Birthday Boy

I know this is the most cliche' thing a wife can do for a husband on his birthday, so sue me! Travis is turning 34 (old) today and here are 34 facts about this great man.

1) He was born clear on the other side of this world in the Philippines.

2) He has lived in the Philippines, New York, Greece, New Mexico, Texas, Hawaii, Utah, Argentina, Kansas and Missouri (air force brat).

3) He is fluent in Spanish

4) He really likes pizza and could probably eat it everyday, especially if it had bacon on it

5) If he likes something, he doesn't ever change. IE: he would wear the same outfit every day, orders the same food at restaurants, etc

6) He suffers from motion sickness. Always has to drive because of it

7) He had over 200 credits at BYU... for those of you who don't understand, it usually takes about 120ish to graduate. Its probably a good thing though, because if he would have finished college in the standard 4 years, he would have been long gone, and we would have never met

8) Travis listens to the same music as my dad. He loves Neil Diamond, The Doobey brothers, the Temptations, and the Beejees.

9) He is left handed

10) He loves BYU sports, but mostly football, probably more than he loves pizza. He hates when they lose.

11) He is known for being a mooch. If there is good food in your house, he will most likely find a way in to eat it.

12) He tried really hard for me

13) For every softball game I had at BYU, he would leave me a rose on my car. Even when we were on the road, he would find out how many games we were playing and would leave me that amount before I left

14) He had his heart broken in San Diego by me. It still makes me feel sad to think about it

15) He pretended he was majoring in my major at BYU so he could do a group internship with me in St. George for two weekends in a row.

16) He loves his Mom

17) He loves his nephews and nieces. Before we were married he would take me to family parties and then ignore me the whole time while he wrestled with all of them

18) He wants to see the world

19) He loves his daughters

20) He fully is aware that we may have all girls, but still wants to have a million kids. If it were up to him, we would have 5 right now

21) He is NOT a chocolate fan

22) He loves FOX news

23) He is good looking without trying

24) He likes to snuggle more than I do

25) He is a sucker for all movies with super heroes, fantasy and action

26) He loves soccer and is a real ball hog. But he has really good moves as well, so I guess its OK

27) He wouldn't let me pick out my engagement ring. He didn't even want me to tell him what I liked. I love my ring

28) He loves to wait for the last minute in most aspects of his life, but in the end, always pulls it off

29) He got addicted to Mt. Dew during medical school

30) He never says no when anyone asks him to do anything. That includes the fun things but also the not so fun things

31) He is a great doctor who will always do the right thing

32) He is an amazing singer, guitar player but his pure talent is the piano

33) He can fall asleep in any location, position and time of day

34) He is the best husband, friend and father I could ask for and I'm sorry I don't tell you more!

Happy Birthday babe! Hope you are having a perfect day.

Love,

Your girls

Is this something you document?

Babies first barf.

Oh yeah and she also learned how to crawl about 2 weeks ago...

Oh yeah and she has two teeth now...

Oh yeah and she can clap.

Stop growing so fast!

Close Call

My sister was at the Reno air races this last week with her company. If you haven't been watching the news, a plane crashed into the crowd and killed 9 people.

Obviously my sister is OK. Her box was about 20 feet from where the plane crashed. Luckily TC was out looking for souvenirs at the time the plane crashed. Luckily no one in her box was killed. She said that most people in her company were out wandering as she was because it was the last race of the day and they needed to stretch out their legs. Only 5 out of 20 people were actually in her box. Those 5 people were injured but no one was killed. When TC saw the plane hit, she immediately ran back to her box to search for her friends. She saw a lot of scary things that I won't share on this blog. She noticed the wheel of the plane in the box where she was sitting. It was shocking to hear about.

I know it is cliche to say this, but moments like that make you realize how fragile life really is. My sister could have been taken from us just like that. I was sick and heartbroken all weekend just thinking about this.

Tice, I hope you know how much I love you. You have been the best big sis! I know sometimes I get frustrated because I can't ever get a hold of you, but I will stop cursing your voice mail. I cherish your friendship and I know that you will always take care of me and have my back. I hope you know that I will be the same for you.

Here are some of the pictures recorded from the crash

Right before it hit

When the plane hit the ground

If you look closely, you can see my sister on the right. She is wearing a white shirt and jean shorts with a black purse around her. She said at that moment she was searching for people in her group to see if they were alive or not.

Those red coolers are where she was sitting earlier

This was the pilot, Jimmy Leeward. He was a very experienced pilot. People are speculating that the plane had a major malfunction and that this pilot did everything in his power to avoid the crowd. We are grateful for him.

I know I was thousands of miles away, but this event really affected me. I want to be a better person and I want to be able to express to my loved ones how much I really do love them.

I'm so glad you are OK sister.

A weekend of labor

Ya know, as in Labor weekend fun.

I personally never remember Labor Day. In the past, Travis has usually had to study or work, so I just discounted it as a holiday altogether. So I was taken back when last week, Travis told me he had the whole entire Labor day off and only had to work 4 hours on that Saturday.

What to do... what to do...

We loved Lagoon so much when we were in Utah, so we decided to go to Kansas City's local amusement park, "World's of Fun." And folks, that is exactly what it was...

minus the 30 minutes of torrential rain fall oh and that ten minutes of not knowing where Travis was wasn't a world of fun either, but at least it wasn't Avery this time!

Oh and we are selfish people, we pawned Brooklyn off on our friends so that we both could ride the rides with Avery. Sorry sweet girl.

They had the coolest ball house. Thousands of sponge balls in a room with sponge ball guns. If you ever are mad at your husband, go to that room. You won't be mad for long.

We went for about 5 hours, and that was a perfect amount of time. I will say, Lagoon had better rides for the kids, heck I enjoyed the kiddy rides at Lagoon. The rides at WOF for the kids were a little too young for our adventurous two year old. I hope that didn't come off sounding snobby. We just like scrambling our brain cells as much as possible in the Charles household.

Just ask Avery...

Before looking at these pics, just remember torrential rain fall victims...

Her first Ferris Wheel ride

We decided to be even more selfish so we took Avery home to a babysitter and went back for the nighttime rides.

We found those two weirdos behind us, on the side of the road and thought they could use a night out as well.

We went on 5 roller coasters and couldn't handle it anymore.

And yes, they did scramble our brains.

It was so much fun. I laughed like a little kid the whole entire time.

The highlight of the night was when we got off the Mamba (a freakishly tall roller coaster) we were walking towards the exit when Sarah pointed at a large man walking in front of us. She directed our attention towards his buttocks area. On his nicely clean white shorts there was a skid mark. I tell you, it really was a scary roller coaster. And man who greased himself, sorry I laughed at you, but thank you for helping me get one of the best ab workouts from laughing so hard. I won't forget you.

That adventure was Saturday.

On Sunday, we actually got to stay up late :) We had the Romney's and the Stores over for an intense couple of games of Dominion. The girls dominated... minus me I guess, cause I never pulled out a W. Good job Jen and Chelsea.

On Labor Day we went biking to the nicest trails down south in Overland Park.

It made me miss living in that place. Lots of running memories on those trails.

We went with her

And him

Oh and of course these two as well

We biked for awhile, and then found a fun park and had a picnic.

I laid on a slide and soaked in the sun. It was the most perfect weather.

Then we packed it up and rode back to the car.

These two were spent.

That evening we finished the glorious weekend with a neighborhood BBQ and of course wrapped up the night watching the Bachelor Pad.

What a great weekend.

Preschool

Avery is officially a preschooler.

A couple of people in the neighborhood decided to throw together a little neighborhood preschool. Its every Thursday for 2 hours. We teach a lesson, sing songs, do crafts, have snacks, do show and tell, etc. My hope is that she will learn to sit still and listen! Amen.

It kind of sounds like Avery is going to be the kid that spouts off everything that comes to her mind. They were learning about emotions on their first day and Brandi showed a picture of a baby who was crying and asked the kids why they thought he was crying. Avery looked at the picture and said, "well, he is a baby, he probably just wants some booby juice." Sounds like we need to edit the things we say around home.

Here are all of her class mates

Jude Taylor, Nathan Hastings, Amelia McCool
On a side note, we were leaving after dropping Avery off and saw this bad boy on the porch.

Sick, I have the chills.

Hair cut

She finally let me do it. Well, I didn't actually cut it, Jen did. And I love it!

I had to convince her that she was getting Snow White's hair do.

Whatever works.

I love it and it really is tempting me to cut my hair. But I will be strong!