Miller Family Happenings

This post is just a random assortment of what we have been up to.  I figure if I wait and try to organize it all, it won't get posted so...

When Ollie uses the bathroom a lot of times he takes his underwear and pants completely off.   He has a hard time getting them on the right way :) 

Beautiful roses from the rose bush in our front yard.

Max with a cheerio stuck to his chin at church.  He often has food stuck to his chin that he is unaware of .

It has really warmed up here.  The boys have been enjoying their Buzz Lightyear sprinkler and baby pool.

On June 16 I left the kids and drove up to Sacramento to go to the Britney Spears concert with Chrissy and Ashley.  We had SO much fun.  Britney actually sang and danced really well, way better than I expected.

Full house (thanks to Groupon).

We had to get matching shirts.

Thanks for the fun night girlies!

Our friends Paul and Amy just adopted their little girl Clara, so I threw a baby shower for them a couple weeks ago.  We asked everyone to bring their favorite childrens book for Clara's library.  I found a cute book theme on marthastewart.com.  I'm not crafty, but I had a good time giving it my best attempt.   

The food spread.

My "Enchanted Garland".

Sweet little Clara slept through the whole shower.

I got them a cute little shirt/dress while we were in Mexico, I think Amy was excited about it.

There are lots of other exciting things coming up for our family.  I'll try to stay up to date on the blog. 

Cabo San Lucas Mexico

We just got back from spending a wonderful week in Mexico.  We went with Jason's parents and brother, which was so nice because we had help with the kids.  Traveling internationally with kids is not the easiest thing to do (learned last minute that even 8 month old babies need a passport and plane ticket) but with their help things went very smoothly.  We had lots of fun swimming, and eating and generally just having a good time.  The day we left to come home, Ollie told me he wanted to "stay in Mexico for a long, long time".

Ollie hasn't flown in a while so we really talked up the airplane thing.  He is at such a fun age because everything is so exciting.  Here are the boys watching the planes before we left.

Uncle Mike made delicious smoothies that Ollie and Jason enjoyed together.

We spent 75% of our time in the pools at our resort.  Ollie has never been that into water and swimming, but that all changed on this trip.  He LOVED it.  I'm very happy he became more comfortable swimming because he starts swim lessons this week.

Daddy and Uncle Mike (and me a few time but I wasn't very good) would throw him up and he just loved it.  Here is an action shot.

Me and Jason were able to sneak away a couple of nights after the kids went to bed and get dinner in town.  This  was a pretty nice "authentic" Mexican restaurant Jason found in Cabo.  If you look behind me you can see the one little Mexican woman cooking all the food in the tiny kitchen.

We didn't take our nice camera so most of our pictures are from my iPhone.

We went snorkeling at Chileno Beach.  Here is Max participating in his favorite past time, chewing on his toes.

What handsome boys.  It looks like we combed Max's hair over.  When we got there we went to Costco and Walmart and Jason misread the diaper package.  It said "3 free" and he just saw the 3 and thought it was the size, but really there were size 5, so Max wore HUGE diapers all week.  He also cut a top tooth so he had some tough days, poor guy.

Ollie is still practicing Yoga these days.

Mike, John and I went fishing one day.  Jason and his mom stayed back with the kids because they both get motion sick on boats.  This was the sun rising the morning we went.  So beautiful.

We caught like 15 tunas in two hours.  Here I am straining to hold these two, they were so heavy.   I'm pretty sure I was the one who caught the biggest fish that day ;)

We came home with 50lbs of tuna.  It was such a fun fishing trip because we caught so much.

This was Ollie's favorite turtle pool, just for little kids.  Most the time he had it totally to himself.  

This pool (right next to the turtle pool) is where we spent most of our time.  If you swim under that bridge behind Jason there is a beautiful infinity edge pool.  It went right up to the ocean, it was gorgeous.  I have some pictures of us, but they are on another camera, when I get them I will post them.

Jason and I went to one of the nicer restaurants at the resort for a delicious seafood dinner.  It was very romantic.  The dark area behind us is the ocean.

Another night we all went into town to eat and this man serenaded us.  Max was REALLY into it.

So was Mike :)

One of the few pictures of the whole group.

Family picture.

Another family picture in front of the sign where we stayed.

Overall it was a wonderful trip.  I wish more of Jason's family could have come.  Maybe next time.  

Max the Lovebug

My sweet little baby is 8 months old.  I cannot believe it.  Time goes by WAY too fast.  Max is such a sweet baby, we love him so much.  Here are some things about Max at 8 months.

I weighed him on my home scale yesterday with clothes and diaper and he is 18lbs.  Skinny little runt.

He loves to give open mouth, slobbery kisses (and I love to receive them).

He is a pretty good night sleeper, going to bed around 7pm and sleeping until 6:30-7am, too bad it took him until about 6 months to do it.

If we are home he naps well but if we are out and about he is too interested in whatever is going on to nap, but he manages to stay happy so I try not to stress about it.

He is a good eater, there hasn't been anything he won't eat.

He is a crawling machine.  He started when he was 6 months and has just mastered it.  Now he is standing up to things :/

He has had ear infections twice (Ollie hasn't ever had one).  In fact right now he has a double ear infection, but you would never know it.  I finally took him in to the Dr. cause he had been sick (runny nose, cough) for 2 weeks and wasn't getting better, that was why.

He has had 3 haircuts already.

 He loves his big brother and just laughs and laughs at him.

I already notice personality differences between my boys. Max is so much more smiley and giggly than Ollie was.  He is also pretty fearless so far, where Ollie has always been a cautious kid.

What a handsome little devil.

Happy boy.

 

Those big, brown eyes just kill me.

I love sleeping babies.

He tends to get himself into some funny predicaments these days.

Macaroni hanging out of the mouth.

What  you don't know is that 30 seconds earlier that net was on his head, courtesy of big brother.

Stop growing up so fast Max!!

Ironman St. George

Last weekend Jason and I headed to St. George so Jason could participate in the St. George Ironman.  I drove up to Lincoln with the boys Tuesday evening (so our parents could watch them while we were gone), went and looked at houses Wednesday morning, and then flew out of Sacramento that afternoon.  It was a busy couple of days.  Jason flew out of San Jose Wednesday and we met each other in Las Vegas.  By the time we got our rental car and checked into our hotel I was starving.  We heard that the Bellagio has an awesome buffet but the line was like 45 minutes long so we opted for the next highest rated buffet The Wicked Spoon at The Cosmopolitan.  It was pretty delicious and we loved being able to sample lots of different foods.  I had high hopes of catching a show as well but it just didn't work out that night.

So hungry and ready to eat.

Some of the yummy food.  Isn't that individual sized pot so cute?!?

We really love to eat out and try different food but it is so hard to do with the kids, so needless to say we really enjoyed ourselves.

Dessert was SO good.

I don't even like marshmallows but I couldn't resist trying one of these.

We aren't gamblers, but we had to put a little money in 25c slot machines.

We watched the fountain show at the Bellagio.

Had to get a picture with the Las Vegas sign on our way out of town.

 We got up Thursday morning and drove the two hours to St. George. We stayed with Jason's grandparents, and it was so great to spend time with them.  Jason's sister Jen and brother Mike also made the trek down from Lehi/Provo which was so nice, and we were so happy they came (especially me since we hung out during the race).  Thursday and Friday were spent checking into the race, dropping off all Jason's bags of stuff, a trial swim, etc.  It was nice though because we took our time and if we wanted to do something we just did it.  Thursday night they had a dinner/info session for the participants so I went and saw Water for Elephants (is it weird that I love going to the movies by myself?).

Tom, Jason and Austin in front of Sand Hollow reservoir where the swim took place. 

We toured the St. George tabernacle.  It is such a beautiful building.  We learned that every prophet of the LDS church except Joseph Smith has spoken from this pulpit.

Saturday was the big day.  If you are friends with me or Jason on facebook you know that the race did not turn out as Jason had hoped.  Long story short the heat, and improper nutrition made it so Jason suffered dehydration and consequently a heat stroke (the temp was 93 degrees that day) causing him to drop out of the race at mile 92 of the 112 bike ride (if you are interested in the long story, you can read it here, and in case you are wondering DNF stands for "did not finish").  Jason was pretty disappointed since he trains so hard for these races and was excited to do this race with friends.  I am just happy he is ok, things could have been much worse if he had waited any longer to stop.  Here are some pics from earlier that day.

Jason's support team (Jared, Shannon and Jamison Burton, me, Jenny and Mike)

Jason after the swim about to get on his bike.  He had a great 2.4 mile swim, with a PR time of 1:12.

Cute little Jamison ringing his cowbell.  He was such a good sport that day.

After we saw Jason transition to the bike leg, Jenny, Mike and I  went and had breakfast.  I felt kind of bad enjoying a delicious breakfast in an air conditioned restaurant while Jason was out in the brutal heat, but he is the one that signs up for these crazy races.

 After breakfast we went out to try to see Jason along the bike course.  We waited, and waited, and waited.  I always worry if Jason doesn't come right around the time I expect him to and normally my worries are unfounded, but on Saturday just when I was starting to feel a little pit in my stomach I get a text from a number I didn't recognize saying, "Your husband is ok.  He has suffered a heat stroke, he is ok.  He has dropped out of the race and will be back shortly."  I'm pretty sure Jason, even though he was kind of out of it, made sure the girl emphasized that he was OK, because he knows how much I worry. It took him a long time to get back because they were picking up so many people who had also dropped out.  Jason was pretty bummed when I did finally meet up with him, but I was just happy he was ok.

Here we are with Jason's grandparents and siblings.

Sunday we went to church, ran a few race errands, and stopped for a walk around the St. George temple.  It was a wonderfully relaxing day.

While some aspects of the weekend were kind of a bummer, overall we had a great time.  I loved spending time with just me and Jason.  It felt like we had so much free time.  We missed our boys though and are happy to be back with them.  By the way, the boys had such a great time.  We were just leaving to drive home and I asked Ollie if he wanted to go home, or back to grandma's, he said he wanted to go back to grandma's.  Don't worry, it didn't hurt my feelings, I'm just glad he had as much fun as we did.  I may even convince Jason to attempt Ironman St. George again next year so we can go back, on second thought, I'm fine with him being done with Ironman distance triathlons for a while...