Something wicked this way comes...

 Tomorrow is Halloween and I am so excited for it this year.  Wes, while adorable last year, was too young to grasp what was going on and he just didn't get it.  This year I think will be much better, experience wise, and I am really looking forward to tomorrow evening.

 Finally having our own house, I was super excited to decorate.  I didn't go super crazy this year but I did a little bit, here and there.  I started on our front porch, with a little tableau that is more fall themed than Halloween so that I can leave it through Thanksgiving as well.  I've had the scarecrow since we lived with my sisters so I just had to take it out of the garage but the sign and the hay are new this year.  (Note: I know my door says 'Welcome' and the sign also says 'Welcome' but I am hoping to peel the door sign off soon and do something different.)

 Heading upstairs, I have these really cute Martha Stewart witches, made of black glitter paper, going up the banister.  One of my sisters had her bridal shower last year and it was a Halloween theme so I saved a bunch of the decorations to re-use and these little witches were part of that stash.

 These little skulls and bats are also part of my re-used decorations and I thought the stop of the stairwell was a perfect place to put them out and still keep them Wesley-safe.  What I didn't think through, however, is that every time I open the front door and there is any wind they will fall down.  Luckily we don't use our front door that often so this isn't too big a problem.

 Here is my 'mantle' which is really my unbalanced shelf in the room.  By unbalanced I don't mean emotionally but aesthically.  I want to have another shelf mounted on the other side of the room but the sofa is right beneath it and Casey thinks that Wes will hang from it.  Because it's what he would do.  I don't think Wes will think of that but we haven't yet put up the other shelf.  I'm working on it.  It will be up soon...mark my words.

 Wes spent the afternoon with my parents two weeks ago and he went grocery shopping with them.  He came home with this little pumpkin which fits the shelf-scale perfectly.  The owl is part of my everyday shelf items, the red skull is a hand-carved piece I bought down in Mexico and the black skulls are part of the party stash.  The black skull-candle and the silver skulls are part of my Halloween decor from seasons past.

 I made the chalkboard last weekend and I didn't know what to put on it.  I am going to frame it out soon and but I wanted to use it now so up it went.  I thought the zombie sign would fit for the season but it is easily and quickly changed.  

 

  I didn't have a cute Halloween bowl to put our candy in but I did have an empty milk jug.  So I put about five minutes effort into this and got a cute little candy jug to hand out our candy.  It was super easy to make, if you are interested in making your own here are the directions.

1. Empty and wash a gallon-size milk jug.
2. Cut off the top of the jug, starting at the top by the spout and then, since I knew I wanted to do a Frankenstein jug, so I left a little height up front.  How low or high is up to you and what you have planned.
3. When you cut the plastic, it's a little sharp and I didn't want anyone to scratch themselves getting candy out so I took a lighter and softened the edges.  This smoothed out any jagged cuts I made as well as evened out my lines.
4. This is where I got creative.  I painted the outside green first and then painted the hair section.  Drawing the details was easy, just a thin brush and a steady hand.  I honestly just did everything really without a plan.  I had an idea of how I wanted it to look and went for it.

 The last little bit of my pre-Halloween run-up was the annual portrait.  Taking a planned photo of Wes has gotten a lot harder than it was last year.  I sat him down and just had to keep the dogs away and that was it. Now, I have to keep him in the area I want as well as keep him looking toward me.  I tried to be smart about this and, without giving all of my tricks away, here is the 2012 Halloween pictures:

First Swim Lesson

 Today Wes had his first swim lesson.  Technically, it was a parent-tot swim class at our local rec center so we had a swim lesson today.  He had so much fun today!  The lesson was only 25 minutes but we go twice a week and he fell asleep on the drive home so I think that this is the perfect class for now.

 We started off just getting him in the water, with me holding him and lowering him to see how comfortable he will be.  He was great all the way to his chin and then he flipped himself onto his belly to float while holding my hands. 

 His instructor wanted us to play "Humpty Dumpty" on the wall: set him up out of the water and then say the rhyme.  "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!"  and on the 'fall' pull him into the water.  We did that once and the next time we went to do it he jumped off the wall before I could start the rhyme!  He had no fear and it was so fun for him to do that all on his own that we didn't say the rhyme at all for the next four or five jumps.

 Next we worked on blowing bubbles.  His instructor asked if he knew how to blow and he copied her when she did it.  Then he copied her again when she started blowing bubbles, and he did so well!  He also had no problem with sticking his nose under water and blowing bubbles.  This is the reason that we wanted to put him into lessons because he has been sticking his face in the tub water so this wasn't anything new to him but he still loved to do it.

 We then started working on his kicking skills.  Kicking and splashing is one of his strong points while in the tub but this morning he struggled a bit with it.  To be fair, there was a water Zumba class going on the other side of the pool so there was the distraction of the other people and the loud (albeit awesome) music and he kept getting sidetracked by watching all the other stuff going on.  But, when he was focused on it he did well, it was just a matter of focusing.

 The instructor wanted us to next work on floating on his back so I leaned him against my shoulder and slowly stretched him out so he was floating on his back.  Which was okay with him until he got his ears wet.  That is, apparently, the point at which he wasn't comfortable so every time we reached his ears he would struggle and sit up.  

 The last thing that we worked on was to see if he could jump off of the wall, to me without holding hands.  He loved jumping off the wall into my arms!  Wes has no fear, just jumping off and trusting me to catch him.  He loved this part and just kept jumping off the wall. 

 His instructor wanted to see if he would jump off and, holding hands now, would go under water all the way.  The first time he did this Wes got some water in his mouth and coughed for a minute but was anxious to go again.  This is the only video I was able to get and it's of him going all the way under; it's not the best video but I still think it's cute!

 My little guy had so much fun today.  We laughed and learned and he kept showing me how fearless he is.  I am so proud of Wes, so happy that he doesn't fear the water like I do.  I have some deep-rooted water issues and don't swim.  I have tried very hard to not pass my fears onto him and am glad that he loves the water and isn't afraid of it.  I hope that this class will let him enjoy the water more and can't wait for our next lesson!

Why I'm done with Five Year Plans

 I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to some things, not so much with others.  Some things I don't need to plan out to the nth degree: meal planning, cleaning schedules, and surprisingly (to me) Wes' and my schedules.  On the other hand, I am obsessive about travel planning, health issues and pregnancy.  I think I bought four books and subscribed to two different daily emails while I was pregnant with Wes, in addition to the movies and tv shows I watched to prepare.  (Watching "A Baby Story" on TLC totally counts, right?)
 One thing that I have done since high school is a 3-5 year plan.  I like to somewhat prepare myself for what I expect to happen, control freak that I am.  When I graduated, my short term (pretty much a 3 year plan at that time) was basically to finish college in three years with my teaching degree from SUU.  I was ambitious and expected to easily graduate in three years because I had accumulated so many credits while still in high school.  After my first semester I was already a sophomore and fully expected to meet that goal.  What I didn't expect was to meet Casey.
 I hadn't really considered meeting somebody, seriously speaking, which is dumb of me.  I figured I would go to school and meet people and hang out, but didn't think I might fall in love.  So of course I meet Casey and my plans change.
 Casey had decided to move to Las Vegas at the beginning of my second year of college and I stayed in Cedar City with the plan to finish school and move to Vegas when I graduated to be with him.  We did the long-distance thing for about two months before I decided it wasn't working for me and made the decision to quit school and move at the end of the semester.  To say that my new life plan wasn't really met with a lot of enthusiasm is the understatement of the century, but my family eventually came to support my decision.
 When I moved, my new plan was to go to work at the movie theatres (at that time, the only job that I knew) and move into management as soon as possible.  I wanted to prove myself to everyone, to say that I hadn't made a mistake by quitting school and that I could be successful without finishing college.
 I started working in December of 2001 and by June of 2002 I became and assistant manager, so I finally was on track to meet my goals.  For another couple of years I worked my way up to second assistant (third in charge of the location) and was planning on making it to GM as soon as I could.  There were some things that I could never have anticipated that conspired against me and my plans, namely other people.
 I was naive and can fully admit that now.  I trusted other people more than I should have and my trust was taken advantage of and Casey paid the price for it.  Casey lost his job and we started making plans to move back to Utah.  We both decided to go back to school and I would finish with my teaching degree first, since I was pretty much half done with my degree, and Casey would finish his work while I was in school since he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do.
 However, when we got back to Cedar City I got a great job as the general manager of the Motel 6 and was required to work during the day.  That did not work with the classes that I would need to take to get my teaching certificate so we decided that he would go back to school first, with the idea that he would go for his PharmD, or doctorate in pharmacy.
 We were really lucky that for two years my five year plan worked out perfectly.  Casey had researched pharmacy schools and there was a school in Vegas that didn't require a bachelor's degree, just certain pre-rec classes.  Casey set up his class schedule in those two years to allow for him to meet that school's requirements, and then we planned that he would apply to that school.  If he didn't make it in on his first try, then he would take the classes necessary to get into the next school needed only pre-recs and then he would apply to those schools.
 Luckily, Casey only had to apply once because he got in on his first try.  Not only did he get into his first choice school on his first try but they also had just opened up a new campus of their school up in South Jordan so we wouldn't have to move back to Vegas if we didn't need to.
 My new 5 year plan, starting in 2007, was to put Casey through school.  I would support us while he only worked as much as he needed/was able to.  I was able to get a pretty good management job with a national pharmacy chain and decided, again, that if I was going to work that I wanted to move up.  I made it my goal to move up to second in charge as soon as I could.
 I made my ambition known to my supervisors and pretty soon I was doing all that I could to advance including taking the Pharmacy tech class that my company taught.  I transferred to four different stores so that I could move into a better position to advance.  Eventually though, I got tired of the politics that come along with management jobs and decided that when Casey graduated I wanted to move into the pharmacy end and just be a tech.
 At this time I was looking past the point of Casey's graduation.  We had a plan that when he graduated I would try to get pregnant and when I had the baby I would stay at home with him/her.  If I wanted to go back to work I would but it wasn't necessary for me to plan on it.  I figured that being a Pharmacy tech would be a pretty good part time job when I went back to work, the pay is pretty good and the job itself isn't too demanding.
 Casey graduated on June 6, 2010 and within two months I was pregnant.  I left management in November of that year and planned on working in the pharmacy up to my due date, which was March 17.  A great plan for me because I was getting scheduled three days a week but could still pick up other shifts at other stores if I wanted to work more/more money.  This plan was perfect, until the first week of February when Casey had to go out of town for three weeks to complete his training for work.  On the second day that he was gone I went couldn't feel Wes moving and my doctor's office wanted me to go to the hospital to get checked out just to make sure everything was OK.
 I got to the hospital, got checked in and got hooked up to the fetal monitors and after a couple of hours I was told that Wesley was fine.  He was moving around and his heartbeat was nice and strong, but did I know that I was having contractions?  At my appointment the previous week I was dialed to a three and had been having what I thought were Braxton-Hicks the whole weekend before but wasn't feeling what I expected real labor/contractions.  After being monitored all day and the contractions not slowing or stopping I had to spend the night in the hospital and then the next morning my doctor checked me and decided that with a pretty rigid medication schedule I could remain pregnant and stop my contractions, so I was released.
 At this point, I needed to take it easy and decided to not go back to work.  So I ended up not working for that last month that I was pregnant.  Not in my plan at all, I had scheduled shifts at three different stores that I needed to call out on.  My plan was to come back to work at the end of my maternity leave and was just waiting for Wes to meet us.
 Wes was born on March 8 and came easily into this world.  Just like his delivery, Wes was a very easy baby.  I took my full twelve weeks of maternity leave and went back to work to do some training and I realized that I would rather be at home with my easy baby than at the pharmacy, dealing with grouchy old people and drug-seekers.
 Has any of my 3-5 year plans worked out completely like I had planned? NOT AT ALL.  Does that mean I'm not happy?  NOT AT ALL.  I could never have predicted where I would be at this point in my life and have to say that I am happy that I have deviated so far off of where I thought I should be versus where I am.
 The things that I kept planning were not bad plans, they were just not right for me in the end.  I could have easily stayed in Vegas working for the theatres if things had worked out differently but I know I wouldn't be as happy.
 I am where I am meant to be right now, which is at home with Wes.  I love knowing that we can do anything we want tomorrow,  that I don't have to squeeze things in around work to spend time with him.  If we don't get something done tomorrow guess what?  We can do it the next day.  Unless other people are counting on us for something, like doctor's appointments or doing stuff with family/friends, we can do whatever we want whenever we want.  Go to the park? Sure, why not.  Take a walk around the block and stop to look at all the construction trucks or a rock or just to stop?  No problemo, we're not in a hurry.  We can take our time and enjoy ourselves.
 My plans for the next week are to start swim lessons and maybe to grocery shop.  My plans for the next month?  Make my Christmas gifts for my aunts and uncles and start shopping for my immediate family.  Next year?  Who knows?  Maybe a trip to Disney World with Wes and Casey and my family, hopefully start potty training Wes, but other than that my plans are wide open.
 Sometimes I have a hard time with not having a plan to 'follow' and I feel like I'm not being productive but I know that raising Wes is a lot of work and that I am not only being productive but making a difference.  I can see my influence on Wes and am so proud of him and what I am doing with him.  In the last week he has learned where his nose and ears are and we are now working on learning where his mouth is.  This, in addition, to a few new signs to add to his vocabulary.  He is using 'play' and 'bird' now and we think he is trying to use 'drink.'
 So there it is, my new five year plan: No plans.  Try to roll with the punches, control and plan for what I can when I can.  That's it.  My type-A will come out (I've already been researching potty training and Disney World and I can guarantee I will still buy travel guides) but I will do my best to not go overboard.  Try.

Playtime Portraits

We got Wesley a Little Tikes play center this last week off of KSL.com and he loves it.  I had my camera the other morning while he was playing on it and just took a bunch of pictures and realized that I got a pretty good selection of 'portraits' of him.  

 How I love this little boy, because he is surely not a baby any more.  There is no fear, no hesitation when he climbs up and down the play center.  He just goes.  He falls, cries for a minute and then gets back up again. 

 He talks to himself, to me, to the dogs.  Half of it is understandable and the other half, is Wes-language that only he knows.  He whispers, yells and screams and makes silly noises.

 I love this kid so much, I can't even put it into words...

Mexican Vacation 2012

 About two months ago, Casey and I decided to go on a mini-vacation.  I started looking at both Groupon and LivingSocial to see what they had available and we finally decided on a trip to Mexico.  The package we purchased was for an all-inclusive, four-night stay for two adults at the Occidental Grand Xcaret Resort, about an hour south of Cancun.  This is not my photo, but that of the hotel's website, but it actually shows our building.  The upper-right building is where we stayed, but luckily our room faced away from the pool.

 We left on Sunday, the 16th, from Salt Lake to Denver with a short layover, then on to Cancun from there.  We had pre-arranged for transportation from the airport to our resort since it was so far out of town and I am so glad that we did.  It seems that whenever we go to Mexico and take taxis or buses they seem to be traveling way faster than is necessary.  They also seem to take traffic laws very lightly, such as turn signals and lane changes are very willy-nilly.
 We arrived at our resort and went to check-in and they didn't have our reservation.  Apparently the LivingSocial vouchers were being handled by an outside travel agency and since it was the weekend (and now that I think about it, Mexico's Independence Day was the day before as well) they did not have our reservation.  So we gave them the credit card and they got us in a room with the promise to find out what was going on the next day.
 That evening we were so tired from traveling all day (I know, first world problems) that we had some dinner at the buffet, a lot of margaritas and went to bed.  The next day we slept in, barely made it to breakfast before it closed and headed out for the day.
 In our resort, on our way to the taxi stand, we passed a fair amount of wildlife.  Just walking out on the paths we saw the first of hundreds Iguanas.  Not the biggest but not the smallest either, they were surprisingly nonchalant about all the people everywhere.  There were also a bunch of parrots in the lobby.  There were four stands and each stand had a pair of these gorgeous birds.

 
 We also saw a coati, which is a raccoon-cousin type animal.  I inaccurately called it a monkey the first time we saw one, but realized the next time it was not.  The last 'wild' animal we saw was an agouti, which was a rodent that literally ran across the path right in front of us.

 

 Our first trip out of our resort took us about ten minutes north into Playa del Carmen.  It is a lovely little beach-side town.  Our taxi let us off at the top of the street heading to the ferry and we headed straight for the pier and the beach.

  

 We left the beach and started walking Quinta Avenida, which is the main shopping street just off of the beach.  We headed into a few stores and had lunch at a great little place called Fridas.  I forget how real Mexican food is different than Tex-Mex and when I ordered some enchiladas I got the red sauce, which is tomatier than red chile is.  It wasn't bad but not what I had expected.  After we left we went further up the street, where we encountered a man with a monkey and I wanted to get a picture.

 This is just one of many pictures we took.  The guy told us it would be a paid-for picture as he was handing the monkey to Casey, but when all the photos were taken, he told us it would be $20 USD.  I said "What? $20 for a photo with a monkey?" and he told us it was $20 each.  The hell we were going to pay that and I told him I would delete the pictures, and he started bargaining with us.  We settled with him at $5 each and left but it pissed Casey off.  That did teach us, however, to make sure to get all prices settled up front for everything we did after that.  After that we caught a cab back to the resort, had dinner, and went to bed.  Or at least I went to bed, at like 8:30.  Casey called me lame, but whatever, it was my vacation and I slept because I could.
 *Side note*  Something that we noticed that we never got explained to us while there:  on the highway that we traveled on there were these random roadblocks set up with the police.  There would be a narrowing of lanes, and then some pretty serious police officers with automatic weapons would be patrolling these road blocks.  We could never figure out what they were looking for and if someone was pulled over, there didn't seem to be any correlating link to figure out what was going on.  Also, when they say "Topes (Speed Bumps)" they aren't kidding you.  It was like hitting a pothole every time we came to a set of them.

   

Tuesday we took an all-day tour.  The first half of the day we went to the Mayan ruins at Tulum.  While not the most famous or magnificent of the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan peninsula, Tulum has the most picturesque setting.  The city was built directly atop a cliff on the beach, providing them with a natural barrier on that east side.  The original name of the city was Zama, which means 'City of Dawn' because the city faces the sunrise.  

  

 On the North, South and West sides of the city was a large wall that served as the rest of the protection from other cities.  Inside the wall, there were many ruins of buildings and temples in various states of ruin.  According to our guide, the homes were built of wood and mud so what was left were the rock basement/foundations.  In the Mayan culture, when a family member died they were buried in the basement of the family home, hence the basements.  However, the city of Tulum was (at some point) raided and taken over by the Toltec's and they didn't subscribe to the same beliefs.  The Toltec's buried family members in the backyard and excavations at Tulum have revealed both burial sites.

 

 We next saw a temple with both Mayan and Toltec architecture.  Every 52 years, based upon the Mayan calender, a temple was constructed or had another layer added to a temple already built.  The first temple we saw was very interesting for many reasons.  First, it had three different levels of temple built into it.  There is an inner-lower level temple, an outer-lower level temple and the upper temple.

 The Mayan architecture in this temple is evident by the face/mask carvings in the corner of the buildings.  The Maya also painted hand prints on outside of the upper level in reference to a god, I don't remember which one.  The Toltec influence is in the rounded columns.  This is temple is known as "Temple of Frescoes" and I wish I had my good camera and not just a little underwater camera but there are these beautiful drawings on the inner-lower temple walls that cannot be made out.  Just beautiful and it made me so curious about these people who could be where my people come from.

 

 

 The next temple is what Tulum is known for and I'll just let the photos speak for themselves:

 

 

 

 

 

 Here are some more of the ruins at Tulum, just breathtaking.  There is a couple more temples as well as some more home ruins.

 

 

 

 

 This was the exit through Tulum's protective wall and here is Casey and I.  I wanted a picture of Casey that wasn't the back of his head as he turned away from the camera so when he sat down to check his blood sugar I took a picture really quick.  He claimed that I withheld his vital medicine from him to get the photo but that's not at all the truth.  *Side note: Casey did really well with his diabetes on this trip.  We were very prepared for anything, with both his glucagon shot as well as a bunch of Starburst to make sure he didn't get too low.  He wore his medical ID necklace and we had the food book with carb counts.  I really think that diabetes may not make travelling too difficult to travel.*

 

 Back at the entrance to Tulum, there was a group of Mayan men performing a ritual that I had seen before but in NEW Mexico, not aware that it was done in MEXICO as well.  Where my dad's family is from in New Mexico, a little town called Penasco, there is a Native American Pueblo nearby.  Every August they have a festival for the patron saint and many festivities including traditional rituals and a carnival.  When we used to go to New Mexico to visit my great-grandma we always went at this time to celebrate.  One of the rituals involved men hanging from the top of a pole and swinging from their legs off of the top, slowly working their way to the ground.  I was very surprised to see the same ritual being performed there in Tulum, which made me realize it's called NEW Mexico for a reason.

 

 After the ruins we spent the later part of the afternoon at Xel-Ha, a natural water park.  It is an inlet that has a freshwater river leading out to the ocean where you can snorkel, float along in inner tubes, cliff jump, explore cenotes, and more.  The park was beautiful, all lush jungle and gorgeous water, whether river or ocean.

 

 

 

 

 At about half way through our two-hour plus time we spent snorkeling the temperature started dropping and the water was getting harder to see through in intervals.  We could start to feel the tide and realized that the dropping temperatures and the mottled-looking water was the warm fresh water was meeting the cooler ocean water.  I love this picture because it looks like old glass to me and is exactly what we were seeing.

 

 On our last full day in Mexico we slept in and took a ferry from Playa del Carmen over to the island of Cozumel.  The ferry ride made me sick but I slept through it and woke when we docked at Cozumel.  Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought a day in Cozumel was a great idea because the first thing we saw as we got off of the ferry was a Disney cruise ship.  The second thing we saw was this humongous Mexican Flag along the pier.  

 We shopped and walked in Cozumel and stopped at this restaurant called Pancho's Backyard.  It's at the back of this really great store, Los Cinco Soles, and was recommended by our travel book.  (Yes, I am that tourist with the travel book.)  The food there was great and the atmosphere was great.  There were some marimba players who performed the whole time we were there.  Unfortunately I didn't take any more pictures while we were in Cozumel and we really didn't do much more that afternoon beyond shop and walk the boardwalk.

 Thursday morning, before we checked out, we went down to our resorts beach.  We never went to the pool while we were there but definitely wanted to make it to the beach and enjoy it.  We had a couple of hours that morning to laze about, so we worked on our tans and ventured into the water a couple of times.  

 Actually Casey went in a couple of times, I went in only once and it was short lived.  As I walked in and got about waist deep I noticed a bunch of little white fish that blended perfectly with the sandy bottom.  As I stopped to look at them, a school swam around me and watched as one came right up to me and bit me on the leg.  When the wildlife attacks, I think that's a sign to leave so I did. 

 On our way back to our room to clean up and pack we found some ruins that were located on our resorts property.  I kind of wish we had more time to spend in Mexico so we could explore more of the resort as well as more of the area around us. 

 

 

 If ever we head back to the Yucatan I want to go to Chichen Itza and Coba to see the ruins there.  I would also like to go snorkeling in the cenotes as well.  Going on this trip was great, even though we both missed Wes a bunch.  It was good to get away, just the two of us, and spend time together.  It was very hard for us to leave.  We had just acclimated to the humidity and how great was it to have someone else making food for me and cleaning up my room?  Overall, a wonderful trip and I can't wait to have an another adventure soon!