Brelynn Off Her Feet

Soooooooo...it is June. JUNE. Wasn't it just Christmas last week? The calendar tells me no.
I'd like to reflect on February for a moment - indulge me.

Do YOU remember February?

I do. I REALLY do.

It was going something like this:

Can I just tell you that it is hard to make a pregnant lady feel special...appreciated...comfortable...pretty...
It must have been intimidating to Ammon to watch my birthday loom closer. Poor boy has set himself up for an entire week of celebrating every single year. Pregnant wife or not.

And yet - he pulled it off! He's learned a thing or two in his experience with a pregnant wife and declared this  year's Week of Love to be a week of "Brelynn Off Her Feet"

I petitioned to make it a daily theme year-round but it didn't fly. But it was glorious while it lasted.

As per usual, the week started on my birthday!

Sunday

Ammon and the girls woke me up with singing and gifts.
Check out my schnazzy new robe!

NOTHING says "stay off your feet" like a luxurious new robe.

But the best present in the world? TIME. Ammon got the girls ready and I had a leisurely morning all to myself to get ready for church. I tried out my new spiral curling iron from my dear sweet mother (who also wanted to order me that robe but the LAST one got swiped up by none other than my one and only husband! Either way it was Brelynn for the win!)

By the time we went to church I was feeling like the most beautiful, relaxed, pregnant birthday woman there ever was.

And that evening we had some of the most delicious brownies I have ever tasted. It was a definite diet splurge for this diabetic girl and my sugar levels were definitely high later but it was SO worth it. We all really enjoyed it.

P.S. - I was completely overwhelmed with birthday wishes and birthday loot! I'm so grateful for everything and especially everyone that made me feel loved and remembered!

Monday

When Ammon got home the next night we promptly put the girls to bed and I put my comfy new robe back on for an evening of pampering.

Ammon sat me down in the living room and turned on a show for me to watch. Then he filled a large bowl with warm water and let my feet soak.

Next thing I know he's pulled out the toolbox and is working on my feet.

Don't panic though. It was my toolbox. Not his.

And that pumice stone? Totally new addition he bought just for me. My feet felt smoother than a baby's bottom by the time he was done with them!

I got lotion and foot/leg massages.

He even painted my toenails...and added his own Week of Love heart to top it off!

I'm telling you - this is one heck of a gift during any phase of life. But while pregnant? Ummmm. Yeah. It was the epitome of heaven.

Tuesday

Tuesday was a game night/snack night combo - yet another difficult feat to achieve when your wife is diabetic. But we did some fancy Pinteresting and came up with some low-sugar snack options and got to work!

On the whole, we had a lot of great success! There were a LOT of goodies here and I didn't feel excluded one little bit from our evening of fun.

We played several rounds of games with the girls which just felt so good. You know how there are things you envision yourself doing with your kids as a parent? And then somehow you never do? Playing games is totally one of those things for me. It was a distraction-free, stress-free, family-only kind of night that filled my heart with all the right emotions.

Wednesday

Okay, so the snacks weren't a complete success. 

They tried to kill me. I was up all night feeling like death.

And then they tried to kill Ammon. And he had to stay home from work the next day in an effort to survive.

So any grand plans he may have had got tossed out the window as we laid around feeling sorry for ourselves and each other.

But even in the midst of our agony Ammon was able to slip outside and make me a beautiful bouquet of daisies from our garden. He's so thoughtful. And aren't they gorgeous? 

Thursday

Thursday was our big adventure day. We love to have adventures. But they are decidedly more difficult to have when you're in your third trimester. So instead of having me pack everyone and everything up and then hauling my large pregnant self miles and miles, Ammon created a local get-away adventure.

Mama and Daddy graciously agreed to watch our girls for the whole entire night. Yup, that's right! A sleepover at Grandma Baysinger's! My girls were in heaven. Nothing is better than a sleepover with your grandma.

Meanwhile, Ammon and I meandered down the lane to the fire pit next to Grandma and Grandpa Hatch's house. He was very manly and made fire and then cooked us a delicious dinner of hot dogs over the flames. It was a little slow going and inventive because we forgot our roasting sticks. But he made it work and we ate until we were full!

Then we spent a good long while just enjoying the fire. Alone. Do you know that kind of peace? Sure, maybe you do. But it is sure easy to forget when you are running after littles all day, every day. Not too often do you just get to be together. Just be. We didn't even talk that much. Just watched the flames sitting comfortably together. A perfect evening.

From there we wandered back down the lane and spent the night in our camper, just the two of us. It was actually surprisingly comfortable whilst being that pregnant. And we got to sleep until we didn't want to sleep any more. Wow. That's another beautiful, rare thing as a parent of littles. Just wow.

Friday

When we decided we were good and ready to up the next morning we wandered inside to Mama and Daddy's house. Our girls were already up AND dressed AND hair done AND having an incredible breakfast of pancakes and eggs. WOW. Grandparents are the best. I could say that a million times. Grandparents are the BEST.

We reluctantly left Mama and Daddy's house later that morning and headed off to "Nesting Day" - very appropriate for a third trimester lady.

The first portion of Nesting Day was spent looking at baby chicks. We really want to get chickens. A lot. So we went and learned a little more about them and fell in love with them and came away all the more determined to make chickens a reality in our backyard. Just look how cute they are! Not to mention how useful! 

For the remainder of "nesting" day, Ammon offered to knock out anything I wanted him to off of my nesting, "honey-do" list.

I'm telling you, he's the best. And I'm the luckiest.

Saturday

Saturday greeted me with the instructions that I need not worry about doing anything that day. Today was to be a day of accomplishing nothing but this:

Oooohhhh, yeeeaaaahhh. Binge watching Saturday was probably one of my favorites. Maybe because it spilled over into the following months. That's a lot of hours of viewing right there.

Sunday

Sunday was Valentine's Day. The last day of the Week of Love and the day that I like to take over in planning...you know, since this would technically be Day 8 of the "Week of Love" and Valentine's Day should be about him too!

Honestly, though, we didn't do much. Shame on me. I did some small, fun stuff for the girls in the morning and had a nice dinner planned (although we ended up eating at Grandma and Grandpa Lords - they had a much better dinner going on and we were very grateful to be included!). And then that evening, after the girls went to bed, Ammon and I just enjoyed our time together. I mean, it was Valentine's Day...I don't think I need to spell it out for you.

The End

Another year of incredible and thoughtful fun! Boy, I'm sure glad we have traditions that help keep us on our toes, that help keep us together, that help keep us in love. The Week of Love. It's a winner every time.

Week of Love: Around the World

It happened again - I got older. Twenty-six years old. For some reason that sounds real old to me. I'm sure I'll laugh at that in ten years but it's a true statement at this moment in my life. Maybe it's just the motherhood taking it's toll - the crummy sleep, long days, slowing metabolism. It's not all bad though.In fact, most of it is really good.

One really good thing about having a birthday is that so many people make you feel so loved! With all of today's technology I probably had at least fifty people take the time to wish me a happy birthday. Amazing.

Plus I got showered in thoughtful, wonderful gifts. SEE:

And of course, the very best thing about being ME on MY birthday is that it is the first day of the famous "Week of Love"!

This year's theme:

Around the World

Ammon and I dream of seeing the world. Of bettering the world. Of creating our own beautiful place in the world. But those things take time. And money. We are neither rolling in time or money at this point in our lives. 

But Ammon decided that if he couldn't take us to the world right now, he could bring the world to us! And he did. And he did it amazingly well.

First up - 

The United States of America

The good ol' U. S. of A. We'd like to consider ourselves patriotic. America is in our hearts and in our blood and we love this land and all that it stands for. We might dream of seeing other places but we only dream of living here. 

We also strongly believe that there is a particular kind of American heart and charm in "Small Town USA."

In fact, we hope to live in a small town one day. Whenever we have a Saturday or a weekend to spare, we make the rounds to see if we can find "the place." So today's activity was naturally heading out to one of those small towns we've had our eye on:

Clarkdale, AZ
Population 4097

To clue me in to the day's theme and to keep us company on the two and a half hour drive, Ammon made up this sweet mix:

We arrived mid-morning and spent the rest of the morning enjoying the town center (which is a BEAUTIFUL area including a grassy area, park and gazebo -  very Stars Hollow of Gilmore Girls, love it!) and exploring the main street.

We then grabbed some delicious grub at the local Mexican restaurant (hmmm...maybe we should have called this day "North America" day.) The food was good, the waitresses were very friendly and I even got some free birthday fried ice cream. YUM!

We asked a nice lady in the town information booth about good places to fish and on our path of discovery we also stumbled upon the Tuzigoot National Monument nearby. This is a pueblo village built by the Sinagua People around the year 1000  (I'm definitely thinking we should refer to this as North America day, haha). 

In the Visitor Center. I'm making sure she doesn't fall off her chair -not palming her in the face or picking her nose. ;)

This monument was SO cool. Well, actually it was a bit warm and sunny. But the site was cool. As in awesome. Neat. Interesting. Totally worth seeing. It was a really great way to be outside, be a little active, learn something new and see a beautiful area. From the top of the monument you could see for miles in every direction. And so we scoped out our dream property - lots of acreage, cleared and flat but still surrounded by trees. Sigh.

See? You'll have to forgive the photo quality - we forgot the camera and had only our cell phones to work with.

In an effort to find some good fishing we also scoped out Deadhorse Ranch State Park. But evening was already upon us and so we didn't actually drop a line in anywhere. Beautiful area though.

Once we got home, Ammon had planned and prepared a delicious American dinner too - hamburgers! Not just any hamburgers mind you. These were huge, juicy, beer-infused, delicious hamburgers. 

(Sidenote- alcohol is not a thing in our lives. That being said, basically all of our favorite foods (particularly hamburgers) are cooked with alcohol. If it says whiskey or bourbon or white wine or so forth and so on, we basically know we'll love it. Weird. But true.)

And just when I thought my birthday couldn't possibly include anything else - he pulled out this beauty:

Is that not the most beautiful birthday cake EVER? Wow. A HUGE thank you to Ashley who made this creation. It was as delicious as it was beautiful! Blew. My. Mind.

Wow.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Spain

The next day was Sunday - always a tricky day to incorporate into the Week because that's not our focus on the Sabbath. But Ammon was able to bring a few Sunday appropriate and Spain themed activities and it worked out brilliantly well.

We had a siesta.

If you are a parent of small children, you know what a gift this is.

He also tried to teach me how to play the guitar. It is safe to say that I am still not musically gifted. Plus guitars are built WAY too big (or maybe my hands are built way too small?). Oh well. We had fun trying. And I always love it when Ammon plays. What is it about a man with a guitar? Mmmmm.

We watched this classic:

And then we had a bit of a fiesta con familia!

Lots of the family got together to celebrate us February birthdays - so much fun! And delicious!

These cupcakes had ice cream frosting (I forgot to get a picture of one frosted - darn!). I'm not kidding. Oh. My. Gosh. How cool is that?!

Asia

Monday morning Ammon left me my letter for the day and told me that we would be dabbling in the Asian world that night. And he told me to tell him what kind of Panda Express and what kind of sushi to bring home. SUSHI. I've never had sushi and so this was a daunting task for me.

I took my conundrum to the Facebook community. To say that people were willing to help would be an understatement.

Yup. 113 comments. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN. Wow.

I carefully considered their suggestions and sent my order to Ammon.

Also, in case you're curious, the overwhelming recommendation was for a place called Sushi Creek in Queen Creek. They weren't open that day or else I probably would have gone with them based on the outpouring of recommendations.

The rest of the evening looked like this:

Definitely happy with my decision - it was way nice to try a few different things and it was all pretty good. I can say that I liked it but didn't love it. Wouldn't consider myself a sushi person but that's okay.

 

Do you see that Panda in the bottom corner up in that picture? That was new to me! YAY! We ate our food and watched both Kung Fu Panda movies. 

Plus I got to win a couple rounds on our new Chinese Checkers board.

Fantastic night.

Holland/Sweden/Belgium

Tuesday evening was full of many sweet surprises. 

You just know it's going to be a great evening when your husband walks through the door with something like this:

Tulips. My beautiful tulips.

Upon receiving my tulips, I also received my letter. Tuesday was taking us to a few quaint areas in Europe: Holland, Belgium and Sweden.

Dinner was devilishly delicious. Homemade Belgian waffles. Homemade syrup.

Belgian Waffles

After dinner, Ammon created the full Swedish Massage experience for me. He pulled out his weight lifting bench for me to lay on. He laid out warm towels over me. He brought out the lotions and the oils. And then he gave me a Swedish massage. Amazing. No. Really. A-MAZE-ING.

He massaged away while we listened to this talk by Elder Holland (get it?- Holland!). Yup. A massage that lasted twenty whole minutes. That is a loonnngggg massage.

United Kingdom

Wednesday we had an adventure worthy of the UK. We went golfing (golfing originated in Scotland in case you cared to know)!

Where did we go golfing you ask? Well, only on the most sought-after greens in the nation.

The Baysinger Desert Club Upper Course

--- conveniently located in our backyard! ;)

We're not ordinarily golfers. So this became no ordinary golf game. We were a little low on equipment but not on creativity. 

Happily, Uncle Royal was very generous and lent us the golf balls...those would have been a little more difficult to improvise. 

On this four-hole course, Ammon won at four holes. By a lot. It was a good game for him. 

That's okay. We all have our talents. Ammon may be good at scoring on a difficult, backyard golf-course - I, on the other hand, am good at eating. Which came in handy for the next portion of the evening. Trust me, you wouldn't want to be bad at eating when there was SO much delicious corned beef and cabbage made for you and not by you. *happy sigh*

While we filled our bellies on that Irish feast, we started watching a BBC show on Netflix: The Paradise.

This was such a fun night. And really something anybody could do anywhere. Feel free to steal this for a date night. You would not regret it.

France

Thursday night we sampled a few things "French." It was SO delicious if not exactly authentic.  

He also had plans and supplies for doing something like this:

buuut we were exhausted. So we opted instead to continue watching The Paradise. So sue us. ;)

Italy

At last, Friday night arrived. The night he had told me to prepare to be away from our babies. A real date night folks. Even better. An all night date night. Even better better. An all night date night that is themed "Italy."

Call me a romantic. Call me a girl. Call me typical. But of all the places in all the world, I dream the most of experiencing Italy. 

Ammon knows this.

And he created an absolutely magical night for me.

We started by dropping off our little ones at Tamzon and JT's house. (Does "thank you" even begin to cover it? Probably not. But it's all I have to offer. Thank you, thank you, thank you!)

From there we headed straight to dinner in Scottsdale: Nick's Italian Restaurant

You wouldn't think much of this place just to drive past it. If you're looking for a restaurant that blows you away from the parking lot then you better keep looking. However, if you're looking for a place with unbelievably delicious, authentic Italian food then stop looking now. The menu was HUGE and the food was incredible. Like really, really incredible.

If you are ever lucky enough to be in the area please try this place. I think you would not regret it. We didn't.

Spaghetti Pollaio

Linguini with Clams

Homemade Chocolate-Chip Cannoli

The food at Nick's would have been a complete Italian night for me - and well worth the drive into Scottsdale. But that was not our complete night. Not even close.

What else? Well, a gondola ride of course!

Did you know that there were gondola rides available right here in Arizona? No? Me neither. Italy and Las Vegas. I was pretty sure that was the extent of that availability. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Right here in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Hyatt Regency you can take a ride on a gondola!

This is not my picture - I forgot to take one!

It was pure romance. Just the two of us on a gondola with our gondolier. On a moonlit night with courtyard lights sparkling  and the peaceful water all around us. And the absolutely beautiful voice of our gondolier. Amazing. We were so lost in the moment that we didn't even take a picture. Even in this day and age some things are just left to the filing systems of our memories.

Yet another thing that I would highly recommend if you are ever in the area. Just do it. It's romantic. It's unique. It's awesome.

Surely, that is all there was to the evening, right? Well, that's what I was thinking too. But no, my friends. That is not all.

We headed home to enjoy the rest of our kid-free night and my sweet husband pulls out our wine glasses and a bottle of wine (fear not, it was the alcohol-free kind). What is Italy if not prime wine country?  And we did not want to miss out on that. 

Of course, we did not consider that we might need a corkscrew. Hmmmm.

Thirty minutes and many failed attempts later, we successfully opened that bottle of wine with some tools from the garage. 

At long last, we poured, we swished, we sniffed, we sipped, we gagged, we poured the bottle and both glasses down the drain and declared the wine-drinking population of the world absolutely insane.

I find this picture absolutely hilarious - do you see the wide array of tools on that table? And the splashed wine all over the table from our violent opening? Hahahaha. We are clearly not wine drinking people.

This was a perfect night. You gotta make yourself an Italian night. You just gotta.

Africa

Bright and early the next morning we went to fetch our littles from the Olmsteads. I wish I had taken a picture of Ammely and Rori's cute little faces pressed up against the window upstairs as they saw us pull up to the house. But I did not.

Our girls were both happy and alive and none the wiser to the exhaustion and sleep deprivation they placed upon their gracious hosts. I'm sure that family was happy to go back to bed or catch some naps that day. Again, thank you!

Our last stop on our journey around the world took us to Africa.

Betcha didn't know Africa was in Arizona too, did you?

Well, Arizona is a very diverse place.And in Cottonwood, Arizona is a gem of a place called "Out of Africa Wildlife Park."

It's akin to a zoo experience but I actually liked it much better. Granted it is a little smaller and has a smaller selection of animals - however, you are so SO close to the animals. They have shows and bus tours and feedings and all kinds of ways that actually let you experience the animals instead of just spotting them from afar.

It was SO cool.

Do you see how close we are?! 

Close enough to feed! Can you see the celery in his mouth? Ammon just gave him that.

And we were close to the dangerous animals too! Incredible.

It was a lot to take in on a sunny day though and soon enough the girls were worn out.

So we headed out. But I tell ya, you oughta check it out if you can. Plus, you get in FREE the entire MONTH of your birthday.

What a Week

Am I a lucky lady or what?

It was a full week. It was a wonderful week. It was a creative week. It was a romantic week. It was a fun week. 

It was a week of love.

So until next year,

Goodbye. Adiós. さような. Adjö. Beannacht. Au revoir. Arrivederci. Kwaheri.