It's Halloween up in this HOUSE!

Normally my halloween decorations consist of a pumpkin on the front porch... and that's it. But this year I decided to decorate October 1st to make it fun/special for Wendy and make the holiday last all month long. This is our halloween front door. We made this wreath with a combo of stuff from the craft store. It plays a "trick" on you because you might think it's cutesy, but just LOOK at the beady little eyes on that tiny evil bird! Come on. It's scary.

For our spooky table, we found dead branches from our yard, spray painted them black, and stuck some spiders all over. Wendy likes to hide these little guys all over the house and name them names that start with the letter S: Sally, Suey, Sassy, Steve, and Scotty.

I took these pictures during Harvey's nap, aka "Mommy & Wendy's quiet time." Someone wanted in on the action. Above is her impression of a ghost :)

Love her.

We were so excited to decorate & get ready for halloween, I made the mistake of letting us carve pumpkins the 1st week of October. The following two days were in the 90's - thanks A LOT California. Hello Kitty witch lasted less than 48 hours before it melted and filled up with black fur. We will be re-carving pumpkins 3 days before Halloween. I also found out that vasoline along the inside and a sprits of bleach and water will make your pumpkins last. Or you could just wait a little.

Clever Girl.

*practicing her smile/pose on picture day

Wendy was really excited, the other day, when I sat down to play dolls with her. She was laying them out and picking outfits for them. After she told me which ones I could "be," I picked up my assigned dolls and tried to start a normal doll conversation. 

Wendy: puts her hand out the way my mom does to the passenger seat in her car when she has to slam on the breaks, "MOM. Don't talk, okay?"
ME: "What?! But that's how you play dolls."
Wendy: "Mom...      all my dolls are mimes. They don't talk. Ever. Mimes don't talk. So don't talk, okay?"

Wow. I didn't even know she knew what a mime was. I think she really just wanted my presence, undivided attention, and to dress and stage her dolls... not so much my embarrassing mom pretend play. It was her very clever way of telling me to please shut up. Ha.

A Piggy Bank full of Penny Freckles

I recently came to the realization that my daughter is old enough to benefit from the vital life lesson that can only be learned through doing some good ol' household chores. So we went online and printed out this toddler chore chart I've been saving. She was INTO it. Her "chores" include brushing teeth, eating her breakfast (eating has always been a chore for Wendy), getting dressed, making her bed and cleaning up her toys. Even though only the last two are real chores, the consistency is good. She gets to put a sticker under each category as she completes it, then after she fills every thing up for the whole week she gets a dollar. When I told her the deal, her little face lit up. I could see the wheels turning in her head, "So... I could go to the 99 cent store and get WHATEVER I want?!" I would love to teach her the concept of saving for something bigger but that might be a little over her 4 year old head. It was an interesting week teaching her the joys of contributing. She really impressed me. Sometimes having her help is actually more work (and takes more patience) than just doing it myself, but her enthusiasm for chores was impressive and adorable. I almost got choked up watching her pick up some of her toys in the playroom (without being asked, mind you). I knew it wouldn't even make a dent, but her desire to help out was so sweet.

Turns out, a week is a long time. And, after taking out Sundays (the sabbath), Mondays & Wednesdays (the days I work) it actually took two weeks. When she finally completed her 1st chore chart, I only had a twenty in my wallet. She had waited so so SO long for some reward for her hard work, I gave her the twenty, told her it was a dollar and switched it out of her piggy bank for a single the next night after she fell asleep. She lost a little enthusiasm by that point, so I upped the ante. We changed the deal to a quarter per day she does all her chores= mo money + instant gratification.

She also gets a nickle for every night she goes to bed without any funny business (crying, yelling for us, getting out of bed, etc.). She couldn't remember what a nickle was called and said, "You forgot to give me one of those, um... you know Mom... like a... penny... freckle... thing?" So now we all call them penny-freckles. Her piggy bank is full of them & it is SO worth it.

Oh H no.

   *birds in order from left to right: bluish, whitish, peep, silly guy
awesome names courtesy of Wendy

Ryan: Uh... babe? I only see 3 birds in the cage. I think Whitish is missing.
Me: No, my eyes play tricks on me sometimes too, because Whitish gets lost against the white cage and white wall behind it. Maybe you should check again.
Ryan: ...No, there are definitely only three birds in here.

That is when I drop whatever it is I'm doing/holding, pick up my 30 lb baby and quickly exit the patio/playroom. I announce to Ryan that I refuse to go out there until the bird is found, and since that is where my treadmill is located, he is going to have a fat, grumpy, tired, unhealthy wife if he doesn't find it soon. (at this time, the room is a DISASTER. I'm talking can't-see-the-floor-under-all-the-toys disaster. Millions of little, tiny toys. Like squinkies and legos tiny. So it was actually pretty easy to loose a living, flying animal in there).

A couple days later my father-in-law found him in the doll house with all the barbies. I can just imagine that little bird checking out those hoochie dolls from across the room and planning his escape to get to them. My awesome father-in-law chased Whitish all over the patio (incredibly, without tripping and breaking his neck) and put him back for me. So, no harm no foul, but now I can't go out there without obsessively, compulsively counting the four birds a couple times. Dang pets. They're just glorified food storage. (don't tell Ryan I said that)

Before & After: Kitchen Remodel

 

 

I've really been procrastinating posting photos of the new kitchen, because, even though it's finished, I don't feel like it's complete. There are still a ton of little things I would like to do (i.e. stain the grout in the subway tile back-splash light gray, get/make some flat roman shades with the perfect white & yellow geometric patterned fabric, find the perfect piece of LARGE art to hang on the blank wall behind the dining table, and the list goes on and on). Then I had an epiphany. There is not a single room in my house that I feel is "complete." At this rate, I would never share my beautiful new kitchen and all the hard work that went into it. So here it is...

*I threw my friend, Sharla, a baby shower (more on that later) and just left up the bunting. It goes in Harvey's nursery, but that big wall is so bare. I guess I'll leave it there until I find the perfect piece of art to take its place.

I adore this little kitchen. The first night it was done, I suggested to Ryan that we should bring our pillows and a blanket and sleep right there on the hard wood floor so I could star gaze at it all night. It's all the little things, things you can't really see, that make my day. Things like: 

• the height of the counter tops being up to standard (I guess the last kitchen was built for a very short woman in the late 1960's, leaning over to chop or do dishes used to kill my lower back)
• the refrigerator being hooked up to a water line so the water/ice machine works (I LOVE to have a glass of ice water with me at all times. And now, we'll save a small fortune by not needing to buy so many water bottles)
• having drawers. yep, that's right, our last kitchen had NO drawers. 
• cupboards that close, even if you don't shut them at the exact same time.
• being pleasantly surprised all over again every time I walk out into the living room, I hope I never get used to it.

I could go on forever, but I won't. I was hoping that having a nicer kitchen would automatically make me a better cook. It totally has. It's just made me WANT to cook, which is a big step for me. I just want to be in there all the time. I love it.

Uncle Nathan

*My brother, Nathan, looking very handsome in the Rexburg, ID Walmart... 

can you tell it's a little busy the weekend before classes start?

This month my baby brother moved out of my parents house and started college. I am SO proud of him... and a little jealous of him. He is attending Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho. The best college in the world. I was there from 2001 to 2004 and I loved it. Part of my heart belongs to Rexburg. That precious hick town helped me become who I am today. He's going to have the time of his life, I can already tell. He's going to develop genuine friendships with people from around the world. He's going to learn so much and have his testimony strengthened at the feet of men who are (or will be future) prophets and apostles. He's going to get 18 years worth of White Christmas' that he missed out on in California... in one semester.

For family night this week, we had a lesson about the importance of an education. We shared how happy we all are that Uncle Nathan (and daddy and Wendy) are working hard to learn good things that will help them the rest of their lives. There are a ton of scriptures about education, but Wendy was most fascinated by what we read in D&C 130:19... that the knowledge we gain in this life will even benefit us in the life to come, even after we die. Then we made uncle Nathan's favorite Sunday night dessert to send to him: homemade chocolate chip cookies! Wendy wanted to know if Nathan could take the cookies with him when he dies too :). She also suggested we just send him just the cookie dough because he always sneaks a ton of it when we make it on Sunday nights at my parent's house (I thought that was cute, just shows how much she knows her uncle... it could also be because she's his partner in crime and can never stop herself from eating all the cookie dough until it's been balled up and put in a hot oven.) We sent him the cookies (most of them) with a the picture above, and some letters.

In my brain, Nathan will always be the raspy voiced, tanned skin, sandy blonde, cutest ever 7 year old boy he was when I left home for Rexburg in 2001. This picture (above) was actually up in my room while I was away at school. I know it probably wasn't always fun having 3 big sisters who think they're your mom, but I loved getting to help raise him. I was 11 years old when Nathan was born so I was old enough to remember him at every stage of his life and it trips me out when my own kids are at those stages. It kinda slaps me in the face and makes me realize that my kids will be grown up before I know it. I love this kid, his love for the gospel, his passion for politics, our mutual appreciation for movies (and books and disneyland and dessert), his friendship with my parents and his desire to do good. I can only hope my kids follow his example some day.

*2005

Love you Nate the Great.

More rambling about the kitchen...

*ryan, looking very official... or very lost

During the kitchen remodel, I thought I was going to be that girl who knew exactly what she wanted. I would wow the contractors with how decisive a woman I was. But something that surprised me about building a new kitchen was how suddenly big decisions are needed to be made about things you haven't really given a second thought (because all you had was your first thought and didn't realize that wouldn't work out). ONE of (many of) those things that I knew what I wanted but couldn't have and had to pick something else quick was the countertops. 

I have a pinterest folder filled with pictures of shiny white kitchens and their pristine marble countertops. Apparently, marble is a horrible material for a kitchen countertop. Especially if you have little kids. It is very porous and absorbs marinara sauce and red fruit juice like a sponge. It's also a very hard substance that tends to shatter glass dishes easily. Thanks for nothin' pinterest. SO... Ryan and I went on a crazy hunt for some granite that was on the gray scale. We went to a couple different warehouses and got so many samples we could have been the 4th little pig who built his house out of granite. But I didn't love any of them. 

UNTIL... one night, with eyes burning from searching a warehouse and jotting down product numbers for samples to take home, I walked by "Kashmir White." It was love at first sight, with a slab of rock. Literally. In an instant, I saw our future together. I saw my children and I, wearing our aprons, rolling out cookie dough on this surface, my little ones with their homework papers sprawled out all over it, and myself with a bottle of windex in my hand every night, making it sparkle like new- the way my parents taught me :).  I can't tell you how much I love this granite. It's probably because of how much I DIDN'T love anything else. It's the perfect mix of white and gray. It has subtle warm and cool shades of blue, tan, burgundy, and black that will allow me to use whatever accent colors I want. It always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS looks clean (which can be a bad thing... it's probably filthy most of the time. During the remodel, all the other samples looked so dusty, but that little square of Kashmir White looked freshly windexed). It reminds me of those falling sand pictures I used to love (were those an 80's thing? I don't see them anymore), and just like those sand thingys, I could sit and stare at it all day.