Potty Training

Aria is finally coming of age. She's begun... potty training (hooray)! Just having m&m's and princess underwear have amazing incentive-aligning powers. Pictured below: another satisfied customer. :)

However, not all experiences have been stellar. While playing today, she intentionally smacked me in the face with a toy, so I locked her in her room for a couple minutes as a time out. Unfortunately though, when I opened the door to talk with her about what happened, I found that during her 3 minute screaming fit behind the door, she had lost control of her bladder and had peed all over the carpet. Not cool. Oh well, at least it cleaned up fast.

Here's a pic from our family night this week, where Aria helped make rice crispy treats.


Zade would've joined us, but he was out of commission. Interestingly though, unlike Aria, who slept on her back as a baby, Zade prefers his side.

Back in the swing of things

It feels good to be back from vacation and to be able to pick up our routines again.
Zade is growing like a weed, but gets cuter every day. I like the aerial pics of him playing in his jungle.




After about 4 months of age, Zade basically gave up binkies. Instead, he prefers to suck on blankets. Funny kid.

Hearst Castle

We stopped off at Hearst Castle in California (which is really more of an old, luxurious ranch) to break up the drive back to Tucson. We got there late in the day, so the main "experience" tour for 1st time visitors was all sold out. Thus, we had to settle for a different tour that covered less territory, but went into greater depth. Oh well. Our favorite part was the pools.



After that, we spent the night in Ventura, CA, and drove home the next day. Here are the 2 little troopers who braved the long drive. During the whole trip, they logged over 4000 miles in these car seats. They were fairly well behaved, for the most part, but as you can imagine, there's only so much that a 2 year old and 4 month old can take before they go nuts. We've now decided that we won't do any more road trips longer than 2 weeks with little ones. :)


The last cool thing we unexpectedly saw on the drive were miles of windfarms just to the east of the L.A. metro area, and all the blades were spinning. It was a pretty neat sight. The picture doesn't do justice to show just how massive these farms are.

California Coast

We hit the California coast near Monterey and enjoyed an afternoon at the beach. The weather was surprisingly cool for August (low 60's), so we kept out of the water. We had fun walking the shoreline and watching the crashing waves.



We stopped for several scenic views along Highway 1 as we headed south along the coast.


This picture captures multiple sides of Aria we often see: 1) clinging to a sippy cup with milk, and 2) picking wild flowers.



When we got back to our motel for the night, Aria thought it would be fun to hop on my back while I did my push-ups. The extra 30 lbs definitely improved my exercise.

Lake Shasta Caverns

On our drive back from Oregon we stopped off at Lake Shasta Caverns near Redding California. It's a privately owned cave system that's only accessible by ferry. The main room there is huge and is covered in flowstone. They had all sorts of formations from cave choral, cave bacon, columns, soda straws, stalagtites, stalagmites, etc. It was definitely worth checking out (though the pictures don't do it justice).


The only downside of the visit was that Aria deposited her lunch in her diaper just as we entered the cave. That meant that I had to hold her very carefully for the 300+ steps in the cave to prevent an explosion from happening before we could exit the cave and change her diaper.

Playing with Dane's fam

Aria had a great time playing with her cousin Audrey at Wildcat Park in Corvallis, Oregon.



What impressed me the most was Audrey even pushing Aria on the swings.


Here's a bunch of the cousins together at Izzy's (one of our favorite restaurants):


Here's the disturbing pic of Zade sucking on his feet (notice the huge grin). That boy will put anything in his mouth.


Here's a nice pic of all those hombres that sport the last name of Chris.

Saturday Market

We went to Eugene to check out our old stomping grounds with my folks. While perusing the Saturday Market, Tara found a little "fairy" headband for Aria, so that she too could embrace the hippy culture. :) Afterwards we went to Studio One and had their infamous French Toast, which I love.




Lastly, we stopped by the UO bookstore and picked up some apparel to show our school spirit.

Enchanted Forest

We went with the bulk of Dane's family to the Enchanted Forest and enjoyed watching the kids wander through all the different fairy tales.





We got a bunch of ride tickets for Aria, but she kept saying she was too scared to do them, so we ended up watching her cousin Audrey (who's 4) do all the rides. (Here's the crew looking up at one of the rides)



We caught the fairy tale theater presentation of Hansel & Gretel, which was hilarious. Here's the cast:


The one ride Aria agreed to do was go on the train. However, by the end she was scared and in tears. Oh well. Can't win them all.

Portland Zoo

We went to the Portland zoo with Tara's good friend Jenna.