the mama life: July 2012

Sunday, July 29, 2012

800 miles and a beach

We're back! And we made it in one piece!

On Thursday morning, we set out on our first official "summer vacation" to Lincoln City, OR! Although we didn't get to escape Oregon, we were 390 miles away from home, so that was good enough! :) so, beginning super early on Thursday morning (4 am, to be exact), I was awakened by my alarm. Which not only got me up, but reminded me that we had another 4 hours to go until we could start our vacation. I unfortunately had to open the Fitness Center this morning and had to stay until 8. The morning dragged by as usual, and then it was 8 o'clock and Josh pulled up with Landen to pick me up from work! I hopped in, we stopped to get some drinks, and then were on the road!

All was well! Josh and I singing along to the radio and Landen happily occupied watching A Goofy Movie in the backseat. We made our first stop in Boardman, where we were waiting to meet up with Josh's dad, Tony, and my new little sisters, Dani and Brenna :). We pulled up next to the Columbia river and found a walking path to waste some time while we were waiting.

Ya know how every time you're going somewhere important you end up forgetting something? Whether its your notes for a meeting, a towel to the pool, or deodorant on a date? Well this trip was no exception to that unfortunate rule. Just a few minutes after this picture was taken, it came to our attention that we had forgotten Landen's bag of clothes for the trip! So, with a quick stop to a Walmart in Hood River, we were back on the road, anxious to get to the coast!Landen kept himself busy the rest of the drive...

After a seemingly endless 8 hours since we left our home, we finally made it to this wonderful view!

And now, please enjoy these quick snapshots of our 2 full days at the beach :)! (I did have LOTS of videos on our video camera, but alas I am too lazy to put them onto my computer and then onto my phone.)

Monday, July 23, 2012

Blogging on a phone is tough!

So, I've decided that come tax return time, a small laptop is on my list of things to buy. Blogging on a phone is a lot harder than it seems :(
This post I wrote yesterday, and was going to publish yesterday, until none of my pictures would show up! So hopefully this works...just pretend that today is yesterday :)

Bueno! I feel like I'm already falling behind on this thing, and I've only
had one post so far! Lately it feels like life is lifting off at the Carlton house. We've got so much going on and coming up that it's got our heads in a spin! But we've made it this far, so there is no reason we can't keep pluggin along :) So Landen has finished his swim lessons since my last post, which we are so proud of! He is not scared at all of any water, especially bathtubs and sprinklers. He now purposely shoves his own face underwater in the tub because we learned that it's not scary to get your face wet :) And now any time he sees a sprinkler, creek, river, faucet, etc., all we hear is "wa-er!". Which is close...but we need to work a little on sounding everything out. This week alone has been crazy! In our tiny town of Baker City we have been prepping for the Annual Miner's Jubilee! And even though it is Sunday now and all of the celebrations are over, I still don't completely understand what the big hulabaloo was about! Either way it was fun to walk around town and see everything that was going on! On Friday they had what seemed like hundreds of booths filling the city park. Everyone brough homemade items to sell. Whether it was clothes, organic fruits and veggies, art, soaps, etc. Our favorite that we ran across was a man who found old railroad spikes in Sumpter, OR and turned them into handknives! Random I know, but they looked so awesome! You would never guess that you could take something so old and rusty and turn it into this beautifully shiny hand-crafted knife. So cool! Some people's talents absolutely blow our minds. Anyways! After spending some time at the park and checking out all of the vendors, we crossed the street and walked down t o the city fairgrounds. (Which happen to be less than three blocks from our house! So convenient).Considering that we do live in a town that is population 10(thousand. haha, it wasn't a very impressive fair). But it was still fun! Landen loved looking at all of the lights, the kids running around, and watching Josh and I play (rigged) fair games in hopes of winning a prize! We tried our luck with darts (trying to pop balloons), and were lucky! Josh won first, hitting about seven balloons with three darts, and won an adorably tiny pink bear! I tried it out and was able to get two balloons with my four darts (obviously I have no real athletic prowess), but was able to upgrade Josh's pink bear to a slightly bigger white bear with a creepy red nose! Landen loved it, which was a nice reward anyways :) Saturday morning, there was a parade through downtown Baker. With about 60 floats! Which is pretty impressive for such a small town.

It started off nicely, will all smiles!

Landen loved seeing the horses (didn't love the live gunshots and band so much...)

By float #35, Landen was spent and ready to do anything else.

Yesterday, we made a day trip to Payette, ID. Which, due to unfortunate circumstances for my Mom's family, gave us the opportunity to see her for six hours! So I of course gladly made the hour trip across the mountains to see her, dragging Josh and Landen behind me :) It was an extremely short but great visit, and made me that much more excited to see her again in six weeks! When we will be flying to California for a week of much needed vacation :) Finally, my favorite part of this post! Today Landen had his first encounter with his first big boy bed! Our sweet little 17 month old is no longer a baby (as much as we will deny it), and has moved out of his crib. :( Compliments of my Mom, she brought us this cute little red bed and MADE that adorable CARS pillow and blanket!

Landen did better than we expected with his first nap time. He only got up once! Which of course we documented under his bedroom door.

But after Josh went in, had a talk about how being a big boy meant staying in bed for naps, Landen had no problem falling right to sleep :)

Hopefully bedtime goes this smoothly! Luckily we have tomorrow off, just in case there are lots of sad little boys who are having trouble adjusting to their awesome new beds ;) ***UPDATE*** Bedtime went great! The first hour was tough. We had to lay him down twice, but then he slept all the way through the night like normal :) so proud of our little Bug!! Also, this Thursday we set out to Lincoln City with Josh's family! Can't wait to spend four days with awesome people having fun! :) stay tuned for what adventures we get ourselves into!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

How does this work?

Good afternoon! Needless to say, I'm obviously new to blogging. But I figure, I need to document this amazing time in my life somehow. (And honestly what are the chances of me writing everything in a journal when I'm only going to be accountable to myself, right?) So! I know you're sitting on the edge of your seat, biting your nails in suspense of what thrilling events have gone on in the lives of my little Carlton family...but I'm gonna burst that bubble. We are but a normal family in tiny little Baker City, making an honest living and squeezing adventures and fun into our schedule whenever possible. Away we go! Yesterday, which happened to be July 9th, we were in Idaho on a (super) mini trip! We ended up making our way to Boise, because I finally convinced Josh that it would so much fun to take Landen to the zoo! Anyhow, anyone who has ever been to the Boise Zoo knows that it's a pretty lackluster zoo (compared to my all time favorite Portland Zoo!). But for our purposes and for the entertainment of our 17 month old, it would do just fine. We began making our way around the monkey exhibit, apparently during nap time, because the monkeys were about as interesting as a rock out in our yard. Nevertheless, we pressed onward! We made our way through "Africa", and found ourselves looking at our all time favorite animal: GIRAFFES! It was magical, and even had Landen saying "raff" with a 1000-watt smile on his tiny face. We soon learned that in just a few minutes the zoo would be holding a giraffe feeding! (a clever way to suck extra money from gullible patrons like us who are looking for a cheap thrill). Long story short, and six dollars later, we had two whole lettuce leaves to feed to this beautiful creature!

What an experience of a lifetime! Hopefully we'll be able to go back through the years and have another go at feeding them again :] We ended up finishing our way through the zoo, but not without struggle. Landen soon decided that he didn't care what animals were there, he only wanted to help me push the stroller. Which was very sweet, don't get me wrong. But from that point forward, the 106 degree weather had turned Landen from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde...and Landen was not trying to "hyde" it from anyone. But luck was in our favor as we made it through 95% of the day before Mr. Hyde showed up. What happened next, you ask? Well skip ahead to TODAY. Today was nothing special. I worked, Josh worked, and Landen took a pretty long nap. But this evening was fantastic! Our little Bug had his very first swim lesson! Josh and I were both nervous, wondering how Landen would do in a pool for the first time...but he ended up loving every minute! He wasn't shy at all about sticking his face in the water (although his sole intent was to drink the water). And jumping off the edge and into my arms was scarier to me than it was for him!

We were so proud of our little Bug! (We were also so happy that Landen had exhausted himself by the end of class that he only required a small dinner and was ready for bed within the hour. But any parent can appreciate days like that :])