The Toilet

So, 2 days ago we had a little problem with one of the toilets here in my in-laws house. We didn't know it was clogged up until my poor little sister in-law got the flu and threw up all in it. When she tried to flush it, it wouldn't flush and got really backed up. After much plunging by my mother-in law and brother in law (Nate), the toilet still wouldn't give and remained clogged for the rest of the night. We meant to put up a sign on the door or the toilet warning those that entered to not use the it, but I guess we forgot because the next morning someone used it (with a #2) and found that the toilet was about to over flow when flushing it! Yikes!! So Carla called her dad (who is such a great handy-man) yesterday to come help us women out! Because both of our husbands are out of town, we had no one but Grandpa Chapman to come do our dirty work and boy are we grateful for him!

So after 45 min of plunging it with a heavy duty plunger, he was a bit baffled as to what could be clogging it up. So he sent Carla to Home Depot to buy a toilet auger- surely that would do the trick, right?? Wrong. After about 15 min of using that without luck, Grandpa Chapman took the toilet completely apart, unbolted it from the floor and continued using the toilet auger to see what would pop out. After a little while, I was called into the bathroom to see what was clogging up our toilet and this is what I saw...




....a little ball that our innocent little Ethan had shoved down the toilet hole! I have to admit that we were all laughing pretty hard! I then remembered that the day before (when the toilet became clogged) I was looking for Ethan and found him playing in the bathroom toilet with his arms soaked up to his shoulders- yes I know I should watch my kid more carefully sometimes. But I didn't think at the time that he had shoved a ball down the toilet!! So anyways, after they found the ball, Grandpa put the toilet back together, bolted it to the ground again and we were all expecting the toilet to work now. Problem solved, right?? Nope, not yet! We still couldn't flush the toilet. So Grandpa took the auger to it again, but still no luck. He then proceeded to take the toilet apart again and after a few minutes we found this...

Yep! We found ball #2!

I was dying! I still can't believe that he shoved two balls down the toilet and that was the source of all that trouble they went through! We guess he just liked seeing the balls disappear down the hole, that's fun right?! I felt so bad for Grandpa Chapman who spent 2 plus hours over here doing nasty, dirty work and left with the bottom half of his pants soaked with who knows what all because of my little Ethan's curiosity, but I guess he wouldn't be a little boy if he didn't shove something into the toilet at some point in his life! Anyways, I thought that that story was too good to not blog about so I hope y'all enjoyed! Hopefully I won't find Ethan playing in the bathroom by himself any time soon. If so, we will be sure to check the toilets for missing objects!

As of Lately

It's been awhile since I've posted and because Ethan is busy taking a nice, long nap, I figured I'd catch up with a few posts. Right now Ethan and I are staying at my in-laws house in sunny Mesa, AZ while Justin is in Turkey and Greece for the next week and a half. I'm so glad that Justin is willing to drive me and Ethan all the way up to AZ to stay for the long weeks he is gone instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves in Mexico while he is half-way around the world! He has been SUPER busy with work and we haven't got to see much of him lately, so we will be glad when he comes home and stays home for a few weeks or so after this trip. He actually got kind of a promotion since the company just recently put him in charge of Turkey and Greece. So now he has all of Latin America and those two countries also. We are pretty excited. He is hoping to one day be in charge of ALL international sales. Whew. Sounds to me like a TON of work and travel, but we are very blessed for Justin to have such a good job. He is getting lots of work experience very quickly which will make for a great application to an MBA school in the future. Here are some photos as of lately..

Justin has become a fan of the Rubik's Cube and was sitting on the couch messing around with it, when Ethan saw what his daddy was doing and wanted to do the same thing. He ran into his room, found the small Rubiks cube Justin has, ran back out to the living room and sat right by daddy to do the cube with him. How cute is this....


The funny part was that Ethan really had quite the serious expression and a look of concentration on his face while he was turning and flipping the cube around. I guess this is serious business to boys...

Our youth had their Youth Conference this last weekend and Ethan had lots of willing teenagers to play with. Ethan is always a hit when we are around our youth. Ethan somehow found a huge orange and proceeded to think that it was a ball. He wouldn't let go of it for the life of him!

They young man on the right is Max, he is one of Justin's youth.

Ethan has his little pack & play crib here in Mesa that he sleeps in and is quickly out growing. I went in to check on him during one of his naps and found this....

Apparently he wanted to sleep with his head embedded into two metal bars instead of his comfy little mattress.

I thought it was so funny that he would do that! That's gotta be uncomfortable!!

We are happy and healthy and don't worry, no swine flu here! We are trying our best to not bring deadly diseases into this country :) I'll try to post more often while we are here in AZ.

Semana Santa

Semana Santa was a few weeks ago here in Mexico and we sure had fun celebrating with the Mexicans! Semana Santa (or Holy Week) is celebrated mostly by Latin American Catholics and it falls on the week of Easter. During this week hardly anyone works, the schools are out, and everyone goes on vacation for a week or two. Even though Justin had to work until Thursday, we still tried to make a vacation out of the time we had. Eduardo (Justin's "boss" in Mexico), Gladyss and Anette invited us to stay at their families house in Altata (the nearest beach to Culiacan). Even though there was no AC or running water, we had a fun time hanging out with them.

Here I am helping to make ceviche for lunch , which is not my most favorite thing to eat. Ceviche is raw seafood mixed with fresh veggies and onions. I'm not a seafood fan.

Anette and Ethan had fun playing in the swimming pool together and swinging on the hammock. Check out Ethan's super full diaper. Swim diapers are just way too expensive!


Ethan loved following the puppy around and letting it lick his hand....


The next day we went with Israel, Chuyita and our favorite little Melanie ( a family from our ward), to Mazatlan. They invited us to go down there for the day and we had a blast with them! Here is Justin and Ethan out on one of the docks...

Melanie was a little scared of the waves but Ethan wanted to run in them at full speed!

We took a boat for like $2 bucks each to Isla de Piedra for the afternoon and the boat ride was actually a little scary. The waves were pretty big and we were crashing right into them head on. I was holding onto Ethan for dear life and was happy once we reached land. The Isla was super packed and we were the only gringos there, so our little family stuck out pretty bad (we are pretty used to it though:) Here we are on the boat ride...

And here are the two little trouble makers with mouth fulls of watermelon. These two sure love playing together!


It was so nice get away and spend time with friends. We are so grateful for our sweet friends down in Mexico for always inviting us to do things with them. It makes our stay there much easier!

An Overdue Update on Ethan!

Our little boy is getting so big! He just turned 21 months old and is growing like a weed! If you are looking for statistics, I have no idea what percentile he is in (they dont do that here in Mexico), but I do know that all of his 18 month old pants are too short and he weighs somewhere around 23 pounds. So basically he is tall, skinny, happy and healthy. Here are some fun facts about Ethan...

-He eats like an adult! I'm completely serious when I say that he eats more than I do in a day! Here is an example... breakfast: a whole bowl of cereal, milk, a whole banana, some cantaloupe. Lunch: bean burrito with cheese, cucumbers, a whole bowl of fruit. Snack: Apple, or sandwich. Dinner: 2 scrambled eggs, veggies, another bowl of fruit. He always leaves a clean plate as well. Is it just me or is that a TON of food for a 1 year old??? I would worry but he is still super skinny and runs around like a mad man all day long. Pretty sure he burns off the calories!

- Speaking of burning off the calories, Ethan never walks anywhere, he runs! He is either running or hopping anywhere he goes. He loves to jump off the couches by counting to 3 and you can always find him jumping off things at the playground and hopping over cracks in the ground. This kid has got some endurance. Is this why I am dead tired by 9:00pm?? :)

Picture of Ethan doing what he does best.. jumping off the couches


- His language skills have taken off in these last few months! I couldn't even tell you all the words he says but it's so fun to hear him repeat everything we say. One thing he just started doing is saying "Mommy!" really excitedly before he wants to tell me something. I absolutely love this and will soak it up while it lasts!

- He is doing so much better playing with other kids and now understands that hitting and pushing other kids is not funny and nor do the other kids think it's funny. We have a neighbor who has a little boy who just turned one and is in the hitting stage. When Ethan gets hit by him, he always turns to look at me with a face that seems to be saying "Mom, did you see what that kid just did?! What are you going to do about it? Isn't he going to get a timeout?!" It's pretty funny..

-Ethan is quite the prayer as well. Quite frequently I hear him playing in his room saying all the words he knows, such as : mommy, daddy, bampa, maw-maw, puppy, yah-yah (Jesus), add a few animal noises in there, etc. and then I hear a loud and excited "AMEN!" He is also really good at "singing" I am A Child of God every night with us before he goes to bed. When we lay him down in his crib, he always grabs his stuffed bear, gives us a big smile and says "Happy!" and blows us kisses. Pretty sure this melts my heart every time!

- Ethan is quite dramatic. When he throws a tantrum, he runs away, throws himself to the ground, and rolls around crying and screaming. Periodically he will stop, giving himself just enough time to look and see if I am paying attention to him or not. If I am not, he stops crying and goes about playing. If I am giving him attention, he continues to roll around and cry. So I usually dont pay too much attention to his dramatic tantrums or just try to distract him by going in his room and reading one of his books out loud. Usually he will stop crying and come over with me to read. It works for me!

- When he gets in trouble, he usually tries to say something or give me hugs and kisses right away to get himself out of it. For example, the other day he threw one of our crystal glasses on the floor, and knowing that I shouldn't have even had it within his reach, I was just going to talk to him about how if we see something like that, we dont throw it, when this conversation follwed:

Me: Ethan, I am so sorry that mommy left that out, but when we see something pretty like that we dont throw it. (Ethan staring off into space)

Me: Ethan, can you look at mommy please. Ethan? Ethan, look at mommy. (Still staring off into space). Do you understand that that is a no-no?

Ethan: Umm... (his eyes scanning the room for someway to get him out of this talk. His eyes finally landed on the picture we have of the Savior in our room) Yah- Yah!!! (Jesus!!!).

Me: (Trying so hard not to laugh). Yes Ethan, that is Jesus. But do you understand that we dont throw pretty things??

Ethan: (Laughing) Yah- yah! Yah- yah! Yah- yah! (Follwed by more laughing).

How can I get upset at this kid? I thought that was pretty clever of him, and now every time he gets in trouble he tries to play the Yah-yah card on me. I try not to be a sucker for it every time. :)

- Nursery: This was rough, real rough at first but now, after only 3 months of torture, he only cries/screams for about 5 min and then he is super happy playing and eating food for the remaining 2 hours of church. This makes for two very happy parents, who can now actually pay attention to the Sunday school and YM/YW lessons. We are VERY grateful for nursery!

- Ethan is also pretty good at taking off his diaper and letting me know that he wants his diaper changed. For example, the other day I was in our room and I heard Ethan whining in the front room. I went in there and saw him lying on the floor assuming the diaper changing position. He had already done me the favor of removing the diaper and laid it beside him. So I put a clean diaper on and grabbed the dirty one to throw it away. I looked inside the diaper and noticed poop streaks. I thought, hmmm.. that's weird. Maybe he just passed gas and left some of that in there? Hmm...no. I started to get a little nervous and searched the house frantically for the missing poop. After a few minutes of searching I found Ethan's little gift he left for me on our floor in the kitchen. Luckily it was in a neat little pile and was a easy clean up/disinfecting job, but I do realize it could have been a lot worse. He could have "painted" our walls or smashed it into the carpet or something! Oh the possibilities. I now keep a pretty close eye on him if he is running around with just his diaper :)

Anyways, here are some recent pictures of our little guy.

He is so good at putting Mr. Potato Head together. We just leave this toy with him in his crib when he goes to sleep, and we get an extra 20 min of free time when he wakes up. He loves to play with it!

In the neighborhood where we live, there is a little farm complete with a pig, tons of horses and about 20 bunny rabbits hopping around! Here is Ethan petting a little newborn bunny and trying to muster up the courage to pet the horse..


We sure do love him and I love being able to stay home with him! He is always full of surprises and energy and just makes me laugh everyday!

What Have I Been Working On Lately???

This!!! (sorry it's a little blury)

Because I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was 17, I never really had the chance to complete my Young Women's Personal Progress program, nor did I realize back then just how important this program is for our young women in the church. And now, 6 years later I am working towards completing this awesome program! My goal is to have it completely done in a year, by May 2010! Just recently, I have felt as if I need to complete this program to not only learn and gain knowledge scripturally, but also so that I can be an example to my girls someday and help them complete this program as well. I am so excited to do this! Wish me luck!

Guatemala

Continuing on from my last post, the day that my parents flew back from Texas was the day that the Smith side arrived for their Spring Break! All 9 of us stayed in our little apt with people sleeping everywhere! It was a lot of fun! The next day we went to church at our ward and then later that night we packed up and drove back to Mazatlan to stay for a few days. Tuesday, we drove back to Culiacan and then early Wednesday morning we (Justin, me, my inlaws, and our work friends, Gladyss and Eduardo) flew to Guatemala! We left Ethan with my brother and sister in- laws for 4 days and although we missed him terribly, it was really nice to have time away! We had a 4 hour lay over in Mexico City but thankfully my father-in-law has some sort of American Express deal that allowed us to stay in a posh waiting area complete with free food, movies, and internet which made our lay over very bearable.

We arrived that night in Guatemala City and ate out at a really neat outdoor Mayan restaurant. The next day, we left early for the beautiful (and very old) city of Antigua. While the boys worked at a huge agricultural conference, we did the wife thing and toured around the beautiful city. Another wife that was with us is a native and served as our tour guide. If you are into old architecture, this is the place to go! A lot of the buildings date back to the 1500's and are so incredibly beautiful!

Here we are in front of the cathedral (in the distant background). This city was even more beautified with gardens full of flowers of every kind, buildings with cascading green vines and Buganvilia everywhere! My mother in law and I were in picture taking heaven!

Here is a famous arch with a yellow church in the background and a little glimpse of one of the 4 or 5 volcanoes that surround this city

This was in the main cathedral and the rug you see on the floor is actually not a rug at all. They make this for what they call here Semana Santa or Holy Week (the week of Easter). They have a procession that goes all around the town where people are carrying statues of the Savior (mostly depicting his suffering) and they will eventually end the procession here in front of this piece of art. The "rug" you see is actually very fine wood shavings (almost like sand) that have been colored and placed together to make beautiful designs. Quite the talent, I think.

This is a huge kite that the Guatemalans fly on Dia de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead). They believe that with the kites in the sky, it brings them closer to the dead and serves as some sort of communication tool. Interesting.

The next day the whole group of us (boys included) drove to Lake Atitlan. This is what we were suppose to see..

But instead, we unfortunately caught this beautiful lake on a cloudy day...
Nevertheless, it was still a beautiful sight to see. It is surrounded by 3 huge volcanoes and the water is crystal clear with a beautiful shade of blue. Some of you might find interesting that this lake is where some speculate is the location of the Waters of Mormon from the Book of Mormon. One things is for sure is that we could definitely see how this lake could have been isolated back then :)


I'm guessing that it was shopping day in the little city near Lake Atitlan. There were SO many people crammed into their main street which was chuck full of little stands selling their goods.

The boy's were working at an agricultural conference located in this amazing hotel! It's called Hotel Santo Domingo and is actually built around an old monastery from the 1500s. There are ruins everywhere and even a crypt where you can see old bones.

The gardens were phenomenal and I loved this beautiful, original fountain seen in this picture...

Want to stay here? Dont worry, it only costs anywhere from $250 to $1000 dollars a night. And no, that is not in quetzal. Pocket change, right? Want to get married here or have any other event? Yeah, it's only about $80,000.... But don't worry, it's free to go around and explore the grounds so if you ever get the chance to go to Guatemala, mark it on your list of things to do.

In the same hotel, they had models that acted as statues portraying the Guatemalan people in everyday life. Here we have a lady making a piece of one of their very colorful and bright fabrics. There are multiple uses for these types of fabric. A side note about the Guatemalans, I absolutely loved seeing and speaking with these people. I loved how almost every native we saw was still wearing the traditional Guatemalan clothing. I also loved hearing them talk. They sing their words and I think it makes Spanish sound more beautiful than it already is when it's spoken in that way.

Im not sure what type of flowers these are but they are beautiful and I want something like this in my own yard someday.....

We ate out at the restaurant in this amazing hotel and were lucky enough to get to sit by the fire. It is actually cold at this time of year up in the mountains of Guatemala, so we were glad to get warm.

We had an absolutely amazing time in Guatemala and definitely have hopes of returning there again someday. We arrived home to a very clean house and a little boy who was very excited to see his mommy and daddy again. Thanks bro/sis in laws for taking care of our little boy so we could get away for a few days!

I sure do love our little family and am so grateful for my husband and the wonderful job that he has that has allowed us to travel all over the world! Thank you BioHumaNetics for taking good care of us!

Mom & Dad Sims Come To Visit!

Oh man. I have some serious catching up do do. The month of March was full of family and fun and it went by way too fast! On March 9, my parents flew in all the way from Texas to visit us here in Mexico for the week! They haven't traveled outside of the country in like 30 years so coming to Mexico was definitely stepping outside of their comfort zone and boy are we sure glad that they did! They flew into Mazatlan and we stayed in a beautiful condo there for a few days before heading back to Culiacan. (We had the condo for a week and a half and we got it for free! It sure is nice to have rich friends :) Here are some of the things that we did...

We ate at Pancho's for breakfast pretty much every morning we were there. With great food and a eating spot right out on the beach, how could we not keep coming back?!

We spent LOTS of time out on the beach. We played in the sand, flew kites and just relaxed! Ethan loved building sand castles but I think he loved knocking them down even more.

My parents out on the beach....

At first Ethan was pretty scared of the waves, but he quickly got over that and I think would have ran out as far as he could if I would have let him! Kids have no fear...

Family picture out on one of the docks

We shopped around out on the streets quite a bit and just had to buy Ethan this adorable little hat. He actually kept it on most of the time too!


We also took my parents to a lookout point and saw the whole city of Mazatlan! It's such a beautiful place!

After a few days in Mazatlan, we took my mom and dad to Culiacan to show them where we live. On our way, we stopped in a cute little town called El Quelite. If you are ever in Mazatlan, this adorable little place is a must! They have a really good restaurant there called El Meson De Los Laureanos. It is decorated with tons of beautiful flowers, greenery and this lovely little parrot...

Justin accidently got a little too close to bird and the bird proceeded to bite a button right off his shirt!

This restaurant also puts on a culture show and Justin and I were chosen to go up on stage to learn how to dance Mexican style. Although we dont have too much rhythym, I think we would have easily beaten the rest of them in a dance off :)

Back in Culican, we showed my parents around our neighborhood and also around some of the sights of the city, This flag is visible from anywhere in Culican- we think it's beautiful and it's pretty much the biggest flag we have ever seen!


So needless to say, we had a great time with my family here and we were pretty much exhausted by the end of the trip, as shown.....

Thanks Mom & Dad for making the trip out to see us! It sure was fun!