while in Southern California

Recently, I've had a few friends move to Southern California. And while I was sad that we didn't get to see all of them on our trip (sorry Emilys), we were lucky enough to travel to San Diego to visit Jenn and Kris. Jenn is one of my best friends from BYU and the sister of Mike, my old roommate.

Jenn has two awesome and beautiful kids, Sam and Lucy. The whole time that we hung out with them, we were really in awe of their parenting style and how they make parenting seem like no big deal -- even though we know that they are such great parents. You know, like letting your kid sit on your lap and watch Bob the Builder.


Here is Kris with Lucy. I like Kris so much. I remember being so happy when I found out that Jenn started dating Kris -- they are such a great fit for one another. And Kris is a Jorgensen, and all Jorgensens are cool...Jenn wasn't cool before, but now she is.


Jenn made us this awesome Italian Wedding Soup with meatballs that she had made the night before. We ate a lot of good things on our trip, but this was probably the best meal that we had.


Here is Steph playing with Sam. This is probably before Sam started throwing things off the balcony. She let him...because Jorgensens are that cool.

Thanks Jenn and Kris for letting us hang out with your family!

Character breakfast at Disneyland

One of the most memorial things we did during our Disneyland trip was eat breakfast at the Plaza Inn. It was great, because instead of standing in line to get a picture with a Disney character they came around to our table while we ate. Minnie was the biggest star there:





This guy from Pinocchio creeped me out - because people dressed up tend to, and because he was a little too friendly. Rob's playing along, trying to rescue me. You can see the character pushing Rob away, what you can't see is how tightly he's hugging me!

Disneyland trip

We love Disneyland! In February we went with Rob's side of the family to Disneyland - it was a memorial trip for his grandmother who passed away last summer. Rob and his siblings and cousin grew up going to Disneyland with their grandma, so it's where we all went to celebrate her life. It was a GREAT trip!.... and I'm finally posting about it.


Rob and I have had a lot of Disney lately - look how excited he is to enter the Disney gates on our honeymoon 1 1/2 years ago:


And it didn't matter that we had just been to Disney World a couple of months before... we were just as excited for this trip:

I don't think you can have too much Disneyland, I remember learning that in 10th grade when I went with my family just one year after going with my school band. It's such a different experience each time (as I mentioned before, Rob grew up going to Disneyland, so he knows all about being excited to go back every time). This trip was marked, for me, by the fun time with family, the sunny weather and the many days spent at the parks - 5 days! I didn't know that was possible!

Experiencing Disneyland with cousins, nephews, aunts, grandpas, siblings, grandchildren, etc sure feels like the way it was meant to be...

poster

Our Disneyland souvenir arrived in the mail today:

Gorton's Fisherman

Hangin out

Can't wait til Spring Break, when I get to see these guys:

Resolution report... and requests

We made family goals at the beginning of 2009. We've reviewed last year's goals in preparation for creating new Resolutions for 2010 (please read the request for recommendations at the end, even if you skip past everything else!), but we thought we'd post them here too with a statement of how we did and what we learned. We didn't keep all of our resolutions with perfection, but improved a ton overall, and became confident in our abilities to make more changes for 2010. There are a lot of LDS references here that I'm not going to take the time to explain further, so sorry for those who feel a little in the dark with what I'm talking about.

1. Temple attendance: Monthly at ward temple night. The part about attending with our ward was added later, which made keeping our goal super easy. It was already scheduled for us every month - we didn't have to make the decision monthly, a no-brainer.

2. Fast Sunday: Plan ahead for a purpose, read talks about fasting before fast Sunday. Overall, we did better with preparing for Fast Sundays than we had done prior to 2009, but we definitely weren't perfect. Setting an alarm on our cell phones for Saturday reminded us to not eat (much) past dinner on Saturday and start our fast that night.

3. Sabbath Observance: Read lessons ahead of time, take notes in church, better media choices, leave early for church, discuss the lessons after church. We really enjoyed preparing for Sunday lessons throughout the week, although our habit of doing so tapered off in the second half of 2009. Our stake president suggested that a good activity for Sunday afternoon is to discuss the talks and lessons that we heard at church. So, we started that while eating lunch or on our drive to family dinner and have learned a lot from each other in Gospel discussions that stemmed from reviewing the day.

4. Get to know the ward: Invite couples for dinner, deliver goodies to new families once/month. We invited a few couples to our house for dinner at the beginning of 2009 - that was the beginning of some wonderful friendships that have strengthened since. I think we managed to deliver goodies only 3-4 times, but as we welcomed other new families, we've also grown to love and feel at home in our ward.

5. Budget: set up a budget, review budget monthly, track expenses. We set up a budget through mint.com, which we totally recommend. Well, I wouldn't really call it a budget - but at least we track our expenses. Once we tracked for a few months, we were able to make decisions about how much extra $ to put toward paying off my school loans and contribute to various savings accounts. Actually sticking to a budget... that's still a goal for 2010!

6. Emergency Preparedness: set aside $ monthly, prepare for the winter, 72 hour kit. Oh how we love emergency preparedness! We're not pros, but have enjoyed getting 72 hour kits ready and have some good ideas of a food storage that works for our small family and small space. Like all of our resolutions, we have a ways to go but know we'll be blessed for the efforts we've made.

7. Review goals monthly: first FHE of the month. A definite must for keeping so many resolutions! Most months we reviewed our electronic copy of our resolutions, crossing some off, adding ideas for how to keep others, and highlighting those we were going to work on for the month. Spoiler for 2010: we're reviewing our goals weekly during Nyland Family Council!

I'm not going to post all our goals for 2010, but I do need some recommendations for a couple that I made. First of all, I want to read more books this year (I won't mention how many, it's a little embarrassing how low the number is... okay, it's 6). I feel like it's been really long since I've read a book that I could put on a "favorites" list. So - all you readers out there, here are a list of books that are my favorites. If you've read one that would feel at home on list, please share!
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
- My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
- Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (the only sci-fi on the list, but I still think it fits)
- The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
- Chocolat, Holy Fools, etc. by Joanne Harris
- The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

The second resolution I need help with is to learn a new skill. I just don't know what skill... it's scary for me to think of learning something new, but I think I'm too content with the skills I have now (as few as they may be!). I just need a lot of ideas that I can choose from. I have really low attention to detail, so crafty/artsy things make me the most nervous!