Europe 2013: Turkey

Fetiye, Turkey. We had PERFECT weather, it was beautifully sunny every day and not too hot. The first full day after getting settled, we had we rented a yacht for the day. It came with a captain and a cook (his wife) who made us a tasty Turkish lunch on the boat. The captain took us to several spots to get out and swim and snorkel. It was so gorgeous and the water was so clear!

Fishing off the back of the yacht with Pop.

These rafts might look dorky but they were the perfect thing to have!

Check out Taft being the bravest he's ever been!





So most people who know me know that I have a somewhat over-the-top fear of fish, sharks, and other sea creatures that could possibly touch and/or eat me. However, after my 4 year old was able to jump off the boat, we figured I should probably give it a go. Bear with me, it takes a while (because a GIANT school of fish suddenly swarm the spot where I'm about to jump)

Party time

Taft was really into snorkeling. Luke... takes after me. 

I really love this.

Taft telling Grammie a story I'm sure.

Not a bad life!

Taft busting a move to "Blurred Lines"

Kayakoy. This town was abandoned in 1923 after the Greek people who were living here were kicked out. 

Ready to find some fish. This was another day when we joined up with a tour yacht, with several other people. this was a lot of fun too but we all agreed the private boat was the best.

Handsome Herways

The kids. 

We spent our days on the boats, at the pool, and one day at a beach that had the most beautiful view. I am SO mad I don't have a picture of it.

Unfortunately while we were here is when my all-day sickness really started to kick in. I didn't cook or help with a single meal. In fact, when dinner was being prepared I would have to hide out in my room with the door shut avoiding the smell.

Despite feeling pretty yucky, we had such a great time. I know where Seth gets his wonderful trip planning skills from. Anita is a pro at finding great places to stay and really researching if the destination is worth it. Tom is the tour guide who's done all the reading and can just tell you about everything! Seth loved spending quality time with his parents and getting to chat it up all day long. Taft and Luke loved getting ice cream every single night after dinner. In fact, they still expect "zert" after every meal now. I loved relaxing on the boat and "accidentally" falling asleep several times.

Europe 2013: London

Tom and Anita were nice enough to offer to watch our kids while we spent 2 days and a night in London. Seth and I had been to London once before in 2007, but really only spent one day in London and our second day visiting Stonehenge. 

It's amazing how much quicker you can move and how much more you can see when you don't have little ones in tow!

Day 1: We got in early in the morning and luckily were able to leave our bags at our hotel. I love when hotels let you do that. London hotels are SO expensive! We spent a significant amount on our room and even though we read reviews, we were a little surprised to see how teeny tiny our room was and found out we had to share a shower and toilet with like 6 other rooms. Yuck. At least it was clean. And the breakfast was pretty good. Anyway, on to the fun stuff: 

We visited the British Museum where we saw Cleopatra's sarcophagus! We also saw the Lindow Man, which was a man found in a bog in the UK in 1984, but they figure he died between 2 BC and AD 119. His body still had skin, hair, and organs! We also went to the Tate Modern Museum and St. Paul's Cathedral. A friend of mine strongly recommended the Tower of London tour and I am so glad we did it! It was really cool. We stopped to try the famous NYC Shake Shack in Covent Garden because we had heard such great things. We were both disappointed and we really like burgers! Seth thinks there is something in London's air that makes things taste bad. We'll have to give it another shot if we ever make it to NYC again. We topped of the night with a showing of The Phantom of the Opera. It was really good, but we were both exhausted and had to watch parts of it with only one eye open so the other eye could rest. 

I've said it a million times before and I say it every time we travel. He's the best trip planner. 

Oldest Royal Palace in the UK. (Pretty sure that's what they said)

Day 2: We rented bikes. It so much fun seeing a city by biking through it. We visited Hyde Park, Victoria and Albert Museum (this was a lot of furniture and fashion design. I could have stayed much longer...Seth not so much), Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, The Natural History Musesum, and the Changing of the Guard. We caught an evening train back to Brussels.  Did I mention all the museums we went to were free? London knows what's up!

Underwhelming. Mainly because we got there too late for a good view. 

This place had the COOLEST dinosaur exhibit. The boys would have either loved it or been totally freaked out. They had a robotic t-rex that I'm not sure was actually life size but it was pretty huge. I also loved the architecture in this building. I kept asking Seth, "what do you think this building used to be for?!" He figured it was always a museum and he was right. 

Recently

Because of our trip to Belgium, Taft missed the first month of school. It's nice that he's not in elementary school yet and we can do that sort of thing. If you can't tell, he was pretty pumped to start school. He loves, loves school. I debated whether or not to send him this year. I felt like it was kind of a lot of money just to play and I figured we could put that money to more recreational activities. However, I am really glad he is going. He loves it. His teacher is awesome. She does a ton of creative projects, sends "homework" home which Taft thinks is the coolest, and puts a lot of thought into the day as opposed to last year which seemed like just a 3 hour play date. 

After we dropped Taft off at school we hit the beach. Luke's double fists in the air say it all. HOOOOME!!

Taft and Luke recently saw a Ghostbuster cartoon and Seth has gotten them singing the theme song a lot. I thought it would be fun to have them be Ghostbuster characters for Halloween. It was a somewhat last minute decision but it turned out pretty good. Best part: I only spent $4 between the costumes!!

Taft's Proton pack. I had fun making this and felt like a pulled a "Kathleen" on this project. My mom was always coming through on projects for us as kids.

Just because I could eat him. 

Taft had his first season of soccer this year. It started out a little rough. He was not happy that he wasn't the fastest on the team. We had lots of talks about good sportsmanship and he's been doing great. He doesn't really have "the eye of the tiger" as my dad would say, but he has fun. A little too much fun. As in Taft's every day life, he likes to chat it up on the field. It distracts his teammates and opponents. Last Saturday's game involved yelling from several parents on the sidelines: "Taft and James! STOP. TALKING!" It's kind of hilarious.  As you'll see in the video, Taft doesn't have a sense of urgency for the game.

Last but not least, Taft had his first primary program last Sunday. I didn't think it was approved to film in the chapel so I took some video before church began of Taft saying his part. And then Luke trying to say Taft's part.

Summer Highlights

These are just random pictures from summer and a lot of repeats from my Instagram. 

Some of our fave friends, Ryan and Becca Christensen, moved about an hour north of us several months ago. We went up a couple of times during the summer and took advantage of their neighborhood pool. 

At a birthday party at the park this summer Taft took it upon himself to move all the trash cans to one location and lined them up in a pattern. Guess he thought the party was lame.

La Jolla  " Children's Pool".  Note Luke's Flinstone feet.

My mom had work in LA for a couple of days, so she drove down to spend her Sunday with us. 

A visit to Dad at work. Aren't they all so handsome?

4th of July Parade on Orange Ave. Our ward reserves a spot for the parade and usually do a breakfast. Unfortunately the last 2 years have been hamburgers and hot dogs at 9 a.m. It's the worst. 

Colie and Jed spent the 4th with us. We loved having them!

The best babysitters/kid entertainers of all time.

A lot of our summer was spent here because, duh.

The Hayes family came from LA to watch fireworks over the bay. Our boys have a great time together.

Pre-bedtime stroll.

Taft took tennis lessons this summer. It was adorable.

While Lukie patiently waits to get bigger to try new things too.

Celebrated Seth's 34th birthday. I don't remember what we did at all, but I most likely made his fave, Tres Leches. 

Oh yeah, I did make that cake and we took it to the Sunday concert in the park to share with friends.

Cabrillo National Monument "Huggy Hug"

Took Taft to buy running shoes and he did a great job testing them out and stretching in them.

Luke had his first real cleaning this summer and I was shocked, SHOCKED, that he was cool with it. Taft had his first set of x-rays done and no cavities! 

Our Disneyland passes were valid again at the very end of summer. Just in time to meet up while our  friends, the VandenAkkers (used to live in Coronado but live in Utah again) were there for their last summer hurrah.

These dudes like mustaches.

Soon to be Family of Five!

I have a list of blog topics I'm needing to do, but we'll just take it one and time. I think I'll put off the Europe one for a while because that's too overwhelming right now.

Most exciting news of late: Baby Herway Numero Tres is on his/her way! We are all very excited, but I think Taft might be the most excited of all. He tells people everywhere we go that his mom has a baby in her tummy. Taft knew something was up before we told him I was pregnant. On our the flight to Brussels he drew this picture on the iPad, at this time I was only 6-7 weeks pregnant:

I saw it and asked, "Is that a clown?" I didn't really notice the details of the drawing. He said, "No, it's a picture of you with a baby in your tummy." I got feeling really, really sick around the 3rd week of our time in Belgium. I was missing out on a ton of stuff, we skipped our trip to Switzerland, I slept for 15 hours straight one day/night, Seth and Anita did EVERYTHING for our kids from the time they woke up til the time they went to bed, and I was completely useless. Taft started catching on and asked why I was missing everything. I told him my tummy had been hurting a lot. He responded with a smile and  asked hopefully, "Is it because there is a baby in there?" He knew nothing about morning sickness or that mom's feel sick when they are pregnant. Seth and I looked at each other and Seth said, "Well, would you think that was cool?" Then I told him there was indeed a baby in my tummy. He responded with a slap to his forehead and said, "Are you kidding me?!" He's been pretty pumped ever since. 

Taft has been concerned about the baby's well being since we told him. Some of his questions/statements have been: 

"Will the baby be warm in the winter?" (Inside my belly)

"Will the baby be warm on our bike ride?"

"When the baby comes I will give her a pink gun or a pink car."

"How will the baby get home from the hospital?"

"Who will watch us when you go to the hospital?"

"Don't worry Mom, I'll hold your hand when you go to the hospital. Just don't squeeze too tight."

"What if the baby can't walk? I guess we can just carry her." (He's pretty certain the baby is a girl)

The boys came to my first appointment. I thought we'd just hear the heartbeat, but the appointment was a tad more invasive than I was expecting. It took some strategic placement of the boys to avoid traumatizing them for life, but it was really cool to get to see images of the baby already. Taft thought it was especially cool.

Thankfully, I am starting to feel better and have a desire to cook again. It was pretty rough for a while. Seth had frozen pot stickers for dinner more times in a row than I'd like to admit. Although it was a major bummer to be so sick during our trip to Belgium, it was a blessing to have Seth around during the worst of it. Anita and Tom too! I really don't know what I would have done if we had been at home and Seth was back at work. I probably would have seriously considered flying my mom or a sister out to help me. It was awful.

We find out whether we have a baby brother or sister the day before Thanksgiving. Can't wait!

Bluth Togetherness 2013

The ever growing Bluth family. First entire family shot in quite a while. This was the first we have all been together since Pete and Carissa's wedding over two years ago. We were together for Lanx's wedding in December but Seth wasn't able to be there.

My parents rented a house in Coronado for week, the same house that Seth's parents rent out when they come to visit with other family members. It sleeps somewhere around 12 people, so we stayed the week too even though we live just minutes away. It's fun to stay up with everyone after the kids go to bed. 

It was a pretty chill week, but still went by very fast. We hung out at the beach, played tennis, checked out the tide pools at Sunset Cliffs, paddleboarding races in Mission Bay, rented jet-skis in Mission Bay, celebrated my dad's birthday with the most enormous breakfast ever at Hash House followed by a Padres Game that night.  

Paddleboarding in Mission Bay. Of course, the only clouds in all of San Diego this day were stuck right over the bay. 

Paddle races. This was hilarious. Right after this shot Tates turns the wrong way and runs over snorkelers. We were all laughing so hard back on shore.  

Myles and Tay Tay. Aren't they cute? 

Taft loved the jetskiing. His response when we started going fast, "YEAH BABY!" 

Jayda is a Trooper, with a capital T. She played with these boys non-stop. She the sweetest. 

I think their record was somewhere around 400?

Buzzy loved the beach. 

The pools weren't as good as some of the other times we've brought cousins. It took us a while but we did end up finding a few sea creatures. 

Coach Lanx and Taft

Jayda is a natural at tennis! 

Concert in the Park. One of the best bands of the year came just for my family! 

Cuzzie's wrestling match.

Grandpa, Lukie, and Kazoo.

Giant Pete, Little Pete

Fudgsicles at  10 am? Sounds about right. 

We all just love this cute boy!

Breakfast at the Hash House for the Old Man. The portions are completely ridiculous. Pancakes 3x the size of your head. I'm not a huge breakfast person, but I had the best French Toast of my life. 

Padres Game!

And that's about it for this marathon of pictures. It was a really great week spent with family. We ate so so well. Travis is a master chef. One Lanx and Trav's night they served smoked pulled pork and brisket (that he smoked at home with his own smoker), his own BBQ sauce, and a bunch of other delicious food. Everyone's dinner was bomb. I think we also pounded 3 costco sized bags of Peanut M&Ms and 2 or 3 giant bags of Twizzlers and about 1,456 cans of Diet Coke. Tates described the Bluth soda addiction like this: "If Diet Coke were beer, we'd all be wasted ALL of the time." Good thing it's not and is just slowly poisoning us! ;) 

Thanks Mom and Dad for such a fun week. You spoiled us as usual!