pissy day

so i've been dog-sitting my parent's dog tootsie this week and will continue to do so next week while my parents are down in cedar city visiting my sis, kyla.

i love the toots, but i'm not used to having to take care of a dog and child at the same time.  

toots has to take a dump?  i have to put the harness on toots, haul everton out with me in his pjs, and venture off outside to watch tootsie do her business.  and then picking the poop off the ground is a feat in itself.

tootsie was whining at 1am last night so i had to go down and tuck her back into bed.  later at around 8.40ish am, brett's been long gone to work and tootsie had to piss.  i took her out quickly then got everton from bed.  i just slightly touched his back and poop was smeared all up on it.  

oh ok newborn.  cleaned him up and got the dog and child fed for breakfast.

fast forward to lunchtime.  

everton hasn't been eating lunch or dinner lately.  becoming anorexic everton?  cuz i love your chubby thighs and your hanging over your pants belly.  so him not eating always stresses me out.  and it's not like i'm feeding him anything really new.  not eating and grumpy?  off to take a nap you go.

and you know what, i'm feeling that i need a nap too.

i lock the baby gate behind me as i go up the stairs and i tuck myself into my delicious bed.

and then i took a blissful 2 hr nap.

FALSE.

tootsie was whining again and i could hear everton chanting for a whole two hours in his crib.  i was in my bed seething.  i was dying for a nap.

i got restless everton from his crib and got started on folding laundry.  

everton helped me out by throwing the big pile of socks into the air like someone just got married. 

that, i didn't mind, it was pretty adorable.

when i was finally done with laundry everton and i went downstairs and i flipped on the tv.  clueless was on, THANK YOU!!  so i got to relax a little bit.  everton was entertaining himself with some toys and toots was doing her usual thang of licking herself inappropriately and such.  i was on the computer and up comes on my twitter feed the LDS church tweeting, "have you counted your blessings today?"

crap, i'm such a jerk.  i wanted to cry.  here i was stomping around, being momzilla, while other stay at home mommies are most likely dealing with bigger problems other than lack of a nap or you know, they have more kids than me.

so then i started to think, well what are my blessings today??

brett always kisses me goodbye before he leaves for work, even though most of the time i'm sonked out.

just seeing everton's smiling face ALWAYS warms me up.

when tootsie looks at me like puss in boots from shrek.

(tootsie really isn't that bad to have around)

everton dancing to the hot dog dance at the end of micky mouse clubhouse.

everton's laugh.

whenever everton says ashes, and that's still the only word he says.

when brett comes home from work is a tremendous blessing to me.  "get your kid honey!"

the chocolate ice cream in my freezer is also a great blessing.

i need to take a pause everyday and thank my Heavenly Father for all that i have.  and to realize that there are people out there in the world that have bigger problems than i do.

and right now, these...

aren't really problems.

the semi-annual filipino fireside

as many of you know, i'm half filipino!

[yes daddy, i know that rhymed.]

and i went with my parents this past weekend to the semi-annual filipino fireside in slc while brett and everton stayed at home.

just a quick lesson in filipino geography, the philippines is located south of taiwan and east of vietnam.  and my mom is from kalibo, the capital of the aklan province (see fat red arrow.)

my parents met while serving in the manila, philippines mission and that amazing love story is a whole 'nother blog post in it's own.

i've never been to the philippines.  but i hope to go one day with my family and learn more about my heritage and to do some genealogy cuz i can never find anything here on the filipino side of the fam.

ANYWAYS,

back to the filipino fireside, i've never seen so many brown people.  shows how often i've been to san fran. 

the fireside was lovely.  they had some mission presidents and RMs who recently served in the philippines give their testimonies and then light refreshments in the cultural hall.

 i realized that wearing heels made me about 2 ft taller than everyone else.  the gym was packed and started getting hot and stuffy due to a million filipinos gabbing.

i don't know who the last 2 ladies are on the right.

my mom's new buddies.  the guy on the right served in aklan and can speak my mom's native dialect, aklanon, which is pretty rare.

i do not know who these people are.

filipino represent!

the parents.

it was a pretty fun night.  

and i'm super proud to be filipino!

teal the cows come home

it was everton's first sunday in a while not wearing a romper or khaki shorts to church.

so OF COURSE i had to take a ton of pics and blog about it.

a very sweet awkward smile.

everton is not impressed

so long sweet summer.  i think we're ready for fall!

i think.

party by numbers

as i stated in my last post, my parents are in utah and will be for about a month!  lucky brett! 

and like always, i am LOVING having them here.  they dote on their grand babies like there's no tomorrow. they help me out so much and as usual, whenever my mom cooks for us i get fatter and fatter but i ain't complainin.

they've only been here for about a week and we've done so much already.

join me as i take us through our week's events, number by number.

1. we ate scrumptious sushi at the happy sumo and had froyo at juicyberry.

2. brett and i attended our first progressive dinner in our ward.  if you don't know what that is, it's where you go to different houses for different courses.  we traveled all over our ward boundary to have salad, soup, grilled chicken (which was so good i hoarded some in an empty bread bag and stuffed in my purse for the rest of the night,) baked potatoes, and finished off the night for dessert and play-dough ice cream, which is what i contributed for the night.  and how did we travel to all these homes for grub?  by hayride of course!  yeah our ward is that country.

3. everton's just a n00b.

4. we had a party for my dad and erin's birthday and had a mix of filipino and mexican food.  and no party is complete without those addicting lumpia rolls.

5. we invited my best friend charlene, her FIANCE adam, mitch and jenny (who is having a baby girl in january) and kyla and travis were able to come up from where they live now, cedar city, ut. it's crazy how much we've all grown since high school, we're all married/getting married, having babies, and working grown up jobs.

6. so erin had only stayed with us for about 3 weeks and we had waited the entire time to see if she would get accepted to ldsbc.  then the friday before classes were to start she finally got her acceptance letter to ldsbc.  saturday we all went to slc to get her an apt, sunday we helped her move in and she was on her way. she found a great group of friends that make her so happy and that makes me happy.  and they all came over to party and celebrate erin's birth.

7. i just love my cute parents and their homemade mango ice cream. yummm

8. the decatos (charlene's fam) and the jones have been together for about 10 years now.  holy crap! and our families keep growing and growing.

9. my poor little poohead was pooped by the end of the party.

10. my parents took everton and hazel on a brisk walk on the second day of fall.  my parents reported that everton held hazel's hand protectively while dragging his foot in the dirt.  and then they had asian popsicles that we got from the asian market.  turns out everton ate the entire popsicle and hazel ate half, while everton ate the other half of hers.

11. while kyla and travis were here we went to the brigham city temple dedication and it was beautiful.  i can't wait to do a session there sometime.

12. kyla, travis, and baby hazel had to go back to cedar city.  but no worries, we'll be seeing them again soon.

13.  and lastly, everton finally got his stitches out!  i had to anaconda squeeze him so he doesn't squirm as much for the doc and i think that's what he fussed more about.  but the doc was fast and everton's cut looks great.  and everton got a delicious dum dum lollipop which he never fails to bite part of the stick off along with the candy resulting in me digging in his mouth for the part of the stick.

and that's the end of the party for now!  thanks for joining.

the laceration sensation

last night was a huge reminder to me that i have a rambunctious little boy.

my parents have been in town since saturday and we were spending some time at my aunt's house.  we were all in the living room and everton, being his cute clumsy self, tripped over air and fell right into the sharp corner of the coffee table.

my child started hootin and hollerin.  he started gushing blood and i was in a panic.  we were actually in a little debate as to whether or not everton needed stitches.  we decided that we should at least get it checked out.  thank freakin goodness my parents were there, to comfort me and to drive us to the hospital.  we were in spanish fork so we assumed they had somewhat of an urgent care center or something.  they did, and they were already closed, at 3pm.  what the freak kind of urgent care center closes at 3?  they definitely didn't have a hospital so we had to go to provo's urgent care.  the doc decided that everton's wound was indeed a laceration and that we would have to take him to the ER to be sedated and to get stitches.  and so we were on our way, just across the street.

a lollipop soothes all of everton's troubles.  but some ben and jerry's chocolate therapy ice cream would soothe mine.  my heart was in my stomach the whole night.  and the little piste han (filipino word for silly kid) was running around the waiting room and had fallen on his cushy diapered bum.  then some old dude was like, "now i can see how he cut his head."  you got it buddy.

my parents did an excellent job taming down any hyper energy everton had left over.

seeing him sedated wigged me out.  his eyes were still open but his body looked lifeless, it made me so glum and yes of course teary eyed!  everton got 5 stitches

but he was getting hilarious as the doc stitched him up.  at random times everton would raise up his little legs or arms and even started oohing and aahing.

after the procedure we had to wait about 30mins for him to get out of his loopiness .

question, is this real life?

when he was able to hold his head up and drink some juice we were allowed to go home.  we stopped by mcdonalds for a late night dinner and i gave everton a french fry and he started suckin on it like a straw.  still feelin loopy everton?  the accident occurred at around 7.30pm and we got back to my aunt's house at 12.30am.  oh how lovely waiting in hospitals can be.  we tossed everton in his bed and it was lights out everton.  thanks be to drugs for knocking him out.  i felt so bad for brett though, he was back at home in tooele and couldn't be there to give everton additional loves.  

the sorority girl.

 we're home now and everton doesn't know what hit him, well at least, what he fell into.

you be careful piste han!
did you know that when i was younger i slipped and ran into the corner of the wall busting my right eyebrow as well.  everton's such a copycat.

the muddy grandpa

my daddy is my superhero.

awhile ago his health wasn't exactly where it should be.  

maybe it was the heaping bowls of vanilla ice cream doused in chocolate syrup every night huh daddy??

and his doc had told him that he better get into shape or his health could take a turn for the worse.

and that's exactly what he did, he started eating healthier and working out a lot more.

i would be chatting with my parents via phone or skype around 10pm our time, midnight their time, and daddy's like, whoops gotta go to the gym, ttyl alyssa.
and then he tells the family that he's training for tough mudder!
and we were all like, WHATTTTT.  daddy you're gonna die!!
and then what happened?  he ROCKED it.
he went to the mid-atlantic event in MD (which we were not able to go to watch him) and he said it was so freakin fun and that he'd do it many more times.
pics courtesy of mah mom.

my parents are seriously so freaking cute.

there were 20 obstacles and one of them was going through dangling electrical wires, yeah ok.

and my mom said she's never heard so many curse words in her life as she watched everyone going through those wires.

and my mom had a blast watching all kinds of people, like this dude with a blow up doll attached to him.

and what's up??  the avengers assembled.  seriously so cool.

my dad's team that mostly consisted of cops.

he became a part of this team through a church buddy, who is a cop as well.  

my dad said that everyone waited for each other to finish an obstacle and supported each other the entire time.  i thought that that was just so cool.  my dad also wears hearing aids, which he could not wear throughout the event and couldn't hear anything at all, except for the electrical cords shocking him.  but yet the team was understanding and was able to communicate what they needed to with him. 

you go glen coco!

i'm SO proud of my daddy and am still in awe of the fact that he accomplished such an event.  he is already planning on doing 2 events next year, 1 out east and 1 out here in utah.

he has inspired everyone in the family to start getting fit and healthy.

and today brett, everton, and i ventured off to work out.  but things didn't work out for today so we came home and i finished off a carton of my fav chocolate ice cream.  maybe tomorrow i'll work on my fitness.

but for real, my dad is so hardcore.   

this 52 year old gramps is still a kickin.

FIRST WORD

my kid just said his first word.  i've been trying not to get discouraged that he wasn't talking for awhile, knowing that when he hits 2 or 3 years old then i'll start worrying.  but i am dying to hear him say, "mama" or "dada."  and then this late afternoon erin and i were singing a nursery song to him and he picked up on a word.  watch the vid to hear the word!


that's right, his first word is ASHES.  from the song that is supposedly based on the black plague.  i started crying of course, it was so cute hearing an actual word coming out of him and not car noises.  but for real everton?  ashes??  whatever it takes to get you to start talkin...