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Juliaaaa, it's time for your bath.

Whaaat? My bath!I'm getting out of here!
Save me daddy!

Club 33

aka Happy Birthday Julia, aka My New Most Embarrassing Moment
On Julia's actual birthday, April 12, we went to Disneyland (again)! This time we went with Robert's family and Jen got us reservations to Club 33, the really fancy semi-hidden, members and their guests only restaurant in Disneyland marked only by the the small "33" sign next to the door. The food is expensive, but you also get into the park free when you have reservations, so, it all evens out to almost a free fancy meal. Definitely one of the fanciest places Julia has ever been.

(Julia was all decked out Disney style)
While I was finishing my meal and Julia was hanging out in her high chair I looked down and saw a green puddle of mush under her high chair. "Great," I thought, "Julia spit up on the floor." I decided to let it wait until I finished my meal. Then I saw Julia making the I'm-going-to-the-bathroom face and smelled something stinky. "Well, I guess I better go change her before other people start to notice the smell." Then I notice another green puddle on the floor.
Odd, I hadn't seen Julia spit up...I got up and walked behind her to pick her up out of her highchair. I was shocked to see what I thought was spit-up was actually poop! Poop all over her back, all over the back of the high chair, and all over the floor at Club 33. Poop! Did I mention this was the nicest place we've ever taken Julia, and she decides it's a good place to POOP ALL OVER THE FLOOR!

"Oh my gosh!" I quietly whispered to Robert, "Julia just pooped all over the place" Robert got up and assessed the situation. We frantically searched for napkins to wipe her off enough to get her out of the high chair. Of course, this being a fancy restaurant, all the napkins are clothe. Woody had paid a visit to the restrooms earlier (because they're so nice, you just have to check them out) and had taken some Club 33 logo paper towels as a souvenir, so he forked them over to us and I wiped Julia off. A waiter walked by and Robert said, "Uhh, we're going to need some clean up help over here." Poor waiter, I don't think he had any idea what he was getting into. When they took away the high chair they said they were going to take it out back and hose it off.

I picked up Julia, held her out in front of me, and made a beeline for the bathroom. I could hear gasps from Robert's family as we passed the length of the table and they got a glimpse of Julia's backside. Robert's mom followed me into the bathroom and we stripped Julia in the fancy bathroom sink and gave her an impromptu bath.

The waiters were so nice, they never even mentioned it after I sheepishly brought Julia back to the eating area. (Luckily we were in a fairly small room, so there were only two other groups there when I took Julia to the bathroom...none when we came back.) And the waiters were so nice as to bring Julia a birthday cake!

One of the waiters asked if this was going to be a "traditional give the cake to the baby" first birthday and I said, "NO WAY!"

Julia examines her cake (notice, no more Disney apparel):

Also, here are a few funny photos of the adults having fun:

Lauren will never go on that ride again.This was the last ride of the night. Woody was so exhausted he just fell asleep, and Robert was obviously 'pooped' as well.
Love you Julia! You are truly one of a kind.

The Birthday Celebration Continues...

After the wedding we headed back to our house in Claremont. The next day Julia opened her presents and we hit the pinata.

Julia was kind of indifferent to the pinata. Tyler hated it. Who can blame him, when you think about it. All the trusted adults in his life standing around whacking a giant yellow chicken, yeah it sounds traumatizing.

Stones Into Schools

I am currently reading Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson. It's the sequel to the bestseller non-fiction Three Cups of Tea, which was about how "Doctor Greg" came to start building schools, especially for girls, in Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. It was fascinating to read how one lost mountain climber who had no connections in Pakistan or to any NGO was able to build a school in the middle of nowhere and then keep building. Stones into Schools picks up where the first book left off as Greg and the NGO he created start building more schools in war-torn Afghanistan. This paragraph that I read yesterday from Stones into Schools really struck me:

As often happens at such events [opening of a new school], the kids were just besides themselves with anticipation. As Sarfraz and I hopped out of the trailer, they gathered in a line to welcome us. One of the students at the front of the the line, a wispy third grader named Aisha, displayed the knocked-kneed gait that is a by-product if rickets, an ailment common to the remote interior of the Wakhan [region in Afghanistan], where the diet is deficient in vitamin D. Unlike most of the girls, who shyly greeted me with a traditional kiss to the back of my outstretched hand, Aisha gave me an enormous hug and refused to let go.

This little girl was super excited because she gets to go to school. I have always taken for granted that I was able to receive an education. There have even been countless times when I wished I didn't have to go to school. This girl in a remote region of the world has never had the chance to go to school. What would that be like? I can think of a lot of other developments that would benefit these people like better health care or electricity, but a school was just as important to the people of this region.

They wanted a school for their children. They asked Greg to build it there and they donated the land and manpower to make it happen. What is it about an education that is so important? Always having taken my education for granted it's hard to imagine not being able to read, not knowing about the world outside of my little sphere, not knowing about math, history, science. But it must be pretty darn important if these people want it so desperately, and I'm sad that I have always taken it so much for granted. Count your blessings everyday! An education really does shape the way we live our lives.

A Wheat Wedding

The same day my family left, Robert's family arrived at our house. They came to Los Angeles for Robert's cousin's, Daniel, wedding. (You might remember Daniel from our Peru trip a couple years ago.) Daniel and Amanda were married for time and all eternity in the Los Angeles Temple on Saturday, April 10, 2010. Side note, we stayed the at the patron apartments on the temple grounds the night before the wedding. This is seriously the way to go for a morning wedding. We just got up and got ready and then walked over to the temple.

They had a few non-traditional things about their reception that just fits with their personalities (especially Amanda, she's a fun one. You might remember her from Julia and the rabbit post.) They had a giant penguin pinata. Little did they know that Julia got to it before they did and took a chunk off his back. Good thing they hit it during the reception and destroyed all the evidence =).
Their cake was a series of frosted cookies.
And they rode away into the sunset on a tandem bike!

Congratulations guys! Hope married life is suiting you well!

Disneyland

Julia had her 4th and 5th Disneyland visits while my family was here. Last year she was two months old when we went three times and she mostly slept. This time we was awake (more than she should have been)and loving it all.
Her favorite ride was It's a Small World, I think because it's so light and upbeat. That was my first time on that ride as well, and I really liked it, but I think they need a longer song for such a long ride because by the time you get out of there you are soooo tired of hearing that song. Julia just kept looking around and around at all the puppets and bouncing around to the music.

She also liked playing soccer in the Innoventions House

Julia loves to walk

Since Julia has learned to walk she just can't get enough of it. She has been a happy toddler at home because she loves to just wander around from room to room. Trying to go places with her is another story because she wants to walk everywhere, and it would take forever to get anywhere if we went at her pace with those tiny legs! We do try to give her at least a little walking time when we go out though. Here are some of the places that Julia loved walking while my family was here (with a few other pictures thrown in to show us as well):Hiking in the foothills of ClaremontNewport Beach Pier
On the beachNewport Beach Temple.
This is where we were when we felt the 7.2 earthquake that was in Baja California. My sister-in-law, Reah, was sitting on the wall behind me in the picture and she thought someone was shaking the wall and said something about it. Then it got stronger and we could all feel the shaking. Julia was walking around oblivious to it all so I scooped her up in case it got strong enough to knock her over. It was pretty long, but not all that strong for us since we were outside. If it hadn't been for that wall acting as a point of reference we might have barely even noticed it.

Birthday Cake

The same day we had the Easter egg hunt we also celebrated Julia's 1st birthday with my family (and then we celebrated again the next week with Robert's family). This was the only time she was allowed to run a muck with the cake though.I was cringing to see her eating cake, but she loved it.In the end she didn't actually eat much but more mushed her cake slice into oblivion.

Easter Egg Hunt

Okay, I warned you I was behind.

My family was here for Easter and I also invited my cousin Katrina and her family up from San Diego to celebrate Easter and Julia's birthday. We dyed eggs, had an Easter egg hunt, and had a birthday cake for Julia (a week early, but it's fitting since she was born on Easter last year).Here's Julia prepping for the Easter egg hunt. You'll notice she ended up wearing a completely different outfit for the actual hunt:We had two sections for our hunt. The patio area of our backyard was for the little kids, Ali and Julia. Julia was more interested in picking up the bark than the eggs, but Ali got the concept and was nice enough to fill up Julia's Easter basket for her. Julia was just really excited to be able to walk around outside. The rest of the yard was for the big "kids" meaning everyone else who didn't hide the eggs. My mom originally went out and hid the eggs, but Robert walked by and said they were all hidden way to easy to find, so he went and re-hid half the eggs. After the hunt he had to go back and retrieve the ones no one could find. We also had a pinata, but ended up running out of time to hit it. We decided to just wait until Julia's real birthday and hit it with Robert's family.

Julia One Year Stats

We have been pretty busy the past couple weeks with family visiting and I have a bunch of posts I'd like to catch up on, especially since Julia turned 1 this week! Unfortunately as soon as our guests left we all (Robert and I and most of our guests back in their own homes) got what we think is food poisoning. Today we're feeling back to normal so we were able to take Julia in for her one year check-up. She really hasn't grown that much since her last appointment...

Height- 28.5 in (25 per)
Weight- 21.4 lbs (52 per)
Head Circ.- 18 in. (65 per)

Hopefully soon I'll be able to fill you in on what we have been doing for all of April.

Washington D.C.

Last weekend we took a quick trip out to Washington D.C. to look for housing when we move out there in June. We didn't do any sightseeing since we were only there for two days and had to focus on house hunting (and really in two days we were just there to get a feel for the areas and decide what kind of place we wanted). This being my first time in D.C. I found it just a little bit weird to be surrounded by all these iconic sights and not even visit. So this was the extent of our famous sights pictures, this was the view from from our hotel room. We were literally down the street from the White House, and I never even got a glimpse of it.

It was quite the experience traveling across the country with Julia. A few things I learned: Having a seat on the plane for your baby is heaven. If by chance they do fall asleep you don't get stuck holding them the entire time. Yay!

Babies do not adjust well to time change. Julia kept her exact schedule, which meant we were going to bed at 11:00 pm Eastern Time every night. On the other hand, Robert changes schedules forward very well, but not so well going back. He is still going to bed at 9:00 pm Pacific Time and waking up at 5:00 am.

For some reason I'm being very picky about the place we get in D.C. I keep thinking there must be that magic townhouse that's THE ONE, the perfect place. We'll see in a few weeks when we go back in if I can find it. After looking at a million places with our realtor I kept saying, "this place is nice, but..." I never could see myself in any of the places we looked at.

While we were there we had dinner with some old friends, Ryan and Rachel, and met their son Liam. Here's Julia and Liam on their first date:

What do you think? Do they look nervous? I guess it went pretty well since they ended up holding hands during dinner. So cute!

On Sunday morning we had half an hour to waste before heading to the airport so we stopped at Fort Ward, which is a park now in Alexandria, and let Julia stretch out her legs and get in some walking practice.


And while we were there Robert had his birthday! Happy Birthday sweetie! It ended up not being all that exciting since we were looking at homes all day and then instead of going out to dinner like we planned we were just tired and ate at the hotel.

March Madness Wrapup

Sorry this will be a short post, but I just wanted to note that I finished the Book of Mormon! I finished on March 32! Okay, it was April 1, so I didn't quite finish in March, but I'm not too broke up about it since I finished the next day. When I started out I wasn't sure if I had the will power to put so much time in each day. And I did! And it actually wasn't all too hard as long as I kept up on my reading each day. I'm really glad I did it. How did everyone else do?