Summer Getaway

So we recently stole away to California for a few days to visit with family and friends. Here are some pictures from our adventures.

We left early in the morning and drove to the other side of the valley before stopping for breakfast. We avoided all the rush hour traffic that way and started our trip off right - with pancakes at IHOP! I got some strawberry cheesecake pancakes, Dustin got some Cinnabun French toast, and Jason chose a chocolate chip funny face pancake. He sure was excited to eat it!
Then we drove into Orange County, and the boys did great on the car ride, even with a hour traffic delay on the I-10 due to a big rig accident. We enjoyed dinner with the Clarke family and then headed to the Haddocks (Dustin's cousins) where we would be staying for the week. The next morning, the Haddocks watched Evan for us while we took Jason to go see Cars 2. It wasn't as good as the other Pixar movies, but we still laughed and Jason loved it, which is all that really mattered. That evening, we went and enjoyed dinner with our friends the Liu's and the Neilsens. I forgot to get any pictures of that; I was too busy chatting and basking in the glow of friendship that never dims no matter how long its been since you've seen each other.

The next day we met up with Dustin's sister Holly Gooch and her family. We started at the OC Swapmeet where Dustin got a new hat, I got some black hair flowers, and Jason got yet another red toy car. Jason loved holding hands with his cousins Spencer and Isabelle and it was sweet to see them so happy to be together.

After the swapmeet, we traveled down to Balboa pier to spend some time on the beach. Big Mistake. seeing as how it was a Saturday afternoon, Fourth of July weekend, the beach was ridiculously crowded. So much so, that after 30 minutes of driving around looking for a parking spot (the Gooches found one after 15-20 minutes), Dustin finally dropped me off with boys and said he'd keep looking for one by himself. An hour and a half later, he finally found one. It was 25 minutes walking distance away, and the whole situation had left us all a little frustrated and put a damper on our beach excursion. But he did finally get to come join us. As first, Jason didn't want to step foot onto the beach because he got sand in his sandal. He hates having sand on him. yet he was the one asking to go visit the beach. But he eventually toughened up and even started playing in the sand with his cousin Gavin.

Evan just slept in his car seat most of the time. I couldn't believe how long he slept!

When Dustin finally was able to join us, he took Jason into the water. Jason was nervous about the waves and didn't want to stand in them, but he enjoyed Daddy holding him while the waves hit, and occasionally dipping him down into the water to get splashed.

Evan eventually woke up and we all enjoyed some time fun in the sun. Here are a few more picture from that afternoon.

Later that night, we enjoyed dinner and hanging out with our friends the Sepulvedas. Again, I was too busy visiting, I didn't get any pictures taken. Sunday morning, we visited our old ward to see lots of friends we used to go to church with. After church, we popped in for a surprise visit to the Flores family. Guillermina Flores used to watch Jason every day when I had to go back to work. They couldn't believe how big he was!

After the Flores family, we headed off to dinner with the Cox family, and were excited to see that the Neilsens were there to join us. Emily Cox, Noah Neilsen, and Jason had a lot of fun on the tire swing together.

The next day, we started celebrated our independence by visiting the Spectrum. We had fun riding the Ferris Wheel as a family (Evan did well sitting up on his own). We rode the train (Jason made sure to inform me he was riding in a "freight car") and the Neilsens even stopped by to ride the carousel with us, enjoy some ice cream and visit some shops. We sure had a blast that morning!

After the Spectrum, we went back to the Haddocks for a family Fourth shindig. I'm not sure which we enjoyed more, the hot dog bar with all the fix-ins, or the plethora of cousins and second cousins that seemed to be running around everywhere. We even got to see little Jameson Hemsath (Dustin's brother's little baby) and he is just the cutest little guy.

Here Holly and Belle get some quality Evan lovin'.

Kanan and brother Jameson pose next to their cousins Jason and Evan.

All the little cousins and second cousins together for a big photo. It was hard to squeeze them all into the same shot, but we did it, sort of.

The next morning, we packed up, went to Tustin where I got to teach my student Amanda in person (I usually just teach her piano over Skype), and then headed back to AZ. We stopped at Claim Jumper for dinner and made it back just as the giant haboob (dust storm) was hitting our area. We hit it just outside our neighborhood, so we're grateful we only had to drive in it for 5 minutes and didn't get caught on the freeways with zero visibility. Here's a video to show you just how massive the haboob was, and a picture taken inside our garage when we got home to show you just how dirty it made my car in 5 minutes!

All in all, it was a fun trip and we're glad we made it back safe. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Watch Evan Grow!

Evan is such a wonderful baby. He just turned 4 months old on Saturday and we can't believe how fast time is going by. He still sleeps through the night and now he is busy rolling over and learning to laugh. He will give a big cheeky smile to anyone who pays attention to him and he is an equal opportunity drooler. I put him on the scale today and he's a whopping 18.6 pounds! But we sure love our chunky monkey. Here are some photos to show you how he's grown over the last few months.

No more diapers for Ducky!

No More Diapers for Ducky is the name of a book that we chose to use for potty training. We did the 3 day method, and Jason got the hang of it after the first day. Granted, we had some issues with going #2, but after bribing him with a sticker chart, and earning a new Mater toy, we got that mastered as well.

These are a few pictures of our potty training adventure. I apologize for them being sideways. I've tried twice to reload them, but they keep loading horizontally instead of vertically. But hopefully you can see from the photos how excited he was to be using the big boy potty. And how cute he is when he tries to put his "big boy pants" (only he says "good boy pants") on all by himself.

So June 6th was his first day without diapers and he has never put a diaper on again since. He has also never wet the bed throughout this whole process. We are so proud of him, and he is so proud of himself. He still hollers out for the whole house, or the whole public restroom, to hear, "Mommy, I went pee-pee!" or "Daddy, I went poo-poo!" We need to work on getting him to tone down those declarations, but other wise, the process was smooth and for all intents and purposes, is complete.

This last picture is him putting his pajama shorts on, and then his underwear. He wore it like that for a good half hour, and I just thought his shirt was tucked into the underwear. I told him to go find his shorts so we could put them on as well, only to realize that he had them on under his underwear. What a silly boy!

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New Blog - Thrive with Hemsath

For those of you who haven't heard, I've started a new business. I am an independent consultant for Shelf Reliance, a company specializing in emergency preparedness items. They have some great shelving and food rotation systems, to help get your pantries and cupboards organized (You may have seen the Cansolidator in stores or friend's pantries, of the Harvest free standing shelves at certain Costcos). They sell other camping and emergency items like water purification, tents, solar charged items, etc. But my favorite thing they sell is their line of delicious, nutritious, long-term food storage items called THRIVE. I won't bore you with all the details, but let's just say that I have milk, meat, eggs, butter, sour cream, mozzarella, strawberries, mushrooms, spinach, all kinds of produce just sitting in my pantry. No more having to run to the store to buy those things if I run out, no more throwing away food that went bad. All of those items have no added preservatives, and are just add water. I use them in place of their fresh counterparts in almost any recipe, and because so many of them are freeze-dried, once you add water, they turn back into the original fresh item, and retain the same nutritional value as their fresh counterparts. And should an emergency arise, I have "food insurance" to take care of my family with, and we're not just talking rice and beans. So that's exciting for me, and I want to share that excitement with everyone else.

People who are interested in learning more have a few options:

1 - Host a party. For friends and family who live locally, if you provide the house and the guests, I'll bring the food, the presentation, etc and we can sample lots of the items so you can taste for yourself what I'm talking about. (they have great host benefits too that let you earn free and half-off products) If you really want to host a party and live further away, let me know. I'll ship you some samples and answer questions via skype. :-)

2- Visit my website: www.WhitneyHemsath.shelfreliance.com. You can view products here, and place orders directly, but if you want to get the lowest price possible, e-mail me your order and I"ll get you the party pricing.

3- E-mail with any questions - ThriveWithHemsath@gmail.com.

4 - Visit my new blog to read reviews on certain products, see pictures of different recipes using food storage items as well as Dustin's review of the recipe, etc. I would appreciate any help I can get sharing the blog information with others, so please feel free to invite your friends, family and neighbors to check it out. It is: http://ThriveWithHemsath.blogspot.com.

This new business endeavor has been dominating my life lately, but I promise to post new pictures soon. Between the bed bug fiasco, Jason's potty training, family pictures, Evan really getting all smiley, there is a lot to post. So stay tuned, and again, thanks for any help I can get spreading the word about my new business.

What a blessing

On Sunday May 2nd, Evan Joseph Hemsath was blessed by his daddy in the Stone Creek Ward down here in San Tan Valley. It was a beautiful blessing, and a number of family members made the hour long drive to come share that moment with us. Considering the services started at 8am, that support is even more appreciated. After the blessing, Daddy held Evan up for everyone to see before returning to his seat, at which point Jason, quite loudly, declared, "That's my brother!" He continued to state that declaration over and over, with some possessive emphasis on the "my". Everyone was chuckling while I was trying to quite him down. He was, and is, a proud big brother.

After the church services, we had a small family luncheon for those who could stay. It was nice to spend time with family and we're grateful they were able to come support us. Katie even got Evan to smile FOR THE CAMERA! So that was another highlight. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

HAPPY EASTER!

Happy Easter everyone! Hope that first picture made you smile. I had fun with him doing those. This is the one where he is closest to smiling. I haven't been able to capture Evan smiling in a picture yet, but he is smiling more and more. Usually in little bursts. We'll do something to make him smile, and then we drop everything to milk as many smiles out fo him while he's in the smiling mood. I can't wait for him to masters those muscles to be able to smile more and more. And then I'll get all the photos I can stand.

Easter Sunday was good at our house. After our 8-11am church, we came home and well, the video explains what happened when we walked in:











Here's Evan in his Easter Sunday outfit. The tie is from a garage sale I went to a while back, but the shirt and overalls are actually the outfit that Dustin was blessed in when he was a baby. So almost 30 years ago. I like that it looks like Evan is loosening his tie after a long day's work.


After we came home, it was nap time for the boys and prep time for mom and dad. The ham went in the oven, other eggs were filled with candy, and then we went out in the yard to hide them. Our friends the Weidners were coming over to have dinner and some Easter fun with us. We had been growing out our grass extra long to make for a better hiding place. As we went out to hide our goodies in the TALL green thick lawn we've cultivated, we discovered we had been watering it too much, because there are mushrooms growing all over. So we will cut the grass and cut back on the watering now that the hunt is over. But the kdis had fun finding their eggs. Here are some pictures.

All in all, it was a great Easter. I even got the inspriation for an animated short film (2-3 minutes) that I think has a lot of potential to maybe get me noticed by Pixar someday. So I am working on that script, as well as being busy finally rewriting my old animated feature from college. It was a really good Easter for all of the reasons you've read and seen here. But even without those things, Easter would have been great because no matter what happens, I will live again. Death will never conquer my sweet boys. My family will be together in the eternities. Because my Savior suffered and died on the cross, and was gloriously resurrected three days later, I do not fear the whispered taunts and threats of this world and its mortality. I testify that the tomb was in fact empty, and that Sunday morning so many years ago, mankind was truly made free. I love my Savior, and I hope your Easter was filled with His love and peace, just as ours was. Happy Easter!