Sunny!!!!

Hey friends, family, and random passer-bys! Well, my exciting news for the day is that it is 77 degrees today!!! You read that right, it is almost 80 degrees up here in Alaska. AND I'M LOVIN' IT!!! :D Everyone up here take walks in the evenings as families because they're just so darn excited that it's nice weather out! It's very refreshing to see. I am currently trying to upload pictures from the california trip, but my software is geeking out. I'll have to try to fix that. I'm excited to report that my sister will be up here next saturday. She's doing a summer job up here for the Princess Cruise line (I guess there's some sort of fancy resort in Denali that she'll be working at) but Tyler, Kari and I will be driving to Anchorage (a 6.5 hour drive) to pick her up on saterday. It'll be fun because we haven't had the chance to check out Anchorage yet. I'm hoping to get some shopping in. :D There is also this really cool indoor water park I'm interested in checking out. Today I found several blogs of friends back in Washington. I was suprised to see that I was on most of their reading lists, but I didn't know their addresses! Go figure. Hey, friends and family, if you don't send me your address, I don't know where to find your blog. It'd be nice to keep up with all of you so feel free to send me that and I'll save your address. Kari is getting bigger. She's FINALLY sleeping through the night (knock on wood) and she's eating three whole jars of baby food for dinner!! She's 9 1/2 months old and sometimes she drives me nutts!! (like now when she's refusing to take her afternoon nap) Tyler got sick after Kari and I were mostly better. He got sent home from work and then the doctor made him come in to get tested for the swine flu (since we'd just recently been in San Diego which is pretty darn close to Mexico) they made him go in through this obscure door and wouldn't let him near anyone else in the building. The doctor that tested him was wearing a mask. It was pretty crazy. He didn't have it, of course, but I think not only were they being safe, but they were using Tyler as a guinea pig. Everyone knew though. Tyler's superviser calls and is like, "so, does Tyler have the swine flu? people are starting to freak out in the office." People can be so silly. Anyway, I need to go see if she's really asleep or if she's just playing in her crib. Talk to you all later!! :D

So I thought a progression blog would be kind of fun so let's get started shall we?

In utero:

Birthday:

One month old:


Two months old:

Three months old:

Four months old:

Five months old:

Six months old:

Seven months old:

Eight months:

Nine months:

Okay, I'm saving these pictures differently so I just need to make sure that they work. More to come. Yay! Looks like it works. Expect picture overload soon!!

I just got back from our weekend in San Diego (lego my sandy eggo! ha ha ha!!) Anyway, so Friday was....well, there's no way to describe it, it was hell. We left the house at 6:30 am, and we get to the tiny airport, check in, go through security, then we have some time to eat a muffin and relax a bit. First leg of the trip was from Fairbanks to Anchorage, about an hour flight. WELL, the turbulance was REALLY bad. I've done a lot of flying and this was the worst I have ever experienced, if we had been in the air another 15 minutes, I would have had to use that paper bag if you know what I mean. Anyway, so we land in Anchorage and we've got two hours before the next flight so we go to chili's in the airport (for those of you who haven't been/heard of Chili's, it's a sit down restaraunt, pretty good food for a lot of money) and you'd think that they'd be faster since they had a significantly smaller amount of choices, but no, it takes FOREVER. By the time we get out of there and I make a bottle for the baby, our next flight is boarding already!! That flight is from Anchorage to Seattle which is a three and a half hour flight. Again, Kari was fabulous on the plane. I really think I have the best baby in the world. But anyway, so then we're in Seattle and we have some time to burn, so we wonder about and look in the gift shops. So the last leg of the trip was from Seattle to San Diego, a three hour flight. Kari is still being good natured, but she's obviously tired and so a little cranky. We land at 7:45 p.m. (6:45 Alaska time) and I try calling the number that I was given for our car rental, doesn't work, so I try the other one, doesn't work either. So I go to the information booth while Tyler is getting the bags and she tells me I have to go up and over the sky brigde and there's a car rental shuttle lane there where you get on the bus with the company that you rented from and they take you to the rental place. So we go up in the elevator (because we have a stroller) and then walk over the sky bridge, see the Hertz bus pull up, go down the elevator, run around the corner and......see the Hertz bus drive away. So we stand outside (where everyone else was wearing coats and complaining about the cold. HA! It was 60 degrees!!) and wait for the next bus. Ten minutes later, the bus arrives. So we hop on and off we go, and we'd gotten almost to the second terminal when Tyler says, "oh crap, we don't have the car seat." WHAT? How did I miss that??? I mean, I would love to blame it all on Tyler, but honestly, I was standing there with him for ten minutes and I didn't notice so it's my fault too. So he ends up getting off at terminal two and running back to where our baggage was being dropped off, meanwhile, I am on the bus, with my baby, a stroller, a diaper bag, a carry-on, and two HUGE suitcases. How the heck was I going to get all that stuff in the rental car building by myself with one arm occupied trying to keep my already tired, dirty diaper, cranky baby happy? Luckily the bus driver got me a baggage cart and took it across the street and into the building for me. I really appreciated it. Anyway, so I wait in line and when it's FINALLY my turn, I realise, oh crap, Tyler has the credit card I wanted to put the rental on. So the lady can't/won't help me at all until Tyler gets there. So I wait another ten minutes, then I call Tyler,"Where the crap are you?" And he says he just got on the bus. Another ten minutes go by. By now I've gotten about 5 text messages from my mother-in-law wondering where we're at and stuff along those lines. FINALLY he shows up, comes in, they start filling out the computer work and she calls to get the car brought up (which I had asked her not to let him know what it was until it got there because it was a suprise) and she comes out and says that they don't have the car I reserved. Anyway, so she offers me another car and I tell Tyler that it wasn't a Mazda 6 I had reserved, it was a mustang. Not two seconds after I told him that, a guy walks in and tells the lady behind the counter that he had found one in the gold section and it was sitting right outside. Talk about ruining a suprise!!! I was so disappointed. Anyway, so we load up the car, I get directions to the highway and about 20 minutes later, we walk in the door to our first hotel. The in-laws were there, but they had to leave right away because the groom was locked outside their hotel. My sister-in-law Britney stayed with us. Anyway, before grandma and grandpa left they wanted to see the baby but by this time, she was screaming and hyperventalating. So they left and I put the baby down to sleep. That was a rough night, Karielle woke up three times (dad woke up zero lol!) but we woke up a little later than planned and so we were running behind. We got in the car about five minutes past when we should have left to make it there on time (with a totally stuffed Mustang. There was a suitcase in between the car seat and the back of my seat so my chair was scooted all the way up and the chair was leaning forward, not very comfy) anyway, I had gotten directions for everything and written it down, but in California, they're not really that great at street signs, so I was lost, I had no idea where we were, so I was trying to remember the google map picture in my mind when it had taken the route all the way down and then back up the highway, so I tell Tyler to get on the highway going south, and we get a call from my father-in-law about ten minutes down the road and he gives us the right directions. So FINALLY we get there and we're late so I send Tyler in, he can't miss his only brother's wedding. Turns out they were running behind anyway so it all worked out. So they get married and then we take pictures. It's windy, on top of a hill, and we're all squinting, so those pictures aren't going to be all that great. But they took a MILLION of them. Kari was not happy. She wanted a bottle and a nap. And the grass was kind of soggy, so my high heels kept on digging into the ground. I kept trying to catch myself but the next foot would start sinking, and the next and the next. Tyler had to catch me. So when the pictures were done, we had to go over to the town where the reception was being held, an hour and a half away. So we drive forever and finally get there, have just enough time to check in to the next hotel, bring our bags up, eat a few appetizers downstairs, freshen up and get back on the road. The reception was beautiful. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, they were both beaming. Then the reception is over, we head back to the hotel. Tyler takes the wrong exit so we get back on and take the exit a couple before what we were supposed to take and it takes us to the part of town they don't intend tourists to see. So we ask directions. By this time I'm about half a straw from crazy We FINALLY get to the hotel, and I give my sister-in-law Tasha, who is expecting thier first, a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not even kidding you, a whole big suitcase was filled with stuff for them. Then they leave and we go to bed. Sunday was great. We had nothing to do until 3 so the kids (meaning, me, Tyler, Britney and family friend Jon, oh and the baby.haha!) go on a walk in beautiful Riverside California. Some of the buildings were built in the 1800s (which is nothing to those of you who are Europeans, but I thought it was pretty cool) there was the Mission Inn, which is famous, and fabulous. President Roosevelt stayed there! And old churches and orange groves!! I've never seen an orange grove. So I took a picture, lots of pictures. Then we go to the Bride's family's house and have a lunch-in for Easter. The bride and groom don't show up to open presents until 6, needless to say, for those of us who didn't know each other, it was a bit awkward. So they open presents, and then it's time for Tyler and I to head back to San Diego so we don't have to do the 1 1/2 hour drive at 2 in the morning. When we get to the hotel, we see that there is a gas station right across the street, and we're happy because we need to fill up the car. We decide to do it in the morning on the way to drop off the car. We check into the hotel. It's scary. The crib that I'd ordered looked like it hadn't been used (or cleaned) in months, if not years, not to mention falling apart and oh, no bedding for the crib, so I told the guy to take it away. We order pizza because we're hungry, 45 minutes later it shows up. Total of 12 pepperonis on it. I put the chair under the handle of the door, because it's just one of those kind of places, and we try to sleep. Wake up at 4 in the morning, get dressed, pack the car, go to check out, the guy is an idiot. He goes to "check the room" and takes about 15 minutes, making us behind schedual, finally he comes back carrying the sheets and the trash and gives me the reciept to sign. Finally we're on our way, we're about to pop across the street when we notice, it's closed. So we drive all the way down passed the airport and then all the way back up again looking for a gas station open because the car rental guys will charge 7.99 a gallon if you don't fill it up because we told them we'd fill it up, and we can't find one. I'm pulling my hair out because I'm so darn frustrated. So we decide to talk to the car rental guys and if we had to bite the bullet, then we'd do it because we were out of time to find gas. Luckily the guy was nice and gave us the 2.32 per gallon rate. Finally we're back on the bus and get to the airport. Check in, and we find out that not only are we not sitting together, but we're sitting on opposite sides of the plane. DOESN"T work with a baby. The lady checking us in tells us to talk to the lady at the gate. So we go stand in line for security (which is extra long because it's the end of a holiday weekend) by the time we get through that, everyone else is already on the plane. Take off, land in Seattle, have to sprint across the whole dang airport to get to our gate. I have to change Kari's diaper, thought I had half an hour. Tyler starts banging on the bathroom door because final boarding has ALREADY BEEN CALLED. So we run to the gate, attendant tells us we need to ask the flight attendant if we can find a way to sit together. Get on the plane, people get shuffled, more aggravating crap happens that is not relevent so I won't talk about. We're in row 28, I'm starving, it's lunch time and we haven't eaten anything all day and we've been up since 4. By the time the food cart gets to us, they only have one sandwich left and then a bunch of "snack packs" so we buy the sandwich and two packs. Split the sandwich, each eat a pack, still hungry. Land in anchorage, speed to the next gate, already boarded, get on. Luckily not a full plane so we can sit together. This is the quick 1 hour flight. Kari falls asleep. YAY!! Unprofessional attendants. Land, wait for Tyler's co-worker to pick us up. He's 20 minutes late. Drive home, put Kari to bed and Tyler falls asleep on the couch. And I still haven't eaten ha ha!! So that was my weekend!! lol!!