hey, it's SLOTH!

     Has anyone seen The Goonies?! Oh it's a good ol' wholesome movie! Aaron and Matt were goofing around with PhotoBooth on my computer and this is what they came up with!

eh....LOL.

"Hey you guyyyyyths"

    Ah! you've got to love my husband and his little brother!

Evil Dr.

     Today was Emily's dr.'s appointment, and just as I suspected she knew EXACTLY what was going on this time. Given it was probably the worst appointment I've ever taken her too the doc actually complimented her on how good she was because most children her age are screaming the whole time and rolling on the floor in a tantrum. She didn't! So even though it was harder for me...it was good. I have 1000 stories for you all. I've going to sum it up with this:

I learned that I have a big headed, big brained, intelligent, better behaved than the average two year old, strong willed, and stronger than the average 6 year old, and 50% as developmentally as advanced as the average 3 year old daughter. Who can poop and clear out the office, and scream so loud that the neighboring doctors call to make sure everything is okay, and "never ceases to amazing" her doctor. She is 24lb. 9 oz and 35 3/4 inches long. If she walked into a room of 100 kids born on her birthday she would be has heavy as 55% of them (she actually went up on the growth chart when it's normal for most kids to drop right now, anyone who knows her, knows that she can eat more than me and Aaron put together). She is taller than 95% of kids her age and if she walked into that room again...she would have the biggest head.

     I did get some pictures while I was in there:

Eating cherrios on the table like a big girl, waiting for the doctor, after the mean nurse had torchured her with a tape measurer and scale

Her boo boo band aid

Yes, that is a couple of tears she shed when the big bad nurse came back and gave her, her shots. Yes she screamed bloody murder, and successfully kick the nurse, but as soon as the nurse was out of the room she was over it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY.

These are the orangutang glasses that she got from the Elephant Bar, I thought you would appreciate them :) Hope you like!

     Well it's time for me to put my daughter to bed, and boy does she need it after such a stressful day! (that goes for me too!)

Trip, what a trip

Sorry that I didn't do any posts over the weekend. I took it off for the first time :P This weekend we went to Bakersfield to celebrate Aaron's cousin, Caleb's 21st birthday. Today is his actual birthday. Happy Birthday Caleb! Also Happy Birthday to my dad (I have a picture for you that I will be posting tomorrow as a present) and Aaron's Grandpa Bill. I think Caleb is the last offical April birthday. I'm all done until next year! yay! April is a crazy month in this family!

     We had fun in Bakersfield. For anyone who has never been to the Elephant Bar (it's not actually a bar but a very nice and cheap family restraunt) it is AMAZING! Probably my new favorite place to eat. We ate there for Caleb's birthday yesterday and the waitress was so nice...she wouldn't let him get a drink...yet (he went back today and ironically had the same waitress) but she did bring him a sunday with a candle. It was really sweet! You don't seem to come across many waiter/waitresses that actually seem to enjoy their customers like this one did. I would have given her a 100$ tip if I could have.

     Today was my lazy get-everything-back-into-order-after-a-trip day. I hate them. I super clean the house before I leave so that it makes it easier when I come back. 

     My best friend, Raina stopped by today for me to design her tattoo. Since I pride myself in being a photoshop master, I was able to design whatever she wanted and then took a picture of her and pasted the picture onto her so that she could look at it and change anything that she wanted to. She loved it of course! :) I got to visit with her for a couple of hours, I pretty much love her to death!! Emily was shy at first (her new thing) but warmed up pretty fast. I took a couple while Raina was here:

Emily found Raina's shoes and was walking up and down the hall way with them on.

When Raina got ready to leave she picked up Emily to give her a hug. This is Emily waving and saying "bye" to me. Apparently she loved Raina so much that she was going to go home with her. She screamed for a good two minutes (a long time for a Emily tantrum) after she left.

     Tomorrow is Emily's very late 18 month appointment. We will see how she does. She's usually a trooper when it comes to shots and the doctor but this is one of the first ones since I feel like she might actually know what's going on. So we will see...I might just have to stick my camera in my purse and try to get a picture of the "big girl" at the doctors office for you all!

2nd post for the day

    Today is also Aaron sister Kaylee's 14th birthday. Happy Birthday Kaylee!! I just got a call from Kim to look out my window and there is Kaylee sitting in the drivers seat of the car. Part of her birthday present was to drive to the end of our driveway. I just about fell over when I saw her. I had a flash of what I'm going to be seeing all the time in just 2 short years! I can't handle all of this growing up that going on around here!

     Today was a pretty uneventful day. I ran some errands but other than that I took it pretty easy. I was on the computer and Emily brought me Aarons "fancy" wedding ring. He has two since his original became his work ring. Aaron is walking demolition machine...I don't know why but he can break anything. So before we got married I went out and got a titanium ring. "no scratches, won't break or bend" HA! I should take a picture of it now to show you...there's hardly even a ring left to it. With that said I bought him a nice ring (tunsten carbide...supposedly even stronger) Emily found it on the shelf above our bed and brought it to me. I had it sitting on the counter and my rings hit the light and it gave me an idea. Since we don't really have any pictures of our rings, I took one. Simple. set them up on my computer and snapped a picture. I LOVE IT

It reminds me of our marriage. Simple, and easy, yet perfectly beautiful.

That was cheesy, I know. Don't get me wrong, I do occasionally want to burry him in the back yard. But I do love him :)

AH! so this is what happens when you're child spends more time in the water than out! this picture doesn't do it justice either. she looked like the creature from the deep lagoon.

You have to look really close at this picture. Her eyes are going in different directions. Why? because she had just spun about 30 circles on my bed and landed on my pillows. But I love the smile!

I think I love this picture so much because I think this is the first picture that I've taken where she slightly resembles my dad. Maybe the flared nostrils (love you dad) from being winded? I don't know but she's perfect!

Happy Birthday

     ...to my "grandma up the ditch bank". I used to call her this because she lived catty-corned to us across the field and you would have to go UP THE DITCH BANK to get to her house. She would have been 76 today and not a day goes by that I don't look at Emily and wish that she was here to be a part of her life. At the time I loved her because she was my grandma and because she spoiled me ROTTEN. Now, with the mind of an adult, I not only love her because she was my grandma but because I can see now what a strong minded, strong willed, smart, confident  and sassy woman she was. I wonder how much influence she had on me in those young years and how much she made me who i am today. I wish I could know her now.  My Aunt Betty (my grandma's sister) just passed away a few months ago. I was fortunate enough to have her meet Emily. "She couldn't wait to get to heaven and see Norma again so that she could tell her all about Emily" I miss my grandma so much that it still hurts to think about. I know I will get to see her again some day and I know that right now she is looking down on me and I KNOW that she would approve. Happy Birthday grandma.

CRAZINESS

     That is pretty much the one word to describe my day! Most of you know that I'm a HUGE bum. It's okay, I will admit it. I usually get up at about 9 with Emily every morning to start our day. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting half of the day but when you really look at it, we go to bed at 11 every night so really...we get a little over an average nights sleep, but it's no 12 hours. I had planned on going to coffee with my friend Jill and Aarons aunt Bonni at 8:30, so I had gotten up at 7:30 to get ready. I knew my dad would be up so I called to see if he had gotten the video that I sent and this is how he answers the phone: "KAYLA?! IS EVERYTHING OKAY?!" Thanks Dad! He's like "You never call before 9 when you roll your butt out of bed. I was worried"  That just seemed to kick start my day. It felt like I was about 2 hours off for the rest of the day. 

     I made it coffee...late. I let Emily play in the bathtub for a bit while I got ready for my day.  For those of you who have been reading this, you know that I've struggled with these bath tub crayons. They are amazing and Emily loves them BUT they are a mess. I officially have the worlds cleanest bathtub! Well I had given up on them...and then I came up with an idea. I sat down and explained to her that if we make a mess, we need to help mom clean it up. I handed her a wash rag and showed her what to do. and GUESS WHAT?! She did it! She had as much fun cleaning them up as she did making the mess in the first place. Of course if Aaron would have done as good as a job as Emily, I would have been upset, but she did a very good job considering she's not even 2!!

     We got ready and went to coffee. After coffee we drove to San Luis to go to Costco. I normally don't shop at Costco because of their bulk items and my not so bulky house, but we needed some meat so I decided to stock up. They are amazing. I ran around with Jill and her sister Holly and her two kids Silas and Luke. Silas is 3 and the size of a 6 year old and Luke is almost 2 and twice the size of Emily. They are the cutest future football linebackers I've ever seen!. After we were done I went to see one of my best friends Meredith, who married one of Aarons many cousins. Her son just turned 4 months old and is 17 lbs. I don't know what it is about this family and big boys but they are BIG. It makes me look at my Emily and realize that she really is my petite little girl.

    On my way home I decided to drive the legendary Hwy. 1. I figured it would be beautiful and sunny since it was everywhere else but as I turned into Morro Bay it was cloudy and overcast and I wasn't in the mood so I took a short cut across the hills back to Paso. I don't drive this road often because of it's switch back turns and my obnoxious car sickness...sure enough, I was about ready to lose my lunch after 10 minutes into the drive. Needless to say I made it. and the few times I stopped because I thought I was going to be sick I took some pictures:

Morro Beach

Fog coming over the mountains

Rolling SLO county hills

Thistle, for the longest time these were my favorite "flowers" They remind me of Scotland everytime I see them and even though I've never been there, I would guess that when everything is green here, this is the closest I might ever come

Oh the irony! Right next to the Thistle is this beautiful but pesky flower slapping me back to reality telling me "HEY! you're still in California" 

The good ol' golden state's California Poppy

My munchy sleeping through it all

     I realized two very important things on this drive. I have two things that make my life more difficult. 1) My motion sickness. It's out of control. I couldn't even enjoy a great drive home. Actually I got home and curled up in bed because I was spinning like I had just got off of a horrible fair ride and then slept for 3 hours to get rid of it. 2) My fear of mountain lions. Don't laugh. It's really bad...I wouldn't venture more than a hop, skip, and a jump away from my car because as soon as I did I thought for sure I was being watched and ran to the car. Then I felt like something was chasing me. I've never even seen a mountain lion here, even though I know that they are prowling all over these hills. Maybe if I saw one and saw that it would be scared of me just like I am of it then I would understand that not every one of this is looking for Kayla Van Patten to eat. I think I need counseling! I'm kidding of course but this is probably one of my most legit fears.

     As I said before, I got home and slept off the effects of my windy drive. We will see if I ever get up early again!!

    A couple of quick updates on Emily:

-People keep asking so I thought I would let everyone know...the potty training has been postponed. I have complete faith that my daughter is very capable of learning what she needs to but I just don't think that she's ready. Understandable and not disappointing since she's only 20 months. She has the toilet part down packed BUT she doesn't know when she needs to go, therefore she can't tell me and I end up with a dirty expensive pull-up. So Aaron and I are working hard on teaching her when she does go, so that in the near future it won't take any extra work to train her.

-Emily has several new words and is picking them up like a sponge. "papa" for Aarons dad and grampa. "ow" for about anything that hurts just a little. (she learned this one from me. Every time she touched my sunburn it was OW!...she got that one quick) "i want that" which is nice because now instead of crying for something she points! There were a couple more but I can't think of them at the moment

-Emily is an escape artist. She has figured out the sliding glass door. GREAT. so now we have to have it locked all the time. I ran outside to grab something out of the car this morning and as I was digging through my mess, I heard "MOMMY" and looked over and she was hanging on the fence looking at me. Thank God for the fence :)

     I am so thankful that this day is almost over!! then I can get back to my regular schedule.

Don't mix business

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