Busy Tanner!!!

Tanner has discovered a new toy....Sophie's bowl!!! He loves to pick it up and then drop it on the tile floor.  I think he likes the sound of it because he'll do it over and over again.  He's also discovered her food and he likes dog food.  YUCK!!!  He'll sneak in while Sophie is eating and grab a handful in each hand and then eat it.  It totally grosses me out!  He won't eat a piece of bread but he'll eat dog food.  I don't get this kid!  April 13, 2015

Tanner discovered the q-tips under my sink and what a fun toy they've turned out to be. I feel like I get to play "pick up sticks" every time I get ready.  He loves to play with my hair brush too.  

Tanner is a very busy boy....I have a hard time keeping up with him.  He's discovered drawers and he loves to open them and dump everything out.  I've kept some utensils that I don't use very often in one of the bottom drawers and he loves to pull out everything and then walk around with the big long wooden spoon.  One time he accidentally hit himself with the spoon and it left a big bruise on his forehead.  It's a good thing he's so darn cute when he's getting into trouble.  He also loves to help load and unload the dishwasher.  He's figured out how to put himself up so he can sit on the dishwasher door.  I have a picture of Chase and Bridger doing the exact same thing so I had to capture the moment because they look so much alike.

The other day I was doing laundry when I heard Tanner banging on something.  I came into the bathroom and he had figured out how to crawl into the bathtub all by himself.  He was sitting in the bathtub playing with his bath toys just happy as can be.  April 23, 2015

 Tanner was my easiest baby to learn the stairs.  He does a great job crawling up them and then he knows he has to "turn around" when he goes down them.  He thinks he's such a big boy now that he can go up and down them. It makes life much easier without a baby gate.  April 23, 2015

 I took Tanner grocery shopping the other day and left him in his car seat.  I looked at his little legs hanging off and he just looked so cramped in his car seat.  So I pulled out his new big boy car seat and he likes it much better. ( I bought it several months ago with a 20% off coupon and some baby gift cards).  It can go forward or rear facing and has 6 different reclining positions and transitions over to a booster seat.  It even has two cup holders!!  I took a picture of Tanner sitting in the grocery cart at Costco because it's the first time he's sat in the cart and not in his car seat.  He was so happy.  He got very excited when I put the box of Cheerios in the cart.  He kept patting the box and smiling.  It was so cute! April 28, 2015

Tanner's new car seat!!!  I switched him over in May to his new car seat.  He loves it!!  I think he likes facing forward.  The seat has 6 reclining positions and it's very easy to adjust the straps.  Eventually it will convert to a booster seat so this will be his last car seat.  I'm super happy with his new seat.

Trip to Wash DC

Saturday, April 18, 2015

We arrived last night in Washington DC at 11:00PM.  We came out here for a AANA conference for Matt. He didn't have any meetings this morning so we headed out the door at 8:30AM. Ted and Amber came with us. There's a subway stop I. The bottom of our hotel which ,ages it very convenient. We took the subway to Arlington Cemetery. There are over 440,000 people buried there.  It's very emotional seeing the rows and rows of tombstones. We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, then they changed out the wreath and played the bugle funeral song. I cried! It was very somber but a neat tribute! Then we went to ??? House (George Washington's son's house). Then we walked down to President Kennedy's grave. I've seen so many pictures of his grave site that it made it awesome to see it in person! 

  After the cemetery, Matt and Ted had to start their meetings at 12:30 so they headed back to the hotel. Amber and I took the subway out to ??? to go to the Farmer's market. Amber bought a couple of sun hats and I bought an apple and some grapes. Nothing too exciting, it was a typical farmer's market. But it was really fun watching the different people. 

  Dan and Shal Marie flew in today. So we went out to dinner with them, the Morris', and Kendra (Westminster student).  We ate at an Italian restaurant. The food was ok. Then we took the subway over to the "mall." When I first heard that I thought it was shopping but it's a bunch of historical sites. We walked past the White House, Washington monument and then over to Lincoln's memorial. Then we had to walk a ways to find the subway. We walked past George Washinton University. My phone said that I walked over 23,000 steps and 10 miles! No wonder my feet are tired! When we came back to the hotel we ordered crispy cream donut bread pudding. Now that was fabulous!

Chase took a selfie with Grandma and Tanner.  So cute!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

  I started the day off going to the gym for a good workout at 8:00. There's something about working out that clears my head and makes me feel stronger. This morning me, Amber and Shal Marie were going to head out by 10:00 but we found out that the boys were going to be done by 11:30 so we went to breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then hung out until the men were ready to leave. We headed to the Mall around noon. To mix it up, we rented some bikes and biked through the mall. It was SO fun! We spent the afternoon looking at the Washington Monument, the Korean, Vietnam, and World War II memorials. They were very touching! So many men were killed in those wars! I was moved to tears at each memorial. They've done a great job paying tribute to the soldiers.  My favorite thing was the statues at the Vietnam memorial and then the 3D wall murals at the World War II memorial. The murals represent the major events during the war. The details were incredible! Their faces had such detailed expressions on them. When we were at the Washington monument, I was surprised by how massive the monument really is when you're standing at the bottom of it. From far away it doesn't look that big from far away. 

  For dinner we took an Uber car to Georgetown. We went to a restaurant that the group ate at last year. I had salmon and it was really good! But the best part was the key lime pie for dessert! Delicious!!! 

  

Look at the Lincoln memorial way behind me!

Monday, April 20, 2015

The boys skipped out on their meetings today and came sight seeing with the girls. We headed out at 8:45 and went straight to the Supreme Court building.  We waited in a line outside the building for two hours hoping to make it inside to see a 5 minute argument before the Supreme Court justices. Unfortunately after standing in line for almost two hours, the line to go inside was cut off just four people in front of us!!! The Supreme Court was only in session today for an hour so that's why we didn't make it in. (We waited for an hour before they started letting people go in). So then we walked a couple of miles down to the National Archives Building to see the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Luckily we didn't have to wait in line too long to see things. To be honest I was a little disappointed because the writing on the documents is so faded that it's hard to even see it! 

  Then we walked back up to the Capitol area and went to eat lunch at Good Eats Grill. Brian gave us the recommendation. They had really good burgers, fries and shakes!! After lunch around 2:00, we went over to Brian's building, the ???? and met him for a personal tour of the Capitol.  Brian was so personable! First he had us come in to Representative Chris Stewart's office and sit down and meet everyone in our group. He actually met Dan and Ted two years ago on an airplane flight.  He told us a little bit about Chris Stewart and some of the award in the office. Then he told us a really funny story about a map that was in the office. Representative Stewart and Brian were just joking around drawing a pretent bombing strategy on a map because Stewart was recently called to be on the Intel committee. They forgot about it and then a couple of days later, a high official from Israel was in their office and asked about it. Whoops! Very funny! Brian joked that if world war three breaks out it's because of their map joke. 

  Brian spent the next two hours showing us around the Capitol. He took us to see the common things and the showed us some fun behind the scenes stuff. He told us some great stories about some paintings and statues. He took us into the House of Representatives room where the State of the Union address is given. We learned SO much! The backs of the seats are bullet proof. It was awesome to see the room. He showed us Nancy Pelosi's and Bohner's offices. He took us on the "senate subway." He showed us the steps that the future present walks down before they walk out onto the balcony for the inaugural speech. Everything was awesome! 

 Before we headed out the men stopped by Representative Chafetz's office to talk about some CRNA business. Then we headed back home on the subway. The subway has been so easy to get around on. Tonight everyone went out to dinner but I wasn't very hungry plus I just needed some down time. I've spent the evening in my pjs and it's been heavenly! 

Riding the subway.

Riding the tram under the capitol.
 

We were on the tail end of the blossoms but they were still beautiful!

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

  I woke up when Matt was getting ready to leave. I thought about falling back to sleep. It then I decided to just get up and get going for the day. I went to the gym for an hour and then got ready. I met the girls at 10:00. There's an Einstein Bagels in the lobby so I've had a bagel almost every morning. I love a toasted bagel with cream cheese! So yummy! We went to the National Art Gallery. I thought I would have all day there but the men finished up earlier than they thought and met us for lunch. I only had a couple of hours but it was better than no time at all.  The main thing I wanted to see was the impressionist era. My favorite artist of that era is Renoir. I love his art! I was wanting to see his painting "the dancer" but it wasn't in view for some reason. It's the painting that hung in the pink room that Shantelle and I shared as kids. So I bought a print of it and of the little girl in the blue dress holding a watering can. The men came over to the museum so we left and went to lunch. We found an Indian restaurant that had good Indian food but it wasn't my favorite. Everyone else really liked it though. I think I just ordered the wrong thing. The decorations were totally worth it. I took pictures and sent them to Shantelle because I kept thinking "Shan would love this!"  After lunch the guys had some more appointments so the ladies went back to the hotel to rest for a little bit. There wasn't enough time to do anything big so I just enjoyed the down time. The guys came back around 4:30. We left at 5:00 to go on our guided Segway tour. Ted has been on a Segway tour before so he asked us if we wanted to go. It was a little pricey, $60/person for a three hour tour. But it was worth every penny. We had a blast!  It was a great way to see everything one last time. One of the wives. Amy had a hard time driving her Segway and crashed a few times. I'm sure she won't be getting on one of those things again. But luckily she didn't get hurt and was a good sport. We finished the tour around 9:30  but we were really hungry and cold so we ate at TGIF's. It had horrible service. It the food was ok. I was really cold so the French onion soup tasted so good! We didn't get back to the hotel until 11:30. We were bombed! 

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

I started the day off going to the gym again. It's a smaller gym but luckily it hasn't been too crowded when I've been there. Amber was suppose to meet me at 10:00 but she was running behind. She was finally ready at 10:45 so we were off to a late start. I wanted to go to the Capitol gift shop to try to find a miniature Capitol for our travel box. We striked out because they didn't have anything like that. But I did find a cute Christmas ornament of the Capitol with a few cherry blossoms. We rode past a gift shop that was by the White House so Amber and I quickly got back on the subway and figured out how to get to the White House. After a little searching we found the store. It was worth the effort because I found tiny charm if the Capitol that will fit perfectly in our box. I also found a Washington monument and a White House but it might be too big. They had a little photo both set up to take some pictures that make it look like you're inside the White House. We had a fun time taking some silly pictures. We made it back to the hotel. We were really impressed that we were able to navigate our way around! We got our stuff all packed up and checked out at 1:15. We were worried that we wouldn't have enough time to go to lunch with the gang so we headed to the airport while they went out to lunch. We have had such a wonderful time in Washington, D.C. There is so much to see that I can't wait to come back and see some more stuff. I never made it to the Smithsonian Institute but that will be fun to do with the boys one day. Hopefully we'll be able to bring them back one day. 

Bridger gave me this sweet note before we left on our trip.