Turkey Week in Reno

So no pictures from my mom's retirement party. I still haven't asked my sister-in-law to forward them, a little on the busy side. I will however go over Turkey Week Festivities!


To start off with, I picked up my nephew, Nathan from school and brought him over to my mom's for an afternoon of Guitar Hero on the XBOX 360 and pizza. He has it for his Nintendo DS, but I thought he'd enjoy the actual guitar. He did and he found it much more difficult(top left). It was very serious business. Uncle Dusty even tried his hand at the Guitar Hero for the DS, of course he was a natural at it. When my brother, Paul came back to pick Nathan up, he played (top right) some songs on the 360 while my niece, Maddelyn danced (bottom). It was a very enjoyable afternoon.




We did go over to Uncle Paul's and Aunt Ellen's for dinner for one evening. That's when everyone got some actual quality time and pictures with Niran. Niran enjoyed his evening, he slept and laughed. Paul and Ellen couldn't believe how easy going he was. The first picture is with my niece, Lauryn followed by Nathan, Ellen and Paul.





The day before Thanksgiving my mom taught me how to make homemade pies...yum! I made a apple and spiked pecan. They both were a hit for desert, but I still like Grandma Patsy pecan pie better.




We spent Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's brother, Carl's house. Did you get that? Have a headache now? It was fun. Ellen's family is like family to me. I've known them my whole life. I could believe how much his kids have grown up. It's amazing!


Dusty and I decided to leave Sunday to head back to Phoenix. BIG MISTAKE! BIG... I had originally thought about leaving Saturday, but didn't want to deal with heavy traffic. Then I thought maybe Monday, but I didn't want to take a chance on missing Niran's doctor's appointment since I had already pushed it back when we decided to head to Reno. So I settled on Sunday.
Niran was sound asleep as soon as we hit the road.

Now I was thinking heavy traffic was going to be driving 50 mph passed a semi down I-5 in California. It turns out heavy traffic is averaging 40 miles an hour for 12 hours and getting just over half way home during a 14 hour trip. Yup, it was horrible. Dusty did some math in his head, my head hurt from staring at so many cars that I couldn't do it, but he figured we say at least 500,000 cars and double the people.

I took this where I-580 dumps (literally on this day) into the I-5. This is where we thought there was an accident. An hour later we knew it was going to be a long, long day. All the way down I-5 we had light fog. That is not cloud covering, it's fog. Later in the evening the fog started getting thicker and the we had to deal with stupid drivers who slammed on their breaks 1/4 mile up in the other lane with no other cars between them. It was fun!
This was just before SR 99 met up with I-5. After that it was slow moving the rest of the way in. We decided we couldn't make it home on Sunday. Well we could have, but we probably would have been driving until 5 in the morning. So we decided to stop on the north side of LA about 8:30 and get a hotel, some dinner and good night's rest. That's when we were driving 70, except we did meet up with SR 99 and the creeped the rest of the way. We got to the hotel just after 10...that was our 12 hour mark of driving.

Monday's roadways were very nice. We were able to push through stopping only once to feed Niran before we got home. Then we went over to Brandi and McKay's to rescue the dogs from them and to show them how big Niran has gotten!

That seems like a pretty busy trip and I didn't even include half of it. I kept the not-so-exciting details to myself.

We're home and Niran has grown!

We got back into Phoenix Monday evening after visiting with my family up in Reno. After we unpacked the very full car we headed over to Brandi and McKay's to pick up the puppies. Our main goal was to show Aunt Brandi and Uncle Mckay how much Niran had grown in the last two weeks. We estimated Niran's weight to be around 12 pounds. Well, we found out at his doctor's appointment the exact weight. Drum roll please.........14 pounds and 24 inches long at 2 months. Yup, you read that correctly, our little boy is eating very well! He also got his first set of shots today. He handled it very well, until we were almost home and that's when the tears started. So far during the majority of the day, he hasn't been crying when he was sleeping. We borrowed Tropic Thunder from Mckay and Brandi and he woke up 10 minutes into the movie screaming. After a quick bite to eat he calmed down and started watching the movie with us. Hopefully he sleeps well tonight...for mommy's sake

I need to get some pictures from my sister-in-law and then I'll do a recap of our visit to Reno. I couldn't post pictures while I was there since my mom has a very basic computer and I didn't have the extra cables for our camera. Overall, the trip went well. It was a nice visit. I'll give more details later. For now I am going to go do the dishes.

An Unnecessarily Long Road Trip

My mom retired Friday, November 14. Yay!! So, Dusty and I packed Niran and his many necessities and headed up to Reno for her retirement party and Thanksgiving. We left the house at 7:50 Arizona time, ten minutes earlier than Dusty had requested. About an hour into the trip, right underneath the planes coming in for landings at the Phoenix Airport our car blew a tire. The bad omen shouldn't have been the flat tire, but Dusty saying we need to get a new one before we leave town. So, after unloading the trunk, replacing the tire, reloading the trunk and driving to the other side of town, we hung out at Wal-mart waiting for them to get a spare tire. When we finally left we were about 3 hours behind schedule and the planned stops to feed Niran were a little off since he ate before we left Wal-mart...the idea of finding a nice quiet fitting room is great!!

We decided to drive until he woke up ready to eat...mistake...when we stopped he had a blow out in his diaper. That was not fun changing on my lap either! The next mistake was thinking we could get through LA quickly and then changing his diaper...again another diaper blowout due to traffic because of the 4 fires we drove past. This time I changed it at In-N-Out, with him screaming his lungs out probably because of how cold it was in the bathroom. I was slightly embarrassed when the employee walked in and said "Oh" before leaving quickly. No, I was not beating my child in the bathroom.

Again we pressed on into the night, me behind the wheel and Dusty sleeping finally. But it isn't a happy ending yet. When I took the wheel I noticed it pulling, but I thought it was due to the single new tire. Right about Stockton I had to wake Dusty up. The pulling was getting to rough and I was having trouble staying in the lane. We pulled off the highway and into a gas station and at 12:30pm Arizona time, we had another flat tire. 16 hours after the first flat tire. At this point I think Dusty was ready to take a bat to the car.

We decided we didn't want to drive the rest of the way to Reno that night. We couldn't get a tire fixed that late and we didn't want get stuck on the pass without a spare, so we called my mom to let her know we were getting a hotel room and we would come up the next day. Well, being on a tight budget we had to settle for a Motel 6, this was after the first one had shady people walking the parking lot and the other hotels were getting a little too close to $100 for one person. After checking in we went straight to our hotel room and climbed into bed. Dusty was out as soon as his head hit the pillow and I slept next to Niran and took about 5 minutes to get the little guy to settle down and sleep before our neighbor started yelling at someone outside. Immediately, Niran was crying, Dusty was mad, and I was frustrated that I have to calm Niran down again. What was this guy yelling about? Some woman in the parking lot called him a "bee with an itch." Apparently this was soooo terrible of a name calling that they were threatening to get family members, friends, and possibly gang members involved. After some more yelling and running up and down stairs that shook our room the yelling was put to a halt by the threat of getting kicked out of hotel rooms by the hotel manager. Finally we were able to sleep get some rest. Well, some of us. I was the only one to wake up to an earthquake while a train went by, but after that passed it was smooth sailing.

The next morning we got up and headed straight for Reno, stopping by Denny's for a late breakfast. We very happily made it to Reno at 5:00pm Arizona time. Why do I say Arizona time? Reno is an hour behind Arizona now. We were happy to finally be out of the car and in a room where we didn't have to be concerned a gun would go off while we slept.

My mom's retirement party on Monday was nice. I was able to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while, even a friend I have been going to school with since elementary school. We shared good stories and there were even some tears. My mom is fully done with the credit union. She has to turn in some keys and finish up some paperwork from the new branch she just finished, but for the most part she is done. She is having a rough time realizing she's retired, but I'm making sure she enjoys the start by having her spend extra time with her grandson, making Christmas cards, baking pies for Church, making homemade chicken and dumplings and just simply relaxing, which I don't think she has ever done in her life.

As for Dusty, Niran and I. We're all doing well. It's a nice little break for us. We're just barely getting our chance to meet with friends and family, but we are rested from the that very unnecessarily long road trip we started out with.

The Playmat

Niran has been swinging his arms and feet like crazy lately and we were trying give him something to grab and kick by holding toys up around him a.k.a. trying to save some money. Our arms can only handle so much playtime and so we caved and bought him a playmat. Definitely don't regret it. It took him a couple of days to figure out what was going on, but now he'll spend an hour in the morning and again in the evening just kicking away at the tucan and swinging his arms with the hopes of grabbing onto something.

Having so much fun!

Time for some serious concentration

Okay, so maybe he played a little too hard.

Halloween 2008

Being so close to Brandi and McKay we decided to spend the spooky holiday with them. The weekend before we headed over to their house to carve our pumpkins. It was really messy and really fun. While the Hansen created spooky pumpkins, Dusty opted for a more friendly ghost. The ghost from Pac Man.
Dusty and I

Beau and Brandi

Skinny-man Brady

Brady & Brandi's Spider and Web, Caitlyn cheerful pumpkin

Dusty's Pac Man ghost

I ended buying another pumpkin and carved it myself. I had to get in on the fun. Plus I made some more pumpkin seeds on top of what Brandi made.

If you look carefully, he lost is right tooth, but I fixed it!

For Halloween night Niran and I went trick or treating with the cousins, while Dad handed out candy. Niran slept for almost the whole outing. When we almost hit the homestretch he woke up hungry. Maybe he was upset he wasn't getting candy and not from hunger. We'll never know.

This year I thought the right costume for Niran would be a pumpkin, since after all that is what he is...a sweet, chubby little pumpkin.

An Evening on the Farm 10/25/2008

Schnepf Farms was having their Pumpkin and Chili Festival so Dusty and I decided to go check it out. It's was very family oriented and will be more enjoyable when Niran is older, but we had a nice little evening out as a family. We had great food, including chili, entertainment, a corn maze, which we couldn't take the stroller on. Maybe next year. We even got some pictures in the pumpkin patch. I tried to get a picture of Niran on some hay with pumpkins, but there had been kids kicking pumpkins down the pyramid of hay and I was timid to leave him alone too long. I did squeeze in a picture of Niran while the kids were posing for their own picture, but I don't care for the shot. I could have done better, but what's done is done.

Weezer Concert 10/18/2008

Dusty and I decided to take an evening off from our new adventure of child rearing. We packed Niran and some of his belongings up and sent him over to Aunt Brandi's. Nana was there and was able to spend some time with her newest grandbaby and to help Aunt Brandi out with babysitting.

What did we do for our night off? We went to the Arizona State Fair to see Weezer in concert with a couple of our friends, Melanie, who's another Weezer fan and her wonderful hubby, Lincoln.

It was a very exciting performance and River's was a crack up, he just did his own thing and let the other band members do a lot of the performing


Great shot of the band. Good seats or what?!


Rivers jumping on a trampoline


Rivers thought it would be funny to climb on the shoulders of security gaurd. I don't think he was expecting to be taken for a ride through the crowd.



About 35 fans were able to join the band on stage and perform a couple of songs with their instruments.

After the concert, the four of us went and performed at the RockBand bus (I need to get pictures from Melanie) and then we went and had some deep fried desserts. Why you ask? It's the fair, fried food is okay.

When we got to Brandi and McKay's, we found a sleeping baby enjoying their company. Nana had already snuck off to bed. Even though Mom forgot to put bottles in the bag and they had to use some of Aunt Brandi's, they were still kind enough to give Niran a bath . I never got the chance to mention, if you don't brush down his hair while it's still wet it will poof out. Here's the proof...


I have a feeling he didn't understand why he was being laughed at. People are supposed to ooh and ahh at cute babies, not giggle.