Santa Visit

Two weeks ago, my mom had asked me if Iszak had seen Santa Claus yet.. my response, "ummm no." I hesitated on making anymore comments about the subject. I'm not really keen on the idea of taking a 6 month old to the mall, standing in line for who knows how long for a 3 minute snapshot and paying for it! 

I finally gave in and said, "hey mom, if you go with us.. then we'll go." So of course my mom jumped for joy, okay there was no jumping.. but it seemed like it from the tone of her voice. Off we tread to Fashion Place Mall to go see Santa. What a daughter does to keep a mother happy at times.

We arrive at the mall and get into line.. standing around, my mom gets another wild hair idea that Iszak needs to have a Santa hat for his picture. Okay, granted it would be so adorable... come on, he's 6 months old. Off my mom goes into Macy's to find a hat.. while the line is starting to creep up inch by inch. Finally a little worker, not dressed as one of Santa's elves or anything.. gives me a price list of the portrait packages. Yikes, $29.99 for the BASIC deal of 1 5x7, 2 3x5 and a some wallets. Santa isn't Cheap! 

I was getting frantic that my mom was still not back after 30 minutes of waiting in this horrid line. Finally, my mom  comes back empty handed. No Santa hats for little kids apparently, of course.. it's Macy's. Phew, we get to the entrance. By this time, my  mom has Iszak laughing hysterically, so I bring him over to Santa.  

Warning: Be prepared for disappointment.

Santa was not the jolly St. Nick that we hear about in stories.. rather he was quite lame.. not one Ho Ho Ho came out of his mouth or actually a sound come to think of it. Maybe this Santa is hearing impaired or something, so I brushed it off. Iszak had no interest in Santa, but everything around him.. the lights, Santa's boots, his own toes and whoever knows what else catches the attention of a 6 month old. 

The staff was very polite and allowed us to take our time, realizing that we have a youngster on our hands. The photographer was working so hard to get Iszak to look at the camera, my mom was blowing a whistle from her key chain.. who would have a whistle on their keychain, unless they were a teacher. Yep, that's my mom.

Finally I decided to take some pictures with my mom's camera, while she decided on which picture(s) to order. Santa was being the challenge at this point.. looking away at who know's what. How old is Santa again? Not 6 months I hope, because he was acting more like Iszak without the happiness part. So the personal snapshots basically were a waste.

Finally I pick up Iszak and go to the cashier to meet my mom. My mom started to bring up conversation with the young gal.. she told us that Santa doesn't have a replacement, so 14 hour days makes it a very long day for him. So what,  it's Santa right?  He could have at least smiled in the picture vs making it look like he was about to have a root canal.

An hour and a half later, $42 less in my mom's pocket.. we got this one and only picture from the experience:

Merry Christmas to your families! Have a wonderful 2009!!

Holiday Tag

I was tagged by Andrea.

Top  3 Vacations

 Of course Alaska, but not sure which time.. probably honeymoon trip.

 Capital Reef with Christopher 

 Yellowstone 

Top 3 Favorite Flowers

 Peach Rose

 Gerber Daisy

 Sunflower

Top 3 Comfort Foods

 Mac & Cheese *yum

 Spaghetti

 Cookies n Cream Ice Cream

Top 3 Places To Shop

 Smith's Marketplace

 Scrapbook Store, not sure of a favorite. I travel to about 5

 Carter's Outlet

Top 3 Opinions About Halloween

 Love it!

 Thrilled to dress Iszak up

 Decorating with my villages(s) & all other stuff

Top 3 Opinions About Thanksgiving

 Not big on the whole turkey eating idea

 Relaxing with my family

 Always room for homemade pies

Tops 3 Opinions About Christmas

 New holiday traditions

 Opening presents Christmas morning with long distant family

 True Reason for the Season

Top 3 Things I Look Forward To During the Week

 My time with Iszak to play and read books with

 Christopher coming home from work 

 Friday night trainings at our office with the team

Top 3 Things Happening This Week

 Time off from my JOB

 Partner's Breakout at the office on Friday

 Finishing up Christmas shopping

I tag Alyssa, Kami, Kateka, and Natalie

6 Months have come and gone

Wow, it's been 6 months with having Iszak apart of our lives. I couldn't imagine life without Iszak. He's brought so much joy and laughter to the family. His little facial smirks or just simply laughing at all of the funny noises that Chris and I make at him. Babies are so forgiving too, because they don't hold onto any grudges like adults do. Maybe it's a good thing that they can't talk yet at 6 months of age, because we may not be able to handle what babies would tell us.

I look back at my pregnancy and here I thought it was rough, being sick the entire time, marking plenty of parking lots in Salt Lake after just finishing a meal that I thought was delicious. I think Chris has decided that the next pregnancy, there will be less eating out, if all I'm going to do is puke the meals. All in all, we've been blessed with a very charismatic and dang cute little guy! He smiles at everybody and just loves to be around people. I hope that doesn't change one bit!

Today, Iszak was just making those silly sounds of a velociraptor and laughing at his quirky parents. Except for the occassional spit ups, which we may have to thank grandma for passing a cold onto Iszak. He seemed to enjoy his 6 month birthday! He's starting to sit up for a wobbly minute or so and figuring out how to brace himself from falling over. 

Here's a picture of Iszak enjoying a different place to play.  

Happy Birthday Iszak! Mommy & Daddy love you!

 

Random Thoughts

Tonight, I got home from work to do my usual routine of checking on Iszak to make sure he's tucked in. I always stroke his cheek, so he knows his mommy's home. Then I go in to check on Chris and say goodnight, if he's not asleep at the time. It just comforts me to know that my boys are taken care of.

I get on the internet and check my Facebook account to find out that someone from H.S. is STILL trying to be my friend. Okay, it's a nice gesture and all. I haven't talk to that person since before H.S. graduation. Plus she worked at my place of employment for a little while and just bashed the company after she quit. I realize people have their free speech, but come one.. there's something called a little respect. I've already denied the friendship request once, because I don't have any reason to develop that friendship or much rather acquaintance.  I'm weird that if you can't even include a personal message during the request, then you're obviously just wanting to add more status to yourself with having the most friends vs wanting to actually BE my friend. *honestly, just a pet peeve of mine*

Lately, Chris and Iszak haven't been feeling well, so I've had to play double duty all weekend. On Monday(today), I decided to take Iszak to the doctor. He's been pulling on his left ear for a week now. I spoke to the nurse last Tuesday about it, but there wasn't a lot of concern at the time. Because Iszak wasn't showing any sign of a fever or restless sleep, which are big clues for ear infections.  Behold, Iszak has an ear infection in his right ear. It's not a major infection, since the ear canal is partially clear. Iszak has been prescribed an antibiotic for 10 days, which should help him. This just shows that we're getting into the cold season and need to watch who gets into contact with Iszak for the time being.  I must say that I'm thankful for medical research to be on the lookout for new advancements all the time.

Speaking of other things:  Yes, I'm working on doing more environment friendly things, such as using reusable bags when shopping. I just wish the condo complex had recycling pick up, because it gets hard trying to store things until they can be dropped off. 

Another thing that I've also been doing is using more organic products, because they don't have all of the extra additives and chemicals. It is one area that I wish I had more knowledge about in the area of Organics. I love to go shopping at the whole food stores or wander down those aisles at the grocery store to find different things to try. Any thoughts or ideas about organics, let me know.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did and enjoyed the longer weekend together as a family, even though there was a cold bug in our home. Iszak had his second solid food that day, which he LOVES sweet peas. He got so mad at me for stopping so soon, but I didn't want to overdo the first day on something new.  Thanks Megan for being my photographer that day! 

"Yummy Peas,  but why does Aunt Megan have to interrupt me while I'm eating."

 Iszak's 1st Thanksgiving! 

Halloween in November

I've managed to finally get to my pictures on our old computer.(not actually true, since this post has been delayed) Wahoo! Here's our little white with brown spots cow aka Iszak. Chris on the other hand doesn't like to refer to our son as a cow, more like a bull without the horns, I may add. Apparently a cow is an embarrassing idea, so next year, I will challenge Chris to come up with the costume... which I already see into the future, that it will be the amazing mom(me) piecing it together with my mastery sewing skills. Anyhow, thanks to my mom for the adorable costume for Iszak's 1st Halloween!

Professional Picture, since really our slowly dying computer wouldn't allow me to access the lovely photo of Iszak on Halloween.

So here's another one:

Iszak is just so darn cute in his Halloween costume!

Quick update

I apologize for not posting on here regularly.. really just been playing with my new Mac and being a mommy, okay and a wifey. I wasn't kidding when I mentioned in my previous blog entry that the other PC is ready to die.. because I downloaded all of the wonderful cute pictures from Halloween to it, because the card reader is programmed for that machine. Then I tried to upload pictures not only to here, but to Walgreens to order prints for all of the wonderful out of state family members. And behold, I get a horrible error message that not only stops me from seeing the pictures... but restarts the program on me! I've got to get the pictures off the machine and just back them up before they're lost. Then I will be able to hopefully post them from my lovely Mac real soon! Anyhow, life's been great for the Urinko's!

More to come at a fashionable and sensible time.

New Computer

Today, Christopher was such a great husband and went around doing errands with me. What a trooper! From wandering around Babies R Us, going to Borders to purchase a birthday present to making a lengthy return to Wal-Mart, we finally made a stop to Best Buy. Chris has been doing some extensive research on Mac desktops and MacBooks these past few weeks. We've finally decided that our current laptop was on it's last leg, literally. The poor thing has been revived and given so much TLC this past year that it's finally giving up. So after about 45 minutes of shopping, we decided to make a purchase. We bought a MacBook and it's for ME! That's right, Chris said that now I have a way to do my scrapbooking. I want to start playing around with digital scrapbooking and see how it goes. Thanks for the great afternoon with my two boys!

Tagless Wonder

1. Post the rules on your blog

2. Answer the six "8" items

3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV Shows:

1. Lost

2. Heros

3. House

4. The Office

5. Good Things Utah

6. Mythbusters

7. Bones

8. Firefly

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Slept in

2. Returned items at the PC Outlet Stores

3. Walked along Park City's Historic Main Street

4. Ate lunch with my hubby, Iszak and my mom

5. Helped put a puzzle together with my hubby and mom

6. Fed Iszak 6 different times

7. Walked around the Utah Olympic Park in Park City

8. Hung out at the Marriott Mountainside Resort with my family

8 Things I Look Forward To:

1. Being a stay at home mom

2. Giving Iszak another sibling

3. Financial Independence with 500k saved

4. Retired by age 45

5. Iszak being able to sit up

6. Patience and Mike's wedding in Alaska

7. Iszak's first Christmas

8. Iszak's first word

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Bangkok Tai

2. Takashi, thanks to Aaron & Satcko

3. Olive Garden

4. Tucano's Brazilian Grill

5. Nick & Willy's Pizza

6. Jersey Sub's in Soldotna, AK

7. Carraba's

8. Sal's in Soldotna, AK

8 Things On My Wish List:

1. Have a craft/scrapbook room

2. Macbook laptop

3. A clean house

4. Finishing Iszak's blanket

5. 100k Income Ring in the next 12 -18 months

6. A hometo call my own again

7. Show Iszak the world by travelling versus through a book

8. Help fund a cure for Cystic Fibrosis

8 People To Tag:

1-8. Anyone who feels like filling this thing out

Iszak's 4 month W.C.C (Well Child Care)

Iszak had his 4 month appointment on Friday, October 10th. Yep, that's right he hasn't started going backwards in growth or anything... just forwards. He weighs 14.1 lbs and height is at 25.2 inches. I hope that he's tall and doesn't stop growing in height while in grade school, like his father managed to do.
I didn't think this round of Iszak's immunizations would affect me like they did yesterday. Last time, my mom was able to go with me for his first round of shots. I handled it really well, because I had to be the brave one. Yesterday, it was just Iszak and myself in the trenches. Which we make a great team, except for when that little tear rolled down those chubby cheeks.. Then I had a few tears. Its just tough to have your little one in pain, even though its for their health. Iszak has had a rough 36 hours and has only wanted to sleep and snuggle for a short time. I definitely know that he's not feeling good when he doesn't want to snuggle for very long or eat.
So the next appointment is on December 18th, Iszak's dad gets to come with us. I made sure to schedule it late, so Chris can go and see what it's all about at the pediatrician's office. I would hate for Chris to miss out on the opportunity of Iszak's first year experiences!
That's all for now, I would post a picture.. but my camera is MIA at the moment.

24 Handbags

On October 15th, Handbag Planet will be giving away a free handbag every hour of the day to celebrate their website. That equals 24 free bags that will be given out for FREE! You don't have to give your credit card info and there is no shipping and handling. Check out the site and see if you are interested in entering the contest! Good luck everyone.
http://www.handbagplanet.com/

Iszak's 1st cereal

On Sunday, September 28th. We decided to start feeding Iszak rice cereal to help him with being more full when eating. I did call the pediatrician to make sure that it was okay, before I just went on a whim to start. Iszak was fantastic with sleeping through the night at 4 weeks old, then I started back at work.. and that ended Iszak's sleeping ritual. Now he's up anytime between 2 & 3 am to eat. I wasn't getting much sleep, so finally I thought to myself.. he's been extremely fussy and hungry all the time. Like feeding every 2.5 hours round the clock and this is with formula!

Yes, that's right.. Iszak isn't nursing anymore. It came to a point that he didn't like to nurse, because he was so adapted to bottle feeding with me working nights. I'm saddened that nursing ended so quickly, but it did last 3.5 months. So, now we're using what's left from the freezer.

Any how, back to where I was.. I finally decided to call the pediatrician and just about begged for advice on what to do.. such as upping the ounces of milk for Iszak, which I did actually. The kind nurse, said start him on rice cereal either in the mornings or evenings. That way in the evening he'll have a fuller stomach when going to bed, wahoo! Well, that only lasted the one night I was able to feed Iszak.. because Chris doesn't or think he can feed him... practice with Iszak is all that you can do, since he's just learning how to eat it as well. Now, I'm feeding Iszak in the morning. Granted, I do have a little bit more experience with the 3 younger siblings. Parenthood is all brand new to us and it's all that much more fun!

So enjoy the before and after pictures of our little Iszak eating RICE CEREAL!

Yummy Stuff Mommy & Daddy!

Another Year Older

Today, September 18th.. what a mile marker for me. I've been a mommy for 14 weeks, a wife for 5 years and 3 weeks, and a daughter for 27 years. Wow, time doesn't miss a beat! I wouldn't pass up any of these moments at all.

This morning Christopher & Iszak surprised me with a card that had tear jerker messages inside. A message that can't be spoken from Iszak's own mouth yet, but it ment the world to me. It was a message of thanks for all of the hugs and kisses mommy! Gosh, motherhood is so wonderful and rewarding!
Christopher had an uplifting and positive message with support in everything I do for our family and the things I continue to do. He's such an amazing man, who stepped into my life at such a life changing time for me. A time when I wasn't open to being loved and comforted after suffering the loss of my first husband, only 6 months prior. To this day, I'm thankful for the many lessons that he's taught me and will continue to be there.

Iszak is an angel sent from God to teach patience, love and happiness to us. Everyday I'm reminded of those great things.

Christopher & I sat down with a client tonight, granted on my birthday, to update their financial dreams and goals. I didn't even think twice about it taking time away from my special day.. why, because I was there with my hubby and son giving hope to another family. What an amazing business I have!! No other person would take time on their birthday or anniversary to change another family's life and their kids future. Afterwards, we went out for Thai food, then stopped at my mom's house for a slice of ice cream cake from Baskin Robins. Overall, I had a great time!

I must say, text messaging has definitely changed the way birthday greetings are passed along. I received numerous messages on my phone today; from my sisters, a friend from work, friends from the office and a dear friend that's been styling my hair for 10+ years. Thank you for making my day special!

In closing of my thoughts for the night.. I'm looking forward to my next birthday in 365 days.

Time Flys

I decided that it's time to start an 'official' blog. Since many people I know have a blog on this site, I thought about giving it a try. Plus it's a great way to keep long distance family updated with our new adventures. As of September 7th, Iszak is 3 months old. He's changed and grown so much since the day our eyes met for the first time. Iszak has doubled in size and has an amazing personality that's starting to shine through now. An attitude of his own, which he shows us everyday his many smirks and scowls. It's so amazing to watch Iszak grow and listen to the numerous sounds of laughter too. Iszak is a very happy baby and our family is blessed to have him in our lives. Our lives will never be the same with our free spirit, Iszak. Thank you God for giving us a wonderful son!

I've started my 2nd week back at my job. It's been a challenge to be motivated to leave my family every
day around dinner time to go to my job for 6 hours. I'm getting home from work, and Iszak is already tucked into bed. I'm afraid to miss the wonderful moments with Iszak, when he rolls over for the first time, sits up on his own, begins to crawl and those cherished first words. Those times are the joy of parenthood! It's time that Chris and I make a decision to do whatever it takes to build our business. I believe it's not fair for Iszak to see his parents part time and on split shifts. Chris and I got married to spend time with each other, not to be apart.

Happy Birthday at 3 months, Iszak! We love you!