Utah trip Aug. 1-15

We were in charge of the Baker Family Reunion this year! One sibling is in charge each year. Caleb is the 10th child so it finally got around to being our turn. We had it at Bear Lake. We camped at Traveland RV Park and had a lot of fun. We played at Rendezvous Beach where we rode jet skis and paddle boards, jumped on the water trampoline, swam, played in the sand, played volleyball, etc. We had morning devotionals, family cheers, a family 5K, swimming and a movie at the pool next to the campground, and lots of good food! It was a lot of work planning all the food for everyone but we were glad we did it that way so that everyone could prepare/clean up and eat together. We were pretty worried about the weather as it was supposed to be rainy and cloudy, but it didn't really rain until our last night there, when it really poured!! Even then it turned out great. We all gathered in the three biggest tents. John and James shared about their missions in two of the tents and Grandpa shared memories of his father in the other tent. Then the speakers rotated.The water at Bear Lake is definitely on the chilly side though. It's bearable but not comfortable. One of these years I'd love to make it back to Lake Powell!

Here was our family cheer:
"We are the Caleb Baker family,
We drove here from New Jersey. We love you can't you see?!?
Caleb, Kim, Samuel, Eliza, Zoe too,
Rain or share we're happy to be here with you!... OH YEAH!"

Eliza gave the best "Oh yeah" at the end. :)

Kimbrie and Eliza in their new dresses from Grandma.

The whole gang. Caleb designed the awesome reunion shirts!

The backs have everyone's names forming the shape of a temple.

We were dying laughing at this picture. Caleb looks like he has a huge belly! I think the shadows are just right or something! One of those pics we'll pull out whenever we need a good laugh. :)

The drive there was actually really fun. The kids did great and we all really enjoyed being together. We left at 3 pm on Friday August 1st, arrived at Josh and Stephanie's apartment in Peoria, IL around 6 am on Saturday, slept for a few hours, spent the day with them and Grandma and Grandpa Baker (who were on their way to Utah too for the reunion from their mission in Wisconsin), went to church with them Sunday, drove part way then stayed the night at a hotel, stopped in Ogden to visit my friend Makana and see her new babies, arrived in Elk Ridge around midnight. Tuesday we played at Boondocks with the Whitneys and Lewis', then Wednesday we drove to Bear Lake to start the reunion!

Josh interned at Caterpillar this summer so we went to their awesome museum.

Sam and Jonathan really love each other. They became such good friends when we both lived at Wymount and they were excited to see each other. They are ALL boy and do a lot of wrestling, shooting things, fighting bad guys, etc.

Silly Grandpa. :) Those machines are HUGE. Pretty incredible.

Makana and her sweet babies

The 11th was my 29th birthday and I was throwing up the first half of the day! A flu was going around when we got there. Caleb flew to St. Louis that afternoon for work, the kids and I left Tuesday morning with Gma and Gpa. Gma drove our van so I could help the kids. We've gotten good at just pulling off to the side of the road when the kids need to pee! We stayed the night at a hotel then split off from them the next morning. They headed north back to Wisconsin and I finished the drive to my sister in law Hazel's house in Kansas City. We stayed there for two nights (Josh and Stephanie were there too w their kids!), then drove to St. Louis Friday afternoon where we met up with Caleb. We stayed the night there, drove home Saturday, got home at 5 am on Sunday, had church at 10. Let's just say the drive home was NOT as fun as the drive there! Everything smelled like pee as both kids were wetting their pants, and we were all pretty sick of everything that comes with traveling! The kids took a couple weeks to readjust. Especially Eliza. She had been potty trained for a couple months and we had to re-do that, her tantrums were at an all time high, it was just a really rough couple weeks after we got home. Seriously some of the hardest days of my life so far. But we got through it and are better and closer for it. I've accepted that being a mother of 3 young children is hard and often crazy and chaotic! Now that I've accepted that, I am enjoying it much more. :)

July 27, 2014

We have discovered wine berries! They grow wild here. They're a little smaller than raspberries and more tart than sweet. First Caleb and the kids found them up the street, next to their "rock climbing wall." This week Caleb was on a little walk during lunch and found tons more next to his work. He was so excited that he took us all back there that evening. I had no idea the man I married had such a passion for picking berries, but he loves it! It takes him back to his childhood. The next day he texted me from work, "It's all I can do to not go out there and start picking berries!" It's great because the kids love it too and they all feel like they're being productive. We've tried lots of things with them and so far my favorite is in pancakes and blended with vanilla bean ice cream.

 

I gave Eliza my tupperware half full and she downed the whole thing! We figured out she has color blindness where she doesn't see the color red, so picking red berries is a bit of a challenge! She seems like like the yellow ones just the same. :) We adore our Eliza girl.

The kids often hang out with our next door neighbor Susan. She is the best neighbor!! Sam especially goes over to her house a lot. They have smoothies together, work in the flower beds, walk her dog Hershey, etc. They helped her set up her beach tent the other day.

Favorite new hoodie towels from Grandma Andersen!

 A few pics from today...

One of my favorite things about our place is the back porch. We have frequent evening family treats out there.

Zoe is 8 weeks today! She is starting to smile and it is so fun.

Sweet Sammer boy. He's into rock climbing lately on the rocks up the street. He ties yarn all around him as his rock climbing ropes. :)

Liza Lou ("Princess P") - outfit #5 for the day. She does all the changing by herself now so I really don't mind!

Just cause I can't get enough of her!

Caleb's 29

We celebrated Caleb's 29th birthday last week! He bragged to Samuel that he's now older than me... but only for 23 days. :) We made brownie bites in the shape of a fish because a fishing pool was to be his birthday present.
Samuel and Eliza love that he plays and wrestles with them. His evenings and weekends are all about the kids and they sure love him and the time he gives to them. I love (among other things) what a good Dad he is, how he does everything he does sincerely and for the right reasons, and how he focuses in on one thing and does a really good job at it. He takes very good care of his family!  He keeps us all laughing and enjoying the little moments that make life good. I love him and am so grateful we are on this eternal journey together!

July 20, 2014

I have started 3 different "catch up" posts over the past 9 months. For now I'm giving up on catching up and am aiming for this post about our week to actually make it past the draft stage!

I sure love these 3 kids!

Monday Sam had his swimming lesson which he LOVES (Mondays and Wednesdays). Seems like everything clicked and he was doing "big arms" and floating and swimming so much better! It's so fun watching your kids work at something and see their progress. His favorite part of the lesson is getting to practice diving at the end. Diving isn't allowed at our neighborhood pool.

Eliza trying to stay hydrated. It's SO hot and humid in that building!! She's a trooper.

Tuesday morning we pulled out at 6:45 to drive to Philadelphia. Caleb had a training for a few days so we decided to tag along! I wondered how fun it would really be with a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 6 week old, but it ended up being such a fun trip. The weather was so nice and our good friends from Wymount the Petersons are in Philly for the summer so it was great seeing them. We hung out at their apartment and pool on Tuesday, then I left Sam and Eliza with them for the evening while I went and picked up Caleb and we went on a date! Our first date in a while and it was so nice. Zoe slept the entire time so it was really like being with NO kids! We had a yummy meal at Pesto Ristorante.

Wednesday we started out at the Independence Visitors Center.

"I'll call you John Hancock. He wrote really big just like you!"

Seaman

We watched an interesting movie "Choosing sides" that shared the perspective of the quakers who didn't believe in war no matter what and who were loyal to the King of Britain. They were persecuted by those who were fighting for freedom. I'd never thought about that side of things before.

We walked out of the Visitors Center and over to a shaded bench. I picked up Zoe to nurse her and poop starting dripping out of her diaper! Right then Eliza says, "I need to go pee! I need to go pee!" The girl studying on the bench next to us had to have thought I was CRAZY! I hope she still has kids some day!! Thankfully I'd had the thought at the hotel that morning to switch out my mini pack of wipes for a bigger pack of wipes. Got Zoe cleaned up, helped Eliza pee in the bushes, nursed Zoe while the kids enjoyed playing in the dirt. Phew!

Having three kids is pretty funny sometimes. Caleb asked yesterday how things can turn bad so quickly. It's really true. Everything can be going just great and then all of a sudden things can go terribly wrong and everyone's screaming and in tears!

Katharine, Jane, and Spencer (Petersons) joined us for the rest of the day and we had such a great time with them! They really made our trip!

Eliza LOVED the carousel ride. She'll still randomly start crying that we didn't get to go on it again.

I love her no look wave :)

Thursday we walked to Au Bon Pain for breakfast, swam at our hotel (our first time staying in a 5 star hotel! Needless to say we felt a little out of place!!), had naps, drove to Fairmount Park, then picked up Caleb at the Navy yard and enjoyed walking along the river there. The ships are so big it's incredible. It's a really interesting place.  It's a huge old navy yard where the navy guys would live. The buildings haven't been used for over 30 years. They're finally developing the area so GSK relocated there are few years ago.  

Zoe is such a good, sweet little baby!! I have never enjoyed having a newborn so much. I really want her to stay little and would love to just hold and cuddle her all day! I think that's partly because she's so good and calm and partly because I feel like I know what I'm doing more, I have enough milk, and am just more at ease. With our other two I was tired from long nights and just more stressed out so I was more anxious for them to grow up!  Besides her blow out Zoe was perfect in Philadelphia and makes going out really easy usually. She's 7 weeks today!

Just chillin', lookin out the window

Seattle

Thanks to Amazon, Caleb and I got to go on a trip to Seattle a couple weekends ago! We had a wonderful time, and having all expenses paid made it especially relaxing. :) Caleb has a couple offers with Amazon so they flew him and his "significant other" out to try and close us on the company and Seattle. We've been very impressed with Amazon's recruiting process. We left our kids with Jeff and Kerri Thursday afternoon, then Tom and Laura got here Thursday evening and took over from there til late Saturday night. We were incredibly grateful for them! We did not worry about our kids at all the whole time, honestly, which was so nice. The kids had so much fun with Tom and Laura. I don't think they even missed us at all until maybe the last day a bit. We're so grateful to have wonderful family members on both sides who support us and love us. It really is an incredible blessing. Here's a recap of our trip:

After arriving Thursday night we went and ate at Benihana's with the Moncours (another BYU MBA couple). I've wanted to eat there ever since we did a case about them at the "Day in the Life of an MBA" class. It was very good. At this point we thought Amazon was reimbursing $65/day EACH for food. AFTER ordering the nicest meals at Benihanas AND stopping after to get a piece of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory, we found out it was $65/day for BOTH of us!! haha We laughed and were more conservative the next two days. :)

On Friday Caleb spent the day at the Amazon offices. I worked out, took my time getting ready, went to Pike Place market with some other spouses that were there, toured the EMP, then went to the Amazon offices with Ashley Clark for an info session. It was informative and good to get a feel for the culture at Amazon. Then we met up with our spouses and had hour d'ouvres and had a good time talking with Amazon people and other potential Amazon employees. Then Caleb and I went and rode the Ferris wheel which was a lot of fun. On our way over we found a cool spot to take a pic with the ferris wheel behind us. We couldn't get the picture right and by the end we were cracking up.

Finally got it!

We also walked by the famous gum wall. We felt a little dirty being that close to it!

Saturday we worked out in the morning, then got ready and walked to the Seattle Center where we went to the top of the Space Needle.

Caleb: "How about I point to the Amazon buildings." Kim: "Awesome idea!" He points, I take the picture, then inform him that in the picture he's pointing at the mountains. He then points out that it's my job to tell him where to point! I started cracking up at the fact that I took a picture of him pointing at the mountain, without telling him he wasn't actually pointing at the Amazon buildings. One of those classic pictures!!

There we go. Amazon is totally transforming downtown Seattle. That group of buildings is only a fraction of what they've built so far.

Then we rode the monorail to Pike Place market, caught some fish throwing action, got an amazing baguette sandwich and chocolate croissant at Le Panier, then caught the 12 o clock ferry ride (Amazon gave us passes to all the main attractions).

Then we grabbed our bags from the hotel, rented a car, drove around some suburbs to get an idea of houses and neighborhoods there, then drove to the airport and flew home. It was the perfect length of a trip. It never got too long, but we had enough time to do what we went there to do and have some fun too. However we left feeling more confused about our job decision! We didn't feel great about Seattle. I'm sure we could go there and be happy, and that Amazon would be a good experience for Caleb, but neither of us felt like, "This is definitely the place for us!" So we left pretty confused. But it was still a great trip and whether we choose them or not, we'll always appreciate Amazon!