Why?

Matthew never went through this stage. Why am I surprised that Corinne is the one to plague me with that question? Every day? All day? Even when she knows the answer? And if I attempt to ignore her the question is continually repeated at a steadily higher decibal until she is screaming at me. Why? Why did 'why' become so important? I am making a motion to delete that word from the English vocabulary.

Nora turns 2

Our sweet little Nora turned 2 yesterday. We celebrated by going to Stake Conference and taking long naps afterwards. Grandma and Grandpa Strong came for dinner followed by the birthday celebration. Since Nora doesn't have a cake preference yet, she gets Daddy's favorite--carrot cake, bedecked with sprinkles by request of Matthew and Corinne. When we started singing "Happy Birthday" to her, she looked like she was about to cry until we clapped at the end and she got to blow out the candles.

Nora enjoyed the singing this time, before opening her presents.

As soon as she opened her presents, she was on the go! She pushed all sorts of babies in the stroller and fed them from her new baby bottles. Corinne and Matthew enthusiastically helped her feed her baby.

We love our Nora. She has such a sweet disposition and has always been a great sleeper. She started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks old and has only woken up in the middle of the night a handful of times since. She is talking up a storm and even uses complete sentences sometimes. She makes sure you know what she wants. But she definitely is hitting the twos. When she says the prayer, she has to say "no" before every word. At least she still says the right words. She is always ready and willing to give hugs and kisses, even if she says "no" before she does it. I think Heavenly Father knew I needed a sweet child to balance Corinne's stormy disposition. But we love both of them regardless.

Veteran's Day

For Veteran's Day, we decided to hike to the "waterfall" in the nearby White Tank Mountains. Luckily, we were admitted to the park for free since Jeremy is a veteran. Matthew climbed all the way to the top of the trail...with a little assistance from Daddy.

He inadvertently stepped into a puddle.


Matthew and Daddy climbing back down from the puddles up top.











































Corinne was so proud she made it to the top by herself.



Nora had the easiest trip.
















The family with Matthew hiding behind Jeremy and Nora cut out.
























Matthew got tired by the end of the hike and Corinne wanted to join in the fun too, so Daddy got to carry everybody. What a happy family. I think he just misses his navy workouts.
























Nora became attached to the hat when Matthew was done with it.
























Instead of twisting her hair into knots, now Corinne just stuffs a lock into her nose. So weird.

















It was getting too quiet on the ride home so I looked at the kids and saw this.

Halloween 2010

This year for Halloween Matthew chose to be Spiderman, Corinne wanted to be a witch (thanks Melinda for the costume!) and Nora didn't have a preference so she received Corinne's hand-me down costume of a cheerleader. But I think she sure made a cute cheerleader!

Eventhough we didn't go trick-or-treating on Halloween, Matthew had 3 opportunities to dress up, Corinne had 2, and Nora had one. We went to Matthew's school's Fall Festival and had fun participating in the different activities and finding ways to use up all the tickets that we bought, including the petting zoo, the bounce house, and inflatable slide.

Matthew was able to dress up for his party at school. I was happy to learn that his class would celebrate Halloween at school when so many schools are doing away with celebrating holidays in order to be politically correct.

On the 30th, we went to our ward's annual Trunk-or-Treat Halloween carnival. There were some fun events for the kids to participate in, plenty of chili to eat, and the begging for candy at the end. The kids are still enjoying the candy since we don't let them have too much in one day. We had a Happy Halloweeeeeen!

Summer 2010

Yes, I know I have been horrible at posting this summer. We've been pretty busy with projects with the house and celebrating birthdays and such. We celebrated Jeremy's 29th birthday with a quick day trip to San Diego to go to Sea World for free while we could. While Jeremy was active duty in the navy we could go to any Anheiser Busch theme park for free once a year. So we had to take advantage of it before June 23rd. Matthew loved it because he was tall enough to ride all the big rides and claimed he never once was scared.

Here are some pictures I found on my phone. I've been really bad about taking pictures lately. I guess this was a mini photo shoot that Jeremy and Matthew took together. Here a couple of their shots.

During the sweltering days of summer I put a wading pool out on the back porch which the kids loved playing in, until they turned it into a mud pond at least once a week. They just can't resist putting dirt into everything. Hopefully one day soon we'll get grass in our backyard so they aren't always playing in the dirt/mud.

Nora has fun accessorizing with sunglasses, necklaces, purses, and whatever kind of hat she can find.

We also celebrated Matthew turning 5 in August. He requested a carrot cake with blue frosting and sprinkles. Easy enough. He also started half-day kindergarten at a local charter school that we were so excited he was accepted into. He wears a uniform every day which is nice since he doesn't have to worry about what he's going to wear every day.

Grandma Medford came for a few days and the kids loved spending time with her, especially on the seesaw at the playground and when Grandma plays "See Me Run" on the piano.

We also celebrated my 31st birthday in September. Wow, I guess a lot has happened since I last posted. Jeremy has also fixed up the hot tub and it is now working, finished up most of the cabinetry and woodwork in the kitchen, put up a fan in the kitchen, and I have done some painting around the house. There's still tons to do, but we're getting there.

Food

Ever since we've come back from Italy, we have had an obsession with food. Not in the sense that we are always eating food, but that we want to better understand food, its complexities, flavors, and how to cook the best tasting meals. Jeremy's brother Jeff (whose wedding we attended in Italy) has converted to the organic food diet and has been trying to convert us for awhile now. He gave us a book called "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. I read it with the idea that it would provide me with insight as to why I should go organic. I mean, what's the big deal? Pesticides keep bugs out of my food. They're necessary, right? Well, that's not exactly what I learned from the book. The book basically describes the "Western diet" and explains why people in the US are so fat. Pollan explains that our food is calorie high and nutrient low and therefore our bodies go through a negative feedback loop and tell our brains that we're still hungry in order to get essential vitamins and nutrients into our bodies which in turn, many Americans will put more nutrient low foods into their bodies to quell the hunger thereby getting bigger and bigger. Ours is the first generation that is expected to have a shorter life span than our parents. Doctors are finding in obese children diseases that usually occur in malnourished kids. The book also explains that Americans eat tons of processed foods and explains what exactly goes into processed foods. I then realized that processed food doesn't really seem like food anymore. I could go on about things I learned in the book, but I don't want to rewrite the whole book here on the blog. We also watched "Food Inc." which you can watch for free on Netflix. This movie is a documentary about processed food too which we found very informative.

So, we aren't necessarily converts to organic foods, per se, but are more into eating naturally occurring foods. Basically the premise of "In Defense of Food" is, as the author says it first in the book, is to "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." As I read the book the thought came to me that this is really a defense of the Word of Wisdom. We should eat meat sparingly and eat fruits and vegetables in their seasons. That is how our bodies were made to eat. The author tells us that food scientists have broken down fruits and vegetables into essential vitamins and minerals, but what they can't do is explain how all of these work synergistically in the fruit/vegetable as a whole. You will benefit much more by eating the fresh salad than by taking a vitamin supplement.

In our search to eat more naturally, we have made a recent find that we are enjoying. It's called Bountiful Baskets and it is a food co-op found pretty much in every western state. What you do is go to http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/ on Tuesday or Wednesday and make a "contribution" to Bountiful Baskets and order a basket which will contain 6 vegetables and 6 fruits which you pick up on the following Saturday. It also gives you options to order other things such as bread, dessert packs, extra fruit (we've ordered a box of peaches and a box of blueberries) and also ethnic packs. It's never the same each week and you don't get to choose what produce goes into your basket. For us, that's part of the fun. We learn new recipes to accomodate the selections and we get to try new foods. We recently found Swiss chard and artichokes in our basket. The kids loved eating the artichokes. Eating it was part of the fun. A good recipe site is allrecipes.com. I love this site because it has a rating system and provides reviews from people who have made the recipe and offer suggestions on how to improve the recipes.

All that being said, I'm not trying to convert anyone to the organic trend because organic isn't necessarily the solution. I'm just trying to provide you with some awareness of what you're eating.

Happy Independence Day!

I'm a couple of days late in posting this because I had to catch up on the Italy trip. But if you notice the counter on the right, it is at zero! That's right, Jeremy's duty with the navy is done! Hooray!

Rome

Our bed and breakfast was fairly near to the National Palace, hence the first picture. This is actually considered an eyesore to the Romans as it was built in the late 1800s. It doesn't really match the rest of the Roman sites.

The Roman Forum. It is amazing to see the excavation that has been done and to see all the different levels of cities. The different civilizations would just build on top of the ruins of the civilization before. And since Rome is such an ancient city, there are a few layers.

Our first glimpse of the Colisseum.

The Constantine Arch.

The entrance to St. Peter's Basilica--the largest cathedral in the world. The Catholics are a bit egotistical and gaudy. But they do have some amazing works of art.

Jeremy took a million pictures of all the popes in the cathedral all holding up different numbers of fingers in reference to the earlier post in Siena about the statue of the pope saying "2 Euros." He thought it was pretty funny.

Bernini's papal altar. St. Peter's also is home to Michelangelo's Pieta. Can you tell I love Michelangelo? We also had to see his Sistine Chapel. I recently read a book called "The Agony and the Ecstasy" which is a historical fictional book about Michelangelo's life. It definitely gave me a greater appreciation for his works.

View of the dome from the Vatican Museum. Rome was our final destination. We did see the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and the Spanish Steps at night just like I wanted to. Just no pictures. And we saw the Boca de Verita from "Roman Holiday" that I had wanted to see. We also did the on/off bus tour to see all the sites. I'd definitely recommend that because you can get on and off the bus whenever you want and it stops at all the main attractions with a bus stopping about every 30 minutes. There is always so much to see and never enough time to see it all, or to sample all of the delicious dishes there. But we were ready to go home and see our kids. So long, Italy!

Amalfi

Our trip to Amalfi was a crazy one. First, we had to catch a 30 min train ride to Salerno from Naples where we were staying. Then we waited an hour to catch a bus to Amalfi. That was one of the scariest bus rides I've ever been on (including a mountainous bus ride in Guatemala). The Amalfi coast is practically a cliff on a very curvy coast. I'm surprised we didn't run any other cars off the road. There were some tight spots where we had to stop as a smaller car squeezed by. And then the bus driver would put his foot to the pedal and we'd cruise along the coast staring out the window at the water down below or the cliff face on the other side. There was an Australian couple on the boat with us and we asked them why they didn't rent a car (since it was obvious they were fairly wealthy). They just laughed and said, "this is why." No one in their right mind would want to drive this road.

From Amalfi we caught another bus that was supposed to take us to a hike called "The Walk of the Gods." The bus driver was supposed to tell us where to get out, but he didn't speak English, and we didn't speak Italian. We got out at a spot that had a sign that said, "Climbing." The bus pulled away and we followed the sign to a rock climbing spot. Not what we were looking for. And, who knew when another bus was supposed to come along?
So we started walking back toward Amalfi. It took us a couple of hours and a 10 minute ride from some kind Italian family that picked up a couple of strange American hitchhikers. But we made it back to Amalfi in time to grab a bite for dinner, catch the last back to Salerno, catch the last train to Naples, and the last metro back to close to our area. And then we had to walk about 6 km back to the friend's apartment we were staying at. We were exhausted and sweaty by the end of the day. But we saw some amazing views!

A waterfall that dropped to a river that ran under the road. There was a sheep trail that led down to it. It was gorgeous! Except for the sheep droppings on the road.

Pisa

Lucca is fairly close to Pisa so we took the train one day to Pisa. We made it a quick trip and walked to see the famous leaning tower, the nearby Duomo and Baptistry, had some gelato, twice, and called it a day.

The obligatory holding up the tower picture.

Florence

On my previous trip to Italy about 7 years ago I only visited Rome and Pompeii and my greatest regret was that I never made it to Florence to see Michelangelo's David, which is my favorite work of art. I know, it sounds cliche, but once you see it in person you realize just how amazing it is. The detail put into it is magnificent: you can even see the outline of veins and tendons in the hands and feet. I seriously got chills when I saw it up close. That alone made the trip worth it for me.

We also made it to the Uffizi museum and saw some more amazing pieces of art. There happened to be a Caravaggio exhibit with one of his paintings, "Medusa" on display. This picture here just doesn't do it justice. It is painted on a shield and the details are exquisite. Kind of creepy subject matter but amazing nonetheless.

We also visited the Piti Palace which had amazing gardens and a beautiful view of Florence.
Jeremy's brother, Jeff, is a professional photographer so he had many photographer friends there for the wedding. I was so embarrassed of our small 7 year old digital camera compared to the high-tech gear of the professionals. He had friends from America, Wales, Poland, and Hungary there. It was so fun to meet all of these wonderful people.

Jeremy just couldn't resist picking the nose of the giant face sculpture.

There was a monument off to the side on the way to the exit of the palace that had crazy sculpture all over it which made it look like it was pulled up from the lost city of Atlantis. It looked like it had coral growing all over it with seashells on it. Crazy and yet very interesting. Florence was definitely my favorite city on this trip. Just beautiful.

Siena

We spent the next 5 days in a villa in Tuscany and visited some cities in the area. The villa was in Lucca which was pretty central to the rest of the areas we went to. One of the cities was Siena. I had never heard of it but it was strongly recommended by Jeff. We first arrived at the central piazza and found this tower and climbed to the very top. It had gorgeous views of the entire city. Apparently there is a recent James Bond movie that takes place here during the annual horse races through the city.

We saw these apples and had to take a picture for my younger sister, Melinda.

Somewhere on or in this cathedral is Michelangelo's sculpture of St. Peter which I didn't realize was there until after we had left.We wanted to go inside this Duomo (cathedral) and found we had to pay 3 Euros to do so. We were a little frustrated because after all, churches should be free, right? We went to Siena with a couple from Hungary who have traveled a lot and they mentioned that every time they go back somewhere the price to do anything increases.

So when we found this statue later Jeremy made a joke that this pope who is holding up two fingers is telling everyone that it costs 2 Euros to go inside. Our Hungarian friends thought it was hilarious.