look what I made!

So I've been seeing pretty Easter wreaths all over the place lately. Nice, elegant looking ones with the eggs painted to look like real eggs. I thought about making something like that. But first of all, it sounded like quite a bit of work for something that could only be up for a couple weeks. Second, there was a good chance I'd screw it up, and it would look like I tried to be elegant but failed. And third, there just wasn't enough color for me! So I decided that instead of trying to make something that looks pretty according to the current decorating standard, I would just make something fun that I like! And I did!

I bought this grapevine wreath a few weeks ago for $3.50 during a fit of "I need to learn how to decorate." It's been sitting on the piano, waiting for inspiration to strike. So I busted out the bin of Easter stuff, stuck Easter grass all over the wreath, and hot glued on some plastic eggs. Then when I was running to grab another glue stick, I saw a bag of pom-poms in an open container (yes, sitting in the middle of the floor...see, something good came from me being homemakerly challenged!) that matched perfectly, so I added those as well. Then I stuck it on the wall! And it makes me really happy!

What I Miss About Utah

First off, I must say that I LOVE living in the Pacific Northwest again. There are MANY things I like better here. Maybe I'll blog about that later. For now, here's a (short) list of the things I miss most about Utah:

This was our house. There are a few things I miss about it. I miss the newness of it. It's going to take a lot of time & money to make our house here have pretty white baseboards & doors, nice new carpet, nice kitchen appliances, etc. And I miss having a central vac.

I miss some of my friends, especially Gayelinn. I really enjoyed walking with her, doing fun things together (this picture is from Cornbellys), and just spending relaxing time together. I've had many friends before & since, but nobody I feel as totally comfortable with as Gayelinn.

I miss being close to most of Dan's family. Not that we saw them all that often, but at least the option was there, right? Look at all those cousins (okay, so a few of them aren't from Utah, but they visited fairly often) to play with!!!

I miss Thanksgiving Point! We loved the Farm Country! It was like going to a little, close zoo with slightly less exciting animals. It was great for stopping by for an hour, not a whole day ordeal like the real zoo. And riding the ponies was FUN!!!

The other part of Thanksgiving Point I miss is the Dinosaur Museum. It was really well done for kids, lots of fun hands on stuff! And lots of fun activities on Monday evenings, like the Halloween one we went to in this particular picture!

I MISS Burgers Supreme. It is my all time favorite place to eat. They make my favorite cheeseburger, my favorite french fries, and my favorite fry sauce! All at one place! Mmmmmmm...

I also miss Lehi Bakery, especially their maple bars. They are to die for! Other places make good other kinds of donuts, but nowhere else have I found the flurry maple frosting. I will definitely be going there next time we visit Utah!

I miss Chilis. We used to go there fairly often, and there isn't one anywhere near here. Sad.

I miss all the fast food places with playplaces. Here we've got McDonalds. In Utah there was Arctic Circle, McDonalds, Burger King, and Carls Jr. And it seemed like a higher percentage of fast food places had playplaces. I guess there's an obvious reason for that!

Two more quick ones, then I gotta go get ready for church!

I miss our doctor, Dr. Peterson. We've found a pretty good doctor here, but we went to Dr. Peterson since my prenatal care for David, so we'd developed a good relationship with him.

And I miss having a close DI, both for dropping off stuff at and buying new stuff. I've been frequenting blogs lately where people take something old & ugly and made it new and pretty. I guess there are other thrift stores I could try, but I just love DI!

And...that's about it. I may think of more later, but these are the main ones. Is it sad that so many of them involve food? Maybe that's partly due to it being Fast Sunday....

funny joke, and random thoughts from my Monday morning

Just got this in my email, and I'm still giggling about it. Thought I'd share:

In the Supermarket
At our supermarket, I noticed a woman with four boys and a baby. Her patience was wearing thin as the boys called out, "Mommy! Mommy!" while she tried to shop.

Finally, she blurted out, "I don't want to hear the word mommy for at least ten minutes!"

The boys fell silent for a few seconds. Then one tugged on his mother's dress and said softly, "Excuse me, miss."
-- Dennis Dook

Random Thoughts

• Still haven't found my mail key. It's been missing for probably 3 weeks now, although I caught the mailman one time 2 weeks ago and had him get the mail. On the plus side, the car has been thoroughly cleaned out and vacuumed, and the living room, kitchen, and family room have all been organized, all in an attempt to find it. At this point I'm pretty sure either a) it got picked up with the junk mail and recycled, b) Katy carried it off and it's hiding with her toys, or c) it's hiding in all the paper clutter of the office. I really should get the office organized before shelling out 40 bucks. But it's a new month, we need our rent check from our Utah house and new bills and stuff. Oh, and I would guess our mail is being held at the post office by this point, I really should look into that.
• Ryan put his pants on backwards this morning. I told him to turn them around (If I just point out that they're backwards he laughs and leaves them that way), and he took them off and put them on backwards again! I'm pretty sure he fixed them before heading to school. Why on earth does he do that? It's WAY more than 50/50 forwards/backwards, he gets them backwards probably 3/4 of the time!
• When I was doing Katy's hair today she asked me who has long hair, then told me Katelyn (a friend from nursery) & Amy (her babysitter that she LOVES and talks about several times a day) do. I asked her what color Amy's hair is, and she told me it was brown (I was curious to see if she said brown or black because it is very dark brown). Then I asked what color her hair was, and she was like "Uh...what color is it?" I told her she has blonde hair. She told me she didn't want to have blonde hair, she wants pink hair. Um, no. Not gonna happen.
• I wish I liked cleaning even 10% as much as I like having a clean house. I frequently tell myself that I'm going to get lots of cleaning done, but there are so many other things that are more fun...
• The missionaries are coming to dinner tonight (so I'll force myself to clean...it's easier to do when other people are going to see it). The last 2 times they've come, the kids have been awful. One time they all ran laps around the first floor, the other time they kept hanging on the Elders. Am I a glutton for punishment to try again? I really want them to learn how to behave!
• I helped in Ryan's class this morning, which I've been doing ever week for probably 5 or 6 weeks now. I'm really amazed at the range in abilities among the kids. Ryan can read just about anything, and I bet there are others around his level. Then there are kids that don't even know their letters! I remember doing Letter People in kindergarten, learning a different letter every week. Now these kids are being taught on the assumption that they know how to recognize and write the letters, and some just can't do it. And while Ryan can read wonderfully, his writing is pretty awful. He would benefit greatly from letter writing practice. I've been doing some at home, so I guess I should just keep that up. I worry about the other kids that struggle with writing and/or reading, and wonder if they're getting the help they need. If they fall behind now, how will they catch up? I think being a teacher must be really stressful if for no other reason than that!

That's about it. I'll work on cleaning the office now, I think I'd better call the post office by 3 or so, so I can go in if I need to.

Painting the Bathroom!

Our downstairs half bath is painted a wimpy pale minty green. It's very blah, but not as AWFUL as some of the other paint colors the previous owners chose. So it didn't get changed in the first rush of homeownership adrenaline. I'm starting to hate it enough to expend energy to change it. Oh, and the toilet is having issues and needs to be replaced, so we might as well beautify the room in the process!

So I am feeling inspired by this blog, and I decided to pick something for the walls before anything else. We bought this painting on ebay several years ago while buying other paintings from the same seller, and haven't ever framed it. I pinned it to the wall to get the idea of how it'll look. I really like it!

So I played with photoshop a little, and used the eyedropper to select colors from the painting. Here are a few ideas I came up with. Please vote for your favorite and/or leave a comment! It'll probably help to know I am planning on doing white wainscoting, so the dark colors won't be as intimidating as they'd be on a whole wall!

Current color, boring minty green

Color #1

Color #2

Color #3

Color #4

Color #5

Color #6

Sleep barfing?

We've noticed many times how the kids don't remember what happens during the night. David gets up to go potty and comes to see us, acting funny (we call it the wiggles...we'll have to upload a movie sometime if we can get a better one than the one we have now), Ryan gets taken to his bed from ours, also acting funny, etc. No matter what, they never remember in the morning.

Last night somebody got up and threw up all over the bathroom. It got on the beautiful white cupboard, the shower curtain & side of the tub where the curtain wasn't covering, the wall & baseboard facing the front of the toilet (so it should've been behind the barfer), and of course all over the inside and outside of the toilet bowl, the top & bottom of the seat and the lid, and the floor. It was everywhere!

Nobody will own up to it! What the heck? I think it's possible that he (it's gotta be one of the boys) remembers but doesn't want to admit to making such a giant mess. But I think it's more likely that he just doesn't remember!

I didn't discover the vomit until after David was already at school, so I called and had his teacher ask him, and he said it wasn't him and he felt fine. So he's staying at school unless I hear otherwise. Ryan is home today anyway, and he's acting totally normal. I called and cancelled our two fun activities though, just to make sure. So we're stuck at home, I had to clean a nasty bathroom that had been wiped down just yesterday, and nobody is claiming responsibility. Nice.

Being 2 is frustrating. So is being a 2 year old's mommy!

Katy has entered that beautiful time of life where she wants to do everything for herself, but can't quite do a lot of those things! I have no problem with her doing the things she can when I have the time to let her do it (which is a lot of the time, one of many benefits of being a full time mommy). It's a good exercise in patience, taking deep breaths and all that.

However, there are two times I just can't let her do things for herself:

• When I need her to hurry for an important reason (usually when I need to take the boys to school or be home from errands before the bus drops them off, or sometimes if I'm cooking dinner or something)
• When she truly doesn't know how

The above picture was clearly one of the latter. I was getting her ready/helping her get ready for bed, and I had just put her diaper on. That made her mad, so she removed the tabs and repositioned them herself. Sorry Katy girl, you are welcome to choose the diaper, choose your jammies, and put your jammies on, but I need to put the diaper on for you. I won't even touch your legs if you want to do "bum up" and "bum down" for me. But haven't a poorly positioned diaper is just not an option, especially at bedtime!

She was not pleased with me for redoing it, and refused to pick her jammies. I tried to help her choose for a little while (I tried giving her two options and I tried letting her pick from the whole drawer), and she refused (she didn't want to get in jammies!). So I chose for her, and put them on for her.

And she SCREAMED for quite some time.

Interestingly, she wanted me to hold and snuggle her while she threw this huge tantrum. So I rocked with her in her room, trying to be comforting and sympathetic. She seemed to calm down a bit (down to normal crying rather than loud hysterical crying). I had the boys get Book of Mormon Stories to read in her room instead of everyone going downstairs. I started reading, and the screaming started again! So finally the boys & I went out to the loft to read, and I held Katy's door closed and told her she could scream all she wanted in her room, but needed to be calm to come out and be with us.

And guess. What. It worked! Within probably 3 or 4 minutes, she finally understood what I had told her about 5 times, and she calmed herself down! She stopped crying, and I opened her door maybe 15 seconds later. She came out and was pleasant for the rest of Scriptures, prayer, and her stories!

It's sad to see my Katy Princess turn half angel/half demon, but after going through this stage of life with two other children, I have a bit more perspective. It really is indicative of a good thing: learning to be independent and learning how to handle strong emotions. I just wish I still thought the terrible twos ended at three. From past experience, three is just as bad & often worse. Deep breaths, deep breaths, we'll all survive.




Oh, and there's an interesting thing that I suspect may be connected. Katy & Ryan have playdates with Natalie & Peter almost every Tuesday since the beginning of the school year. The boys are absolutely adorable, really well matched friends. They're only about two months apart. The girls are about a year apart (Natalie is older), and Katy hadn't really gotten into playing with her yet. She loved having playdates, but just hadn't reached the "play together" developmental level yet. She was still doing the "play alongside" thing. Yesterday was the first time we've played in 3 weeks due to illnesses, and Katy & Natalie played together really well! We were at a park (it was a beautiful day!), and they kept running around together, doing the slide at the same time and stuff like that. Once I even saw them holding hands while they ran. :-)

Now I'm no human development expert, but to me it doesn't appear purely coincidental that Katy developed the "I do it or I throw a tantrum" and the "play together" mindsets at the same time. I'm not sure how those could be connected, but both are fairly noticeable milestones, and both have been reached within the last few weeks.

My baby is growing up. :-)

Bathroom Fix-up, Mostly Done

I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture to fully appreciate the transformation. We had white walls, not great wood cupboards, yucky looking vinyl floor, and nasty, nasty toilet and caulking. And not just because we have a few boys here who lack the ability to aim. And no amount of scrubbing made it look clean. Ick.

Now we have fun green walls! I wanted to go fairly bright to make it work with the shower curtain. It turned out a bit brighter than I thought it would, but I think it looks good as a kids' bathroom!

We will be changing the countertop at some point. It isn't too ugly, but it doesn't quite fit the colorful room! And Dan wants to do a granite tile countertop in the kitchen, so we're going to have him practice in here. Better to have the learning done in the kids' bathroom!


I painted the cupboards and baseboards white. I will probably be doing the door at some point if I decide I like it enough. At this point I'm a little concerned about the ability of the white paint to withstand usage. I cleaned this bathroom this morning (hence my willingness to post pictures online!), and I noticed some dings and scratches in it. Maybe we'll need to figure something else out. Again, good to practice in here!

And Dan did the beautiful tile floor back in November, but I never thought to post pictures of it. Maybe because I didn't do the hard work! Anyhow, I really love the tile we picked, and Dan did a great job with it. See Honey, it was worth it to learn how in our old house!


I've been thinking about keeping a house clean vs. decorating a house lately. I'd love to have a super cute house like what you see in a magazine. But first of all, I am not so great at keeping it clean, so I should probably tackle that issue first. And second, I really just don't know how. All the little extra decoration-y things just seem unnecessary to me, but they're needed to get that look! I just can't feel good about spending much money on things that are entirely un-functional. I'm still torn about the whole issue. The bathroom looks nice, but unfinished. But does it really matter?