the return of elder grant

the main purpose of our visit was to welcome home my little brother! he had been in mexico for the past TWO YEARS (which went by really fast, until i saw his little face -- which isn't so little anymore -- and realized that two years is actually a loooooong time) serving as a missionary for our church.

on thursday, april 12 we packed up the entire fam, some balloons, a few posters and a whole lot of excitement and headed to the airport to plant ourselves in the closest possible spot to flight arrivals.

passengers started filing down the stairs and we were all giggling like nervous little schoolgirls and then there he was!

with his new girlfriend! nah, just kidding. he just made a friend on the plane, good little missionary.

he looked mostly the same. just older and cuter. and still short ;) i feel bad for taking all the tall genes in my family.

this was when grant met jack for the first time! if you'll recall, i was 5 months pregnant when grant left on his mission, so he only knew jack through photos. they love each other. [side note: can i get a holla for finally getting my hair highlighted?!? ;) ]

it was such a happy day.

we collected his luggage and went straight to in-n-out. 95% of our conversations for the rest of the day involved iphones. granty has a lot of technology to catch up on! 

he spoke in church on sunday to share some of his experiences in mexico and i was just so proud of my little brother. he's mature and smart and funny and brave. he told a story about meeting a guy, omar, who was a member of one of the big drug cartels in mexico. omar wanted to turn his life around so he started taking lessons from grant and was making so much progress, but the gang told him he could never get out of the life he'd already chosen for himself. one day, grant and his companion showed up to teach omar but he was gone -- his sister said she thought he packed up and left town to try to get away from the gang. a few days later the police found omar dead, hanging from a city bridge -- murdered by fellow gang members. these were the crazy circumstances grant dealt with for two years, just so he could go and teach the people of mexico about the gospel of jesus christ. 

[he DID have a bunch of happy stories too, for the record. and if the comments on his facebook page are any indication of the relationships he made down there, i can say he definitely made a huge, positive impression on the people he met.]

i'm so glad he is home! especially when he texts me 30 rock quotes in the middle of the day :) [and p.s., my mom's amazing friend kathy came to the airport with us to photo-document the occasion -- all photos above are hers.] yay elder payzant!

church photobombs

whew! we're back from 10 glorious days in california -- which you'd think would be really warm and amazing, when in fact it rained for 4 of those days while seattle was having it's best weather week of the year, yay me -- and i have soooo much to tell you and show you.

so while i work on a buttload of new posts, enjoy these little treasures from church on easter sunday. jack was completely fascinated by pop pop's iphone so he plopped down on his lap and stayed entertained throughout the entire service. mostly he thought taking pictures was the best.

 stay tuned for more :)

farmer jack

today jack and i checked out the kelsey creek farm in bellevue. i had no idea there was even a farm there but actually it turns out there are TWO, right along the freeway on the way to b's work.

this wasn't a real farm, if you're curious -- more like a fake educational farm. it consists of two barns built in the 1930s and a handful of small animals like ponies, chickens who lay green eggs (something else i did not know existed until today, apparently i need to watch more martha stewart), 3 sheep and 2 bunnies. the farm is a venue for school groups and birthday parties and it was really quite cute. they're big on teaching kids the basics of animals and farming and then doing hands-on stuff like feeding, petting, crafting, etc.

jack is REALLY good at animal sounds, particularly of the farm animal variety, so i was pretty excited to take him. i went with a group of local bloggers and jack was the littlest kid there, but he pretty much loved it.

he particularly liked petting the bunny. what did i NOT love? getting this reminder of how freaking nasty my hair has gotten. siiiick. i'm getting it done in 4 1/2 days and i can. not. wait.

"tractor" and "barn" have been frequently repeated words over the past few days, so he was pretty pumped to be able to shout those at appropriate times throughout our visit. he was really good at petting animals but he freaked when i let him ride the pony. no pictures of that because my hands were too busy prying a toddler death-grip off of my arms. it was sunny when we got there and hailing by the time we left, thanks bipolar washington weather. all in all, a fun outing for me & my little sidekick.

no april fools here

wow, my life is flying by these days. april?? wasn't it just january? crazy stuff. i need to be better about documenting our lives before it's gone. i always thought it was funny when i'd look in my sweet grandma's fridge and find salad dressing from 2002, but now i kind of get it. life just gets going and before you know it 10 years are gone and you still haven't cleaned out that old ranch dressing. gotta stay on my toes :)

b's been working a lot. i've been working not as much and i kind of love it. less stress, more time for researching fun kid craft ideas and learning new things. i'm simultaneously reading a toddler discipline book and the steve jobs biography, both are equally fascinating. my little brother comes home from mexico next week (!!!) and we're so excited to see him. and, we spent the weekend reveling in the word of god, thanks to living prophets who speak to us at general conference every six months. seriously, it is SUCH a boost for my soul, listening to those talks and songs for two days straight. i am lucky to be a mormon.

oh, and mr. jack is cuter every day. i took him to the kids quest museum last week, he wasn't a fan, but at least we got out of the house. and don't mind his vicious facial scar, it has since cleared up. toddlers have quite the knack for self-injury.

he's always my little buddy and i love running errand with him, except when he howls about having to sit in his carseat. he loves to point out facial features -- "EYES! mowww! eeeear!" and always pinches my nose when he gets to "NOse!" he's a great runner and will run run run all over the place, especially right before bedtime when he takes laps around the ottoman. he's a good eater but only when he wants to be -- some days (like today) he'll eat little more than yogurt and milk. he knows tons of animal sounds and names and even a few letters and colors. he says "coo! coo!" every time he sees a train, and calls every clock (every circular object, for that matter) a "tick tock."

it rained a lot last week so one day i'd decided we'd had it with being indoors. i bundled both of us up in coats and rainboots and we played in the rain! it was pretty fun, actually. jack loved it.

not much else going on around here but life is really good. now if we could only get some more sunshine... ;)

may the odds be ever in your favor

hooray, we saw it! i read hunger games when i was pregnant with jack and finished that puppy off in about three days, followed closely by the next two additions. b read all three books over christmas break 2011 and might have been even more excited than i was to see the movies. we'd been watching all the trailers and emailing each other links to spoiler alert & gossip sites and bought tickets for opening night as soon as they went on sale. we were PUMPED.

since this was a movie worth seeing in theaters (doesn't happen too often these days, especially when you suffer from city-wide babysitter scarcity) we decided to go big or go home -- and ponied up for tickets to the ipic theater. this is a high end line of theaters (with a location in pasadena, holla!) with a super swanky vibe -- the lobbies are very lounge-y with gourmet food & drink options, bigscreen tvs, a full bar, etc. the theaters themselves have two types of seats, full recliners and cushy oversized sofa chairs, and waiters even bring food to your seat.

we opted for the cheaper seats and snuck in our own treats ;) but it was still off the hook. such a good movie and such a fun way to see it.

cushy-seat self portrait + my cute date:

even the bathrooms were awesome. and full of hunger games signage ;)

i came home and did a quick speed-read of book 1 over the weekend, just for fun. then i had a dream about peeta last night and b was nowhere in the picture. not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign. (oh, and we still have the printables up in our apartment;) guess it's time to start a countdown for movie #2!

things are looking up

hooray! life is good. i actually wrote a whole post yesterday about how grumpy i've been lately -- turns out this seasonal affective disorder is a real thing -- but lucky for you, i didn't have time to finish it so i never hit publish. besides the whole constant-rain issue, i also accidentally deleted my next blurb book after spending 10 hours on it and i've just been in a bad mood for a week. boo. cranky lyndsey is not a fun lyndsey.

but just like that, 24 hours later i'm a happy girl again!
the sun came out today for a few hours.
jack and i headed to the mall, where i scored probably the best retail deal of my LIFE on some new boots ($120 boots for $7, thank you very much), we played in the play area with our favorite friends, and then met up with b for a tasty lunch.
jack took a 4 hour nap, i went to the latest seattle blogger meetup, b & i watched survivor.
AND we finally got ourselves a babysitter for this weekend because you know we've already had opening weekend tickets for hunger games since three weeks ago ;)
i'd say this was a pretty good day -- and just in time too, because i was starting to lose it.

in other news, jack and i built our first fort last week and it was so fun. i guess that's one highlight of being stuck indoors all the time.

jack has been talking a TON lately and throwing out new words all over the place. i have to really pay attention because he'll point out objects or make appropriate animal noises and i'm never expecting it! we're trying to train him to say "grant" in preparation for uncle grant's homecoming next month, but mostly it comes out sounding like "grok." we'll take it. he also likes to climb inside the ottoman, lay down and pretend to sleep by making little snoring noises. he is too funny.

here's hoping for another sunny tomorrow.

in no particular order

not a whole lot has been going on around here of late. lots of errand running and dinner dating and getting overly excited every time a truck drives by (jack's favorite thing), per our usual. and i kind of love it. especially when my days involve playing with this little guy.

we're still working on the whole tantrum thing. it's not perfect but we're getting there. plus, jack's got a lot of cute moments to make up for the bad ones -- bad like when he screams at me and throws a plate of ketchup & chicken nuggets on the carpet and i have to count to 10 before hysterically laughing. (if i don't laugh, i'd probably cry. so, laughing it is.)

he is starting to talk like crazy and it's the BEST. he's learning a couple letters and colors and does all the hand motions to our songs (including fist-pumping and a tiny "ooray!" for "if you're happy and you know it"). he runs and jumps and holds my hand in the street and feeds himself cereal for breakfast every morning. he's completely obsessed with mickey mouse clubhouse and those dannon drinkable yogurts. basically, he's awesome.

in other news, we had snow, hail, rain, drizzle, sunshine and 60 degree temps -- all in the past four days. seattle's weather is crazy but i love it. i can't believe we've been here for almost nine months! sometimes i still feel like i'm settling in, but other times it really does feel like home. we've made ticket to ride friends, the librarian knows jack's name, i know the fastest shortcut to trader joe's. we're set.

so set, in fact, that i'm an official state of washington business owner (which you probably already know if you're my facebook friend). i've decided to take my freelancing biz in a slightly more professional direction -- meaning i have an official email address and i actually file taxes now ;) my business license arrived last week and i even have an "under construction" page on my website. i feel so blessed to be able to grow my little business, and i'm excited about what's to come. i really, really love being a full-time mommy...but it's SO nice to be able to plug into a professional network for a few hours a day and get 'er done.

we've got lots to look forward to around here -- hunger games is coming out in 12 days (yes, we already bought tickets for opening night, woot!), adjusting to daylight savings, and welcoming my little brother home! he gets back from his two-year stint in mexico in less than a month and we are SO excited. jack and i made a little countdown chain to mark the days...

but jack isn't really quite clear on exactly what you're supposed to do with it. 

anyway, that's an update from us. maybe it won't take me 11 days to blog again :)