CANCUN!!!

I loved Cancun!! What a beautiful place! I'll try to start from the beginning.
Hubby and I dropped the kids off on Thursday night because we had to leave for the airport at 4:30 a.m.!! We got there, all went well. Flight was awesome! We flew Frontier Airlines. I'd never heard of them before, so I was kinda scared, but I thought they were awesome! Each person had their own TV with satellite, so we were able to watch what ever we wanted the whole time. That made it much nicer! Judd's not a very good flier, so it distracted me and helped me to not be AS annoyed by him. We got to our hotel at about 4:30 and scoped our cute room out. We had an ocean view which was awesome. The hotel is in the middle of the stinking jungle and they try to keep it as natural as possible, so there are all of these winding dark sidewalks going through jungle areas and every time we walked somewhere we saw something cool. There were little Coati animal things, which are kind of a cross between a lemur and a monkey. They were running around everywhere.


There were also tons of Iguanas. And they were HUGE!
Here is our room. They had room service come in twice a day and they always made different towel art. This one is a little rabbit with fresh flowers all around it. I thought it was cute.
The food at the hotel was Fabulous and really fancy. The waiters all pulled out your chair and pushed you in and placed napkins on your lap. We're not very high class, so this was all new to us. There was a lot of culture at the hotel. People from all around the world come to stay there. As Americans, we were probably in the minority. Mostly everyone was from Europe. Now, I'm not very familiar with Europeans, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But... little did I know, they are very proud of their bodies. No matter how old they were, no matter how big or small, they wore bikinis and speedos. I'm not kidding. Even grandmas and grandpas. I had fun one day and tried to take pictures of all of the speedos around me.

The manly speedo

the Speedo sunburn

the jogging speedo

the grandma and grandpa speedo/bikini combo

Father and son Speedo

The kids even wear speedos and the young girls never wear bathing suit tops. Well, a lot of the older girls didn't wear tops either. I had to constantly say to Judd "No looking at 10 o'clock." No one seemed to care, even if their were kids around. All of the American guys seemed to enjoy this. I caught a few staring pervs. There was this one family with a mom, dad and two little boys about 3 and 1 1/2. The baby had a pacifier in his mouth and would run around in a little speedo. I called him binky speedo baby, and I looked for him everyday because I missed my own kids and it made me happy to see other people's for some reason. I am kinda a little jealous of how comfortable they are in their own skin. There were some big girls in skimpy suits, not that I would ever wear a skimpy suit, but I wish I was that confident. I wish we lived in a place where you don't feel like you have to be a stick figure to look good. I was impressed.
Well anyway, my idea of vacation is relaxation. I woke up early, walked to the beach with a book and could sit there all day. I would even leave Judd sleeping and go out to be beach side. I realized its not that much fun trying to take a relaxing trip with a husband. He didn't quite know how to relax. I would sit there reading and watching the beach and the people and I was perfectly happy like that. But he was all jittery and waiting for me to entertain him the whole time. Geez can't a girl get a break, even on vacation!! We went for walks, and found shells and he even let me bury him once. We got really bad sunburns because I ran out of sunblock while I was out there and had to buy some Mexican sunblock. It should be called Mexican sun"burn" because as soon as I put that stuff on I could feel my arms cooking! I also bought Mexican mosquito repellant because I was being eaten alive, and I swore it was just a mixture of pine sol and lotion. I had 32 mosquito bites on my legs. 5 on one knee cap.
Anyway, here's some pics from a walk along our beach



I actually wrote that and a wave washed it away as I was trying to take the picture. Judd bent down to fix it and I snapped him. He was all embarrassed that he would look like a wimp if I posted this, so I just thought I would throw that out there.... so officially, for the record, Judd is not this smooth.

On Monday we did an all day excursion to a natural water park called Xel-ha (Shell-ha) and the Mayan ruin town of Tulum (too-loom). Xel-ha was stinking awesome. you get there and they give out snorkels, goggles and fins and then you put on a life jacket and snorkel in this natural lagoon that is the size of like 10 football fields. There were fish everywhere. All different kinds. Judd had a minor encounter with a "5 foot long" barracuda. or so he says, but each time he told me about it the fish got a little bit bigger. hmmm. He did touch his tail fin though, even though he admitted to me that the fish scared the bejeezies out of him and it had huge teeth. After about 15 minutes he got motion sickness from the waves and he just kinda had to sit around and watch while I explored. I went in to caves and over reefs. I can't wait to develop my underwater camera film. That will be so cool. hopefully i figure out how to use my scanner. Judd got over his motion sickness
for the most part and we came upon a rope swing that I made him do. He was a little nervous that he was going to hit the wall, but a little pressure from a lady can get a man to do anything, especially when it comes to his pride. So he did the rope swing and then he did some cliff diving. The water is amazing down there. You can see all the way to the bottom everywhere you go. Even at the beach at our hotel, we were swimming with angel fish and other dark unknown shadows. Kinda Freaky.
They had like 12 dolphins at Xel-ha.


Here's some pics of Tulum. This place was really neat. The temples were built right on the beach.



This is a temple for the Goddess of Fertility. I thought I was in a fitting state :)



look in the branch of the tree

We also went into a little town called Playa Del Carmen, where we were able to shop and haggle with the business owners. Judd pays way to much for stuff in Mexico!! What's up with that. I can hardly get him to buy anything here and he goes there and paid $22 for a pair of sunglasses (because he thought he it would be fun to body surf while wearing his old ones from home, they are now property of the Gulf of Mexico) and $15 for a weird straw hat that he ended up leaving on the airplane (thank goodness) We got the kids some cool little presents though that were like a $1 each, which was more my style for that stuff. One thing that was crazy about that town, besides the drivers, was that they had soccer leagues on the beach. They set up goals and play like crazy men for hours.
All in all, our trip was great. We didn't even fight once until our flight home. By then I was just ready to be alone for a little while. And, I was ready to see my kids.

DiSnEyLaNd!!!

We had our whirlwind trip to Disneyland this week. And when I say whirlwind, I mean it! We got to Anaheim at 11:45 p.m. Tuesday night. Did Disneyland all day Wednesday and drove home Thursday morning. It was fast, but I'm so glad we did it. It was the perfect time of year to go. We didn't have to wait in line for hardly any rides! The kids were able to ride on everything at the whole park and even do some rides twice. Madison's favorite ride was Peter Pan, Nolan's was Space Mountain, Mine was Pirates of course, a classic. Judd's was Indiana Jones. We went on the Nemo submarine ride and it made Judd feel really woozy, so the rest of his day was kind of crappy.

The kids at Mickey's house. I could not find a way to get Mickey's ginormous body guard out of the picture. I need to figure out how to crop.

The kids were so brave. When I couldn't go on a ride Madi always rode in front by herself. I don't know if I would do that when I was 7.

My cute little stinkers! They were the perfect ages to go.

Space Mountain freaked Madison out. And you can see by the look on Judd's face that he doesn't feel really good either. Nolan however, is always wide eyed and quiet after the ride. After it was over he yelled YESSSSS!!


Its a small world was so much better as an Adult. I really liked it!!! And the kids LOVED it.

Judd had to get his picture taken with his role model. ;)

the broom from one of our favorite Disney Books


Minnie!!!

I think I've taken other jail pictures of these guys before, but I'll say it again. I wish I had one of these at home!! All in all, it was a great trip and I'm so glad we had the chance to spend time with the big kids before the little babies take over.

For Sale

Very cute male child. Almost 2 years old. Can say a few words such as... love you, good boy, hi, bye, mom, dad, Madi, Nolan, etc...
Will throw things in the garbage can (especially spoons and toys), can unload the dishwasher and put clothes in the washing machine.
Reason for selling, mom just can't keep up with him anymore. Needs very energetic family that enjoy cleaning up lots of mud and bottles of nail polish that have been opened and used as a paint brush on floors, walls and body. Loves to wear hats or other things (underwear) on his head. Underwear and pacifier included.



Also, still for sale and now at a reduced price. This child that enjoys playing in garbage cans.


OTHER THINGS:
we took a trip to the Phoenix Children's Museum. If you've never been, you have to go!! The first Friday of every month if free from 6 to 10 p.m. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of fun the kids had here!





Me and Madison went to see Mary Poppins. It was one of the best shows I have ever seen! Here she is in her little theater get up. Her first Broadway Show. She had so much fun. Mary Poppins flew right by us on her broom!



Here's Madison with her homemade robot, Petunia. She's a gardening robot.

In other news. My due date has changed from the last time I posted. I went in to the Dr. and she said that I was about 3 weeks farther along than I thought! What great news! New due date...Sep. 6th. We find out next week what we are having! This pregnancy has been a pain in the butt, literally! My butt is killing me! And the migraines! But...I'm not big on complaining, so I'll leave it at that. I have been feeling this little bug moving around though. That's when it starts being real for me. I'm still kind of in denial because I can't believe that I'm having another child after Coulson. There is nothing like him and this pregnancy is going way too fast!

Oh, and just so I don't have to add another post after this one... WE ARE GOING TO CANCUN!! Yay! We've never done a honeymoon and we just celebrated 8 years. We will be gone for 6 days in May. I'm sure I'll have a million bajillion pictures to post. SOOOOO excited!

Book List

I've been in such a funk lately! My emotions are all over the place, poor husband, poor kids, poor me. If you're ever bored, I can use some girl time, but nothing that has to do with food. I've not been updating my book list, but oh, I have been reading. In fact, its all I've been doing lately. Its my escape from my crappy mood. I've been keeping them up on goodreads.com. If you're not on there and you love to read...you should be!! Find me and be my friend :) Here's a few that I've read since my last post... Gone by Lisa McCann, Fire by Kristin Cashore, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Alliance by Gerald Lund, Shiver by Maggie Steifvater, Evermore by Alyson Noel. And there are soooo many good ones to come. All of them were REALLY good, except Gone.

My Crazy Weekend...

THE RAGNAR RELAY:
a 200 mile relay race between 12 people. Here's the story.
I found out this weekend that running can actually be fun at certain distances. All of that marathon training is for weirdos ;) My short 4 and 5 mile runs in the mountains were wonderful. I will stick to that sort of training from now on.
So, so many people did the relay this year. Like 5,000. It was crazy. You may know others who did it and say "oh it was so much fun," or "we had such a blast." Don't listen to them. They are liars. There are not very many ways that this was fun. I would classify it under "an experience". Our team was separated into 2, 15 passenger vans. It seems like there would be a lot of space for 6 people in a 15 passenger van, but don't let the 15 fool you. We were in that van for about 24 hours.
I was the first runner from our van and I didn't start my first run until about 2:45 p.m. It was a nice run, about 4.8 miles. It felt really long for some reason. I've never really trained in hills, so it was a struggle at first. I did come in faster than we had predicted though. Then everyone else did their runs. We went through some really pretty areas. After everyone was done, it was about 8:30 p.m. We went for some dinner and drove to an elementary school where we could supposedly sleep until our next leg started at 12:55a.m. Well, we didn't get there and arranged until about 10pm. so you can imagine, this pregnant girl was famished. I paid $2 to sleep in the school, since sleeping in the van was not very comfortable. They directed me to the multi purpose room, aka cafeteria. There were about 200 people sleeping on the tile floor and hardly any space to lay down. I found a tiny spot in between a bunch of people and tried to get some rest. There was banging from the kitchen, people walking by my head, a horrible snoring man and of course sleeping on a tile floor isn't the most comfortable. To put it simply, I didn't sleep a wink. The other van called me and said they were ahead of schedule so we had to get going. My run was supposed to be 30 minutes later. Luckily, I had sweet Bobby on my team who agreed to switch runs with me so I could get some much needed rest. I was going to run her leg that started at 3 a.m.

Love you Bobby! She put on her orange reflective vest and head lamp and set off into the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. She had a great run and we were all amped up at this point and ready to go. But...as soon as Bobby got to the exchange point, they stopped all the runners. About a mile ahead of us, an 18 year old boy was hit by a car and was critically injured. It was a 2 lane highway and there was nowhere for us to go but back to where we came from. We were instructed to drive to some high school. By the time we found the high school it was 4:30 a.m. By the time they figured out what they would do with us it was 5:30 a.m. We were told to skip our whole second leg, meaning the other van on our team would start their runs. So we went to get some sleep in fountain hills at one of my teammates family's home. We arrived there at about 6:30. There were twin beds to sleep in!!! I have never been more excited to see a bed in my life!! I slept for 2 straight hours!!! It was the best sleep I've ever had. I woke up and felt great. I had a run to get ready for. We all loaded up and headed to the exchange point where I would be taking off from. It was a beautiful day!! I began my run and immediately noticed the huge hills that were all around me. It really was hilly in Fountain Hills. I had 2 massive hills that reminded me more of going up the side of a mountain. I like to call them mini mountains. It sounds better ;) I made it though, and I did it fast! 4 minutes faster than my predicted time. I was done and I was happy. I bought a candy bar the day before to celebrate. It was heaven. My van did their runs and slowly but surely we made it to the finish line at Tempe Marketplace. We crossed the finish line at 2:26 p.m. We got some really cool medals. Then I went home. I fell asleep at 4:30 and didn't really wake up again until 7:30 the next morning. I was still tired but church meetings couldn't be missed, so I was back at it. I will never do Ragnar again. But, I'm glad I got a feel for what it was like. I just don't think not sleeping, driving really slow for 200 miles and running at 3 in the morning is a fun time. But...its over! YAY! Here's some pics.

Fountain HILLS

My first run

Tiffany. The one who talked me into this. Why are we smiling. She is the most in-human, fast runner of all time.

Sprinting to the finish on my last leg!

HILLS

Van #2

The whole team

~BAKING~

I'm not that great at baking. It takes a lot of time and a lot of mess and I can eat it all in one day. I try to avoid it at all costs. However, there is one type of baking I am good at! It takes a long time, makes an even bigger mess, and fortunately for everyone, I can't eat it.

That's right. There's a bun baking in my oven ;) And its baking until Sept. 6th. That makes me about 14 weeks.

venting

I'm not a sympathetic person. Just ask my husband. He has a cold right now. I can hardly stand it. All of the moaning, groaning, coughing, limping, complaining in a nasal-y voice. Are you serious!?! When I'm sick, he usually doesn't even know it. And when he does know it, he says that "being sick is a mental thing. If you just think that you're not sick then you won't be" blah blah blah. Basically, he's full of crap. Today I told him to think positive and he will feel better. Apparently it doesn't work for him. What is it with men and the dramatics? I wish I could just lie around the house when I'm sick. Nice wives will let their husbands sleep all day, make them food in bed, stand by as they lay on the couch and watch TV. But... if you are a frequent viewer of this blog, you'll know... I'm not nice. I don't get to do all that stuff when I'm sick and I get by just fine.
Its the same with Nolan. When he cries I just tell him to be quiet. He has this piercing scream. Like a pterodactyl getting shot out of the sky, only way louder. Try to imagine that. Then he dry heaves. Its horrible. No kid can ever beat it, promise. Every time he screams I make him do it outside. If someone else hears it they go running to him because they think he's probably broken his leg or had an arm chopped off. They are pretty concerned when I tell them to ignore him. Usually it because Madison teased him. Some people would call that tender hearted. I call him a wimp.
I'm mad at my kids today. I guess last night they snuck out of their beds, got into the pantry, stole 4 boxes of fruit snacks (each containing 10 packages) and ate them. All of them. They hid the wrappers in their pillowcases. I'm so glad that we have a dog though. Judd hasn't had the time to pick up the dog poo in quite a while, so guess what punishment for the kids was? Picking up poo, lots and lots of poo. The whole time they were saying things like "I don't like dogs" "I wish we didn't have a dog" "I wish Cooper only pees" Hilarious. Then they were washing windows, they still have toilet scrubbing to do and they paid me for the fruit snacks from their piggy banks. I swore to them that I will never buy fruit snacks again as long as I live and I made them eat carrot sticks for lunch. Seriously, after reading all of this...am I mean?

New Years Resolutions

Every New Year I join the masses and vow to not eat sugar and to exercise more. It usually fails within a few days. Sometimes a few hours ;). I have a confession to make. I love food. I love sugar. I will pretty much eat anything. I think life on a diet is pure torture. This is a realization that I came across last year during my resolution. I might as well have said "my New Years Resolution is to see how long I can torture myself by watching everyone around me eat awesome food while I have to eat carrot sticks." What kind of life is that?!?! Not one I want to try to have. What is life without cookies and milk? Or lemon bars? or cheesecake? or a huge bowl of peanut butter crunch cereal? Or breadsticks with alfredo sauce at Olive Garden? You get the point. So... needless to say, that is not what I'm doing this year. Statistics show that most resolutions are lost by Feb. 14th. I've witnessed this at the gym. The first few weeks of the year the gym is packed. It always makes me laugh.
I do enjoy resolutions. I think they a are wonderful way to try new things and make yourself better. So for this year I've got a couple of things in mind.
1. Kiss my husband at least 10 times a day. (he will like this one ;)
2. Only spend $40 a week on groceries
3. snuggle with my kids every day
4. laugh at my kids mistakes instead of getting angry
5. Drink more water

These things are totally doable and I won't get depressed if I can't do them 24/7. Oh... and of course.... UPDATE MY BLOG more. I've been so bad. It seems everyone has kind of fallen off of the blog band wagon. I miss you guys!

Good times...

Ah, life at the Rich home just continues to get more entertaining as time goes on. Madison gets sassier, Nolan gets goofier, Coulson gets crazier. Apparently I'm still the meenest mom on the planit. Madison and I got into it pretty good the other day before school. It all started over Jamba Juice. I guess every so often Jamba does a fundraiser at her school. She wanted me to give her $3.50 so she could buy one. Well, I'm a big advocate on working hard and earning money for things you want even if its as simple as a smoothie. What can I say...I'm kind of a Hitler parent. So making a long story short... she was having this huge fit. Throwing things, making messes, crying, yelling, the whole fit shebang. Me being a stubborn mom and always creating an antagonizing situation for my own entertainment, made her sit on the couch until she calmed down. Well, the school bell had rung (we can hear it from our house) and she was so upset... but still, I was steadfast and immovable :) and I drove her to school late. Here is my note to the office...

Dear Office Staff,

Madison is tardy because she decided to throw a huge fit before school. Please let her go to class so I can enjoy the rest of my morning.

Thanks,

Kristina :)

I will now turn my focus to Nolan. He is a funny kid. I mean really goofy. He makes these weird faces. His new name for me is Cartoon because he looks like some kind of animated character when he makes these faces. He gets in these phases. Lately its been soccer cleats. He thinks they are the coolest things ever. He wears them to school, to the store, to play in the back yard. He thinks they make him look cool and that they make him run really fast. This is very important to him now that he's trying to impress the ladies. He has become a little Casanova. Every time a girl of any age comes over he tells them how beautiful they are. I was doing a lady's hair the other day and this was the conversation...

Nolan "you look very beautiful"

Lady "thanks! your mom did a good job on my hair"
Nolan "I mean you look pretty with your boots and skirt and black shirt and your hair too"

So anyway.... wearing these soccer cleats have become somewhat of an image booster. He decided to wear them to Madison's fun run at her school. He gets out there, flirtin' with the ladies and as he rounds the first corner...BAM... he face plants because his cleat got caught in the dirt. This is a perfect example of a male. They think they are so cool and have something to prove. They all face plant eventually....

I had Madison's 7th birthday party at my house a couple of weeks ago. That's right, she's 7 now! She wanted to have a pajama party and her only request for an activity was to play freeze dance. So I gathered together all the Miley Cirus music I could find and we had a blast. I also found an idea to make hair clips out of felt. I used a dye cut and punched out a bunch of flowers. They mixed and matched their own flowers and sewed little buttons in the middle of the flower. Teaching 6 and 7 year olds to sew is kind of scary but we made it through without any injuries. It was a pretty fun night.

Another cool thing happened. We all know how Madi loves to draw. Well, she ended up winning a drawing contest for her school! She won a breakfast with Santa and her drawing was on display at a Christmas party for the town of Gilbert! I'm a proud mama!

So much to do in so little time...

I confess, I've been a lazy blogger! I'm going to try and jump more on the band wagon!

For a long time I would think "oh, nothing's been going on to blog about, but i looked through my camera and I realized that I was wrong. So much has been going on. I will try to go in order.

First... Madison had 80's day at school. I was born in the 80's, so I missed all of the big hair and hair spray. But needless to say, I can do some pretty "rad" 80's hair. Here she is, ticked off. She hates her hair. She thinks everyone will laugh at her. "Well of course they will laugh at you. Everyone laughs at people who look like they are stuck in the 80's." Come on people. Mullets... you can't honestly tell me that you've never laughed at someone with a mullet before. Funny story really fast... I saw this guy one time with a mullet, back in my younger, braver years. I say "nice mullet" and he says....... "what's a mullet?" If you don't know you have a mullet then you might be a red neck. That's all I have to say about that. Anyway. pictures of her on 80's day!

Well Halloween came and went this year just like everything else. Weeks of preparation for 3 hours of candy hoarding fun. Woo hoo. I love having a baby that I can make dress up as anything I want.... A Garden Gnome. Best costume of all time.

Judd and I were Popeye and olive oil. He actually won best costume, thanks to his lovely wife who spent the days leading up to Halloween stressed beyond belief and slaving over a sewing machine. We won 2 harkins tickets. I am pretty awesome...

The kids were little red riding hood, decided upon super last second, but pulled off none the less. and a knight. I am the meanest mom because I won't let my kids dress up in what ever they want. Every little boy is spider man and batman and every little girl is a princess or Hannah Montana (dry heave) Funny story really fast about Hannah. I heard this song on the radio the other day and I was like "who the heck sings this song? I swore it was Alvin and the chipmunks talking about moving to the USA or something. Come to find out it was Miley Cirus. How the heck can people like her music! she sounds like she's singing on helium. Anyway, long story short, My kids have to look unique. Here they are...

After Trick or treating is always my favorite part. I turn right around and hand all of that hard earned candy away. Except this time we stayed out too long. Madison was hanging from the door way yelling "get your candy!" No one came. Madison and Nolan then started fighting, Madison fell over the gate and out onto the porch. We decided that we'd had enough of Halloween and put the kids to bed at 7:30. I love early bed time!

My birthday came and went! It was one of the best birthday's ever. I at out every lunch and dinner for 3 straight days. I was spoiled! I had girls night out on Wednesday, Phantom of the Opera on Thursday, a RS party on Friday and dinner with my parents on Saturday. Phantom of the Opera was great! The scene changes and music are AMAZING! Oh, and did I mention that I got a 90 minute massage?!?! Hot stones and everything. Steph, you're the best!!!

Oh and my most best girl's night out ever to see New Moon. It was awesome. I'm going to see it again on Tuesday. Be jealous. Its okay.