Our Two Year Old

Chloe is most definitely a two year old. She is at a time where she is wanting to assert her independence at all times. I wouldn't say that she's a terrible two, but we do frequently see fits of rage when we don't understand what she wants, or we say no to what she wants. Despite the craziness we love her with all our hearts and would do anything for her.

Chloe has really enjoyed our times going to Disneyland since January. We have tried to go at least once a week since we got our passes and have only missed a handful of weeks. We are kind of sad that after this week we will be blocked of for the summer. Her favorite ride is the Ariel ride and the Finding Nemo Submarine ride. Chloe also loves to visit with the princesses. In fact I think visiting the princesses has inspired her desire to wear a dress every single day. We are grateful for the large bag of hand me down dresses we received from a ward member or else I would be needing to do laundry a couple times a week so Chloe can wear dresses every day. It's cute. She is a little princess.

The funny thing about the dresses is that it doesn't stop her from being extremely active. She loves to be outside whenever I let her. We live right next to our complexes park and so we often go out to play on that equipment. She is becoming such a good climber, it kind of makes me nervous that she's so much like Brian in that sense. Here is a video of Chloe climbing at our favorite local park. It was the first time she was doing it mostly on her own.




Chloe is talking more and more in complete sentences and is a cute little story teller. Our bedtime routine time has doubled because she keeps asking for us to tell her more stories. She likes to take her little pink toy phone and pretend that she is talking to grandma on the phone. She loves to sing her favorite lines from her favorite songs in movies too. And anytime she hears any music she will stop what she is doing to dance.

Chloe has entered a stage where she is a very picky eater. It's literally a game every meal to try and guess what foods she will actually eat. She's mostly just drinking liquids for the past couple weeks and so I had the clever idea to make her smoothies, that way I can get her to eat plenty of veggies and fruits. This crazy kid even says no to ice cream and pizza and hates leftovers. Feeding her on the cruise to Alaska in June will certainly be interesting....

Anyways here are a couple cute pictures of Chloe that we've taken recently and haven't shared on Facebook yet.

The line was short for Autopia and so we took Chloe on for the first time. She was so excited to drive!

At the mall, in a fire truck, in one of her princess dresses.

Graduation, Jobs, and Car Accidents

Life has been pretty busy since the last time that I wrote, and unfortunately that means that I can't possibly share everything that has been happening. So I'll just share the things that are most important...or actually more like the things that are standing out more in my mind right now. Brian has been working very hard over the past month to complete his master's thesis. Things were absolutely crazy with his deadline to complete this in addition to all his final papers and projects. I am happy to say that Brian was able to complete his master's thesis prior to the deadline and as of May 15, 2015 Brian has his Master's Degree!!! I am so proud of him and the dedication he has put into his work. It has been hard at times, but I love that I was and will continue to be able to support him through these years in graduate school.

Because he now has his master's degree on his way to the PhD he can now teach at most universities. He is lucky enough to have cohorts who work at Cal State Fullerton in their psych department and so when they told him about job openings he jumped at the opportunity to apply. Brian was contacted for an interview and spent many days stressing and prepping for it. I told him he would do remarkable because he tends to always leave a good impression. Brian's hard work and diligence has led to a job offer teaching at Cal State Fullerton this Fall. He will be teaching two sections of Research Methods. We are both beyond excited for this opportunity. It is such a blessing that he was able to find a job so quickly, especially in comparison to most of the job hunting we've experienced since coming to California.

On May 18th, while Chloe was taking her nap and Brian had already texted me to say he was coming home from setting up an intervention at a local high school, I was surprised see that I was getting a phone call from Brian. I rejected the call because I didn't want to wake up Chloe and texted him back to ask what was up.....If I had known what his text would be in response I would have answered the phone right away. His text read: "Someone hit me...pretty bad. I'm OK but I'll be awhile" My heart stopped, even though he said he was OK it's a terrifying thing to hear that someone you love has been in a car accident. I immediately called him back and he told me the car was in pretty bad shape. I asked Brian to write what happened, but he's still pretty upset about the situation especially because of how things are now going with the car... but I'll get into that later. Brian was coming home and as he had stopped as an intersection he looked behind him in the rearview mirror and saw a car speeding towards him. There was nothing he could do except wait for impact. The car slammed into the Maxima's rear end with such force that the Brian's car was pushed into the car in front of it, and that car then rear ended yet another car. Because of this lady's reckless driving 4 cars were involved in an accident, and our car unfortunately took the brunt of it and was the middle of the sandwich.

You could actually see the Honda symbol from the car imprinted into the bumper and the trunk would no longer close. :(

:(

Last Wednesday the insurance adjuster came and estimated about $4200 in damages and gave us a check and a name of a body shop we could take our car for repairs. He then told Brian that they could increase their coverage to about $5200 if needed. Unfortunately Brian let me know that if it did surpass that amount that would mean that the car would probably be totaled, that the insurance would not be fixing the car and would instead give us a check for what they feel our car is worth. Yesterday we called the repair shop to see how things are going, their estimate has now exceeded the maximum the insurance had allotted. Not the news that we were hoping for. While the insurance hasn't officially told us they will be totaling the car, we don't have much hope that they will pay for the amount the shop has quoted. We could take the money insurance gives us and repair the car, paying for the rest of the repairs out of pocket, however that would mean that the Maxima would have a salvage title. More than likely it looks like we will be trying to find a new car. Yay!....Not really.....

Brian and I really loved this car. It has a lot of memories in it and we put a lot of hard work into fixing any repairs ourselves so we could save money. It's frustrating that because of someone else's bad choices we are having deal with the worst of it. I'll try to do another post in a few days once we hear back from the insurance, maybe things will turn out more positively....and I'll focus on Chloe things, I love that crazy little girl of ours.

Brian & Teresa Happenings

As you may have noticed the last post was solely about Chloe. And that is how it should be. However there is so much happening in Brian and my life I figured it was only fair that I write a little update about us.

First off, since it's easier to write about other people, is Brian. Brian is currently in his last semester of coursework at Claremont Graduate University. What does that mean? He's super super busy. By the beginning of April he needs to have his master's thesis done. So he's working on that on top of everything else that is expected of him, his normal coursework, teaching online for BYU-Idaho, and playing with Chloe and I. After this semester is over he will have completed his master's while on his way to a Ph.D. This means that he will be able to start teaching at more local universities starting this Fall. (which he's needing to worry about applying to as well) In January we received great news that the grants for Brian's lab were approved, and now Brian will get paid for the work he does. Once the semester is over he will still be attending Claremont Graduate University to finish his Ph.D but will not have to attend classes on campus. He should be able to focus more on his dissertation, whatever teaching positions he may have, and continue working with the lab on campus.

I am feeling a lot more busy than I was a year ago. I am currently the first counselor in our Young Women's presidency and that has caused some great changes in my life, in addition to some added stresses. Every Wednesday we have mutual and I love getting to work together with the girls and getting to know each one of them better. The difficult part sometimes is that in order to give Brian some uninterrupted study time is that I bring Chloe with me. It is interesting to try to wrangle a hyper becoming increasingly tired two year old who doesn't like to sit still, or stay in the same room for longer than twenty minutes. Chloe does love the interactions with the girls though, especially the neighbor girl who has babysat her a few times. Currently we are trying to raise money for the girls to go to Girls Camp this summer. And so right now I am in the midst of planning a Fiesta Dinner and Silent Auction. It's going to be awesome, but there is a lot of work that goes into an event such as this. (much bigger than planning a toddler birthday party) It'll be May 2nd, just in time for Cinco de Mayo, so I'll try to remember to update everyone on the success or semi-success of it. Besides wrangling and teaching Chloe daily and Young Women stuff that's pretty much my life right now. I am still going to the doctors monthly to try to figure out this joint pain thing, but it's slow going. We've been thinking for years it's fibromyalgia, but from what we've read it takes awhile to actually be diagnosed, and the doctor has mentioned it as a possibility a few times. But it seems like she's still trying to rule out other things. She just ordered another round of bloodwork and x-rays. Yay! :/ So for now we keep trying different doses of different medicines, but it only ever really dulls it barely, not exactly the treatment I want for the rest of my life (since it seems to be here to stay). The physical therapy was kind of helpful in that it made me recommit to being physically active everyday because that seems to be the only thing that consistently keeps the pain at bay. An added bonus: it means I will continue to be in shape the rest of my life. So that's my life in a nutshell right now.

Anyways, because of  generous family we were able to buy Disneyland Passes in January. We are so excited for this. We have gone 6 or so times already. We can only go on weekdays, but since Brian has no classes on Tuesdays we have made those our Disney days. It's fun and Chloe is loving the Disney magic in her life. We've missed the past couple weeks because of stuff, but we look forward to going again this Tuesday.

Well...until next time enjoy life!

Chloe's 2nd Birthday

Chloe turned 2 on February 7th. (Yes, I know it's been almost 20 days, I've been a little busy. :P) Anyways, over the past months Chloe has shown a great love in the movie Finding Nemo. She would constantly request to watch it, and memorized lines from the movie. So when planning Chloe's birthday party I decided to do a Finding Nemo themed birthday party. I had a blast planning it, and I think Chloe and her guests really enjoyed it. Here are some pictures from the day:

Our Nemo Ocean Wall

I had Jellyfish around the room.

Yummy Food!

Nemo Coloring Pages

Playing with Playdough

Pin the "Lucky" Fin on Nemo

Fishing! The kids loved this and would have done this the whole time if they could.

We also played a game where the kids rolled a cube with different colors on each side, and with each color we would do a different action such as "Jump on the jellyfish" "Glide on Mr. Ray" or "Peak out of the anemone."

Chloe's cake that I made.

We didn't even practice blowing out candles and she did it first try!

She got a Squirt to go with her Nemo.

The Kids. (this is the best group shot we could get lol)

We had a great day and I'm grateful for those that were able to come.

So here's some more things about Chloe now that she is two:

• She has so much personality. She will stand in front of the mirror and make faces at her herself.
• She has become extremely talkative. (Except she's developed a shyness with strangers in the past weeks)
• She picks up new words almost instantly.
• She is a climber and explorer.
• When she does something she's proud of she'll turn to us and say "I did it!"
• She likes to pretend cook like "Ratatouille", she says it as "Touie", and likes to help mom cook.
• She has mental maps of places that we go frequently (mall, church, apartment complex)
• She's become quite the picky eater.
• She goes down for naps and to bed for the night extremely well.
• She stopped breastfeeding a month ago.
• She loves most anything Disney related (We probably let her watch too much...)
• Still likes Tinkerbell, but has recently become obsessed with Frozen and singing "Let it Go"
• Loves going on our walks to Barnes & Noble where we read many books, and she asks us "One more" when it's time to go.
• Pretends to read any book, even if it's dads textbooks.
• 25lbs (29th %) and 34inches (44th %)

Merry Christmas!

I know it's not really Christmas now, but I know if I wait I won't have time until after actual Christmas...Here is our little newsletter we included with our Christmas cards this year:

2014 has seemed to just fly by, but that happens when you are having fun and raising a toddler. Here are some of our highlights from the year:

Brian is still attending Claremont Graduate University for his PhD in Positive Developmental Psychology. Studying and working on massive research projects takes up most of his time. He has one more semester of coursework, which means we could move away from California while he works on his dissertation, but we will see what happens. He is still a professor online for BYU-Idaho teaching psychology.  He continues to enjoy teaching the 12 & 13 year olds in our ward as well.

Teresa continues to stay home and take care of Chloe. While it is a full-time job with no sick days, it continues to be quite rewarding. Teresa still loves to read whenever she can and Brian jokes with her that she is still reading more than him even with all his schoolwork. In the end of July, Teresa was released from her calling as Primary Secretary and was called to be the First Counselor in the Young Women’s presidency. It has kept her quite busy, but has allowed her to get her creative juices flowing and have more interaction with adults. 

Chloe continues to be the center of our busy lives. Every day we are amazed by her intelligence. She is quite a talker and picks up new words daily. Chloe is also very sweet, saying “Hi” and waving to everyone we meet outside of the house. She loves going on walks and asserting her independence. Chloe has made friends with the older kids in our neighborhood with her friendliness, they all know her name and even come knocking on our door to play with her. Chloe is in a constant state of motion, climbing and going everywhere her little body can take her.

As some of you may know both Brian and I like to play around in photography, and we've always figured we can take pictures close to the equal of most professional photographers. That being said, getting pictures with an active toddler this year really made me consider getting a professional over doing the pictures ourselves. We ended up having to get dressed up two days in a row because Chloe had a meltdown and would not cooperate for a family picture...I love the pictures we got and I want to share, so this is going to be a little picture overload. :)

This dress was a hand me down, and Chloe absolutely adores it.
Whenever she puts it on she will spin around in it. It's her "princess" dress.

She's not looking so much like a baby anymore....

Being silly.

I was joking with Brian that we look like we're doing engagements pictures. Lol.

Love my lil girl!

So stubborn, but adorable.

One of my favorites!

Tickling her to get her to smile!

I'm done Mom and Dad....

Nemo!

As she points to things she usually say "I see"

This year we'll be spending Christmas in California again. We're already working on getting Chloe to say "Merry Christmas" and she's really close. She loves the tree that we have up, even though she keeps taking the ornaments down. And she gets super excited when she sees all the Christmas lights as we go on our daily walks. Brian's brother and his wife will be spending Christmas with us, so it will be fun to share Chloe's excitement with them. I have a feeling it is going to be a great Christmas. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and are safe in your travels. Merry Christmas!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was super fun this year. Chloe has grown up so much since last Halloween. Because of her love of Tinkerbell I decided early on, like in August, that I would make a Tinkerbell costume for Chloe. Figuring out a costume for Brian and I was a little trickier. I was going to be Wendy, and Brian as Peter Pan, but I really couldn't find a good Wendy dress and knew I wouldn't have time to sew both mine and Chloe's costume with Brian starting school again soon. So finally I had the idea that I would be Peter Pan, and Brian would be Peter Pan's shadow. It was really funny going around in our costumes to hear people's reactions to Brian. Many adults didn't get it, and kids got it pretty quickly.

We went to a few Halloween events this year. First we went to our wards trunk or treat. Then the following Saturday we went to my parent's ward trunk or treat. And then on actual Halloween we went to the trick or treating event they held in Claremont Village. Once we got home we went door to door in our apartment complex. It was really fun and I was impressed with how polite Chloe was. She never got around to saying "Trick or Treat!" but when she was handed the candy she would always say "Thank you!" And thanks to all the candy she learned a new favorite word....."Candy!"

Here are some pictures from our Halloween festivities:

By the time Halloween actually rolled around Chloe was obsessed with Finding Nemo, so we ended up making a Nemo pumpkin instead of Tinkerbell.

Chloe loved visiting the local pumpkin patch.

Happy Halloween!

I HATE Running But....

It works. This summer I was really motivated to get down to at least my pre-pregnancy weight. Prior to the start of this summer I was working out and watching what I was eating, but I was just not seeing any changes. It was getting really frustrating for me (Brian can attest to that). So with Brian not in any classes I took advantage of the "more" time and started running 5-6 days a week. In addition I was making sure I was walking at least 10,000 steps a day, and of course eating well. With the addition of running I finally started seeing the number on the scale drop. YAY! I hate running, my asthma kicks in and I just want to stop, but I have been pushing through it. I have met and exceeded any of my personal records for running the mile that I ever ran in Junior High. The other day I did 2 miles in twenty minutes. Not the fastest by any means, but I was moving and that's what counts. I've lost about 15 pounds this summer, so I reached my goal! I am fitting in my favorite pre-pregnancy jeans, Yippee! Lol. I still have some more progress to get where I want to be, but I am feeling much better and confident about myself. Here's a picture that we took the other day that I love the way we look.

On a side note, we've started the process of trying to determine the cause of all my joint pain again. I'm determined not to give up out of frustration from not finding anything again. With Chloe being such an active toddler I want to be more active with her and not so tired all the time. So far the bloodwork has come back normal, and the same for most of the x-rays. There was one tiny thing wrong with one of my shoulders that I'm going to try some physical therapy for, but it doesn't explain the pain in my hips, knees, back, and shoulders and how it comes and goes in cycles. I'm ready to move past this, I've been just "dealing" with it for 6 years and want to start treating it.