A busy few weeks . . . long post

Our busy past few weeks were filled with lots of fun and little time near the computer. It was a nice break. As I mentioned before, my mom, grandma, and sister came out to visit for a week. My grandma has a tendency to back out of trips at the last minute because she doesn't think anyone else is capable of watering and taking care of her vegetable garden while she is gone. To our surprise she made it to SC! We spent the week doing all kinds of things but I think grandma's favorite was picking strawberries at the U-pick field. I think she ate one for every one that she picked. :) My favorite was just having the company and getting a lesson from the "pros" on how to make my favorite oatmeal whole wheat bread baked in juice cans. My sister also talked me into doing a Lia Sophia show while she was here. I was hesitant at first because I don't feel that I know a whole lot of people but it turned out that ended up having her biggest sale show to date. I think I ended up getting about 18 pieces of jewelry from the catalog for $65 dollars! It's worth doing that again for that kind of deal. Now that the gang is gone Easton still goes into the extra rooms looking for yaya and Grandma Frei. He says that they have gone to work (because that's what happens every morning when dad dissappears). We will be visiting Utah in July so it won't be too much longer until we see them again.

Also in the past few weeks our house has gone from an empty lot to this. We are SUPER excited!

For Memorial Day weekend we decided to be super spontaneous and go camping. We know nothing about any of the camp sites in the entire state but managed to find one that was available. It was about an hour and a half away and turned out to be the perfect spot for our first time camping in SC. Easton loved the fact that we had a tent and our own chairs around the campfire. He enjoyed playing with every stick he could find, watching the frogs (I've never seen so many in one place in my life), looking for alligators and snakes (didn't ever see any), chasing squirrels, and dipping his sticks in the water at the pond, and poking his sticks in the fire at our campsite. Scott and I surprised ourselves by successfully cooking a number of meals by fire (tin foil dinners and dutch oven). I think I gained 5 pounds from the dutch oven cinnamon rolls that we cooked with cream cheese frosting for breakfast on Saturday morning. We enjoyed some hiking but decided to wimp out when the forsest go too thick. I was terrified of a big snake jumping out to bite me and for some poisonous spider to bite Easton. Turns out we got out bite free, except for a few ticks that decided to latch on to Scott's legs (which he didn't find until after we got home and showered). Yikes! It was SOOO good to get out of the house and away from everything for a few days. It was so relaxing to not have to do anything and to sit around the campfire at night and look up at all the stars and take it all in. We sure could use an outing like that more often. :)

Happy Birthday Easton!

What a better excuse not to make a post on the blog for over a week and a half than having family in town and celebrating a birthday!? Easton turned 2 on Friday and had such a blast celebrating. My mom, grandma Frei, and sister Shelbee came to visit and got in very late on Wednesday so when Easton woke up on Thursday to his "Yaya" here, he couldn't quite believe his eyes. As if having family here wans't enough, I decided to do Easton's birthday around a pirate theme since he really thinks he is a pirate and is obsessed with them. He says the cutest little pirate"argh matey" and likes to go around having sword fights. Though I've never been one to make fancy birthday cakes (I'd rather buy one) I decided to pull out all the stops and come up with a pirate ship birthday cake. I completely outdid myself and now don't know what I will do in the years to come. :) Easton just couldn't believe the cake. He had to see it and be near it constantly. It was cute.

In celebration we all went to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and games. Believe it or not, Easton spends more time running around and playing the video games and games to win tickets with his dad than over on the toys and slides. He always has a perma-grin and we can never get him to stop for even a second for a bite of pizza. After we finished there we headed home for presents and cake & ice cream. Scott & I got Easton this cool Schwin Roadster trike for his birthday which we thought he would be totally stoked about but his favorite gifts of the evening were from his Grandma's; a piano keyboard (this is another thing he loves to do), the Elefun game where you catch butterflies, and a singing Elmo. Now that it's a few days later he has warmed up to the trike but is still to busy with other things to pay too much attention to it. :) Easton is such a blessing in our lives and we don't know what we would do without him. It is so much fun to see him grow and to see his little personality develop more and more each day. We love you buddy!

Reality TV

It is no secret that I love reality tv, well, the good shows anyway. After watching American Idol last night and seeing David A. do so well Scott and I were still debating on whether on not he was Mormon. I'd heard both ways but didn't know for sure. Just at that moment Scott came across an article on the internet about Mormons and reality TV. It was a fun article to read and to see how the media sees that the Mormom people and culture have something unique to offer their viewing audiences. Thought I would pass it on to all you junkies like me. To check it out go here. http://www.newsweek.com/id/135758.

Tired Kid + Grocery Store = Trouble

So, I must share our little shopping experience from yesterday as it is the first time I have really been embarrased by Easton in a store before. Yes, Jessica embarrassed. It doesn't happen very often. :0)

As usual, it was after lunch and we were plaing the nap game. "Are you gonna fall asleep or can we run to the store quick (come to think of it I guess there really is nothing "quick" about grocery shopping)?" I waited for a while and decided the nap wasn't going to happen and we REALLY needed food. Our fridge was pretty much empty. So we get in the car and first head to Petsmart for some crickets for our gecko. Easton loves Petsmart and I knew he would stay awake if we headed there first. We then headed to Walmart (the closest grocery store - gas is so expensive!). Easton refuses to sit in the grocery cart these days and generally he behaves well so I let him walk and follow me around. Our rounds started off as usual with him pointing out where the milk is and trying to open the door for me to get it. From there it was like a little trigger switched and he turned into the kid from hell (the kind you wish you could have left out in the car). We needed eggs so he ran over to the eggs and before I could get there had a carton of eggs open and was taking one out (I am partly to blame for this as I let him crack the eggs when we cook, etc.). Luckily I stopped him right before he cracked it open. As I was trying not to miss anything on my list Easton started running down the isles that I wasn't going down. Typically he doesn't go far but this time he didn't care if I was going that way or not. I could hear him thinking "how can I torture mama?" I would give him that look and tell him to come back but that only forced him further away. He was wearing a new pair of shorts that were a tad on the big side and as he would run (no belt on) they would slip further and further off. At this point I realized what was happening and decided I'd better head his way. As he continued to run, his shorts finally fell all the way down. He made it down a whole other isle before I caught up to him and about 20 people had witnessed him running with his pants down. I was just trying to keep my cool and pretend it didn't bother me! :)

From there he took a liking to standing on the front end of the cart while I pushed so I was able to keep him close until we made it to the produce section. I think he grew horns and a pointy tail about now. He wanted bananas so he went right over and picked some out. That was fine. But as I was putting them in a bag and looking elsewhere. He went over and started helping himself to the grapes. Yes, eating them, and lots of them. His cheeks looked like a chipmunk. After tearing him away from the grapes I went to get a bag for some apples. Easton went straight to the apples and of course reached for the one apple who's placement was key in holding all the rest of the apples in place. Yank! There goes about 20 apples rolling and falling to the ground. With a red face and clamy forehead, I tried to hurry and pick them up thinking no one was watching. Who was I kidding? There are always a million people everywhere in Walmart. There was even an older lady who gave me a nasty look like I should have purchased all those apples. ??? I wanted to remind her that I'm sure she had young children at one point too. But Easton had never behaved like this before so it was a first for me. While I was cleaning up apples Easton had proceeded to bite into an avocado. Lucky for me the skin was tough and didn't appeal to him so he moved on. (Mind you I did pull him aside for a little talking to after each of these incidents but I think it just made things worse - and my cart was full so I couldn't put him in it.) Before we made it to the checkout stand I had to stop him from eating a strawberry that he got out of a closed case. What a kid! I've never been so embarrassed nor had such a workout going grocery shopping!

A New House!

So we've finally decided to break down and build a house out here in SC. The deal was too good to pass up as we are able to build a beautiful new home for a lot less that what we could buy an existing older one for. The builders just got our permit and are ready to get to work. We are very excited and only wish it could all happen a little quicker. This home will be slightly larger (2,476 sq. feet) than the one we are in and is an "open" type floor plan so it seems even bigger. We're doing all the fancy things thanks to a large credit at the design center, tile/hard wood floors, solid surface counter tops, crown molding, a gourmet kitchen, etc. It should be finished a month or two before the baby is born. We are so excited! :0)