Separate Vacations

The end of August was the famous family rafting trip that Max and I look forward to each year. Max made sure he had this week off back in March when he decided to take his summer sales job. I spoke with my Sister-in-Law months earlier to see if she would be willing to have Charlie stay with them for a whole week. She of course said yes. As the time got closer, Max and I both felt that Charlie wasn't old enough to spend a week without us. Especially a week where James and Elizabeth would have no way to contact us. We have never left Charlie overnight and it would have been very difficult for both me and Charlie to be separated from each other for that long. I would have an anxiety attack not being able to get updates throughout the week. I know that he would have been well cared for at his cousins' house but I felt strongly that I needed to stay home with him. Max needed to go on the rafting trip as he is a vital oarsman and much needed man-power. He has also been working so hard this summer and so I completely support him taking a vacation.

So, anyway, what it came down to is that I had to spend a whole week with no contact with my husband. That hasn't happened since our missions and it was definitely much harder now seeing as we are married and have a baby. But it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been...we actually both had a lot of fun and made the most of our time apart.     

We arrived in Oregon on August 18th. Our best friends Richard and Marissa picked us up from the airport and we went out to breakfast at the Original Pancake House. YUM. It was so fun seeing them and it probably is the last time we will see them until little Lacy makes her grand appearance into the Patterson family. It was fun seeing Marissa all pregnant and Charlie is always a hoot at restaurants. He somehow always thinks tables are drums and definitely made his presence known in that restaurant. We then headed to the rafting headquarters (our house...AKA Jay's house) so Max could help load up the trucks while I went shopping to get the food Max needed to prepare his meals. and that's most of what I remember that day.

Next day Max helps finish up the packing and they leave just as I leave for church with Charlie. I only got a little emotional with no tears. I was borrowing Uncle Jay's SUV while they were gone. Turns out church is very stressfull by myself. I got to the point where Charlie was just so wiggly that I took him out to cruise down the halls. He met another baby, older but much smaller and got so excited that he flapped his arms like crazy and scared the poor little kid away. Anyway, we get to the second hour of church. Our old home teacher comes up to me during class (note that we haven't been in this ward all summer) and says, "Max is on the phone, it's an emergency." ( I had somehow forgotten to bring my phone with me and this was the only way he could think of to contact me.) I run out of the class a little flustered, thinking in my head..."He was able to call so I know he's alive" It turns out that it wasn't much of an emergency but that one of the cars had broken down and they needed the SUV that I was borrowing. I was very relieved but then I started to worry about how I would get up to Tacoma the next day. If I had to sit in Portland alone and stuck I really would be miserable, it would have been better for me to stay in California. But then enters another character in the story, our river grandma Annette. One of the most loving and Christlike people I know. I could write volumes on this wonderful lady but just know that she is our acting Grandma, nearly 80 years old and goes white water rafting several times a year. She had left her car at the house while she was rafting and happened to leave the keys. She was 100% okay with me borrowing the car for a week and even driving it up to Tacoma to visit my family. I seriously started crying because I was so happy and grateful. What an angel!

Anyway, I had to go home from church a little early so one of Jay's friends could pick up the SUV and take it out to where the group was stranded. This is where contact ended with my husband for the week. I luckily sneaked one of the best packages in Max's luggage and he had no idea. (this is pretty good for me because I am awful when it comes to surprises and being sneaky.)

This is getting pretty wordy...I think pictures should come soon.

Next day...Monday The morning was just spent packing and getting ready to spend most of the week in Tacoma with my Brother's family. We were really looking forward to this. Charlie hasn't been around Grace and Gwenevere in awhile so I was looking forward to seeing them play.
Charlie slept the first half of the drive and then cried for the last 30 minutes. As soon as we got inside and Charlie saw his cousins and their toys he was a happy boy again. In attempt to cut off my wordiness...here are some pictures from the week.

My Grandpa Roemhildt made this rocking horse for my brother James many years ago. Now I am on the search for someone that wants to make one for Charlie.

These kids are so much fun!

Grace's two teeth. Charlie and Grace on racing for the third tooth...I think Grace will win!

We kept ourselves so busy so I didn't notice how much I was missing Max. We went to the Zoo twice. And to the Children's museum, and a toy store, and Costco, and had a picnic at the bay. I even got to watch 2 chick flicks with Elizabeth. I really had a blast and love this family so much. I couldn't have imagined a better week without Max. (That sounds bad, but I think you know what I mean.:) Here are some more pictures of the week. They are way out of order but I'm just going to leave it at that and let you sort them out.

 But the fun didn't end there. Elizabeth, Grace and Gwenevere came back to Oregon with me to go to a wedding of a friend we grew up with. I was happy to have them with me on my drive back and to stay with me so I didn't have to stay alone in this big house.
When we got to Oregon we went to Charlie's 9 month appointment. We all rode the sky tram up to the Dr office. Gwenevere said it was a little bit scary. The girls played while Charlie was in his appointment, we then ran some errands and got Pizza and took it to my dad's house to eat and go swimming. Oregon weather isn't as good for swimming as Sacramento weather so we weren't in the pool for long. Charlie loved it though! We got home late and called it a night. The next day we went to Danny and Laura's wedding. We came a little late but it was fun to see some old friends. Afterward, we were getting hungry and Elizabeth and I decided to be spontaneous and go to Olive Garden. We had our hands full with 3 little kids but it was still a fun time. After that I had to take them to the train station to go home. It was sad to see them go but it was exciting to know that my week had passed by much faster than expected and my husband was going to be home in a few hours.

So, now is the time I think I should throw some rafting pictures in here....

Mitch floating around

The women folk that run the show

There is so much I love about this picture

Those are my angels

Max started the first annual rafting Olympics

The stage

The judges and participants

Lisa performing a skill

The "Medals"

The scores

Beauty

       So anyway, Max got home at 4am and I got butterflies seeing him again! I guess the best part of being apart for a week is reuniting again...and I'll just leave it at that!

Checklist

So much has happened in the last little bit and I know I will get distracted before I get it all out here so here is a list of everything for you to mull over in the meantime

• to Oregon
• Rafting-to Idaho
• Tacoma (washington)
• Back to Oregon
• Back to California
• Baseball
• Kelly and Toby
• Back to Oregon
• New home
• Max the Handyman 
• OMSI
• Charlie's 10 month

Yup, I think that's a pretty generic list of everything we've done and the states we've covered over and over again in the last couple of weeks. I know you are now hooked and therefore I will start blogging...

Charlie's Cafe

I'm on a blogging role. I think this is because I've finally baby proofed our house and Charlie has a pretty good attention span so he can play with his Spanish farm toy or stroller or bang on the dryer for large amounts of time, and I'm not about to stunt his creativity. I love watching him explore. Now he is actually in bed and I just finished my chores so here I go again.

Shortly after moving here I found a tiny restaurant near our house called Charlie's Cafe. Ever since then we have desperately wanted to go there. But the problem with small restaurants is they aren't open very long and Max works long hours so it was hard finding a time we could all go together. They are open from 5:30am-2pm and Max usually takes his lunch break around 2:30. We only have less than 2 weeks left working here so we wanted to make sure it happened. Max came home for lunch at 1pm today. This is a major sacrifice too because that means he had to work a long afternoon in 100+ degree weather. (Exhausting, but he does it because he loves his family!)

Anyway, we finally got to go to Charlie's Cafe and it was a hoot! It was a small western themed diner. And Charlie, the owner was our server. This Charlie happened to be a woman (short for Charlene) she explained that she has been called Charlie ever since she was little and she also has a daughter, Charlotte, so the name is a strong family name. I'm not really a restaurant critique so I wont even try but we had fun and Charlie got to try french fries and pickles. His faces were't nearly as shocking as his cantaloupe face. He seemed to like the saltiness.
 It was an enjoyable family date and here are some pictures...

Enjoying the pickle

This guy thinks he's so big!

Since they closed at 2 we just took a bunch of pictures outside on the bench

Tough guy!

 

Seagulls and a picture book.

Some of you may have heard of Max's strong dislike of Seagulls. He even goes as far as calling them Bastards, which if you know my husband, is very strong language for his very cheerful personality. He wasn't born with this hate, it started three years ago the summer after we were married. Max was working for Clark Pest Control just as he is now. I was working there as well but just in the afternoons. We arranged our schedule so I would meet up with him in a park for his lunch break, we would eat, then we would both go out and work. One particular day I made some excellent meal, I can't remember exactly what it was but I'm sure it was good. I also made Snickerdoodles. These are Max's favorite cookies and I don't make them very often because I think they are gross. So this was an exceptional treat for him because it was so rare. We sat at a picnic table and ate our meal, when we were stuffed we went to lie in the grass under a shady tree but left our meal supplies on the picnic table. (All back in the plastic grocery bag) A bunch of seagulls were flying around and we saw one land on the table near our food, we watched nervously. That seagull put his stupid little beak in our lunch sack and pulled out a snickerdoodle from the apparently-not-sealed Ziploc bag.  The seagull started flying away but didn't go too far. He landed near us, looked straight at us and startled gobbling down the cookie. Now if there is anything Max hates more than seagulls (and Max's Hate List is very VERY short) it's wasting delicious food. From that point on Max has felt that he needs to avenge his Snickerdoodle by terrorizing the seagull race. ( I won't go into those details)

Ok, so that being said here is another story. Charlie and I went to the Library. It was just going to be a quick trip to drop off a pile of books and pick up a few things on reserve but of course I have to peruse the children's book section. There on display was this book...

 I will check out any book with "Max" in the title (and we have found quite a few) so we were excited about this story. The story started out pretty dull, not my favorite children's book by far, but then I got to this page.

   The major conflict in this story is that Seagulls steal food from Max's lunch...really?

I later read it out loud to Max and we were laughing so hard and figured someone had written this book about our unfortunate seagull encounter. The publisher date proved that this book was created a year before our incident which shows that seagulls are no good and there are other victims too.

Moral of the story: Seagulls are stupid and this children's book was a weird coincidence.

9 Months

Happy Nine months to my baby boy!

Charlie now has two teeth

He is crawling like a wild animal and is getting really fast.

He can stand on his own for only a few seconds and he have to set him up. 

He loves helping me do laundry but mostly he loves drumming and singing on the dryer.

He can pull himself up on every piece of furniture and wall and will use them to walk. He is always doing laps around the coffee table or along the wall.

He is trying lots of new foods and expanding beyond the boring baby foods. 

He plays games with us now. We crawl and chase him while he tries to get away laughing. We all love this game.

He loves the pool more than ever and could stay there all day. He is constantly splashing (all over his face, and he doesn't care,) and kicking his feet. I think he will be a second generation swimmer.

He is getting quite a bit of hair which I really was expecting my baby to be bald for years. 

He loves bath time but is so darn wiggly that it is quite a stressful time for me. 

He wants to grab and feel anything he sees so he no longer sits still in our lap. Story time has become a much greater challenge as he wants to grab and bite the book. 

His sleeping has improved however he is still not sleeping through the night. He has learned to settle down on his stomach so that has decreased his night wakings but we will still sometimes wake up, pull himself up and forget how to get back down. On good nights. he will wake up once to eat then sleep in until 8 or 8:30 (He goes to bed at 7:00pm) So I can't complain about that. 

 He has just recently started putting everything in his mouth.

He can get into all our bathroom drawers

He has a very cheerful personality and loves being around people. 

Matching cheeks! I love these boys!

Watching some Olympic volleyball...and chewing on the table 

This is is the standing/walking training we make him do.

In the last month Charlie has been to San Francisco, an aquarium Six Flags, the library (many times) and a long walk in 100 degree weather,


New food he has tried include raspberries, cantaloupe, pumpkin cookies, smoothies, bread, etc.
Later today we will try some fresh turkey and potatoes.  

He can stand for a couple of seconds as long as he is holding something. 

Showing off his teeth. The one on the right is still hard to see. 

He loves his daddy

 The following sequence of pictures makes me laugh so hard. Whenever we give Charlie a new textured food he makes the most wonderful faces which I'm sure is the case with most babies but it just is so incredibly funny. This time he was trying cantaloupe. I literally took these all within seconds of each other.

Hmm...this looks interesting. 

"That was kind of a big bite"

"Ahhh...take it back, take it back."

I'm over it.

 Charlie is just about too tall for his carseat so as soon as we get back to Portland we are going to upgrade, but first I needed a comparison picture. I seriously can't believe how much he has grown. 

2 days old

9 months old

 That's all I can think of right now. We are excited for all the fun things we have going on in this next month and watching Charlie learn all the things he can do with his body.

Six Flags follow up

On Saturday the whole Clark team got to go to six flags. Saturdays at Six Flags are not nearly as good as Tuesday mornings at six flags which is when we went last time and whenever we got off a ride we were able to just jump on the next one. Anyway, due to my recent injury I wasn't able to go on any fun rides. It turned out alright because I was able to stay with Charlie and Max could still go on rides. He probably wouldn't have been able to go on as many if we were taking turns. I still felt pretty miserable but being outside in a busy environment helped a bit. Charlie got to ride the carousel which was probably more exciting for me than him. I thought it was so darn adorable but he remained pretty expressionless. Haha. 

He loved looking around at everything. There was even a small zoo area so we saw some elephants, giraffes, lions, and tigers. We then got in line for another kiddie ride that I was sure Charlie could handle (warning...this is where my complaining comes in) It was a dumb little ride where you sit in this jeep car and it drives you in a circle and it's supposedly a safari. So I park the stroller and hold Charlie while we are in line. I should not have been holding him for long term still from my injury especially when he is constantly wiggling, but I was hoping that he could at least enjoy a second ride...so 45 minutes later we are at the front of the line...and the woman asks..."is your child able to walk yet?" I answer 'No" because I am just too honest. She then tells us that Charlie is too small to ride the ride..."What! So in my decrepit condition I have been wrestling with this child to sit in a lame 90 second kiddie ride and now you are turning us away?"  No, I didn't really say that...also, I really love holding my baby it was just more of a struggle this day. (and for the record, the park map said there was no minimum age or height, I triple checked before getting in line) Anyway, Charlie tried flirting with her to get on the ride...all smiles and giggles, I'm pretty sure he must have learned that from his dad. The woman felt pretty bad. After that I was really done with six flags. I felt really sick and it was getting really cold. We met up with Max and fed Charlie. We were about to leave when we realized a dolphin show was about to start so we went to that and Max was able to wrestle with Charlie. :) It was actually pretty impressive. Who knew dolphins could be so smart. So after that we were really ready to go. We are grateful that Max's company sponsors these fun events, and that Max was able to go on a couple of rides after all his hard work, I'm just bitter from my untimely injury...so that is my little complaint. I just know all of you were sittin gat the edge of your seats wondering how six flags went. and that is that.

To the ER once again

Somehow I have been cursed recently. Well not really, I'm actually very blessed but last night was my third ER visit in the last 18 months. The first two were not as necessary. ER visit #1 was Christmas Eve with miscarriage #2. The ER was not necessary that time but we were out of town and just went to ask a couple questions and they were concerned so they admitted me. ER visit #2 was as infection post baby (I'll spare you the details) but the only reason they made me go to the hospital is because it was Thanksgiving and everything else was closed. That brings us to last night...ER visit # 3. It all started when I was being diligent and doing my daily workout. A workout that I have done several times a week for months. This being said, there was no explainable reason for me to pull a muscle...but that is exactly what happened. I felt a pop in my neck/upper back area...almost like pulling silly putty so fast it breaks. My neck was immediately stiff but not sore. After putting a bag of frozen broccoli on my neck I took a shower and realized the pain was so bad I could barely take my hair down and it was impossible to shampoo my hair. Post shower I couldn't dry or brush my hair and I was dreading getting dressed. Luckily Max was due to come home for lunch within an hour and baby was still sleeping. By the time Max got home the pain was so bad that I couldn't' move and there was excruciating pain whenever I tried to find a comfortable position. I thought it would get better on it's own but it just kept getting worse. Max took the afternoon off to take care of me and Charlie. After Charlie went to bed we decided that I probably should go to the Doctor. Luckily our insurance covers ER and urgent care visits out of state. So we woke Charlie up and headed to the hospital. The car ride was awful, every bump and acceleration was incredible pain but we made it and still had to wait for awhile. Around 9pm, my mom got off work and was able to come pick up Charlie so he could go to bed. He was such a good a clam baby through the whole ordeal, even being past his bed time. We are so proud of that child. Anyway, the wait was painful but much more bearable than the car ride. The visit ended up being much faster than expected, they took the vitals, gave me some painkillers, took some x rays, then decided it was a muscle spasm. Then the let me go. When the meds started kicking in I started feeling nauseous and like I was going to pass out. Max said I was really pale. I felt better when I was able to lie down. They let me free then Max and I had to stop by the pharmacy to pick up my meds. And of course the pharmacy takes a long time to get them ready so Max and I decided to make a little date out of it. We were hungry so we got some ice cream and ate it in the car. I was feeling better in my neck but still somewhat nauseous. It was a good way to make frustrating events fun, especially since Max has been working so hard and we haven't had much alone time. He stayed home all day today too and took amazing care of me and Charlie. I don't what we would have done without him. So far the pain is a lot better but my neck is still very stiff so hopefully it won't take too long to fully recover.  
Tomorrow we are going to six flags as a team...I'm pretty sure I will need to avoid the big roller coasters...I guess Charlie and I will just enjoy doing the kiddie rides over and over....

ps...I'm on Valium while writing this so I apologize if parts don't make sense,