Hello, it's been a while.

Not much, how 'bout you?

Long story short, my best friend moved to Portland and while I thought she had someone to help her, she didn't. At the last minute I dropped everything to help her move, we drove to Portland in a Uhaul towing a car, then I flew home.

It was a fairly stressful trip. But I'll spare the drama (except for one story) and just give you pictures.

We left on Wednesday and the weather was not awesome.
Izze was cute and really patient while we finished packing and moving everything into the Uhaul.
The weather might have made a better choice this day... instead it made me not miss Utah at all for a few days.
It snowed, it was cold. I was a tad stressed. We planned on leaving around 1:00 and finally left around 5:00, but stopped and ate dinner, so really we left around 6:00



We drove and drove and droveity drove and Izze slept. Then... she got diarrhea. YAY! So we pulled into a rest stop and I was too nervous to change her in the bathroom, so I did it in the cab. Cool... about an hour later, so gets diarrhea again. So we pull into a gas station and at this point, it's exploded through her clothes. Jessica is getting frustrated because it's costing time and if this is the theme of the day it's not awesome. Also. I have fully lost my voice. Hmmm. So I go into the gas station and I start to change Izze and I call Jeremy and I start sobbing. I told him to come get me or at least Izze and I was sick and stressed and all of a sudden, about 30 ladies come into the bathroom, 3 stalls mind you and I'm trying to compose myself. As I walk out of the bathroom there is a line of about 50 more girls and about 60 boys (highschool age). I guess they were coming from West Jordan High School (which is where I grew up) to Seattle for a choir competition. Izze wanted crackers and juice so I had to wait behind obnoxious teens to buy them. When I got back to the car I was stressed, but I let it out and it felt good. So we went on.



Then... this is the besty. We were trying to get at least into Oregon before getting a hotel for the night. We decided with the stops we'd made Boise was our best bet. So we tried to pull into a hotel and got turned around in a neighborhood. We got stuck in a circle with the Uhaul, with a trailer pulling a car... it was bad news. We tried backing up, but the trailer was turning the wrong way and car was turning on the trailer. This was at about 3:00 am. We called Uhaul and they were going to charge a fortune to help us. AAA doesn't help on commercial vehicles. So I called the Boise Police Department. An officer came out and spent about 45 minutes directing Jessica out of the circle. He was so nice. I really should write him a thank you letter. I hope he gets a raise. We pulled into a hotel for the night and fell asleep at about 4:15 or 4:30 and were up and out of there by 8:00. Things went genuinely smooth for the remainder of the trip. We were supposed to get to Jessica's complex at about 5:00, but didn't think we'd get there until 6:00. Luckily Jessica called and asked if someone could stay and they did. We got there at about 5:20. Whew!

Then Jessica was a little upset, because the place seemed slightly ghetto and the lady who waited for her called her snobby. Hmm.. Some more stressed ensued, getting stuck in a circle again, removing the car from the trailer, the trailer from the uhaul, finding a place to do money orders, and realizing we had no one to move her in. So. I turned into a kind of jerk. I made Jessica watch Izze and while I brought stuff up from the Uhaul. Now I don't speak Spanish. But I know these dudes were talking about me. Specifically about my butt. but it's cool. No harm, no foul. We got everything, but the most heavy stuff. Izze and Skelly, Jessica's pug were being kind of hard to handle. So we went to Albertsons and got some dinner and snacks for Izze. Then we woke up the next morning and Izze and Skelly watched a movie, which Jessica and I moved the rest of the heavy things, except for one stupid box. Filled with a stereo. Death of me.


It's cool.

Then we spent the day being touristy. We met up with my friend Melanie for super late breakfast. I haven't seen her in a few years and she lives near Portland. It was really good to see her. Mixing friends proved to be a good idea this time around. Now Jessica has one more friend where she lives. We then went to a vintage store that was darling. Izze kept begging for the rotary phones...

Then we went to the vegan strip mall. Amazing. Food Fight, we got some marshmallow fluff (vegan of course) and some rice krispie treats and some vegan jerky. Then next door at Herbivore Clothing Izze and I got some shirts. I got one with an elephant that says "I'm vegan and I <3 you" and Izze got one with some birds that says Herbivore... keep sining. Then we headed next door to Sweetpea bakery and I had THE BEST cupcake, ever. No joke. It will be my first stop next time around.

Then we stopped at Jessica's mall to see if she'd get stabbed. And it turns out it was the same mall we had to stop at on the way to Canada to pick up our friend's engagement ring (longer story). She will not get stabbed.

Then it was time for vegan softserve and an enormous book store.
You can see Izze's missing tooth finally.


We had a very busy filled day.

Izze saw these elephants and they were instantly dubbed "Mama and Izze elephants"


The next morning I barely made my flight at 7:15 am. Luckily I did. I would have either had to fly to Vegas and had Jeremy drive to pick me up there, or stay until today. :( Ew. Not that I didn't like being in Portland, or being with Jessica. I just missed Jeremy and my bed.

The flight by myself with a grumpy toddler was a tricky one. Kids have a lot of crap. Luckily I checked a bag, but I had Izze, her car seat and two carry ons. Wow. I don't want to have to do that again.

The next day we went to the park with Jeremy and fed some geese and seagulls and our landlord asked us to move.




We're most likely moving to a townhome in Daybreak. It's a new community modeled after Sugarhouse where we live now... and a few of the other surrounding areas. We'll rent for a year and if we like it we'll have the chance to buy it, or we'll buy something else. If we hate it, we're moving back to Sugarhouse. We're just waiting for the owners to call us back either today or tomorrow, after they've talked to our current landlord.

At least I know our landlord, will give us a good referral. She doesn't want us to go, at least... that's what she says, but her son, needs a place for his new family. He's gonna be a dad and a step dad. And they know we've been considering moving anyway. So. They just pushed things along for us.

And that's my update. I'm super busy. Izze's in preschool right now, so I indulged in some Internet time. Today is picture day for her. I almost didn't get her there in time. I think the pictures are going to be darling. They took them on/in front of one of their school busses.
I still have an hour until she's out. What to do?

Some pictures.

I got ready to make a big post with pictures and everything. Even a ton of pictures of our visit to Discovery Gateway yesterday.

I erased all but two pictures.

So here are the two.



Izze is feeling back to 100% she hasn't thrown up in almost two weeks! I'm pretty excited about that. She also no longer has her front tooth. She's really cute without it. But again... deleted those pictures. I'll see if I can get them back and make a post tomorrow.

Izze's pretty excited about Easter... mostly because she thinks she's getting a build-a-bear, specifically another panda.

She's been impressing me day after day. She has a new found love of playdough and drawing. Sometimes it's hard to remember she's only 29 months. If she wasn't so small it would be hard not to mistake her for three. I mean, she's only 24 pounds. She's not a big kid. But she is really smart and learns so quickly. It amazes me, how much she actually comprehends. She can recognize when people are feeling, happy, sad, grumpy, and calm. She sings like crazy, all the time. I love every minute I have with her.

Sick Punk.

So it's been over a month since we blogged here. It's not like me to forgot my blog. So here's the scoop. Izze's been pretty sick. Since January she got a bug and was sick for a few days. It came back stronger in February and lasted a few days longer than before. Then all throughout March she threw up every few days, mostly during the night. This is all taking place while Jordan was going through his grand jury ordeals.

Which, he's now in jail... so if you want to know more about him being held wrongfully in Cache County jail check out Support Jordan".

This last weekened Izze got sick again to the point we had to take her to Primary Children's twice to get an IV to rehydrate her and to get her glucose up. She was so weak so couldn't even stand or hold herself up on the potty. She has been tested for anything the doctors could think of off the top of her head, but all the tests came back negative.

She doesn't have a virus, she doesn't have celiacs, she doesn't have diabetes, she doesn't have a UTI. So what does she have? We have a few more tests to get back the results from and we should know how those turn out tomorrow.

In the meantime I've made an appointment with a Pediatric GI specialist, that won't happen until JULY!!!

In the midst of all this, I noticed something with her front tooth. The surgery she had in January didn't quite work on one tooth and now she has to have it pulled. Sweet Punk is going to be missing a tooth. She'll have that pulled on Monday.

In better news, she's still loving preschool, she started art class at the library downtown. She loves that too. She loves watching movies, she's pretty much potty trained, but the hospital stays have set us back a little. So she's mostly in pull ups, but I'm thinking next week after her tooth ordeal, she'll back in her undies all day. She's such a sweet, funny girl. You can totally understand her when she talks and her newest thing is tell jokes. Her favorite is, "What do you do when a cow is in the road?" "You MOOOOOVE it!"

She makes friends really easy and she's one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I've ever met.

Here's a little picture of her to hold you over until I can post more of her preschool/art class/hospital stay