what i've been up to

we've been a little busy lately, so its nice for me to just sit down and type a blog update with pictures that i made sure to take. 2 weekends ago was my very first night away from tristan EVER. yes, i know it was long overdue! every year josh's mom and her sisters put on a scottish tea at one of their houses. this year, it was up in glendora at her younger sister's house and, since it was a bit of a drive, we all spent the night.



my sis in law jessica and i were the only "young" girls there this year, and we had such a blast! the first order of business once we arrived was to get the food all ready so that we could eat and eat and eat. there were lots of little finger sandwiches (cucumber with dill & cream cheese, egg salad, tuna salad and salmon) there were strawberries with whipped cream, mini chocolate mousse tarts, lemon tarts, scones with clotted cream, shortbread, empire biscuits, dream bars, nut cakes, currant cake, and the most delicious flavored tea ever. we stuffed ourselves full, then filled our purses with chocolates and set out to enjoy a chick flick at the movies. we shopped, then had our traditional dinner of meat pies, mashed potatoes with gravy and peas (oh so scottish) and then we all put on our bathing suits and soaked in the hot tub outside. once our fingers and toes had turned into raisins, we donned our coziest jammies and watched 'fried green tomatoes' until one by one we dropped off to bed.



(that's my mom in law chris in the middle, with aunt marion on the left and aunt nancy on the right. try to ignore the 'redi whip' can in the photo, its not very scottishly authentic looking :)) of course, the next morning i awoke at 5:15 sharp, looked at my watch, smiled to myself and rolled over to fall back into some more delicious sleep. i slept in until 7 (which, before i had tristan i never would have dreamed of calling "sleeping in!") and then leisurely made my way to the kitchen for some coffee and leftover scones with jam. we went on a gorgeous walk after breakfast, well more of a hike really, to a lookout point over the city and then we did some more shopping before grabbing in-n-out burgers on our way home. it was a fantastic weekend and my only regret is that i didn't enjoy a night away sooner! the boys did awesome at home on their own. apparently tristan never even really cried the entire 2 days i was gone, though he did somehow manage to get half a peanut lodged up his nose which josh didn't discover until the next day. i came home to big hugs, washed and folded laundry, vacuumed floors and a sparkling kitchen. WOW! again, why didn't i do this sooner??!



2 days later tristan and i were off to the airport to pick up my friend christy for her 3rd annual visit. josh and i always enjoy her company and this year tristan really did as well, calling "kissy! kissy!" up the stairs while she attempted sleeping in. we got to visit the wild animal park as well as the beach and we also fit in a little bit of shopping. we had hoped to do more, but the garage sale we had been planning for weeks just happened to fall on the saturday she was here. i've never actually done a garage sale before, and christy's an expert, so i was extremely thankful that she was here to help me price things the night before the sale and to keep me sane during the sale. it wasn't a hugely successful sale, we only made $60, but that's more than we'd have made by hauling it all to the thrift store like we normally do.

that same day was tristan's first ever sleepover at his gran and grandpa's house. my mom in law wanted to try having him over as a test run before the baby starts to come and he has to sleep there anyway. she had the great idea of having tristan's cousin johnny spend the night as well, to make it a little easier on tristan. i know i've mentioned this before, but tristan ADORES his cousin johnny, so it worked perfectly. they even shared a bed and when tristan shed a couple of tears after gran turned out the light, johnny comforted tristan with some of his stuffed animals and within minutes they were both sound asleep. the next morning, i couldn't manage to sleep past 6am, so i got up, made myself a cup of tea and sat down in a *quiet* house while reading my daily devotions. it was heavenly!

christy flew back to her snowy home on sunday while we enjoyed 80 degree weather. (sorry, just had to rub it in a little!) josh had his first full week of work since december, which we are SO grateful for. he even has a couple of side jobs lined up as well, so i think that this month is looking pretty good so far. we were hit with a pretty awful shock when we discovered that the ultrasound i had a month ago was only partially covered by our insurance, so we have to pay around $800 for it! if we had known beforehand, we never would have had it, so that was pretty depressing news, but we just continue to take things one day at a time and God always provides.


today i used a bit of spare change to buy a couple bags of potting soil and i had fun in the backyard planting some of the flowers i seeded indoors. i've got snapdragons, african daisies, cosmos, zinnias and bachelor buttons all growing strong with some grape tomatoes popping up as well. i can't wait to see them begin to bloom so i can take some pictures to post. gardening is so therapeutic for me and tristan just loves running around the backyard, "helping" me by watering his little sunflowers with bucket after bucket of water. i've really been drinking in these special moments lately with tristan still being our only child. he is talking so much now and making sense finally and josh and i burst out laughing every day at something he says or does. these are happy days...we have so much to be thankful for.