Victoria's Birthday

Victoria is 4!! This year we held a celebration for her at Jungle Jim's Playland. We invited about 15 kids and 10 showed up so it was quite busy. It was a Tinkerbell party so she had Tinkerbell cake and received some Tinkerbell related gifts. It was so nice to have it somewhere besides our house because we couldn't have had such a big party if that were the case. This way, all the other kids were able to have a great time too and I didn't have to clean up afterwards. :)

Victoria on one of the many rides at Jungle Jim's.

Later on that evening Victoria had her first dance performance at the Festival of Trees. She did incredible! We are so proud of her. I would post the video of her performance but it would take too long to upload. Just take my word for it. She's a good dancer. Here she is with some of her dance friends (Kennady and Kennedy, lol).

Top 10 Reasons why Winter is the best season

10. It's beautiful outside. The snow really brightens up outside. In fact, the other day I thought our front porch light was still on bc the snow just brightened everything up! There's nothing like snow, especially because of...

9. Snowball fights! For some reason, even though it's extremely cold and all you can think about when you're outside is getting back inside you simply cannot resist when a ball of powdered ice comes flinging at you. Who wouldn't want revenge?! Not to mention, once you get started you forget all about being cold. No other season can you play with the weather...ever heard of a rain ball fight? Or a sunshine fight? Not gonna happen.

8. No Yardwork. It might not seem like such a big deal to you, but I hate doing yardwork out in a blazing sun. So when the ground is covered with snow and everything else is died off and I don't have to go outside to make my yard look nice (because it already does due to snow), I am one happy camper. Though, not literally a camper...camping in the snow is just insane.

7. Hot Chocolate. There is nothing like waking up and realizing your cold and then realizing you have the perfect drink to warm and wake you up. Hot chocolate. Speaks for itself.

6. Food. Not just food in general...but you know food you normally eat around the holidays. I'm talking about cookies, breads, hams, and all those other baked goods we put together. Makes a good excuse for heating up the house with your oven too...and you get a treat for doing it. :)

5. Hot Tubs. Yet another way to warm up and relax.

4. Snowboarding. Ok, I've only been twice, but I really do enjoy it. And I've learned to appreciate the fact that Utah really does have the best snow on earth. I used to play with snow (that was really just packed ice) and it is nothing like the snow here. And riding it down a mountain is incredible.

3. Christmas is coming. Once the snow hits I immediately start thinking of my preparations for Christmas, which is the best holiday as we celebrate the birth of our Savior. People are kinder and you can feel the spirit. People really stop thinking so much about themselves and start to realize the needs of others around them. It's a great feeling.

2. Football! I just love it when football season comes around. As if we needed an excuse to stay inside from the cold it just encourages us even more. Football is so fun to watch. And once February arrives, it's time for the Super Bowl, which means, even more good food and comforts of friends and family hooting and hollering.

1. And finally, the number one reason why Winter is the best season... Snuggling! I anxiously look forward to Winter every year for this very reason. Sitting with family around and big blankets covering us. It's just...WARM! And comforting. And great!

Well, I hope you enjoyed my list. And even if you don't like Winter (did you not read my list?), have a good one. :)
P.S. Don't eat yellow snow.

What happens when your kids no longer nap...

Creativity begins.

A Ghoulish Halloween and a Puppy Birthday

For Halloween this year Victoria was a witch (shown here with my vampire teeth): and Mikayla was a puppy. John and I were vampires (not shown) Our batteries died so we couldn't get a pic. Anyway, for breakfast I made them "ghost," which is what we call French toast in my house. It only seemed fitting to cut them into ghost shapes as well. :)
In today's news: Mikayla is two! My puppy is all grown up and actually has taken it upon herself to be potty trained! That's right! One day she just hopped up on the toilet and starting going and has been doing so ever since. She's great! Easiest potty training EVER! We held a birthday celebration for her at our place. She received lots of awesome fun gifts that she is enjoying very much. It's hard to keep Victoria away from them actually. We got her a puppy...which she loves! (Fake of course). But don't worry...she's spending lots of time with her other gifts too. Thanks everyone!

"Every dog has his day."

Spontaneous Combustion Excursion

As Friday night rolled around we came to ask ourselves what we would be doing for labor day weekend. Generally, we work...not fun. But we decided to do something fun this time. So we decided we would go to Antelope Island for some good old fashioned camping. We didn't have our tent or sleeping bags, but we decided we'd sleep in John's new truck...in the back...with a blow up mattress. So that's what we did.Turns out there was a festival going on the same weekend. So we went there for a little bit.
Cute camping fun.
We also spent some time at the Great Salt Lake which was...salty and smelly. We mostly sat on the beach and ate lunch. We intended on staying Sunday night also, but around 5pm it started being ridiculously windy outside. We thought we would freeze if we slept outside overnight and thought it would be much nicer to just go home to our warm beds instead. So we left. Turns out a good idea because there were record lows for last night in September. Go team inspiration!

Slap on the Wrist

Yep, I suppose I deserve a slap on the wrist for not updating my blog more. "Life is just too busy" isn't exactly accurate...more like "anytime I do get a free minute I don't have updating my blog at the top of my list". So here goes, the important big things...

John's white truck died again. This time we opted to not get it fixed and instead John bought himself a "new" old truck. It's a 2005 Ford F150 King Ranch. He's in love with it. He spends lots of time cleaning it and "getting it up to snuff" as he would say. It's a four door so we can put our kids in there and as an extra perk...it came with a dvd player! The dvd player will not really to be used for driving around town, but we plan on using it a lot with an upcoming road trip that we have planned. As a side note...I LOVE road trips!

We still have all of our properties and we still hate being landlords. Once John gets a chance (he's extremely busy at work this month due to production of new drugs) he'll be getting all the paperwork done to have his realtor's license again and we can get some of them on the MLS. Hopefully that will get us some offers despite the bad market. We are really just at the point that we'd like to move forward with something else even if it means getting less money than we originally thought we would. If we are going to have another child (don't freak I'm not pregnant) then we will need a bigger place and so we'd really like to save up for the house that we truly want our kids to grow up in. Right now, things are just too crazy for us. It's time to tone down. Pray for us! Here's the Provo duplex that's still for sale...we are now asking $189,000 instead of our starting which was $225,000. A big drop in price, but still no offers. We had a realtor for a while, but he didn't help much.

The kids are still doing awesome. We love them to death and wish we had more time with them...a problem that would be helped if we got rid of some of our properties.... Mikayla is talking quite a bit. Half the time I don't know what she's saying but I listen anyway. She can be really funny. We're hoping to get her potty trained soon...just have to start. lol.
Victoria will be 4 this year. Crazy! She's going to be doing a combined preschool and dance school in a few weeks. I know she'll have loads of fun as she loves to dance and ALWAYS asks about school. She's very intellectual visually. She'll take random things and make letters or shapes out of them.
Ok so, I'm good for another few months right? Ha ha. I'll try to update more...if my schedule ever gets "uncrazy". :)

And then two months pass...

Well, March happened. Not sure what we did, but then April John and I took a 3 week vacation to Thailand and Cambodia. :) First, we drove to California to drop our girls off with their Grandma and Grandpa Riley who were so kind to watch (and spoil) them for us. Then we were off. Here's what we did-

April 3-4: Chased the sun in the plane. We caught it but lost 14 hrs. It took us about 24 hours or so to get there. Also, joined a club in the air. ;)
April 5-9 Phuket, Thailand

April 5: Shopping (we did lots of this throughout the trip). I also took a Thai Cooking Class this day. I learned how to cook Tom Yum Goon, Kao Put Gai, and Chicken Satay. Then, we swam at the beach.

April 6: Caught a bus to Phuket City where we saw their Butterfly Garden and Insect World and also went to the mall. We tried going to a club this night, but clubbing in Thailand is a bit different than in America. So we went expecting to dance and people are just drinking with really loud music in the background. So we didn't stay long.

April 7: We woke up with a little bit of a scare this morning. All the hotel staff had left because there was an earthquake in Indonesia. Last time this happened the Tsunami happened in Thailand and so everyone left without warning any of the guests. Sad, but true. "Every man for himself." Since no one actually knew if a tsunami would happen we were basically waiting for word to evacuate with our stuff packed. After a few hours, everything was fine so we went with our original plans of the day which were to go on an Amazing Canoeing Day Trip. They took us kayaking and to lots of different islands. It was nice, but John got burnt and therefore...

April 8: John was sick due to second degree burns on his skin. He didn't put lotion on...or very little. So we rested a lot this day and got massages and then saw "Date Night" at the movies.

April 9: Travel day... took a flight to Bangkok and then went to the train station so we could get a sleeper train to Chiang Mai. We spent 5-6 hrs at the train station waiting for our train, so we were a little bored, but we met "Brock." Brock was from England and was spending his time backpacking Southeast Asia. He kept us entertained for a few hours. We call him Brock because we never actually exchanged names. At some point during our conversation we decided we would give each other fake names because it sounded fun. We named him Brock and he named us Simon and Petunia. lol.
The sleeper train was actually pretty nice. We slept in a bed on the train as we traveled to Chiang Mai and didn't have to pay for a hotel for the night. Plus, it wasn't very expensive.

April 10-16 Chiang Mai, Thailand

April 10: Arrived in Chiang Mai and spent the rest of the day relaxing and then shopping.

April 11: Went to the mall, then swimming at hotel pool, and finally shopping at the night bazaar.

April 12: This day we went on a zipline tour throughout the Jungle. It was called Jungle Flight and it was pretty cool. Ended the day with shopping again...shocking.

April 13: First day of Song Kran. If you don't know what this is then I'm sorry to hear it, but this really should be an international thing. Song Kran is how Asia celebrates their new year. It originally began as a "ceremony" where the elders would pour water on the younger as a symbol of passing on to the younger generation (or something like that), but over time it became a large national water fight! Basically, the entire country shuts down and everyone has an enormous water fight. Seriously. Not kidding. It is the coolest thing ever.

April 14: Water battle continues.

April 15: Last day of Song Kran. Watched concert and got wet, of course.

April 16: Travel day...flight to Bangkok, bus to Cambodia border, taxi to Siem Reap.

April 17-19 Siem Reap, Cambodia

April 17: Angkor Wat Day Trip. This is our tuk tuk driver that drove us around all day to see Angkor Wat.This is John at one of the temples.

April 18: Shopped, Swam, Ate.

April 19: Caught bus to Sihanoukville. Checked in to new hotel and swam.
April 20-22 Sihanoukville, Cambodia

April 20: Entire day at the beach, lounging and what not. Many people walk around with stuff or services when you're on the beach. I got a pedicure for $3, while on the beach. Awesome. John also got his nails trimmed (thank goodness).

April 21: Spent another day at the beach. Dinner on the beach at night was very nice. Also, another must...coconut shakes.

April 22: Basically, everything in Sihanoukville was beach so yes, another day relaxing at the beach.

April 23-34 Phnom Penh, Cambodia

April23: Caught bus to Phnom Penh. Last time to shop or get anything else we wanted...so that's what we did.

April 24: Caught plane back to San Francisco :( but we got to see our kids again :)

So that was our trip. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed ourselves. It was much needed. Hopefully, we'll be making another trip like this soon. Maybe even with our kids next time.

Videos of my Squids

First video is of Mikayla taking her second step. I got it on my camera phone so the quality is not that great, but it's what I could grab the quickest. She learned to walk by dancing. :)

This is Victoria at the hardware store. Looks like John's not the only one that gets excited to go. And I must say, we find this hilarious. Our kids LOVE to dance.

Mikayla Broke Her Arm

It's true. Mikayla is not as resilient as Victoria. A few weeks ago we went to California to welcome home John's younger brother from his mission. We flew in Friday evening and they took us all out to Round Table Pizza. Mikayla was cranky because it was actually an hour past her bedtime so when she walked off the bench and started crying I assumed that was why. After all, Victoria falls ALL the time and she's always been fine. Plus, she's a stick. If she falls you would think she would break. So naturally, Mikayla is fine. We all went back to the house and Mikayla went to bed...still crying, but like I said she was tired.
The next morning we all get up and as I'm changing Mikayla for the day I notice that she's not using her left arm. Then it dawns on me...she WAS crying more than the usual cranky cry, everytime we touch her arm she starts crying, and she wouldn't even hold a toy in it. So I took Mikayla to the ER and sure enough the X-rays reveal two fractures in her left arm. Some vacation huh? However, she's adjusting quite well and is recovering in her lovely green cast.One thing that I've noticed about the ER's that I like is that both times I've had to bring in Mikayla to the ER (the first being when I found out she was allergic to penicillin) they have seen her immediately. So if you ever have to go to the ER just hope that you're a baby. As well it should be that babies go first, it was just a broken arm...we could have waited. And in fact I was expecting to, but I guess nobody can deny helping a cutie like her.

Christmas 2009...I know I'm late

This year we were graced by my family who drove all the way to Utah from NC to visit us for Christmas! It was great to see them especially since it's been a few years. We got to play games together, catch up on life, and just generally have a good time...after all, that is what the holidays are about eh? From left to right: my dad, my mom, and my sister Marisa.
My (little, or maybe just younger) brother Michael and I.We received lots of great fun stuff this year as usual. The tangible gifts were great, but the memories were better. For example, my older brother Daniel and my sister-in-law Kristen gifted us all a trip to Brighton Ski Resort to go snowboarding. This was my second time going snowboarding and it was way more fun than my first because I fell less. And it was nice to have that memory to share with my family.
Mikayla didn't get much this year because she's only one, but we don't think she minded. Victoria is really good at sharing things with her also and so she assumes that whatever Victoria gets is hers as well...which is kind of true.
For Victoria this year, we got her one of those motorized cars that cost like $300 in the store. But, of course, if you know anything about us Rileys you know that of course we did not pay that ridiculous price! John used his good bargain hunting skills and found one at DI for $25. It needed a new battery which costs us around $50. We then cleaned it up and made it look new. It used to have these stickers that I called "moo stickers" because it looked like cow print, but now the car is totally cool. Victoria's reaction? Just what we had hoped for (see video)...