Future Cindy Crawford

Gracie is practicing for her future modeling career LOL. I had the camera out this morning and she's such a ham. Check out these poses:

Sew Scrappy

Now that life has settled into a bit of a routine since the wedding is over.. the tonsils have been removed etc etc. I thought it was time to get to doing some "crafty" things- like scrapbooking my zillion pictures and learning to actually use the sewing machine that's been sitting in the closet for almost two years.

So I found a spot I thought would work. The storage room downstairs. Haul the table down, get the sewing machine out- only to find out the one outlet in the room doesn't even work

So on to plan B-

See that spot where the dresser is? Great wall for a craft spot .. but first

I had to tackle these dishes:

Then the bed needed to be made-

And this mountain of laundry put away-

Then it was lunch time- Leftover Beef Stroganoff (the picture isn't great but trust me its delicious)

After lunch it was naptime-

(Apparently the bed wasn't good enough- see how she surrounded herself with toys... fell asleep playing after I'd put her in bed)

Time for mom to catch up on some of her favorite blogs-

By this time Madi was home from school and it was time to get dinner started, then baths, jammies, brush teeth, family prayer & bed.. WHEW!! A full day. And just for kicks here is a great article about what Stay at Home moms do all day.

See what time it is? (mental note- fix the date on the camera)


And NOW I can begin my project- or Jason can anyway:


After about an hour, a can of black spray paint and some baby food jars collected from freecycle.org I have My "Sew Scrappy Craft Area"




I even put it to use to make my first sewing project- a one yard apron.

It's not much, but I'm pretty proud of it and I can't wait to see what other great things come from this Sew Scrappy table!

Love at First Sight

I decided to start printing our blog a couple times a month and mailing it to our family members without internet access so I began printing it yesterday which then made me nostalgic as I reviewed it from the beginning. I realized in reading it that I never told our "How We Met" story, and not everyone may know. So here it is... How "We" came to be-

I had been in an "on again-off again" realtionship with a guy in Idaho and we were in an "off-again-lets-just-be-friends" stage when I logged into one of the many singles websites (http://www.singlesnet.com/ - I should send them a thank you card) I belonged to in order to check my email in June 2008. In my inbox were the usual off-putting, creepy or otherwise undesireables.. and then there was a very attractive photo of this guy and a very generic.. "hey saw your profile , would like to get to know you"- kind of email.


One of Jason's profile pictures (this was added after the initial picture I saw)


Jason's first wife, Christina had passed away in May from cancer and suddenly after 9 years of marriage, he found himself a single father with 3 young children. He'd joined singlesnet to find some people he could talk to. He stumbled across my profile, saw my pictures and decided to send me an email. He says that he didn't think I'd ever even write him back...

I shot back a short email and we corresponded that way for several weeks. I was just biding my time until I was back into an "on-again" phase with Idaho-guy so I wasn't really looking to start a relationship. Besides, I lived in Pleasant Grove and Jason was three hours away in Vernal.. a town I'd been through ONCE in 13 years and it was when we first moved to Utah. It's not like we were ever going to meet. I wouldn't even give him my phone number at first. After several weeks of back and forth emails I finally gave in and gave him my number.

He called one night and from then on we spent hours on the phone every night. He would call me after the kids were in bed about 9 and we'd talk til 1 or 2 in the morning then he'd get up for work at 6! I don't know how he managed all those weeks. During one phone call we found out that we were both going to be at the SLC airport at the same time. He was leaving to go visit family in Georgia and I was going to pick up family coming to visit SLC. So we figured we may as well meet in person seeing as how serendipity brought us to the same place at the same time...

He walked up to me in the airport and though I'd never believed in it before, it was literally love at first sight. We only had MAYBE 5 minutes before he had to go catch a flight- 3 babies in tow. And I spent the next week waiting on pins and needles for every text message. They were few and far between and I didn't know if he was even really interested. When he got back from Georgia a week later we set up a date for the 15th of August.


Me on our first date (what was with my hair?)

I drove to Vernal that weekend of August 15th and it just confirmed what I already knew. I would marry him.. I didn't know when but I knew it would happen. We went to dinner and he showed me around town and took me hiking - I was wearing 4" platform heels- he figured if I could make it through that, I might be a keeper LOL. Everything after that was a whirlwind- Our first date was the 15th of August, he proposed 11 days later on the 26th of August and we were married November 8th, 2008.

He's my confidante, my best friend and my soulmate. He's the most amazing, generous man I've ever known. In six short months we've seen both sides of the country, had a wedding, honeymooned in Las Vegas & Disneyland, bought a house, blended a family, been through a surgery and a million other tiny little things.. a lifetime of activities already and I can't wait to spend the rest of our lifetimes together. As we turned to leave the altar at our wedding ceremony and greet our guests he said to me "Are you ready?" Yes honey, I waited 29 years for you, I'm definately ready.

3 Things

How is it that things seem to come in 3's? It's been said that celebrities pass away in 3's. I have 3 children, my children have 3 parents, we have 3 cars and today I have 3 things to blog about... go figure.

1.) Valentine's Day...ahhh another Hallmark Holiday made up to sucker millions of people out of their hard earned money for $150.00 flowers that will be $9.95 on February 15th and still be dead by February 20th. Valentine's Day at our house came from Sears -in the form of a ratcheting wrench set for Jason (romantic huh? lol) and the Dollar Tree - in the form of inexpensive decorations, candy & toys for the kids. I made pink heart shaped waffles for breakfast and the kids thought it was great. Here's a peek at what our table looked like for
V-Day:

2.) Redneck Baby Gates

What the heck are you talking about? you ask. Jason and I discovered last night- after two months of freezing in our room every night, that the heating system was installed in our bedroom but not actually hooked up to the unit. We have a weird heat pump system that heats the house by pumping hot water through the baseboard units and we're not sure how to fix it. Our answer in the meantime is to keep the bedroom door open during the day so that the room stays semi-warm with the heat from the rest of the house.

The dilemma: How to keep Gracie (the main culprit) from destroying the room as has oft been the case when the door is open.

Answer: Redneck Baby Gate

My plastic roller cart from the downstairs bathroom and the garbage can from my laundry room. Yes I could've shelled out 22 bucks for a "real" baby gate at Wal-Mart today, but seriously 22 bucks? Butter is on sale at Smith's for 1.49/lb. Do you know how much butter I could stock up on for 22 bucks? But I digress... This is my current answer to the Gracie dilemma and hopefully I'll no longer have to chip the icecicles off my face to kiss my husband goodnight.

3.) We have a family of 5... that means 5 times the laundry I had to do when I was single.. and I had a fully stocked walk-in closet of my own. So if I'm gonna do that much laundry, it's at least going to be in a place I don't dread. Hence my decorated laundry room.... the only room in the house that is totally decorated LOL

It started with this border I found on clearance for 50 cents at Lowe's. A little country? Perhaps. Pretty cheesy? Yeah. But its a laundry room not a Jackson Pollock.

Some $2.00 clothesline, a $1.50 bag of wooden clothes pins & a bundle of $3.00 dishrags and I have this adorable window treatment. The window only looks at the basement window well in the backyard, so it didn't need to be functional, just cute. I bought the supplies but Jason "designed" and hung the window treatments. (told you he could decorate in the last blog posting didn't I?)

So that's it for today. Great things come in three's and right now two of my children are taking a nap... better go take one myself so that will make 3.

Catching Up

So this tonsillectomy really took it's toll on me. After the meds wore off the first day I was toast. I'm finally feeling well enough to at least blog a bit today. So here's what's been going on around our house the last 2 weeks. Warning: Lots of pics to follow

Grandpa Jim came to help with the kids for several days and we had so much fun having him here. We can't wait til he is here with Grandma Kandi all the time. Jason and I even had a minute to go on an adult-only slurpee run and when we came back, Grandpa had been playing Twister with Madi & Jake. I almost wish we'd been there to see that.

Occassionally, we played...

Mostly, I tried to sleep...

Jason decided to redecorate... or just decorate actually. He took this blank wall:

A little bit of sight measuring...

A little bit of package removal, a homemade stencil made with posterboard, an exacto-knife and some dragonfly stickers

And we have this beautiful arrangement on the wall downstairs now. My husband has pretty good decorating taste sometimes. Bonus: Total cost for the project was like 35 bucks. Can't beat that.

We got a new family member. His name is Bo, and he's almost 5 months old. A purebred Golden Retriever. He's a sweet boy and Jason is in love, though Gracie hates when he tries to get anywhere near her. She screams and the louder she screams the more he wants to comfort her and therefore be near her.. it's a vicious circle.

Just this past weekend I had the opportunity to suprise Jason with a little overnight getaway. We went to a friend's wedding reception in Bountiful and Grandma & Grandpa kept the kids and we got to celebrate Valentine's Day a week early.

King Bedroom at the Hampton Inn Lehi: $100.00

Bag of silk rose petals & strawberry scented tealights: $6.00

Two plastic champagne flutes & bottle of Cider: $5.00

An Evening spent laughing & dancing with my husband and a full nights sleep without having to listen for the baby monitor: Priceless

(BTW: We also went shopping for new church clothes for J. How handsome does he look??)



One day I tried to do Gracie's hair.. 19 month olds don't like to sit still

So it ended up like this: but it was cute for the 5 minutes it lasted


Yesterday the kids and I worked on Valentine's projects for Dad. We all made him "love bugs" Great project for your kids. You could have a whole family of bugs. Some googly eyes, a couple pipe cleaners, some markers and an egg carton.. at least an hour's worth of entertainment.

We all also know that Jason LOVES magnets.. so I made him some (I admit I ripped this idea off another website and now for the life of me can't find it)

This:

Became these: (there are magnets on the back of each)

Now Dad has magnet pictures of all his little SweetHearts


I think that about covers it for the last two weeks. I've become rather familiar with our DVR and like catching up on Rachael Ray when I can now. Jake and Madi both have Valentine's Parties this week at school so we've had lots of Valentines & candy around the house. Jason is still working hard and just this week he got a new toolbox for the house, so he's all sorts of excited. It makes me laugh. But now there arent' tools laying all over the place and that makes me happy too. And percoset.... that makes me happy and sleepy... think I'll go take a nap now.