One Stop Shopping

I have to say I'm always amazed at what can be found on a trip to Las Vegas - for good and bad. You can see the entire world in one stop shopping. You want wild animals? Got 'em!

G-Pops showing Danny the giant Koi.
Flamingos - and boys pretending to be flamingos. More huge fish.Even dinosaurs! Don't worry, Olivia survived the attack. :)You want a little culture? Some international flair perhaps? Got it!

Chinese New Year with Kaya & Olivia.Luke, Danny, and Olivia pose with Caesar. I forgot to take pictures of our Venetian gondola ride, but did get some of the volcano.
Danny found it almost as scary as the real "cano" in Costa Rica.And in case animals or foreign countries aren't really your thing, the giant piano is a winner.

It is pretty cool when you can walk from country to country without ever getting a passport and enjoy some fantastic wildlife without going on a safari. I can't say I'd highly recommend jetting off to Vegas as a family trip though - as mentioned before there are plenty of things you come across you may not want to see - but we managed to have a pretty fantastic trip anyway.
Thanks again g-pops!!

Love II

My family had a tradition growing up that we'd make Valentine Bags a week or so before Valentine's Day. Danny had fun doing it this year, and Matt was quite the artist himself. It's fun and frightening allowing Danny to practice his fine motor skills. He's still working on the appropriate amount of glue. On Valentine's Day we had fun opening the bags and seeing what Valentine's we had gotten each other.

LOVE

So I'm sure I fooled some of you into thinking this was a Valentine's blog . . .not so. :) A couple weeks ago we got to go to Las Vegas with Matt's family. One highlight was getting to see Cirque du Soleil's tribute to the Beatles - LOVE. It was phenomenol - familiar usic, incredible acrobatics, fun dancing. Dad Hong had gotten us some pretty spectacular seats up front so we could really see everything from facial expressions to rippling muscles during the rope acrobatics. AWESOME!

Wow!!

Though Danny didn't make it to the actual performance (which started at 9 PM - thanks for watching him Lance!!) Danny did enjoy some of the hype around the theatre and gave a nice show of his own.

Needless to say, all the action wore our little man out. Thanks again for a fantastic trip Jerry!!!

And by the way, if you made it through reading this whole blog . . .
ultrasound says . . .
WE'RE HAVING A GIRL!!

Bad Guy

So, when Danny was a sweet innocent baby boy, I remember imagining that he would always be so kind and angelic. Though I knew he was a boy, I thought with careful parenting I could be sure he never got obsessed with swords and guns and "Hi-ya!" kicks. I still remember, however, the first time he found a toy laser gun at his cousin's house. They don't even have a lot of toy weapons and have pretty strict rules about how to use the light sabers and stuff. But down the stairs comes Danny, shooting up a storm with the one laser gun in the house. Where did he learn that!?

Not too many weeks after that I became a little more concerned when we were eating waffles and he bit a piece into the shape of a gun. "Look - gun!" Followed by gun sounds. I explained I didn't like him shooting his waffle at the dogs. That's a conversation I never planned for.

We also try to read the picture scriptures every night before bed, but again I started to feel a little nervous about this routine when instead of requests for the stories of bravery and righteousness Danny just got excited to read about, "Sticks mommy. Bad Guys!" I've continued to try and explain that although it's generally not good to cut off arms or murder people with swords, that Ammon and Nephi were really good guys. Not sure how much of this is sinking in with my two-year-old.

Matt has continued to reassure me that none of this means our son will be the next unabomber or grow into an overly violent teen. It's just typical boy stuff. I try to reassure myself that I'm not a bad mom while continuing to teach Danny the difference between good guys and bad guys and the danger of the weapons he's so keenly drawn to.

I had to laugh the other day though when my precious, innocent, angelic two-year-old pulled out this one. I had been cleaning out my closet (the joyous swapping of regular clothes and maternity clothes) when out of the back comes this guy. "Look mom. I a bad guy."


My little thug. Can anyone relate?

Snuggling