Mother-Lovin'!

Do you like how I totes just psyched you out about what I was maybe going to start talking about?  Like srsly were you freaked that I might start swearing and possibly be enraged??  Whew, well you can breath a sigh of relief because I'm not.

It is in fact something quite the opposite of that.  We were talking today in church about the qualities that make a good family (specifically qualities in our mothers) and also about charity and how the two intertwine.  So I thought I would take justamoment to acknowledge the traits that the amazing women in my life have taught me to admire.  This list of women begins first and foremost with my mother, but includes many other surrogate moms, sisters, and amazing friends.

* One of the things I have always valued that my mother taught me to appreciate was the humor in all situations and how humor can enrich your life.  Some of my favorite memories involve my family laughing together.  It's helped us through a lot and has brought us much closer together.  (ironically, while humor is valued greatly in my home, my sarcasm has often gone "too far" in my mother's eyes.  Hence the ridiculosity at the beginning of this rambling :)

* My mother seems to have an unceasing amount of love for anyone she comes in contact with.  She is giving with everything she has with anyone she brings into her circle.  She so readily loves and cares and I admire that a lot.  It's something I aspire to.

*  From the very beginnings of my memory cleanliness, in all areas of my life, has been beaten instilled into me by both my parents.  My dad was more dictatorial about this instillment but it was my mom who took the time to explain why it is in my best interest to be this way.

This Mother's Day list could go on for a while.  I am very blessed by the women in my life, they are all amazing and I strive to be like them.  They are all so supportive and their faith in me keeps me warm at night :).

Back to Being 7 Years Old

As a kid, and in to my high school years we traveled a lot as a family.  We were always going places to see family but we stopped at lots of the national parks and things in between.  We also used to listen as my mom would read Roadside Geology of the United States.  This book tells you all about the surrounding geology given what road and mile-marker you are at.  It's really fascinating.  I never wanted to be a geologist, but I loved loved loved learning about the geology across all the states we went through.  I remember a small bit about going to Carlsbad Caverns the time that we went (although I learned when we went this time that part of my "memory" was really about somewhere in Mississippi or Missouri... oops!) and I remember loving it.  But that was back when I was small and I had been thinking about it a lot.  This Christmas break Abbey and I had the joint idea (chicken and the egg kind of thing for who actually gets credit...) to go back when we're all older, her kids might remember, and her husband could see.  I was ecstatic when my mom agreed.  And that was when I turned back into a little kid again....except this time the little kid has a camera!

My picture excitement started when we pulled into our hotel and the sunset was awesome.  I needed to get a picture of the dog's ear as well, those always fascinate me.

It was the next morning that we went to the caves and you drive up onto a little plateau to get to the entrance. Looking out across the prairie was gorgeous I thought.  Well gorgeous in a "ugly desert spiky ocatillo" kind of way.

The entrance to the visitor's center.

We decided to hike down through the natural entrance then we thought we would take the elevator back up at the end of the day.  There is this warning at the beginning of the hike and I thought it was hilarious.  Hilarious because you're hiking downhill.  Maybe they want to put that on the other end of the 1.2 mile trail 750 vertical feet down in the ground.

 This is the natural entrance to the cave.  Well the close up version.  If we had come in the summer I would have forced my family to go back at sunset so we could see all the bats come teeming out of the cave for the night.  But sadly, the bats winter in Mexico.  Gorgeous though right?  The amount of detail that is entirely etched by water and wind.  Mind boggling.

These are called draperies, and it's what happens when water and sediment drip down the side of the cave wall.  The caves we were in weren't really "living" caves, which means that they're dry for the most part, so the draperies, stalactites, and stalagmites aren't still growing.  There were so many caves behind caves, and caves through holes.  I couldn't quite capture it, but I tried really hard!!

It fascinates me how all these things can grow and be shaped and still be their own entity.  They're all entirely separate even though they're formed in the same way.  In this picture alone you can see stalactites, stalagmites, cave popcorn (the bumpy stuff on the right side), and draperies.

When a stalactite and a stalagmite grow together it forms a column.  They are the most beautiful imposing things I've ever seen.  This column was about 4 feet in diameter.  Ahmazing.

This is my favorite picture of the trip.  Sadly it doesn't even capture the things that I could see in person.  But it's still my fav.  The stalactites look so delicate, and yet they're made of rock!  And they're completely untouched and as natural as anything.  I can't even explain how much I want to gush about how cool it is to witness something so amazing and natural and know that man had absolutely NOTHING to do with it.  We were 750 feet directly down into the earth and still this stuff forms.  Absolutely amazing.

This is my tribute to some of the photographs that were taken when the caves were first discovered.  The man who discovered them, Jim White, couldn't get anyone to come see them until he dragged a photographer down to take some pictures.  My tribute would be much better if I had a tripod but I will settle :).  The black and white is pretty cool though and still manages to capture the subtleties of the features.

I was so excited to go to the caves and even more excited that I got to share it with my fantastic family.

Holiday Lovin!

I feel like perhaps I have complained a little bit too much about the people I miss. Hopefully I only feel this way because I have been complaining mostly to myself but if I have gone over my "venting time" please forgive me. But in light of the fact that I really have been missing family a lot I thought I would visually explain who the people are I've been missing, then maybe it'll be more understanding that I miss them : ).

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These adorable little teddy bears are my three mini schnauzers: Button, Peanut and Kodiak (from left to right). Aren't they unbelievably precious? They are the reason I have been close on multiple occasions to going to the animal shelter and getting a dog in the last four months. Or just taking one of them back with me :)

This is my pretty pretty peanut. You can tell her favorite activity is to lay and just soak up the sun.

Kodi is the most snuggly dog I have ever seen. If you're sitting he's sitting with you

 This is Button. She is the oldest and pretty much keeps to herself unless she really wants to see you. Then she'll come sit next to you and 'allow' you to pet her.

This is my niece-y Kyndal rockin my dad's pajama pants. She's a trip this one.

One of her favorite activities at Thanksgiving. Jumping on the 'trampoween'. Couldn't get enough of it.

Her Christmas present was her addiction when I saw her a couple weeks ago. She can literally walk faster than this thing but that didn't matter. She rode it to her heart's content and then was perfectly happy letting Aunt Heidi carry it the rest of the way to the park.

Haha I got a camera for Christmas and she wanted to look at it so I let her take a picture. Then she posed herself like this and said "Take a picture of me right here". Completely priceless.

My momma and K's little brother Dev. He is happiest when he's being help by just about anyone. And grandma is happy to do it.

Here's they're examining his Christmas present turtle.

He was way more interesting in grandpa's (my papa bear) beard though. He couldn't get enough, completely fascinated by it.

This was the moment before I let K look at my camera, you can see just how much she wanted my camera.

I just had to take a picture of them all playing together. Dev fell but was happy enough to stay there as long as K and grandpa kept getting the balls for him.

Here's Abbey my sis right as my dad gave her a really awesome present of her own.

Hahahaha the hat craziness of my parents. Get's me every time and I love it. They both however were not cold on that night.

We were concentrating really hard on Super Mario Bros.....and failing badly.

This was all four of us playing so my sister Megan and my dad were also concentrating hard as well. You couldn't quite get us here yelling but we were.

Ben, Abbey's husband was waiting his turn....hahah and didn't know his picture was being taken.

Aside from blood family there's the family I miss that I've adopted. Such as Cory (on the right). It took forever for us to get this picture though because there were a bunch of little kids that wanted to go first......weirdos.

And my beautiful Sarah. I miss her mucho in Arizona. We used to have such fun times so we had to meet up again and try on weird hats. Ignore me in this picture.

So there you have it. The family I love and miss. Not all of them of course but a great many of them and our fun times. I love the holidays because we all get to be together and just hang out, play games, shop, anything. LOVE it and can't wait until next year!

My second favorite gift this Christmas

Well really I shouldn't rank them, it might make some of the other gifts jealous....so I guess we'll just say one of my favorites : ).
This year I was given the new old school Super Mario Bros. game for my Wii.

I was really excited about this because honestly I completely adore this game. I never get tired of it. I'm not very good at it but really I never get tired of it. Mario has always held a special place in my heart. I used to play it when I was really small (like 5-6) and I learned some valuable life lessons:

 - Turtles should always be jumped on and then kicked or they come back to bite you (unless they're spikey turtles, then you just run).

 - Creatures throwing things out of clouds are of the devil. Straight up.

 - Being small does have its advantages but not very often.

 - Flying is extremely helpful but never being able to master it makes it a hazard of the most extreme kind.

 - If you don't get the right pattern in the castle of life you'll be going in circles forever.

 - Boomerangs are also hazards of the devil and should be avoided.

The new game is especially awesome because you can play with four people at once in the same screen. The chaos that results from this is FANtastic. Since you're all there you can also push each other around, pick some one up and throw them, and jump on others' heads. The yelling caused by all this is absolutely priceless and playing with my family was the ultimate highlight of my Christmas vacation. Hearing the words "STOP pushing me!" and "Get OFF my head!" come out of my father's, my sister's, and my brother's mouth was the best ever. Laughing ensued.

Fam Time

So I know I'm ridiculously late with this but the past couple weeks have been kind of insane. But this is about the weekend that Abbey and I had when she came to visit! I had so much fun and it was so nice to forget for a little while that I am 1500 miles away from everyone.

Saturday: Game time. So we played Delaware State which meant that it was pretty much a blowout, but it was still really fun to show Ab the hugeness of our stadium (ya it's bigger than Lauren's) and we had all kinds of fun with the wave (that's what the crowd does when we get bored). It was a little bit cold though so we only stayed until about the middle of the third quarter.
OH! the coolest thing about the game was at half time Delaware State's marching band performed, which while their football is terrible they have a competitive marching band that was awesome. They did a montage of Michael Jackson songs and the entire band did the Thriller dance! It was amazing.

Sunday: Road Trip. We took about a 2.5 hour trip to St. Joseph/Benton Harbor on Lake Michigan and went out to this cool little tiny lighthouse. I say little tiny not out of any real knowledge because this was the first one I'd seen, but just in my head I imagine them bigger. But we took a lot of great pictures out there, and generally had an awesome day. We also had some of the best cherry truffles ever!

This was the most awesome sign on the walk out to the lighthouse.

Abbey all serious.....me not. This wall though was aweomse, it was like natural photoshop!

So then I relented and we were both smiling!

Then we went to go we climbed down the cool little ladders.

And then just prettiness.

Monday: Shopping and daddy daughter time. No pictures from this but it was great fun to go shopping and find many wonderful things and then have dinner with daddy who had flown in for the day. I did take some other pretty scenery pictures that I could  mess around with and have fun so I of course need to show them off!

And my fav:

We're just so much better than you...

I recently realized that I may or may not be an elitist brat....but that aside, my family is just so much better than other peoples'. I was thinking about my family, as I do a lot lately, and realized we are just awesome. Don't get me wrong I know a lot of families of my friends, really really well, and they are really awesome as well. But my family. My family is just amazing. And here's why:

*My favorite thing ever is staying up late playing games and laughing my a** off. We play all kinds of games, card games, skill games, wii, everything. We trade insults and just laugh all the time. I think my favorite game is when we have to adopt different personas. Take for example the game curses. Here we are sitting around making up stories about how we went to prison while Ben is a pirate, Ab has a french accent, Mom is irish talking about her lucky charms, Daddy is women school teacher with a high pitched voice, Megan has to talk without moving her teeth, and I'm Mr. T. Recipe for hilarity basically. I love it. And every time we are together that's what we do. We play games.

*Second thing, we people watch. Haha some might call it judging or making fun. I think those are strong terms...haha we people watch. It's fantastic. Best times of my life.

*We talk, about all kinds of things. We usually end up all intense into our random discussions. And as long as we're not at Olive Garden it's all good. Example. We're playing yahtzee one night in Pagosa Springs, and my mom makes the (mistake) decision to ask what the odds are that you roll a large straight on the first roll. Hahaha three engineers TAKE OFF on this subject and for the next hour argue about what the odds really are. Hahah about this time Abbey jumps in and says "mom, don't ever bring this up again." Ha it was fantastic!

*We love to vacation together. We just love to be together. The best thing is the world is knowing that the people you love want to be around you just as much as you want to be around them. The feeling of knowing that you're going to hang out with these people and have fun and just laugh together. I love it and wouldn't trade it for anything.

So there you go. That's why we're better than you. Haha there are some people I can name that I know are just as good as us but I don't want to be rude...

Oh Goodness!

So I had Father's and Mother's day covered, and my mom's birthday for that matter, I got them both presents and made sure it was all taken care of. But I was kind of busy and completely preoccupied and just stopped with the present. I was thinking a lot about leaving though at the time so I was thinking about those people and all the things my parents have given me, temporally and otherwise. So here's a little tribute beginning with my mom. One thing that continously amazes me about my mom is how she brings people into her circle. If I tell her about my friends she remembers them and cares about them immediately. I also love that she gave that to me. We definitely have different ways of showing it but I love people and I love doing all that I can for them. Let me tell you, this is not bragging on my part. Ha I hardly do enough, but I do try really hard and I know that that comes from my mother. She also loves to learn about any different thing she can and she also gave that to me. I love every subject under the sun and when I was homeschooled together we saw many amazing different things together. We got to go anywhere that was interesting and even though I liked some things more than others it was still awesome. Another thing that I love about my mom is her talent for all things sewing. She didn't pass her patience for this on to me but I definitely respect it (especially since she is making me new curtains!). My mommacita.



Now my Papa Bear. Most people that know both of us would agree that I have my father's personality. And not just because we share the same career. Well share would be extreme. Technically I'm just following doing the same thing he does; engineering... electrical... mems. Yup I followed it all. But other than that I have the same sarcasm that he has and the same quiet observance. Most times we just like to listen, but get us started on a topic we like and we'll never shut up. Which is how we have conversations that start with me asking how to make his vegetable beef soup in the pressure cooker and end two hours later with a rousing discussion on not only how the pressure cooker works and the atmospheric pressure it works at but also how it could be better. Add Ben in and it's awesome. Those conversations usually end with Abbey asking why my mother asked the odds of anything in yahtzee and begging her to never do it again. We have fun though. I was spending the night at a friend's house recently and her dad said you probably took a lot of things apart as a little kid didn't you. I thought about that and said, well no, I had a lot of questions but I'd just ask my dad how they worked and then he'd tell me. If he couldn't tell me, then I took it apart. Early on I realized that I wanted to be like that, be able to answer any question posed to me. Haha I'm sure some people are annoyed by that though. Overall I am probably most like my papa, and I love it.



When I have a problem, I also ask my dad about it, and he tells me what to do, and how to handle it professionally. Then my mom tells me the other side of the story and that I should be more compassionate, or louder and more assertive as the case may be. It's a wonderful balance and I wouldn't trade it at all. I love my parents so much and miss them a ton. Luckily I have a webcam so I get to see them all the time but at the same time that makes me miss them even more. But like I said earlier missing them gives me an amazing opportunity to appreciate them.

Nephew News

So at 6:22 this morning I became an aunt again with my new nephew Devin Thomas Wiltbank. Since Abbey is still in the hospital I thought that I would post some pictures of him just so the day is remembered. Abbey is doing well after the c-section and likes that she can be taken care of in the hospital, although I think she missed Kyndal. Here's just a few pictures of today when we took K in to see him. There are no pictures of Abbey and don't hold your breath for that one, she declined all media attention. Oh I guess everyone always wants the stats - he was 7 pounds even and 20 inches long with a fair amount of dark hair, but only on the back of his head. What a cutie, already different from K, he's mellow.

K is really good with him, she is always talking about mommie, daddy, at the hospital, babies Devin. She always includes him like she's already accepted him into the fam. It's pretty cute. In this pic she was being 'soft' with the baby which pretty much translates into petting him. But it's effective.







Most likely there will be more to come on this subject : ).

Rant of the Day

First I have to say that I now feel a little guilty ranting about what I was going to rant about because I just read Abbey's blog about the baby coming and realize there are maybe more important things than my pet peeves. Hard to accept trust me I know....but. Haha really though I'm excited to have a nephew and happy for Abbey that she'll be having him tomorrow. I hope this one isn't as stressful for her and Ben as the Kyndal was. We loved her but the first month was a little rough...haha I love my dramatic sister. She makes life so much more interesting than mine would be without her.

Oh random funny story about Kyndal before I get ranting... So about a month ago she was doing this thing where she just throws herself backwards onto the couch. Well I was laying there being all sick and tired and she just falls back flat on my nose. For a good ten seconds I was convinced that her head had firmly broken my nose. But lucky for me and the shape of my nose it hadn't happened I was just REALLY bruised. But nothing you could see. I realized today though that it's still bruised...ha that's what brought it to my mind, I accidentally hit myself in the nose and it hurt!

Okay now my rant. I don't like things like lol, u, r, rofl, any type of abbreviation really. This tends to make my text messages long and I'm sorry. But I just don't have it in me to accept this kind of thing. That being said....those ones I can tolerate when other people say them, I experience only a small twinge of annoyance that I can fairly easily just put aside. But the one word that I can look upon with no degree of allowance is any type of abbreviation of enough. I despise(!!!) nuff, 'nough, ANY thing associated with this abomination. I can handle e'nuff said or anything like that but you drop the e and I drop you like a fat kid drops gym. I think it makes you sound like a retard and I can't stand it. So there's my rant after my lovely familyness and how much I love my family.

Christmas Memories

In the spirit of Chrstimas I was thinking about all of my favorite memories from those times and when I was little. So here are just a few. I share them because sharing memories is like sharing yourself and you can see what inspires people and what has really made an impression on them because those are the things they remember the most.
So first one of my favorite things is that every Christmas morning I am the one who gets to seperate all the presents and decide where people sit. I also love it that no one has realized that I give myself the best seat every year. Haha. But one year I came out really early and just started seperating the presents not even thinking about it and I had them all seperated when mom came out. She was a little upset because she hadn't taken a picture of the tree yet and I had to put every single present back, take a picture and then seperate them again. So after that I have taken a picture of the tree FIRST before seperating everything.
Another favorite memory is being little, before we moved so before I was seven and was really into Santa. Abbey and I used to wake up really! early and Megan too, and to pass the time before mom and dad got up we would sort of just sift through what was under the tree and guess what we had all gotten. Then we would all just kind of lay on the living room floor and talk about what we'd do with our presents and stuff like this. I just realized that by that point in time Abbey and Megan were already older than me and were totally playing along the santa thing for my benefit and that's so cool! I don't have anyone little that I could pretend for so I never thought about it but it must have been so fun to see me get so excited.
Okie, last one I'll share, one of my favorite traditions is every Christmas day after all our presents are open Lauren, my best friend, and I call eachother and discuss what we got and what we're excited about. It's not too monumental but it's so nice to talk to her even though she's never with me and be excited about what she got and have all kinds of fun talking.
So there's just a couple of my fun memories for Christmas. If you want you should leave your own!

On to family memories..

I'm finally done with the semester!!! All the tests, all the homework, all the projects, and all the graduate applications! So what this means is that I have time to finally do something other than school. Like finally read again or spend time with my family. And family is the subject of this post. I was talking to a friend recently and ended up asking them what their favorite part of spending time with their family. And then I thought about my favorite part of being with my family and thought I would write it down and share everything.
So this is what I decided the absolute best time was when all my family is together. When we're all together as a family we usually play games and I love it. We all sit together and usually end up laughing hilariously, like when we played Curses and all had weird things going on. It's just amazing to listen to everyone talk and laugh and tease each other. Those are the memories that I love the most because when we're all together we end up just being really happy and our teasing personalities just make everything so much fun. And we're all just so dang smart that the games are fun that way too. Challenging and just being together. And we always manage to figure out new things about each other, like how my mom can pick out specific people only from their profession and dates they lived. Haha I'm pretty sure we were all floored when she got four of those in a row in Smart Ass.
I love spending time with my family whatever we're doing I just picked out games as the time when everything is good and everyone ends up amazingly happy and at random times I just think of those times and start laughing. Ha and then I look like the weirdo I am.

Like sister like sister

So instead of like mother like child, I'm like my sister. So Abbey has a little girl and because she's a mom she occasionally worries about things a little bit more than necessary. Maybe sometimes a lot. Maybe going off the deep end is a better term. Now don't get me wrong, I love my sister and have just recently acquired a new appreciation for this habit that she sometimes has. Last week I got a spider bite. I didn't notice when I got it I just looked down and it was really huge on my leg and really swollen and hurt pretty bad. Well that was unlike any spider bite I've ever had so me being the curious person I am was curious as to what kind of spider bit me. So I went on the internet, and word of caution, NEVER do this. I freaked myself out so bad that I honestly was scared that I was going to lose my leg. I was convinced I had been bitten by a brown recluse and could not sleep for an entire night. Why I got so freaked out, I don't even know. Maybe because school was super stressing me out so I was already a little crazy or I hadn't gotten enough sleep. I don't know, but I FLIPPED out. I maybe would have gone further in my madness but luckily I was talking to my friend at the time who made me stop looking at the computer. If not for that I might have gotten even worse. The entire time this was happening I was thinking to myself, Heidi, you have gone off the crazy train right now. This is not rational AT ALL, and yet here you are, still on the computer at 1 in the morning. What are you doing? But yet, I couldn't stop myself. It was crazy. But I finally went to sleep and woke up in the morning realizing that I was a complete idiot, I had not been bitten by a crazy spider, and was not going to die. But for that small amount of time...it was awful....and Heidi went crazy.

Heidi Just Got Owned

So this morning....I'm getting ready for school just talking to Abbey and K, occassionally giving K a yellow skittle, just hanging out. Then my niecy sees my teddy bear on my bed and she really wants it. So I strike a deal with her. "I'll give you my bear if you give me your milk....?" So she grabs her milk and reaches for my bear. "No I get the milk and then you have my bear." Okay so she hands the milk over I give her the bear and I pretend to drink the milk. She's awesome for 2.5 seconds, then she wants her milk back. "Nope, it's mine now." "Mine?" "No K, it's mine, unless you give me the bear." "No!!" Okay so I'm not giving up the milk. Then she starts jabbering and pointing to the bear and the milk. And somewhere in the jabbering I catch, bear tirsty.... "Oh okay, so the bear is thirsty?" A nod. Well we can't have that now can we. Ha so I hand over the milk and she gives some to the bear. And then she starts drinking the milk and runs out of the room. Priceless. And that was me getting owned by the next generation. Haha, then she comes back in and I'm drinking water and she points to and goes "water. Mine." Haha it was awesome. Funny kid. Maybe Abbey will tell the story about her trying to get the tupperware open...

You are what you eat....or whatever.

So here's a confession. And I don't make these very often, haha. Costco sells these four cheese tortellini, in huge packages right because it's Costco. Well it comes in two parts and I think there is 6 servings in one part. Great for the whole family I promise. Well I can eat an entire package all by myself. I love these dang things. I could eat them all day and I don't get full of them. So that's my fat girl confession haha I can eat tortellini ALL THE LIVELONG DAY.

I'm sitting here with my niece this morning, watching Oy Ory. It's fascinating. I love babysitting because I get to watch cartoons and movies with her all the time. I forgot how funny this movie was.. Watching Buzz Lightyear drive the car is genuinely awesome. And I love how the characters all personify the actors that are giving them voices. You can totally tell Tom Hanks' personality and Tim Allen is flippin hilarious. And there are good one liners but I can never really remember those afterward...haha I have a bad memory for things like this because I get distracted by everything else that is going on.

Speaking of one-liners, Saturday is the day! Brian Regan comes out with a new DVD and act and I can't wait to see it!! I was talking to my friend Kara about it yesterday and we submit that it cannot get any better than this! We were also talking about her class about the US Presidency and how the election is going to factor ito her teaching. I wish that I could be in her class so that I could talk about it with her and the kids in her class. This one is shaping up to be really interesting! Not going to get into it right now though...haha I don't have enough info for my comfort level. But I will by the time I go home for my dad's birthday haha so that I can talk to him about it.

Well I guess that's enough topics for one post...I have to go back to school now. YAY!! Haha

Lacking Information

So I can't think of anything else to write about...and the thing I want to write about I haven't thought through enough. It's all about my generation and what we are like. But so far the article I'm reading I've only read a third of it and it's upset so I need to finish it first and then formulate my thoughts. But wait with bated breath because it's going to be good! We're going to save the world but the way we're described is incredibly wrong from my point of view. But more on that when I finish.

One thought for today: Happy Birthday Abbey!! And K is cute when she says my name.

Here however is a different thought that is shorter and less cognitively intensive then the one I'm trying to sort out. So McCain doesn't know how to use 'a google'. How impressive is that. Not only does the man not know how to use google he doesn't even know what it is. I wonder how incredibly mixed up he would be if we threw the wikipedia concept at him. Now I don't think this will effect the man's ability to be a presidential candidate but still you have to admit that's incredibly weird if not pathetic. How does someone not know anything about it? But at least the man is doing things unscripted so you know he's an actual person as opposed to Obama who won't talk at all without scripting.