amy all those cool Arches (cause she’s never been down there) But we didn’t, due to the fact that my Penske moving truck only got 10 miles per gallon.

Ha ha I remember thinking that it took FOREVER to get to Moab but wow, that was only half of that days drive. We kept on driving and finally got to Monticello. The temple there is kinda small but the Angel Moroni makes it look Templish enough to recognize. We left Salt Lake with gas prices around 3.09 per gallon. In southern Utah we saw gas for up to 3.19!! Once we got into New Mexico I noticed a significant drop in gas to 2.89.

New Mexico was weird. They totally have a way more “native American” culture feel going on there. We drove through Farmington and wowzers…. The 3 hours or so to Albuqueque was the longest 3 hours of my life. There was NOTHING but dirt and bushes the whole time. We stayed in Albuqueque over night. It was still a dry climate and that day the weather was pretty much identical to Salt Lake.

The next day we only had to drive 8 hours! (Except we lost an hour by moving into the Texan Time Zone) We drove through southern New Mexico past tons of Indian Reservations, and lots of “don’t drive drunk” billboards. There were lots of hitchhikers during this stretch. The Utah and Colorado mountains disappeared and turned into plateaus and mesas which eventually just turned into rolling boring hills. We drove though a couple towns looking for lunch in New Mexico but the towns were all dead and shut down. Right before the Texan border we noticed 2 new restaurants!!!! Church’s Chicken, and Long John Silver! I convinced Amy to eat at long John Silvers cause they were combined with an A&W. It was mostly fried fish and not that good. After that we crossed the border…

Texas was noticeably different because the towns along the road were not dead! All the restaurants were open and the gas stations in service. Oh and guess what? Gas went down again! This time the average price was 2.69 cents. As we kept driving through texas the prices kept going down! It started raining really bad and both Amy and I were looking around for tornados cause that’s what the drive was like…just like the movie twister! Most was flat flat flat! And you know what happens? The sky looks ten times bigger out here without the mountains and hills getting in the way. The first big Texan city we passed through was Lubbock. Amy and I got separated here though. She turned and I didn’t see her. About 10 minutes later I used our precious emergency phone and called her. We decided to just meet at the hotel and drive through Texas all alone rather than try to backtrack and find each other.

After about an hour the rainstorm stopped and I noticed Amy driving in front of a bunch of Semi’s up ahead. She was so happy to see my big yellow moving truck when I finally caught up to her! We drove many more hours and guess what was cool? The windmill fields!! There were these windmills that were HUGE. Their propellers were ginormous! All spinning slowly in the wind, wow, it reminded me of Mission Impossible 3 where those helicopters totally get taken down by the windmills. Anyways imagine like 500 of those huge windmill and what a sight!! As far as the eye can see! I loved seeing those the most. We pulled into our hotel in Abilene Texas that night.

The next day we only had to drive like 5 hours! YAY. We were pretty sick of driving. To be honest I don’t remember anything about this drive. Except for the gas prices went down to 2.46 !!!! Go Houston yay! On this last drive we had to deal with more “house closing” problems yuck but it was all eventually taken care of.

I think we pulled into our Hotel around 6pm. We ate some Wendy’s and fell asleep pretty fast, but yay, our driving was over and we had made it to HOUSTON!!

The next day we went to Close on our house at 2pm. It lasted until after 5pm. Blah blah blah, lots of signing work. Right after, we headed into our brand new house and started unloading the truck. Luckily 6 strong men from the ward came to help us and the truck was emptied in under 30 minutes. That was awesome of them! We knew we got a good ward. There was however one casualty. Amy bought a beautiful bedroom set when she was like 2 years old and we had decided to transport it… Her lovely perfect dresser got a humungous scratch dent right on the top! OH NO! oh well though, we kinda gambled on that decision to bring precious cargo. We’ll just put something over it to hide it now!

We pretty much had everything just thrown into our living room that day. That night I stayed up late and set up Amy’s big fancy bed and we had some place to sleep. The house however had 2 problems. The house smelled like stinky smoke and the garage smelled like stinky death.

The next day we dedicated to 4 things. Find a washer and Dryer, get electricity turned on, get water turned on, and find a lawn mower. After a long and hard day we did it ALL!!!!!

The next day we works our tushies off unloading boxes, filling up cupboards, yadda yadda yadda and wow what a bunch of crap we sure had! At about 8pm that night we had some very special visitors… Isaac and his Grandparents!!! They had driven to Vegas, flown to Long Beach, and then flown to Austin. Then they drove to Houston and boy let me tell you Isaac was happy to see Amy and me. He was also happy to get out of that car!!!

The next day was Saturday and Tracy took me to a home depot to shop for stuff to fix the house and Valerie took Amy to the grocery store to fill our cupboards up with the right food for Isaac and us. By noon Tracy and Valerie had to go. They were the last ones to say goodbye to us. We’re happy that Isaac likes the house. He LOVES his room. All those toys of his that we had packed away were suddenly back! His crib was back! His high chair was back! And his parents were back! And of course we let him watch his “Little Einsteins” addiction here too.

Isaac has slept very good here, he wears shorts and a light T shirt instead of wool outfits with footsies. It’s hot. This morning we woke up and went to church. It was fun meeting our ward. Our ward is about 15 minutes away. We go to the “Spring Branch Ward” in the “Cyprus Stake.” The ward’s very different from our last. Here there’s no elder’s quorum!!! So me and about 5 elders met with the 5 high priests. I’m a “group” member ha ha. There were 6 young men doing the sacrament, so that’s cook having them in the ward, and I think there was about 3-5 young women. It’s a very well rounded ward. There were about 3 babies Isaac’s age. Over all it’s just about 2/3 the size of the wards that we grew up in. Except the ward boundaries are HUGE. Even in Honduras I was never in a ward this big ha ha.

The bishop pulled us into his office and we explained how busy I was and how much time Amy has on her hands and how Amy plays the harp and stuff, so hopefully he gives me a calling in the primary and Amy becomes the boss of everything. We really like our ward. It’s small but very simple :-D. Tonight we’re going to have dinner with a couple who invited us to hamburgers!!! They’re so nice!

So yeah, we went to dinner and it was fun and YUMMY. There were 4 couples who all showed up with their kids. Isaac is so weird, he doesn't do well with children. He's an adult baby. So he freaks out when he sees kids sitting on top of each other, and if he gets run over, it's pretty much the end of the world. Isaac really entertains adults way better with his kisses and faces he pulls and such but he goes blank around other kids. But yeah the next day after playing in a room full of kids guess what? Isaac got a runny nose! Figures. He still has it today too!

Oh and I guess I learned why our ward is so oddly shaped. It turns out that the bulk of the ward is very transient, and has developed a reputation for not producing any leadership. So they have extended our neighborhood into being members of this ward so that we can keep it alive. So when the bishop found out that we lived up north, he automatically thought "leadership!" He's super happy that we're planning on staying here for another 5 years or so. (he he, did I forget to mention that I may do a residency???)

So yeah, we went to Orientation on Monday and I became the most popular kid in my class. I'm the one with the baby! Isaac blew about 20 kisses and was the attention of the meetings and speeches with his giggles and cries.

I got my optometry equipment and a bunch of other stuff today. I know my schedule now too. (Thursday is my Short Day).

But yeah. I'm scared of school, it's gonna hurt! 23 credit hours this semester of HARD HARD classes is not so cool. So pray for me k?

Another funny new thing is that last night and tonight the school is sponsoring a social activity... ha ha they had a party at a bar downtown and the school set up a bar tab. Drinks are free!!! They really want you to socialize and that's how it's done around here! One of the Administrators gave a speech today and said that ya gotta balance out all the hard work with fun! "Optometry and Beer are synonomous" she said ha ha.

Anyways it's a crazy "non-internet" week. please give us a call ok? Love yall
-Amy and Brad

Isaac blowing kisses to himself

Here's a funny little video Brad took on our camping trip :)

Our Honduran Adventure

We spent the first two weeks of this month in Honduras. I think that this post may end up being a bit long- so you can just look at the pictures if I get too detailed for you. First off- as a disclaimer with the pictures- before we left for Honduras Brad told us to look as ugly as possible. No make-up, straighteners, blow dryers, and we were to wear frumpy clothes. All for our own safety. I went so far as to go to the DI to buy some ugly clothes. So please ignore the uglyness in the pictures. Good news is- we didn't get robbed, raped, or kidnapped while there! Yay!




To start off with, I'd like to state some things I learned about Honduras:




1. Most cars, or more specifically taxi's, are too crappy to have seat belts in them. I have no idea how some of those cars got us from point A to point B




2. No matter how poor of a Honduran you are- you always have a TV. Even if you have cardboard boxes as wallpaper, you still have a TV in the room




3. Honduran food makes my tummy sick, and makes me spend lots of time in the bathroom




4. Red lights are used more as a yield sign




5. Everyone listens to the same crappy music where every song has the exact same beat. Kinda got sick of that.




6. The people are very warm and giving.




So, here's what we did:




July 5th- We left the wonderful USA and spent all day traveling. We flew into San Pedro Sula at about 7:30, went straight to the hotel, and called it a night.




July 6th- We took a 4 hour bus ride to Copan. It was such a cute little city. We got there a little late to see the ruins for as long as we wanted to, so we explored the shops, and ate a local restaurant. A guy convinced us to go horseback riding in the morning to the ruins.




July 7th- We woke up bright and early, to meet the horse people. We had the cutest little Honduran guide, who took us up a mountain. He was in such good shape, at 58 years old, he walked us up and down the mountain with no horse. He said everything in Spanish, so Brad interpreted for us, as he educated us about cows, and rocks, and fruits, and whatever else we saw on the way.



Here he is trying to talk to Stephie. We didn't understand much when he talked to us though.

On the way up, this was one of our views. SO SO GREEN! It was gorgeous. When we got to the top of the mountain there was a little town up there. The people that lived in this town are closely related to the Mayans. As soon as we rode in, a few of them came up to us to try and sell us their dolls. We bought one made out of corn husks. The guide informed us that our horses needed to rest, so he'd take us to the "hospital". We thought it was kinda weird to take us to a hospital. So we walked along a trail in the jungle for about 15 minutes. Pretty soon we came to a pile of rocks. That's what I thought it was at first- but it was actually Mayan Ruins! You could see a frog carved in those rocks. Our guide went on to explain that this is where the Mayans would take their women to have babies.
He sat down in the birthing spot and reenacted having a baby. It was pretty much hilarious. Then he said if that spot didn't work cause the legs couldn't spread far enough apart, they'd sit on the frog head. He then had me sit there to reenact it all.
He had us pull out the corn husk doll to be the "baby". We were all laughing pretty hard, as he coached pretended like I was having a baby, and pulled out his hat to catch it. Afterwards, we rode our horses back down the mountain, and to the actual ruins park. It was so amazing to see! Here are just a few of the pictures we took:

This was their ball court
This is the mother of all the pyramids there, that they are renovating. Every step has hieroglyphics on it, so they have it all covered to protect it. They are still piecing it back together.
Here is brad in the tunnels inside some of the ruins. We weren't supposed to go in because we didn't pay for it. So we got yelled at afterwards.
A view from some really tall ruins.
This is the residential area, where people lived
An alter beautifully carved
Overall the ruins were amazing. It's something I can check off of my bucket list. After the ruins we went on the longest bus ride ever to Tegucigalpa. It took about 9 hours. Who knew you could spend so much time traveling in such a small country?



July 8th-

The next morning we were off to find a local family, one of the places Brad stayed as a missionary. Our plan was to stay a couple nights at their house. Plus, they currently have 4 kids going to BYU, so we hauled a big suitcase from their kids down to give them. We looked forward to not having to lug that around anymore. After a few tries, we finally found a taxi that was willing to take us to their house. Their house was across the city and not easy to get to. Brad was really hoping it wouldn't rain, because this family lives up a really steep muddy hill. When it rains, it's like driving up a hill in snow. Just as we were getting to the hills, of course it started to rain. The taxi did pretty good, until one part. There were like 3 cars stuck on this super steep hill, and a couple cars coming down. I was praying no one rolled into each other. After spinning out the wheels a few times, he reversed and we went to the bottom of the hill, waited for traffic to clear out, then took off as fast as he could. Now remember how I said the taxi's are super crappy cars without seat belts? So it was quite the experience. After that we finally made it up! I think if I were a taxi driver there, I'd avoid that part of the city like the plague.




I didn't get any pictures of this area, because apparently it wasn't the best area to be pulling out a nice fancy camera. The family said we could go outside as long as we didn't carry more then 2 or 3 limps on us (like 15 cents). I guess the area had gotten worse since Brad had lived there, and the church hasn't sent gringo missionaries there for a few years. It's a little nerve racking if the church won't send their gringo's there.....




That night we took a taxi down to Centro to go shopping. The dad of the family accompanied us so that we could find our way back.




July 9th-




This was the day we rented a car. We took a taxi to the airport, got our car, then went for a ride. The first stop? Valle de Angeles. A beautiful town about 45 minutes out of Tegucigalpa. This is where we did most of our shopping. Poor stephie was really sick at this time though, so she sat in the car for most of the time. After a couple hours there, we took another drive to the city of Danli. Bradly's first area.




We were so happy to see there was a Chester's Chicken there, the only American restaurant in sight. My tummy had had enough Honduran food. We visited so many wonderful people in Danli.
This is a picture of Brad in front of a house he helped build as a missionary. The family had 2 or 3 similar looking houses on their property. I also go eaten by mosquitoes here. Still hoping Yellow Fever isn't in my future.
This is another family of a bunch of girls that all loved Brad.




After spending a night in Danli, We went back to Tegucigalpa, where we went to Applebees! I got cleansed there- it was the best meal of my life.

July 11th- After spending another night with the Tegucigalpa family, we spent the night with another old house of Brad's in El Siteo- in the outskirts of Tegucigalpa.
This is a picture of their Pila. The city will give them water like twice a week, they fill it up, and thats what they have to use until they get water again. After going to church, the family took us up to the Picachu Jesus statue. It was so beautiful!
This is all of us, minus the dad of the baby, he was taking the picture. The city of Tegucigalpa is behind us.
This is the famous statue that looks over the entire city.
There were beautiful gardens around the statue, including bamboo!
As we were wandering through the gardens, we suddenly realized it was going to rain any second. So we started basically running for the car. Just as we got to the car, it was a downpour! As we drove down the mountain, there were rivers of water running down all around us. It was pretty crazy.

July 12th- This day was a traveling day. We took a bus from Tegucigalpa to La Ceiba, then took the ferry up to the island of Roatan. It took almost 12 hours total.
Brad on the ferry eating a sandwich. Bad idea- he threw it up an hour later. That was one bumpy crazy ride.
We spent July 13-15 on the island, and is was so beautiful! We had the opportunity to go snorkeling and sea kayaking, and really had a blast. We were so freakin excited to get back to the US when it was all over though- we were both really missing our baby too. So in the end I at least learned to be very grateful for all of the riches that we have in this country. A couple days ago I was taking Isaac on a walk through the neighborhood, and I looked around and thought how there is nothing like this neighborhood in Honduras. Beautiful sidewalks and roads. Everyone has a lawn, and a good sturdy house with AC. We are really so blessed.

Crazy Summer Madness

OK, so as many of you already know, we have had a crazy summer so far.

First off, we went to Virginia on a family vacation with the Larson's for Christelle's graduation. It was so so fun! Here's a few pics of the trip:

Ferry Ride at Busch Gardens

Smithsonian Dinosaur

Virginia Beach

Picture with Grover at Busch Gardens

Washington Monument when we drove up to DC

On the train

Crazy scary fun roller coaster

We got back from Virginia on Father's Day night. Tuesday night it was time for Brad and I to go to Houston in search of a house-leaving Isaac with his grandma's. Our plan was to leave at midnight on Jetblue standby buddy tickets to JFK in New York, then fly from New York to Austin, then drive 2 hours to Houston. Reaching Houston at about 2 to 3 PM the next day. Using standby tickets this was the cheapest fastest route. Still a huge trip though. So the day we were supposed to leave, things were not looking promising as far as getting on the JFK flight. Unfortunatly Jetblue only flies to 2 destinations from Salt Lake, making it easy for the flights to fill up, and harder to get on standby.

So we decided a plan B trip would be to drive all night to Vegas, and get on a plane there at 7 am, cause it's easy to fly standby from Vegas. Plus my grandparents just bought a house down there, so we'd have a place to park our car. Before we jumped to plan B, we thought we'd at least show up at the airport to see if there was any chance of someone dropping out, and us getting on. We went to the airport around 9, checked in, and started the waiting game. As it came closer and closer to boarding time, we got more and more nervous- wondering if we were going to have to make a long 6 1/2 hour drive to Vegas that night. Finally it was time to board... but they weren't handing out standby seating assignments yet. As the plane was boarding we went up to the ticket man to see if we were gonna make it on. We got a smile, and he said, "you guys will make it"!! YES! We made it on, and we didn't have to drive all night.

So needless to say, by the time we got to Houston the next day, we were positively exhausted.

We got a hotel room, and crashed. The next day our first day of house shopping began. I could go on and on with the details of our house search- but I'll just write it all up in a nutshell. The first day we looked in northern Houston, a little farther away from Brad's school with a grumpy realtor. The second day we looked and condo's and apartments as a plan B in case we didn't get a house in time. The third day we looked in Southern Houston, a little closer to the school with a really good realtor. It ends up we liked a house in Northern Houston the most, so we decided to put an offer in the the good realtor. We decided to offer 6,000 bucks less then asking price (which is alot when you are dealing with a house as cheap as this), expecting a counter offer. The next day we got a call from our realtor saying our offer had been accepted!! We were so excited! We are going to get a house! The house we chose has been basically completely redone- so it will really feel like we are moving into a new house. So we officially had a successful Houston trip.

Other then house shopping, we did a few more fun things in Houston- I'm having too much trouble posting pics, so you can look at facebook for that. :)

So the following Monday came around- the day we were supposed to go home. We got word from Brad's mom that there was no chance of flying into Salt Lake on standby and there wouldn't be for days. Ugh.. not again. So plan B- fly into Vegas. So we drove our car back to Austin, jumped on a plane to Long Beach, then finally got into Las Vegas where my grandparents were nice enough to pick us up and let us stay with them. By this point, as you can imagine, I was missing my little boy so so much! It was so sad to see the plane leave to Salt Lake from Long Beach, and not be able to get on it. At least we'd get to see my grandparents new house. We ended up spending a day and a half in Vegas- then finally started the long drive home. 7 hours later we pulled into my parents driveway, and I could finally see Isaac again! I ran up to greet him, and he looked at me like I was a stranger, wanted nothing to do with me! It totally broke my heart. When Brad approached him, we was just fine with his daddy- but he seriously didn't even want me to hold him. We finally figured that he was mad at me for abandoning him or something. I think nothing breaks a mother's heart like her child not wanting her after not seeing each other for a week. So I'm slowly getting his forgivness back. He'll now let me hold him, but still doesn't want to give me "loves" or anything. It's even more heartbreaking to think that I have to leave him again on Monday for Honduras :( We'll be gone for 11 days, I don't know how I'll handle that. Plus this last week that we've been seperated, Isaac has grown and learned so much! He is basically running around now- when we left a week ago he was barely able to take a few steps. So I'm sure I'll miss so much in the next couple weeks too.

Ok, I'm done complaining about being seperated from my baby. Over-all we had a wonderful trip, and we got a house! We are so dang excited- and life is good. Brad, me, and my sister Steph will be in Honduras from the 5th-16th, so I'm sure I'll have some fun stories to tell then. Happy 4th of July everyone! Thanks for reading my novel- ha ha. This turned out a bit longer then I thought it would.

Learning to walk

Isaac is seriously so so fun right now. He's a little sponge that soaks in everything around him. he is learning things so fast! For instance, last week we were at church, and he was babbling and being a little too loud during sacrament meeting. So Brad looked at him, put his finger up to his mouth and shushed him. What was Isaac's reaction? He shushed him back with his finger to his mouth! It's so fun to see him imitate everything we do. :) He probably doesn't understand exactly what shushing means, but he's quieter when he's shushing us then when he's talking ha ha. He can now show you where his ears, eyes, toes, mouth, and belly button are. About half the time he gets his nose right. He has a little toy that says "blaa", so he likes to yell "blaa" back at it. His first word is poop- and he's trying to say many other words. Since we live with birds now, he takes special interest in them. Everytime we go outside, he'll look for the birds, then do sign language for "bird" when he hears them.



At breakfast I always put cheerios on his tray for him to snack on, and he always drops some on the floor. Of course the bird is right there on the floor waiting for them, then Isaac enjoys watching the bird eat his cheerios. This morning, Isaac tried eating his cheerios by sticking his head down to the tray, and eating without his hands. I then realized that he was trying to eat like the bird! What a funny little boy.

Finally, Isaac is learning to walk, and doing quite well. For quite some time, he's been walking along furniture, and while holding onto our hands. He's always been scared to take a solo step though. Then on Sunday night, he was super tired, and super wired and hyper as a result. He started playing this game where he'd stand up all on his own, then we'd clap for him, then he's sit or fall down. He got such a kick out of us applauding him, that he'd stand up over and over again. I think he finally found out, it's not so bad to fall down after all. The next day, we visited my mom. When we were in her front room, I put him down on his feet, and he surprised us all by taking about 10 steps! He wobbled around like a drunk man, but he seriously walked 10 steps all by himself! Here's a video of him taking a few steps later that night:





So, he is finally learning to walk. He still wobbles around like a drunk man, and falls after a few steps, but I'm sure he'll get the hang of it soon! His biggest problem is that he's just so anxious to take off running, he forgets that he has to keep his balance :) I think he's going to be a handful when he does get it down....