Vincente has quite the little attitude.

And lately he is getting kind of jealous of the attention that Joseline gets. Which is odd, since he's never been jealous before 8-o

As I try to approach Vincente (for ... anything, really) "No, Mamãe, you walk away!"

Today when I was talking to my friend, Michelle, "Mamãe, listen to me talking now!"

Vincente's prayer... every time.... "Dear Heavenly Father, and thank you for this day, name of Jesus Christ, AY-men!" Even at meals :) When we try to tell him "Remember to say 'Thank you for the food'" He tells us "No! It's MY turn!" and proceeds to start at the beginning again.

Me or Grandma: "Vincente, do you want some ___ (fill in the blank with food item)"
Vincente: "No, I just want ___!" (fill in the blank with a more preferred food item)

Vincente, upon finishing his sandwich: "I want a new one!"

Vincente, upon receiving said new sandwich: "Ooooh, THANK you!"

Vincente, when we want him to go to bed/eat his food/do pretty much anything "I don't think so!" (or, alternatively, "Eu ascho que não!")

2+/2+

Russ' DLPT scores! For those of you who are not familiar with the military and their arbitrary language test scores, this is a VERY good score! He has done REALLY well! His course is finished! Hooray! And he graduates on April 1. I will be flying down to CA with the kids on Tuesday next week to celebrate with him and to help him and the Wildes move back to UT.

We are pretty excited to see our sweet hubby/Papai next week! Especially with all the stress of DLI Chinese behind us! What a great adventure! We are glad it is over, and we are grateful for all the things we were able to learn and experience - especially the new friends we have made, new places we have seen, and new things we have learned to love!

He reports to his (more) training in AZ on the 14th of May. Until then, he is ALL OURS! We love him so much.

We are so proud of you, Papai!!

Staying Afloat

I love this picture of Vincente. I love the boats behind him, the still water, and the fact that the sun is too bright. :D

There is so much going on in our lives right now. There is a new adventure around every corner, and I’m trying not to get too stressed out about everything. We’re loving pretty much everything that is going on, and the kids are growing up so fast! I have been a total slacker with taking pictures of the kids, but I will start again.

I have come to the realization that I don’t do anything if I don’t set a goal to do it. I am going to blog once a week every week for the next six weeks. (Trying to start a habit, here!) Each blog post will contain at least one picture from the previous week. This will keep me taking pictures. I really wish I had a DSLR and some cool lenses and flashes. Some day.

I’ll probably try to post every  Sunday. I need to come up with a better blog theme, too. Actually, I really love my theme (the present), I just need to better define the theme. So I’ll work on that the next six weeks – defining the theme of my blog. Don’t forget to follow the “front page” blog so you can be notified when I update this blog.

Happy reading!

Running Total

So I figured I should post an update about the running situation. I have been a big slacker about, well, just about everything since we got here. mostly I blame it on adjusting to living in a new place, and reconnecting with old friends who I have been missing terribly.

I am reminded every day how blessed I am to have such great friends.

I think I was stuck in a little funk. Not really sure exactly where I wanted to be more... Back in CA, or here in UT. Now I feel like here is where o am supposed to be, so that helps.

Well, I finally did things that I kept telling myself I would do, like setting up the running swap with a friend (we talked about it a few weeks ago, but I never followed through... Story of my life).

So now I have a running partner, I take my kids to story time, and I sent off my application for ARL. This week my main goal (besides running again) is getting letters of recommendation from old employers.

I really am feeling motivation and purpose.

I heard a quote from one of the brethren a while ago that went something like this:

"When the why is strong enough, the how will take care of itself."

I believe that.

My why is getting more defined in my head, so the "how's" are coming along a lot better.

Thanks for all the concerned comments! I love to have a sounding board for some of my emotions. Your encouragement has really helped.

So far I have run 3 miles this week. My goal right now is just to be consistent at 9 miles a week, running 3 miles, 3x's a week. So far, I'm on target to reach my goal! Thanks to all my great encouraging friends.

I'm trying to have more faith. It's a work in progress!

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Fail, or Quit?

I am back living with my in-laws. It's great, they are fabulous, I love them to death!

I miss my friends in CA. I miss having that great relationship with people nearby. I REALLY miss running with Deann. Well, we never ran together, but we did a running/kid swap (I watched her kid while she ran, then she watched mine while I ran). It worked out really well, and I was consistent, and because I was consistent, I was able to improve.

I felt like I was achieving something. I was climbing a mountain and getting closer to the top. It was a great feeling. I just felt AMAZING. And happy. I feel happy when I run. Something about those endorphins, I'm sure.

So I made a goal. I want to run a half marathon at the end of the summer. 13 miles. I just KNOW I can do it. Well, I knew I could do it back in CA when I was running three times a week, usually 9-10 miles a week. I just knew I could do it. If I kept running like I was running, and climbing that mountain, I would make my half marathon goal, I would!

Enter moving to UT.

So, no longer do I have Deann to run with :( So that means I don't run as often. I would ask my MIL to watch my kids for me to run (and she would do it) but I feel bad asking her to do any more. We're already mooching enough, living in their house. I just don't want her to feel like she has to raise my kids, too. I have nothing to give back, because she doesn't need anything from me. Except for me to keep my kids quiet so she can nap. But that's not really me doing anything anyway, since we're already in the way making noise so she can't nap. That means that me keeping the kids quiet is simply undoing the damage I've already done by having my kids here.

Let me clarify - my MIL does not make me feel bad for living here. It's something I do all to myself.

But anyway, so I haven't been running. We've been here for nearly 3 weeks, and I've ran a total of 3 times, for a total of about 5 miles. Yeah. Lame. Well, first off, the altitude is higher here anyway, so I knew it was going to take some adjusting.

On top of that, I live too far away from anyone really to take advantage of friends who want to do swaps with me. And I live at my in-laws, so it's not really great to have MORE kids here... which would mean that I would always been driving long distances to get to someone else's house. Lame.

So I'm faced with a horrible moral dilemma.

Do I quit my training? (for now... I would pick right back up where I left off if I can find someone close to watch the kids, or when I am in AR) Or do I just keep trying to train, and fail miserably?

I'm not a quitter, and I can't stand failure.

So what do I do? I don't have a good answer. Maybe you do?

Apples and Veggies

My babies love their food. Joseline loves veggies - green ones, mostly.


And Vince loves his apples!! He doesn't care much for veggies, but he likes apples, strawberries, and sometimes bananas. Mostly he's a bread and cheese kind of kid. We're hoping it's just a phase.


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Brand New Day

Here we are in Utah. Finally settled in. I would have pictures, but I'm writing this post on my laptop since the kids are sleeping in the bedroom with my big desktop. I will probably move either the kids or the computer (probably the kids, I have to talk to my MIL first. It would be a lot easier for them to sleep in their own room, and there is an empty room. And in the event that someone needs to come use that room, we could always move the babies back into the big room. Although it would probably be easier to just move the computer out of the big room... probably we'l do that.)

It has been fun to be back because I feel like we're moving on - moving forward, which is good.

Russ has decided officially that he wants to be an interpreter. We always knew that he wanted to use his languages, but he was never really dedicated to one "career." If anyone knows of any businesses looking for Chinese interpreters, Russ would love to interpret in Chinese this fall.

We'll move anywhere in the western US if the job pays enough.

Home Again

We are on our way back to UT -we being me, Vince, and Joseline and Russ' mom. Russ is going to stay in CA to finish up his course at DLI while the kids and I go back home to get a job and get out of his hair.




We miss him already, and we're only just past Bakersfield. Oh yeah, I'm writing this blog post in the car and I plan on posting it to my blog as soon as I am finished. Russ got me an iPhone as a going away gift because he is the greatest man in the world. I love him so much and he is so thoughtful.

Wish us luck, and we can't wait to see all our friends in UT again (and all you friends in CA we will miss you terribly!!)



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A Whale of a Tale

Things have been quite busy around here (hence no blogging) but I’m  blogging right now before I have to get dressed for a run.

We got lots and LOTS of boxes last night (and a tape gun!) so I will hopefully be able to pack most of the house today. It’s starting to get me down – the thought that we’re leaving beautiful Monterey and the ocean and all the wonderful friends we have here.

Thankfully a lot of those friends are in the Utah National Guard as well, so we’ll see them occasionally. But there are a few precious friends who are dear to our hearts that are active duty and will be sent to far away places. We will miss them SO much. We will probably have to take some vacations out that direction (a few of them are going to Ft. Bragg) and visit. It would be neat to see the other ocean!

My little family is doing wonderfully. They are growing up so fast.

We went Whale Watching on Monday with Sanctuary Cruises. Vince loved the boat. Joseline slept. Russ got sea sick. And I got to play hero and take care of everyone.

We saw one whale. It was magnificent. He only surfaced about 3 or 4 times, but it was really cool. And now Vincente has seen a real live whale. He probably won’t remember it much, but we’ll remind him about it. Especially since we will probably never go whale watching again. We have decided that we are not ocean people. At least, we’re not the riding-on-the-ocean type people. We like the beach! Does that count? 

Mais – the real thing

Joseline signing “Mais”

Mais

Joseline signed her first word!! Well, she actually been doing it (inconsistently) for a few weeks. We’ve been trying to teach her “mais” (or “more”) and she has been clapping occasionally to say “mais.”

Last night we were eating pizza with friends and we were trying to get her to sign “mais” for more pizza. She would clap, and then once when she was clapping she suddenly stared at her hands and pointed both fingers and touched them together.

I ran to get the camera in case she did it again.

She didn’t.

So here is a picture of another baby doing the sign.  Removed said picture since I caught her on camera.

Joseline was way more cute. She was staring sooo intently at her little fingers, making sure she got it right! It was awesome! I promise to post a picture of her signing as soon as I can get one.

I can’t believe I never got a picture of Vince signing anything. And he did a LOT of signs.

M Day!

Okay, clearly this is not our house (or our POD… lawn/pool furniture? Yeah… no. Bricks on our driveway? No.) but it serves the purpose of showing our preferred method of moving. I’ll take a picture of our POD when it gets here… IN THREE WEEKS!

Our official move date is February 25. It was going to be a little later, but apparently the housing office’s last day is the 25th, so if we didn’t want the 25th, we’d have to stay here into March, and we just want to get our stuff packed up and get back to UT! Plus, the earlier I’m back in UT, the faster I can start finding a job. And I need to get fingerprinted for the ARL program, and if I don’t get it done in UT it will take up to 10 weeks to process. Sorry, folks, I need a job a little earlier than that.

Right now we are in need of moving boxes, since we just decided on Friday that we were going to move out a month earlier than planned 8-o

We’ll be seeing all you UT folks soon!! We can’t wait!! :D

We have a little to-do list for before we leave:

- whale watching cruise (scheduled for President’s Day! the 15th)

- family photo shoot on the beach (gotta find out about that!)

- trip to San Francisco (I think we would be really disappointed if we lived in Monterey for over a year and never went to SFO. So we’ll have to plan that trip in there sometime!)

- sell our CAR!! Ack! 8-o Otherwise we may need someone from UT to fly out and drive it back for us. Any takers? I found flights from SLC to Oakland for under $100. We’d pay half the ticket? If it comes right down to it we’ll probably end up just trying to sell it to a dealer 8-o Yikes.

Long Time

It’s been a while, and I’ve been taking too many pictures (again!) but I’ve decided to start only posting my very favorite pictures or the pictures that go along with a particular story/event I want to share. And then not spend so much time talking about the stuff that went on. I’d like to … but my life is probably not nearly as interesting as the pictures are cute :)

I’m going to work more on scrapbooking and eventually I’m going to start printing pictures to hang in our home (this fall… when we have a “home”)

Anyway, life has been very eventful this month. My parents came to visit, we went to the aquarium with them, the farmers market, and did a bazillion other things.

Now we’re getting ready for yard selling and moving and such.

I can’t believe our time here is almost finished.

 

We’ll be moving back to UT on March 1 (well, me and the babies) – but those plans are kind of tentative… they’ve changed at least 4 times since the beginning of the year…

 

Then it will be job hunting for me, graduation for Russ from DLI on April 1 (which I may or may not attend… he said he doesn’t care as much about his graduation from DLI as he cared about his graduation from BYU – I can’t blame him… bachelor’s degree and 5+ languages vs. associates and 1 language… hmm, it’s easy to see which schooling wins in the “coolness” dept for him)

In other news, Joseline still does not walk, I speak more Portuguese at home (and have committed to speaking Portuguese to the kids this summer while Russ is in AZ), Vince speaks Portuguese in the evenings and on weekends when Russ is home, and Joseline mostly just giggles. Oh yeah, and makes the “car” noise. Like every time she sees anything with wheels. Motorcycles, cars, push toys, etc. It’s pretty much hilarious. Her favorite toys are cars, and dishes. Good thing we have a lot of each.

 
And she loves Lightening McQueen. If Vince’s Cars toys are out and she has a choice, she goes for the Cars toys before the Hotwheels. I can’t blame her – they are pretty fun cars.

Vince goes potty almost all by himself and FINALLY puts his undies back on by himself. I just stopped helping him one day. The first few days he ran around naked because he wouldn’t put them on by himself. Then I started taking away toys/privileges if he wasn’t “underweared” Now he just does it himself.

 

Russ is getting ready to take the Chinese DLPT on March 20 (another recent for our early departure). He’s doing pretty well in class, but still hates doing homework. I totally understand though. We are SO much more entertaining than his homework :)

I am mostly hanging out with the kids, marking off my to-do list every day, and SO enjoying my garden which is blooming all sorts of beautiful flowers (the flowers are totally coming with me to UT).

We try to go to the library more often, and I’ve started doing a run/kid swap with a friend – she runs while I watch her 2 year old, then I run while she watches my kids! It’s working out great, and I’ve been pretty consistently working back up to a 10 min mile for 3 miles. I hit it just about on the head on Wednesday, and I hope to do a 4.1 mile loop next week, probably on Friday. With lots of hideous hills. It’s going to be a great run, though. Half-marathon, here I come! I’m progressing, slowly but surely.

The Post Wide Yard sale is on Saturday (the 6th) and my goal is to make $1000!!! Can I do it!? Better bet your bottom dollar I will!! I’ve got lots to sell, and I have the very best spot on the lot, which is going to be all decorated pretty, and I always have a “free stuff” box, which I’m going to place at the BACK of my spot this time, instead of the front, so people have to walk past all my COOL stuff to get to the free stuff :) You’d think I was in marketing or something.

 

  

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the random update and the pictures. Just a few BAZILLION of my very favorites from the past weeks. (Sorry, I wrote “few” before I actually went through my pictures to see how many favorites I had… )

Chompers

As of today, January 11, 2010, Joseline Marie Rowley has erupted her first tooth! Hooray!

I’ve known it was coming for a while. I could see it. The gums have been swollen for the last few days. She’s been fussy (of course) and ornery. But it finally erupted some time while she was sleeping (which was also broken by cries of pain all night :( and we were out of baby Tylenol)

Well, here it is, making its grand entrance! (see the little dark spot on her bottom gums – almost hidden by her lip, but it was the best shot I could get! Obviously she didn’t like me taking pictures of her mouth)

I’m sure more will quickly follow. That seems to be how these things go.

I’m really glad she’s finally getting her teeth. Vince got his at 4 or 5 months old. I think it was actually better for him to teeth when he was younger. I don’t even remember him being nearly as fussy and cranky as Joseline is. It’s like she’s older so she’s more annoyed about the pain.

The first good shot I have of Vince’s teeth, and he was almost seven months in this picture. He’d had these teeth for at least 2-3 months. 

New Posts Index

Check out my New Year 2010 Post

Since I have posted about 15+ posts in the last 24 hours and they aren’t the most recent 15+ posts in my blog (I put them in order where they belong in our lives, for the most part) – since I did all this craziness, I made an index for you, so you can see where all the new posts are. I will keep this as my most recent post.

Don’t forget to add our front page to your blog roll/list so you can see when we update the blog.

• Food-Foot Dance
• Sweethearts
• Army Strong
• Blue-eyed Girl
• What?
• Joseline, etc
• The Next Mozart (new)
• Happiness al a Vincente (new)  
• Monterey Bay Aquarium (new)
• Thanksgiving trip to UT (new)
• McDonald’s Reunion (new)
• they could be brothers (new)
• Diva
• joss in the box (new)
• I am a Builder
• Christmas Part I – Tree Shopping (new)
• Christmas Part II – The Light of the World (new)
• Christmas Part III – D Co Christmas Party, and Santa (new)
• Christmas Part IV – Traditions (new)
• Christmas Part V – On Christmas Morning (new)
• Beach Babies Part I – Sand Sans Sun (new)
• Beach Babies Part II – Happy New Year (coming soon – maybe tomorrow?)

they could be brothers

This semester I got to watch my friend’s little boy while she took some classes at MPC. It was great that Vince got to have someone to play with. Well, let me tell you. These two boys … were a handful. Either one of them are great little boys, but you put them together and suddenly it’s like the world is one big UFC fight!! My goodness. All day long it was “Vince did this…” “Ethan did that…” and crying and fighting and yelling and screaming. They had a good time, though. It was just rough on me!!

We went to the aquarium with said friend and her boys and at one exhibit, Ethan and Vincente were standing next to each other. Of course, two little boys of their temperaments cannot be within arms reach of each other without a little pushing match starting. So inevitably, they started shoving each other. I think it’s because Vince was calling the sea dragon a sea horse, and of course Ethan, being older (and apparently more informed) corrected Vincente, which frustrated him, and then starts the shoving. Some lady standing near by asked me if they were brothers. Ha. I wish. Then I could smack both of them on the head, instead of just my kid. :) Just kidding, of course. But really. Geez, it’s like they never stop.

And then I snapped a few other cute pics on our walk to the park. So here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Does this picture make my thighs look fat?

 

My sweet baby girl  

joss in the box

What do you get when you put a Joseline in a toy box?

A Joss-in-the-box!

Happy 2nd!

Yesterday was the official second anniversary of our family blog. I am pleased to say that I wrote more posts in 2009 than I did in 2008, and I hope the trend will continue. I hope all of my readers enjoy reading about our family and our exciting adventures.

This year is going to hold a lot more adventure, so stay tuned! And if you have a family blog (or any other blog!) that isn’t on my blog list (see the right) please let me know so I can keep up on your family, and comment on your blog, too!!

Oh, and my blog goal this year will be to label my posts. I’ve been pretty bad about that since I switched to Window Live Writer. But I will be better this year!

Happiness al a Vincente

I just love how happy Vincente looks. Pretty much all the time. The kid is in love with life. I think I could learn a few things from him.

   

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so he doesn’t look particularly happy in this picture. More like confused. I think this was at the huge Rowley family Thanksgiving dinner in West Valley so he was probably looking at some relative he didn’t know. Which was most of them.

Blue-eyed Girl

Just my beautiful blue-eyed girl