Bathroom Remodel

The other Summer project that got mostly finished this month was my Mother's master bathroom/entire home plumbing project. Here are some pictures of the original bathroom.
We ended up tearing out the built-in cabinets, most of the back wall (to accommodate the new plumbing and electrical work), and enclosing the side window leading to the other bathroom. We also took out the gross 30 year old green shag, put down tile, installed a shower and a new toilet and sink. And of course when I say we, I mostly mean the Blue Prince. Other than some demolition, clean up and painting I mostly just chased Bella out of the work area.


Here are the post construction pictures. There is a reason my mom adores her son-in-law. "We" are taking a bit of a break before tackling her other bathroom.

One month catch up

So as my friends and family are wont to point out, it has been over a month since I updated my blog... No real excuses, I've thought of several blog topics but none of them have really panned out so instead you get a travel-log with many pictures.


My garden:
Still doing well, we have a ton of tomatoes that are slowly turning red at the rate of about 3-4 a week. My dad and Kathy came to visit a couple of weekends back and we turned some of my 2 foot basil plants into fantastic pesto. I loved these pictures of Bella with the cucumber right out of the garden. She ended up eating it down to a nub. Pickles were her first food as they calmed her when she was first teething. I guess the food preference stuck. (insert weened on a pickle joke here :))



Hill Air Force Base Museum:
Since he arrived in Utah three years ago, every time we drove north to Brigham City the Blue Prince would look longingly at the Hill AFB aerospace museum. Finally this month his dream became reality. So many airplanes, so little time.


Notice Bella standing up in the stroller in protest of being strapped down. She figured out how to walk anyway.


Peach Days:
We made it up to my mom's for the yearly pilgrimage back to Brigham City for Peach days. Everyone enjoyed the parade and Bella enjoyed getting all spoiled and sugared up by her grandma and aunt.



Notice the sucker and the hair bows. A prime example of what happens when we visit Grandma (she pitches a fit every time I try to touch her hair)



Mill Creek Canyon:
We took advantage of a beautiful fall evening to go up the canyon with some friends a couple Monday's back. We lit a fire with much lighter fluid and the blue prince's welding torch. Due to the Uruguay/Argentine contingent, dinner was of course grilled meat followed by rounds of Mate by the fire. One of the most pleasant evenings we have had in a long time. Pictured are a side view of Ariel playing with the fire, a decent family shot, and a good picture of Andrea and little Ada.



Watching Ella:
Ella is the youngest daughter of my dear friends Brandon and Kelly. She is about six months younger than Bella and she has been coming over to play every Tuesday afternoon while her mom is teaching a class. The two girls play quite nicely together in a toddler, parallel play kind of way. I have known Brandon for over 11 years now, and the other day we were commenting on how bizarre it is to see our children playing together.







Memory Grove:
Last Friday we decided to explore sites around Salt Lake that we had never visited and ended up at Memory Grove. Considering we lived a time in a nearby neighborhood, this was a glaring oversight. The park was beautiful and made for a lovely hike.

Following the hike we were resting on a bench and Bella decided to explore my diaper bag. She pulled out a swim diaper, and the changing pad and proceeded to see how many ways she could put on the diaper. After several minutes of sticking her arms through the holes she lighted on the next logical challenge: balancing the diaper on her head.

Notice the intense look of concentration.

Anyway, along with a memorable trip to the state fair (that included a Virgin of Guadalupe hat, many animals to pet and a new horsey toy) you are basically caught up on our month. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Thanksgiving point

On Saturday we got tired of boredly staring at each other and decided to leave the house. Our destination: Thanksgiving Point Gardens. None of us had gone before and as I tend to geek out with plants and gardens in general it sounded like a good fit. (Is it silly to say that one of my favorite parts was the demonstration tomato garden? I was feeling slightly smug that none of their full sized tomatoes were ripe yet either). The Blue Prince just kept sighing with pleasure about how calm and peaceful everything was. (I think we have been working him too hard)Anyway, on to the pictures:



Bella and myself on the bridge of the Monet Garden. Bella is peeved that I wouldn't let her play in the lake.

Bella inside the Caterpillar slide in the Children's Garden.

The Blue Prince in the Wisteria tunnel leading to the Secret Garden.

I told him to pose like a Greek God statue and this is what he came up with. I won't lie, I kinda like it.

We were standing on a pier in the middle of the fish pond covertly throwing Cheerios to the Koi fish to make them come to the surface when Bella decided to join in the game and threw in her bottle. The fish proceeded to happily drink the milk out of the nipple. Through ten minutes of precise Cheerio throwing skills we were able to get the fish to move the bottle towards the shore where a valiant Blue Prince was able to pluck it out of the water.

Here is Bella riding on Papi's shoulders and of course pulling his hair. She has recently developed a bit of a troubling violent streak. If anyone knows the best way to deal with screaming, hitting, face slapping, and head butting tantrums (I think she nearly broke my nose this morning, when it got in the way of a flailing head butt) I am all ears.


A family picture self-portrait by the Blue prince. He is generally very good at these.

The Artist

On Wednesday the Blue Prince was sick with the most recent plague making its way through our home and decided to stay home from work. As Wed is my big work day, he decided that we would save the babysitter fee and he would watch Bella all afternoon. Blue Prince has an odd habit of filling Bella's crib with toys when putting her down for a nap. Wed. he apparently decided to put her down with a coloring book and a pencil. When he went to get her out of bed a couple hours latter he discovered this lovely example of budding talent. He said that she pointed it out to him with the biggest smile imaginable on her face, so proud of what she had done.

Allergy testing

As many of you know Bella ended up at PCMC at the end of June for an overnight stay due to an allergic reaction to an unknown source. Today we had our visit with an Allergist for skin testing and we are a lot closer to an answer. The three main allergens are:

• Eggs:
  

Which basically we knew. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a little girls face shouldn't look like this after eating a scrambled egg Christmas breakfast.

Luckily so far, the facial swelling has been the extent of the effect from eggs, and it goes away after about an hour. We just have be careful of less obvious sources such as the "ah-ha" moment in the Buenos Aires food court when we remembered too late that Chinese fried rice is made with scrambled eggs. Dr. Allergist also said that raw egg is often more allergically potent than the cooked stuff, so we will be avoiding cookie dough for the time being.

• Shellfish:
  

Also not a huge surprise as it is the familial allergy group. The weird thing about it is that each member of my family with a seafood allergy is allergic to different things. My grandmother is allergic to Trout. My father gets deathly ill with Scallops and I have a mild allergy to Shrimp that I have mostly grown out of. One of my earliest memories is of being rushed into the bathroom by my dad to wash the hives I had developed after eating a shrimp dinner. I think I was about 5. Now I just get itchy hands if I have to peel shrimp. Dr. Allergist seemed somewhat surprised when I was asking in depth questions about what is defined as a shellfish. His comment of "most kids foods are fairly safe" in the tone of "what are you feeding your 18 month old" made me realize that most families eating habits are somewhat different from my own. We don't really go for Kid foods vs. Adult foods around here. My cousin Conner's favorite food as a toddler was Crab Legs. I'm sure that Bella has probably had Shrimp before without problem, but it will be interesting trying to figure out which Shellfish is her specific No No.

Number 3 and the real Kicker:

• Cats

Bella loves cats, Kitty was one of her first words. Thinking back, it makes sense and is probably the one that ended us up in the Hospital. She would always get a little congested when we would visit Grandma's and she would play with the Ancient One (i.e. Crystal), when she was still around. Two of the upstairs neighbors have cats but luckily they mostly run away from her before she can get too cuddly. For the time being I am just going to watch this one and try to prevent her from rolling around naked with felines. At least we have a good excuse now to turn down free kitten offers. We had a narrow escape from this the other weekend when we visited with Aunt Leanne. She tested borderline positive for dogs as well so no furry friends at all for us. Not news that will break either my or the Blue Prince's hearts. The down side is that this allergy leaves her at high risk of developing asthma, so another fun thing to look out for.

All in all I think it was a worthwhile visit and I appreciated my friend Kellie's referral to the Doctor in question. Anyone else have any fun allergy related comments to share?

100 Facts about Liz

I recently found this site that generates 100 hard core facts about you based on quotes about Chuck Norris. Here are the highlights:

• 3. Superman owns a pair of Liz pajamas.

• 8. Whenever Liz plays Chutes and Ladders, she treats the chutes as ladders, because she's not some sissy who can't climb up a plastic slide.

• 29. The United States Federal Reserve Bank decided that Liz's basement was a much safer place for their gold than Fort Knox.

• 43. Liz can predict the shuffle on her iPod.

• 58. Liz can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

• 74. Liz's calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Liz.

• 79. Liz is the only one who can "try this at home."

• 88. Liz was born with the right to party. Unlike the rest of us, who have to fight for it.

• 96. Liz can tie her shoes with her feet.

Feel free to give it a try if you are feeling a little down on yourself. :)

Previously promised videos

Last Post today I promise. Auntie Caitlin wanted some videos of Bella talking. Hey, I aim to please. The second one shows her climbing skills and the third her rocking out to her singing bike.

Gardening update

I bet you are all wondering how my garden is doing. It is doing fantastic thanks for asking. The only problem I am having is that my huge tomato plants keep getting flowers but they fall off and no fruit is being produced. Any master gardeners out there that have any ideas?

I picked my first Zapallo after several disagreements with the Blue Prince about when they are ripe and when they should be picked. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet I discovered that my lovely Uruguayan squash (zapallito de tronco) is actually both a summer and winter squash so you can pick it either early and use it like a zucchini or latter and let it harden and use it like a pumpkin or other hard squash. (So we were both right) The plant is huge and I have to cut it back frequently so it doesn't block our back gate. So enjoy the pics and thank you for humoring my new little obsession.

Mommy please let me out of my highchair and quit making me pose with squash.

Recent happenings

It has been a while since I updated my blog and I have been severely reprimanded by several Aunties... So here are your Bella pics. You can stop the harassment anytime :).

This is a recent photo from the front of our house. I like the cute smile on her face, and it is only slightly blurry so you can get the feeling of constant motion that accompanies the child.

This pic is from a recent overnight camping excursion that we went on with a group of my friends from college. There were 10 adults and 11 kids under the age of 5. They put us in a campsite a little too close to the river for comfort sake. Luckily, we only had to fish one of the little ones out of the water and no one fell in the fire this year, so all in all the trip was a rounding success.

We brought our two hammocks and they were a hit with the kids. Here is a picture where we managed to get 10 of them in at the same time. I kind of felt sorry for the ones who got stuck in the middle. (you can kind of see the pained look on Eleanore's face)

Bella and myself in a quieter moment when we had the hammock to ourselves. I love my hammocks. This is one I bought in Brazil while on my mission. (We got to cross the border once in a while for our P-days in order to buy cheap stuff in Brazil and eat at the Brazilian buffets. It was the highlight of serving near the border) My other hammock is made of multicolored plastic twine and I got it in Nicaragua. My host father there knew how much I loved theirs and helped me bargain for one from a door to door hammock salesman. (I guess he wasn't actually a door to door salesman actually just someone who walked down the street calling out and selling his wares. He only came to your door if you called out to him saying you wanted to buy something. It's a sales technique that is used too infrequently here in the US. The ice cream trucks have kind of cornered the market.)

This is a rather freaky pic of Bella taken during the 4th of July fireworks. She must have moved just as the camera went off. Unfortunately none of the pictures we took that night look much better. The reason I am posting this is that it reminds me of a scene in the second Ghostbusters movie where the evil overlord spirit is trying to take over the body of the baby. A bit too much Vigo the Carpathian for my tastes.

Memory tag

I saw this meme on Susan's blog and thought I would play along:

Participate if you like. Ignore it if you prefer.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn’t matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It’s actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I’ll assume you’re playing the game and I’ll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don’t want to play on your blog, or if you don’t have a blog, I’ll leave my memory of you in my comments.