Finn. Hello trouble.

 Finn is growing fast. I can't believe he is 19 months already. Lately he likes to do things himself. Especially feeding himself. He got a little carried away with the pudding today. Then when I gave him a bath, he pooped in the tub (which he has done about 12 times, come on!). 

He also scales his high chair to get into it then stands on it like this until I get him down or he climbs back down. I never knew why they made high chair bases so wide, now I know. 

He likes to play in the sink, like Owen did. Only he can not keep the water in the sink, so he doesn't get to play it very often.

He is trouble, but we love him and can't get enough of his smiles, jabbering, dancing, and hugs. 

California

We took a week off and headed to Southern California the middle of June. It was GREAT! Relaxing, sunny, full of adventure. We're back home and there is SO much to do. I'm taking a break to post a few pictures:)

Laundry Woes

This is what my laundry room has looked like since I moved in. It has been driving me crazy, and after a lengthily and enlightening conversation with my cousin Tara, I decided to do something about it! Even though we are just renting, investing a little time and money is a good thing. I mean we know we'll be here for another 2.33 years. That's a lot of time spent in a horrible looking/functioning laundry room. Oh and you can see from our washer and dryer that "it don't matter of you're black or white!"

So, I assembled and installed my first cabinet. Hung shelves. Moved and added more hanging rods. I also tried to utilize the "1990's basket space" by adding nice sized Target baskets. And then filling them with clothes. All of Owen and Hannah's clean clothes now stay in the laundry room. No more dragging clothes up and down from their rooms. They get dressed in the laundry room and put dirty clothes right into the hampers. As clothes come out of the dryer, they go in the baskets, or hung up, and viola! I'm done. The laundry room is right next to the mud room so socks are right next to shoes. It's wonderful. I have saved so much time with this little adjustment. And I think my kids could even have less clothes, because it is so much easier to turn things over. No tramping through the whole house gathering up dirty clothes once a week.

I guess I need to take another shot to see the baskets. I send these to MaryAnn, whose house this is. I was sort of trying to hide the fact that a hammer hit one of the lower shelves to make room for the dirty clothes hampers. Oh and the view out the window is nice, I've seen multiple sunsets since I moved the hanging rod out of the way. Who hangs a rod right in front of the window!

Late night

I can't sleep, and I haven't done anything productive with my time. Finn woke up, he is getting his two bottom teeth. Things are not perfect, life is crazy. Sometimes when I look at everyones blogs, I feel weird, like I relate with my friends and family, and then at the same time, that I don't. ANyway no one really wants to read my ramblings, you'd rather see some pictures! Kids are so fun to photograph.

The kids have been great sports lately at eating what I cook. I was so proud of them I had to take a picture:) The look kind of moody. I guess that's normal.

Cancun Fun

We had such a great time in Cancun. The best thing was being with Ben and Tara. Tara is my cousin, just a year older than me. They live in Virginia, and we got together a lot while we lived in Pennsylvania. Tara and I share the same middle name, Beth, our grandmother's name. And the four of us just get along really well. We laughed a lot. We kept making fun of the drunk people and talking about how we were so much less embarrassing. But a few times we were laughing so hard we couldn't walk down the street. Jeff and I both tripped and almost fell one night after a walk back to from the convenience store. Tara was 5 months pregnant but super energetic! I miss you guys!

Ben and Jeff riding the waves.

Ben and Tara, the beginning of our private tour to Tulum and Chichen Itza.

All of us in front of the temple. There is another temple inside it that is the same, just smaller. They have excavations dated back to 200AD, and are continuing to excavate. Even though it was more expensive we decided to take a private tour with Alma's tour. It was great to have an LDS perspective. It was one of our best days there.

We got to go swim in a cenote, which is part of an underground water system. It was beautiful and I only wish we cold have stayed longer.

We ate some awesome food! This restaurant, Emara, was authentic Yucatan food. It was so delicious and a little adventurous. They only had one English menu and one young worker who spoke english. All part of the fun!

Jeff and I did an excursion at Explor. They have zip lining, jeep driving through caves, and some other touristy stuff. This is the beginning of our day, we had to leave the camera in the locker and were too cheep to buy the pictures of us actually zip lining. The highlight of the day was meeting my "tocia" or my twin, someone who has my same name. She was a cute mexican girl who worked there. Everyone was so nice. Especially when we tried speaking our terrible spanish. I think the only thing we mastered were our numbers. Mostly because we didn't want to get ripped off when we bought things.

Riding the bus

This is the beautiful hotel we stayed in. Thanks to Ben and Tara. I'm glad you guys are so rich. Lol