Party!

On Tuesday night I hosted a baby shower for a friend in my ward. I had a lot of really fun ideas for this shower but didn't end up doing all of them because the invite list was HUGE. But here are few of the things that I did do.

Food:

I made this amazing trifle based off a recipe I found off allrecipes. I totally modified it though and it was so good. The filling was cheesecake pudding, whipped cream and sour cream. I layered angel food cake, pineapple, bananas and berries and the cream mixture - heavenly.

Then I made pina colada cupcakes based off the recipe that Beverly submitted for my recipe contest. Oh my! They were so so good. Very moist (they are the pink ones w/ coconut in the picture). Beverly's recipe was for a cake so I mixed the pineapple right into the mixture and did everything the same as the cake recipe called for. (I really wanted to do 3 tiers of cake stands but could not for the life of me find a small stand to go on top. If you know where to get one, please let me know - I've seen these around)

I also made Hilary's water punch. It was very light and refreshing and every bit as good as she promised! It's pretty uncharacteristic of me to make 3 brand new recipes for an event but they all turned out great. I also had a fruit tray/dip and a few of my awesome friends contributed desserts for the party.

Favors:

At the last second I decided to do a quick favor for the party goers. Last second, as in, the afternoon of the shower. So I was a little limited in what I could do. I settled on white chocolate covered pretzel rods that I rolled in cute babyish colored nonpareils. They turned out cute.

Here they are displayed:

As usual, I love hosting but am always a little relieved when it's over.

Blurb

Last night, I finished my first Blurb book. I am so excited to receive it in the mail. It took me hours and hours to format and organize my book. I printed my blog from July 2006-December 2007 (just under 300 pages). From now on I'll just do an annual book. It was so fun to read through all my entries from 2 years ago but I found myself wishing I had blogged even MORE. So, long story short, don't be surprised if you see even more blog entries coming your way. I plan to print each years book for each of my kids at some point (but at $85 a pop, it won't be this year).

I also started a new, private blog that I'm calling my "small plates" based on the talk by Henry B. Eyring in the October 2007 General Conference called O Remember, Remember. It was one of my favorite talks and he talked about the importance of keeping a record of spiritual things. Allen has always been a great journal writer and writes EVERY day. Me, not so much. So, I'm starting a new blog just for myself to keep track of my spiritual experiences and insights. I'll have it printed up every year too.

I'm so grateful for the record that blogging provides!

Meet my new BFF

Yes, I'm having a love affair with a can of black spray paint!! Seriously, I never knew how versatile one little old can could be. Here are some examples. Remember those white shelves that everyone and their dog had from PB? Yeah, I have a stack of them sitting in my garage... I'm pretty much over them.

Before:

After:(Melissa, do you recognize that far right F?! I saw your blog post about the wire letters this morning!)

Need more convincing? Check out this step stool. It sat outside by our trampoline the entire year we lived in Seattle. Needless to say, the rain took it's toll. But it's the perfect size for my little half bath and I wanted to see if I could resurrect it.

Before:

After:

And I don't have a before picture of these topiaries. The bases used to be shabby chic white. Like I said, I'm over the white so I made them over with more black spray paint:

Dear black spray paint, my husband and decorating budget sincerely thank you!! (I prefer semi gloss for a nice finish). And since I'm too lazy (as usual) to edit my pics, rest assured that none of the above projects remotely look like they've been spray painted.

I'm having a big shin dig at my house tomorrow night, hence my absence. Nothing like a party to make you finish a million little decorating/home improvement projects. Stay tuned for details.

Until then, you MUST go see Mamma Mia! I went out with a group of girlfriends last week and absolutely LOVED the movie. It is the most fun movie I've seen in a long time. I am a huge ABBA fan so it was especially great. The soundtrack is awesome too! (My only beef with the movie is that Colin Firth's character is gay - I just don't buy it. I guess he can't be perfect Mr. Darcy forever)

Quick, Fun Lunch Idea

A couple weeks ago I started making muffin tin lunches for my kids. They LOVE it. I have no idea why food tastes better if it's in a muffin pan, but apparently it does. I can get them to eat almost anything by presenting it this way.

You can obviously put just about anything in the tin but some other things I've included that have been big hits:

Small PB&J cut into fun shapes
Pudding
Crackers
Veggies/Dip
Apples/PB
Any Fruit
Any veggie
Crackers
Applesauce
Mac & Cheese
Chicken Nuggets/dipping sauce
Stuff for mini pizzas (crackers, pepperoni, cheese, etc.)

I usually include one section that is a treat that can be eaten after everything else. I'm going to use this idea for our next movie night and fill each spot with some fun treat!

Visitors

This week has been full of visitors, some welcome, others.... not so much.

First, the very welcome visitors, Allen's sister Jennifer and her 6 kids. We had a great time together. It was chaotic, noisy, messy and FUN. Jen has three year old triplets and two other little girls so all the girls had a grand time together. Jen even made the girls matching dress up outfits. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of all the girls together, but here is Makenna in hers:



And Carter was just happy to be with one of his few male cousins - they played Legos and video games to their hearts content. We even ventured to the AZ Science Center for an afternoon of educational fun. A few pictures:

At the Grossology exhibit: Yes, that is a gigantic nose!Seriously, what's not to love?!? What my house looked like the majority of last week:
Now, the not so welcome visitors.
1. We had our first (and hopefully last) ever scorpion invasion. Last Friday night Al and I were getting ready to go to bed. I was going upstairs to check on the kids one last time and stepped into the dimly lit kitchen and almost stepped right on top of a tiny little scorpion scurrying across our floor. Scared the heck out of me. Al caught and disposed of him before I could take a picture. We're both now incredibly paranoid about the potential of more scorpions. We had some friends over earlier that night and the kids were in and out of the house a ton so we're hoping it snuck in during a time when the door was open. Anyway, we high tailed it to Home Depot the next morning and bought a black light to check for scorpions. I kind of wonder if I'll ever feel comfortable walking across my floor again.

2. We also had a pink eye invasion this week. Carter, Makenna and I all had it. No one in the family has ever had it before. It was inconvenient and nothing much more than that. We washed hands and linens A LOT to prevent the spread to Addie, Al and Jen's family. Unfortunately, Allen woke up this morning and said he thinks he has it. Now I have to make sure no one else recontracts it. Yep, pretty inconvenient.


And one last thing, look at LuLu's new trick. How is it possible that she's already sitting up?!?




She's also army crawling across the floor. It's going way, way, way too fast and she seems in a hurry to grow up!

5 Months!!

Addison is 5 months old (stop the clock, slow down time...she is growing up way too fast!!).
What you'll usually see her doing these days:

1. Sucking her thumb:
2. Shoving her clothes in her mouth:
Other things about her this month:

- She is rolling over both ways. I think she forgets she can go from back to tummy because sometimes she'll roll over during her nap and get frustrated when she can't get back to her tummy.

- Has found her feet and they are usually in her mouth. Adorable!

- Loves giving big, slobbery, open mouthed kisses. They are the best.

- Loves bathtime. She has graduated to the big girl bath and will kick and flap for as long as we'll let her.

- Gets so happy whenever she sees after the night or nap. Kicks her legs and squeals.

- Has tried rice cereal a few times and applesauce. NOT interested at all.

- Has sadly started waking up for a nighttime feeding most nights the last couple weeks. SOB. I think she is going through a growth spurt and is really hungry. This is why I'm trying to start her on solids. After having her sleep through the night for the last 4 months, it's been a little hard to go back to middle of the night feedings.

- Is still REALLY tiny. Her 3-6 month clothes are still pretty big on her. I'm a little worried about it but she is such a happy baby and eats really well. I'm interested to see what her ped says next month.

She is such a love and fills up my heart so much. We are just enjoying every second of her being a baby and appreciating her development so much!!

(Sorry for the sucky pictures. Despite having the newest, nicest, fastest point and shoot on the market, the lag time is killing me. I'm saving my pennies for a DSLR and some photography classes!)

I want this...

tank top for Makenna:

I saw it on a photography blog and fell in love. It says: Peace, Love, Lipgloss and is all cute and blingy.

So I did a quick google search. You too can own one for a mere $70 from Neiman Marcus. I'm not exactly practical when it comes to clothing my children but even this is WAY too much for me. Do you think I could make one myself? {Sigh}

Utah Trip Recap

I have a million things to do but fear that if I don't catch up on blogging it will never happen. So here's a quick recap of our trip to Utah for my family's reunion.

Sunday - spent the day in the car driving to UT. The kids did great but were antsy the last couple hours of the drive. We made it to Steve & Meg's house where Joel & Ami were waiting for us and had a yummy BBQ together. We let the cousins play together for awhile and then chatted until way too late in the night. It was so fun to be together if only for one night. A big thanks to Ste and Meg for allowing us to stay the night with them.

Monday - Spent the morning with Meg and kids. Carter had all the little kids collecting snails that are all over their yard. They kept putting them in their kiddie pool and in the end probably had about 70 snails. He is such a boy and kept trying to get the snails from crawling out of the pool. He was very disappointed when he learned we wouldn't be taking any of them with us. (See the pile of snails there?)

The cousins together:

We met up with my parents and niece and the guys and kids went off to do some grocery shopping while my mom and I made a quick stop at Tai Pan (seriously, how awesome is that?!) I found exactly what I had in mind for a couple rooms in my house! We met up for lunch and then drove up to Cherry Hill where we were camping for a few days. My sister Nicole and her family met us there. What joy to be reunited with our family after over a year. After we set up camp we all took off for a half day at the water park. It's a cute little park, perfect for little kids.

Tuesday - Spent the day at Lagoon. I was a little skeptical about whether we would enjoy the park but we all had a great time. There were so many rides we didn't even have time to ride.

Addie got way spoiled being held by someone the entire week! Possibly my favorite picture from the entire week. This was on Rattlesnake Rapids which is a really fun water ride (right before we all got soaked):That night my brother and sister came up from SLC and we had a fun family dinner. Lulu meeting her uncle for the first time:

The kids played games and kickball late into the night. We stayed up late playing games and talking. Al and I even watch 27 dresses on the laptop in our tent (we really know how to rough it around here)!

Wednesday - Another waterpark day at Cherry Hill. We started every morning with a big, yummy breakfast cooked by my parents:

The kids did some crafts while we waited for the park to open. We loved camping at Cherry Hill where we could come and go as we needed to. We got smart and took our portable crib into the park that day and Addie got some great naps. A few pics from the day, on the lazy river:

Time in the kiddie pools:I think he was pretending to be the incredible Hulk here:One of my very earliest childhood memories is when my family camped at Cherry Hill as part of a ward activity. I was 4 and I actually remember it very clearly! The kids were daring as ever and we rode the big slides over and over again.

Thursday: We packed up all our camping gear in the morning and then went and played at CH for awhile again. The kids played mini golf and in their huge climbing gym structure:

We met up with my brother and sister at the Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch: (another family tradition) We drove to Provo and checked into our hotel and let the kids play in the pool for the evening.

Friday: Fourth of July, see previous post :)

Saturday: Cruised up to the BYU bookstore for some souvenir shopping. Everyone got new tshirts and candy at the candy counter. We went up to the creamery and had some yummy (and cheap!) ice cream. I took Addie back to the hotel for a nap and Al took the kids to another water park with my parents and sisters family. We met up later for dinner at Brick Oven. It was so fun to run into one of my former missionary companions with her family at dinner. We had lost touch a few years ago and were able to catch up and exchange contact information! After dinner the guys decided to hit a movie together so we took the kids back to the hotel and let them watch Horton Hears a Who. We bid a tearful goodbye to my oldest sister and her kids as they headed back up to SLC. (And, I did not take a single picture this day). My little bro stayed up late and chatted with us in our room.

Sunday: Woke up much later than we planned due to being up late the night before. Hustled through one last breakfast with the family and then said our goodbyes and hit the road. Had an uneventful drive back to AZ. I'm so sad though not knowing when I'll see some of my family the next time. We drove through Colorado City (where all the polygamists live) and we drove through the town - bizarre-o!

We had a wonderful trip and I'm so grateful to be part of my wonderful family!! I am still suffering from Post Vacation Blues but luckily we have had a busy and fun week.

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July this year. It's pretty much tradition to spend it with my family and always so fun. We started the day by running a rousing 3.2 miles as part of the Provo Freedom Run 5K. Don't be too impressed, I'm STILL sore.

After a quick shower and breakfast at the hotel, we took some pictures and then headed off to the parade:

The kids were completely enamored by the floats, bands and people in the parade. We had a couple of celebrity sitings - Glenn Beck was actually in the parade and Donny Osmond was filming his son on a float about 1 foot away from us. The floats were quite impressive and it was fun to see how the whole community was involved in the parade.

A few of our cute parade goers:

After the parade we headed to El Azteca for lunch and then back to the hotel for naps and some time in the pool. That evening we were invited to one of my cousins house for a BBQ and fireworks. This was for sure a highlight of the trip for me. I got to be with my family and spend a lot of time with several of my cousins and their families. We took some pictures of the cousins all together:

Did sparklers and tons of fireworks:
We finished up by watching the fireworks from the stadium of fire and having ice cream cones. It was a wonderful day celebrating the freedom of this amazing country and spending time with family!

Home!

We're home from our fabulous Utah trip. Of course, I have lots to do to get resettled. Lots of posts to come... 4th of July, trip recap, a new blogiversary contest, Addie at 5 months, etc.

AND for now, I've taken the privacy settings off the blog until I decide what to do. You can stop all your harassing emails (wink, wink). So go ahead and add me back to your Google Reader or bloglines, or whatever. I've added some extra security for now.

I'll be back soon!

Updates

1. Keys - still haven't been located by WalMart. Upon further reflection, my guess is that one of the employees pocketed them. It's sad to have to assume the worst about people but I really see no other logical explanation. They didn't disappear into thin air and if another customer accidentally picked them up, I'm sure they would have been returned.

So that thought totally freaks me out. WM has our address on file and anyone could find my house. So last night we had all the locks on our house changed by a locksmith. The total bill? $533. Walmart's going to love us. I still have to go to Nissan and Honda to have our car locks rekeyed today. Such a disaster.

2. Weight loss - it's been forever since I posted an update. I am FINALLY down 20 lbs. and only a couple pounds from my pre pregnancy weight. Not bad since it's only been 4 1/2 months. Don't get me wrong, I have a long way to go. It just means I was plenty chubby when I got pregnant. I am thrilled though. I can get into most of my clothes and am losing steadily. (ETA: I should clarify, that is 20 lbs. since starting WW for a total of about 40 lbs. since I had Addie).

3. Not an update, but isn't this fun:


Get your digital signature here. It takes all of about 3 minutes!

Shoot me now!

Aaaaaargh. As if I needed a reason to hate WalMart any more than I already do. I'm crazy busy trying to get ready to go to Utah this weekend. More crazy than usual because we are camping for a couple days and that requires so much more gear than normal.

On my to do list this week was to get an oil change on my car. It's only about 1,000 miles overdue. So today I truck all three kids over to WalMart where I can get a quick change and buy a few remaining items for the trip. I check in my car and hand over my keys and the guy tells me it will be ready in 10 minutes.

I do my shopping and return to pick up the car. I paid for my oil change and then..... they can't find my keys. ANYWHERE. There were 5 people looking for my keys for about 15 minutes. Addie needed a nap so badly, the other two kids were hungry and needing a potty stop. So, I told them that I was going to run my kids to the restroom (yuckyuckyuck) and then take them up to the McDs at the front of the store. Gave them my cell phone number to call me to keep me posted. Then I called Al and put him on alert that he might have to leave work to bring me some keys.

After I fed the kids (about 25 minutes later) I went back to the auto counter and found that not only had they not located my keys, they had not come up with any solution for me. Hadn't called the manager or anything. I'm wondering if they thought my keys were going to magically appear or maybe I would forget about them or what?!?! By this time I was more than just inconvenienced, I was mad. Really mad. I called Al to come over and bring me some keys. By the time he got there, about 3 managers were finally bustling around trying to think of a solutions. They called all the customers who had been in that morning to see if they had given the wrong keys to someone, etc. Finally, they refunded my oil change and committed to paying to replace my keys. The keyless entry remote is going to be $200 alone.

I'm finally home (this entire debacle took 3 precious hours today) and everyone is happily fed and in bed. Now I have to see about replacing everything before we leave. Seriously, what a nightmare.

Since I'm here, I might as well say that I'm not sure how long the whole private blog thing is going to last. When I decided to go private I had no idea that blogger only allows you to invite 100 viewers. Sooooo... I have quite a few more than 100 people who have requested an invite. Stay tuned, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Photo Tag

I've seen this tag done a couple places and think it's a fun way to capture the here and now of day to day life. You're supposed to take the photos without staging anything. So here's the good, bad and ugly :)


My Laundry Pile: I did 7 loads yesterday which is why this is so small. We all know it won't last.



My Kitchen Sink: I am thoroughly anti sink clutter. Call me a minimalist. When we replaced our kitchen counters last year I had them replace my sink to include one with a built in soap dispenser. Love it.


Favorite Shoes: Flip flops, of course. I'm loving these blingy ones right now




Our Most Popular Potty: The one in the kids' bathroom. It's right off the bonus/play room and most convenient during the day. (and still needs to be painted, it's the next project on my list)




Self Portrait: This is way harder than it looks


My favorite room: Not because of how it looks, because it is a HUGE mess, but because we are finally done painting all 1000+ square feet of it (6 gallons of paint!!!). This is exactly how it looks right now. I've decided to dejunk, reorganize, purge and deep clean as part of this project. It will be put back together before I hit the hay tonight. I have some really cool ideas for this room so stay tuned!


What my kids are doing right now: The girls are napping (M is actually asleep right now). Carter is in his room playing with his Legos (of course)



My fridge: Let's be honest, in dire need of a good wipedown:

Play along if you want! And look for your blog invite tonight because they will also be done before I go to bed!