Sunday

I love this sweet old man and the message of this video.  Sometimes our "Sunday" feels far away, but it's coming.  And I can't wait :)

Happy 9 Month

Happy 9 month birthday Holly Hoo.  

I love thinking about what you would be like right now; crawling and starting to sign and say words.  Briz would probably be starting to get annoyed with you trying to steal her toys.  But I would be having a ton of fun with my two girls.  I wish I could see exactly what you would look like right now.  

I love this quote I read recently. In the last 7 months, I have learned that really I know so little.  Often, I realize that I am the child.  I often feel like my sweet daughter is taking care of me from afar.

"Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson -

What We're Up to

This is what has been going on in the lives of the Cottle (some things I've missed for 2012):

1. Nick and I have been enjoying living close to downtown by trying to go to as many plays and concerts that we can fit in:

West Side Story

Beauty and the Beast

Wicked

The Naked and Famous

Snow Patrol

 2.  I have started to once again hate my head: I have gotten quite a few migraines :( The only thing that works for me is Tylenol PM, trying to sleep, and an ice pack.  It can become quite a problem if we have an activity planned.  The picture above is me at the Naked and Famous concert where I was trying to keep my eyes opened.  I COULD not to save my life.

3.  Dealing with Brizzy being three.  Terrible two's my ass, it is for sure terrible three's.  She insists on wearing a dress every day and when she doesn't get to, she freaks out.  I have to pick my battles because she also wants to wear makeup every day.

 4.  I know I already mentioned Snow Patrol, but this concert was awesome!  But Nick and I are starting to realize how old we are.  These late night weekday concerts are killing us!

5.  Saw the avengers.  We ended up seeing it in 3d, and I actually enjoyed it (I normally am way too cheap to pay for 3d movies).   I am excited that there will be actually good movies in the theater this summer. Andrew Garfield as Spiderman?  And Christian Bale?  I have only have two words in response to that: Boo Yah.

6. We have been working our tails off trying to get our yard ready for summer.  We planted our vegetable garden and I even got a blueberry bush.  It has been sunny and hot and gorgeous for the last little while in Oregon and we are loving it.

7.  Work is nuts for both Nick and I.  Nick is getting ready for Epic Relay season and some stuff for the Olympics.  And my work for Romney's campaign seems to increase each week.  

8.  In the few spare moments I have, I have been trying to get my butt in gear to run in the Oregon Epic Relay.  I am getting nervous because I am definitely not up to par with my training, but now its the real countdown, so hopefully I can not die while trying to run 6 miles.  Yikes.  Wish me luck.  I need it.

9.  I had a wonderful mothers day.  Nick cleaned the house, made me german pancakes, bought me some treats and other presents, and I got to take a really long nap.  We also visited Holland's grave.  I feel very grateful for my family.

We jumped out of the sky

Yep.  We did.  There is somewhat of a backstory to this, mostly having to do with just how terrible of a wife I am . . . Two years ago Nick graduated from Willamette University with his MBA.  I was extremely proud of him, but also very nervous about the whole job situation.  When Nick graduated, I was trying to think of a graduation gift, and my favorite presents are one in which an activity is involved.  And I knew that it had to be more than something like a movie gift card (although I did think about this and then realized that I am extremely lame and cheap).  So I thought of dum dum dum, Sky diving!  I thought it would be an awesome gift.  But turns out sky diving costs a fair amount of money . . . which, we did not have.  So for my graduation present to Nick, I wrote him a card and told him that I would take him sky diving as his present, but that I wasn't going to do it until he got a job.  I am an awesome wife I know.
Now, two years later, thanks to Andrea Croskey's birthday and her adventurous ways, I finally delivered on my graduation gift to Nick (Please also note that I included myself on this gift since I am pretty selfish).   So last Saturday, we went sky diving.  Stuff has been pretty crazy, so I really didn't even think about the fact that I was jumping out of a plane until we walked into the office to sign the papers.  And then I got nervous.  But mostly I was nervous out of anticipation.  I just knew that I was going to pee my pants or else just completely freeze up, trying to push my body out of a plan 13,000 feet in the air.  I was scared, waiting for the nerves to come. 
After a few hours of signing like hundreds of waivers, mostly which warned me, "You might die;" and doing some intensive training, which included a five minute warning of, "Don't walk out to the plane by yourself" and that's all; I got on the plane with Nick, Julia, and a few other crazies.  The closer I got to it, the less scared I was.  I would think, knowing myself, that I would be fa-reaking out about the fact that we flew by a commercial airplane right as we reached the spot to jump.  But nope.  I sort of thought to myself, "Eh, what the hell."  I was the first to jump out of Nick and Julia and I.  And it was awesome.
It was nothing like I thought it would be.  Mostly what I experienced was crazy cold pressure on my face as I dropped 9,000 feet in the air.  It's not the typical roller coaster stomach dropping experience.  Just like you're getting blown through a really cold wind tunnel.  At 4,000 feet, the parachute popped up and it was easy sailing.  I got to "drive" the parachute a bit and I'm pretty sure my instructor was annoyed with me because I was trying to go in circles as fast as possible.  But honestly, I just kept thinking, wow, this is really peaceful.
Overall though, it was a rush.  I'm so glad I got Nick such a great graduation present two years ago. And truthfully, I am so proud of Nick for graduating, I love him so much and I am so glad we finally got to experience this together.

6 months

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost-

 There will never be enough tears or words to describe how much we miss our Holland.

Dance Class

Brizzy started a dance class last week. And even though we are starting to get very busy with me working more, I wouldn't trade the 40 minutes for the world. She is hilarious in it. She loves it. Actually, more than anything, she loves to dress up in anything girly, wear jewelry in public, and look at herself in the mirror . . . which are all things she gets to do when she goes to dance. She is not the most skilled dancer (sorry, that's most likely my fault), but she sure can stand on her toes like a pro! Oh and she also likes to mix things up a bit with some break dancing, marching, sliding on her stomach for no apparent reason (actually, I think she just does this when she gets tired).

Next up, a post about her sports class. We like to butch it up sometimes, to balance out her extreme girliness.

Things I want to drop kick

I feel like using my friend Mander's List of things she wants to punch is basically stealing, so I decided to alter my list slightly, yet still including the same message of things that irritate me/make me angry. I have thought of a lot of things today:

- People yelling out emphatically during a group workout (particularly when they're not even really working very hard themselves). Please shut up.

- Zumba in general. I don't get the craze.

- Brizzy when she tells me to not touch her because I am either a)sweaty or b)smell like peanut butter (she hates peanut butter). It's quite bizarre how often one or both of these things is the case.

- Myself, realizing I have created a monster in Briz, when she asks me on every single song that comes on the radio, "Mom, who is this?" or "Mom, what song is this?" And she will not let me off the hook unless I give her the name of the band and the title of the song. When in doubt, and I don't know, she just assumes its Naked and Famous because we've been listening to a lot of that lately.


- Taxes ( even though I didn't do them - thank you Nick :) )

- The GOP . . . and the Democratic Party. Both of them are driving me crazy.

- Pretty much all of the news stations (CNN, Foxnews, ABC, NBC, you name it). I watch them out of necessity to understand a bit of what is going on this world, and yet, I am angry while I am watching them because they are pretty ridiculous.

- Anyone who talks trash on Mitt :) Okay, not really (actually, yes, really) . . . that is unless you want to complain about car elevators. I consider that acceptable to complain about.

- Clocks. In general, I don't like them, because there is just not enough time in the day! They need to move slower.

- Really really demanding rich people. Yes, all of them.

- My computer for freaking out all of the time.

- Tennis shoes. I am ready for flip flops/sandals. There have been a few days where I have even just rebeled and worn them anyways, but my poor, freezing feet suffer the consequences.

- And lastly, college basketball, for already being over. I think I only watched like two BYU basketball games this year. And I tried to get myself jazzed for March Madness, but it never really happened (probably mostly because my brackets sucked).