Hawaii November 2007

I seriously have the best job in the world!  I went with the Westons on vacation to Maui!  We stayed at a house RIGHT on the beach, and i got the whole third floor to myself! It was beautiful!  I could look out my window as i lay in bed and watch the surfers and waves, and fall asleep to the sound of the ocean. 

Views of our Backyard

Kevin, Hilke, Oliver, Nathan

Snorkeling

Nathan and I

At the beach!

Oliver (9 weeks) was quite the little trooper on this trip. The only time he was happy was when he was being held or in his swing/ bouncy seat. We left both of these essentials at home in California, so it took a lot of creative effort to keep him happy.  You can only do so much one handed!:) So our solution....a blow-up turtle we used when we went to the pool with Nathan. We would go out on the back patio for dinner at night(the air was so warm!) and lay him in the turtle and he'd fall asleep. We caught his first smile on camera too!

Ollie Sleeping on a beach chair-The warm air would make him stop crying and put him to sleep so he slept outside a lot:)

At night when Kevin and Hilke would go out, I would pace the house with Ollie trying to get him to fall asleep.  After at least an hour of walking and bouncing, i would finally succeed.  If you put him down, however, he would immediately wake up crying.  This picture shows my solution for not being able to put him down. And this is how Hilke and Kevin always came home to find me.  Harry Potter, Baby and pacifier. 

More of me and my Nathan:)

Manhattan Beach February 2009

It's hard to believe these pictures were taken in February!  I left Rexburg at an unbearable -20 degrees and flew into LA where it was 80!  

As anyone who knows me is well aware  (I can't help but talk about them all the time:) I nannied for the most amazing family September 2007-April 2008.   Not only are their boys the cutest on the planet, 

but the family became like another family of my own. Their mom, Hilke, and I are now more like sisters than anything else.  I come to her for all kinds of advice and laugh more around her than you'd think possible. We get into these giggling fits over who knows what, and Kevin(the dad) just sits there and rolls his eyes, I'm sure wondering why he ever hired me in the first place. Poor guy, his boys are too little to take his side, so he just has to put up with Hilke and I.  He gets his revenge by being like the older brother  I never had and teasing me about anything and everything.  See what I mean they're like family?! 

In fact, I just missed them all too much ! This last February they flew me out for a week (in the middle of the semester!) to help out while Kevin was in England.  Hilke and I had so much fun playing with the boys.  Oh and did i mention, they are renting a house in Manhattan Beach (LA area) for the year, so we literally had a house on the beach!  Every morning Hilke and I played "tag-team" and would take turns taking a morning run along the beach.  Then we'd take the boys out for a full day of fun (minus naps of course:) 

There was a playground on the beach that they loved, countless parks, dolphins to watch in the water (yes you could really see them!), an aquarium at the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier, and the cutest little ice cream shop.  The first day I found it, I took the boys in and let Nathan pick out a "lolly".  He was obsessed.  Notice how in almost every picture he is holding it. Multiple tantrums were produced due to the fact that he didn't want to sleep without it.  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a lollypop? Haha! He learned to do everything one handed so he didn't have to let go of it! 

One of my favorite memories was feeding the seagulls!  There were hundreds!