SCHOOL!

She's a "grader" and there's nothing greater than that. Here's Brooklyn on her 1st day of first grade. She did so well and was so ready to do something other than being bored at home. I'm just glad I don't have to listen to SpongeBob anymore!

(Taylor always wants in on the action.)

Here are the current projects. Two dressers and a toddler bed. We already did our office desk, but the room is still being assembled so pictures will be posted soon.

First is the sad Michael Jackson dresser that's been missing some handles. Mike put the stickers on when he was a kid. I can honestly tell you that Michael Jackson no longer exists on this dresser. It's time to let go (*sniff*) This dresser will be sanded down, stained, then will be struttin' some new hardware.

This was Brooklyn's toddler bed that we got for $35 from IKEA. Taylor's room is already yellow so the orange would be a horrible clash of color. All I have to do is remove the hardware and spray paint it white. Can't wait for the clean look!

This is a dresser I got from a neighbor who was giving it away for free. Tip for the wanna be DIY-ers, if it's free, just take it! This one I want to get creative with. This bad boy is going to get a new color, a pattern painted on the drawers and some pretty new knobs. This will be going in Brooklyn's room so I want to make it look good. Stay tuned for the results!

Changes!

Yeah for new hair cuts! This was to just get my hair healthy looking again. I've been working so hard at growing it out that I haven't cut my hair in about a year. Finally it got long enough that running my fingers through it wasn't working so well anymore. Luckily Jessica (Killian) Olsen is one of my neighbors and while she cut Brooklyn's hair for the new school year I decided to get mine cut as well. Voila! Hello swoopy bangs and layers once more!

Projects!

(I posted 3 things today. Don't forget to check them all out!)

We've had so many projects lately that if you ever need to find us on Saturday, just drive down to Home Depot. Projects include weed killing, landscaping, fixing sprinklers, shelves for a pantry, Mike's pedal board and Mike's pieced together guitar.

Strawberry!

(Don't forget to check the other new post after this one)

Last week we had a Girls' Night Out in Strawberry! My best friend Rebecca and her girls and me and my girls all drove up to Rebecca's parent's cabin. It's still being completed, but it had running water and toilets and electricity which is all you really need, right? We had a blast just hanging out and relaxing. I'm so glad we went. Thanks so much Rebecca for inviting us! Here's the pics:

Back seat drivers :)

Taylor loves car rides, Kimberlee hates bumpy roads.

BFFs :D

Yes, they wanted to be there.

Chillin' in the loft.

Having fun at the Llama farm that had mostly goats, but here is a llama.

Llama face!

Oh yeah, she's 6!

I can't believe I haven't posted about Brooklyn's birthday yet. I'm such a dork. Anyways, just over a month ago Brooklyn turned 6! We were away on a family vacation on her birthday so we didn't do a big party or anything. I admit my dork-i-ness one more time when I say I forgot my camera.

When we got back we had a little cupcake party with some friends and again I forgot to take pictures until it was over and there was only one friend left. This is Brooklyn's across the street friend Leah. We're glad she comes over to play with Brooklyn. They are almost exactly a year apart in age so it works out just right.

Happy Birthday Brooklyn! You're sweet when you want to be and love to be happy. You're a goof ball and a fire cracker all rolled into one. You keep us on our toes and you make us laugh so much. I love your curiosity even though I don't have the answer for you every time. Good luck in 1st grade this year. I know you'll make lots of new friends at your new school.

Oh yeah, Taylor had fun too.

Just wanted to say . . .

I love new backgrounds. Starts everything fresh and inspires new ideas to write about. Who knows if I'll actually get around to doing it.

That's all :)

18 Months!

On May 25th Taylor reached the official nursery age! Amazing how time flies! It seems like yesterday I was getting 4 hours of interrupted sleep at night and letting her cry it out while I made dinner. Now she's as happy as can be. She's great at entertaining herself and sleeps a good 12-13 hours at night without waking up! She's quickly learning that it's funny to make mommy run after her and that switches make lights go on and off and handles open doors to the magical bowl of water, aka the toilet. She loves "reading" books and riding her trike. She is getting better at saying "Mommy" and "Daddy", "Papa" and "Mama", "Puppy" and "Mow" (meow for cat), she's still getting the hang of Brooklyn. It sounds like Boo-n more than anything. She knows sign language for more, please, tree, flower, all done, down, hello/goodbye, and points to the door and says "Go!" She loves taking walks and playing in the dirt. She still loves her "tag" blanket from Aunt Holly and sleeps with it everyday. It's tricky when I have to wash it without her knowing. She's my angel with goofy faces and giggles all around. I'm so glad she's a part of our family! Happy 18 month birthday Taylor!

"Distant Land" by John Rutter

I heard this on Music and the Spoken Word this morning and loved it. Just thought I'd share.

I see a distant land: it shines so clear.

Sometimes it seems so far, sometimes so near.

Come, join together, take the dusty road;

Help one another: share the heavy load.

The journey may be long: no end in sight;

There may be hills to climb, or giants to fight:

But if you’ll take my hand,

we’ll walk together t’ward the land of freedom.

I hear the distant son: it fills the air.

I hear it, deep and strong, rise up in prayer:

O Lord, we are many; help us to be one.

Heal our divisions: Let thy will be done.

I know the time will come when war must cease:

A time of truth and love, a time of peace.

The people cry, ‘How long

till all the world can join the song of freedom.’

I touch a distant hand and feel its glow,

the hand I hoped was there: at last I know.

Swords into ploughshares: can it all come true?

Friends out of strangers: start with me and you.

I see another time, another place

where we can all be one, one human race.

The walls will melt away,

we’ll come together on the day of freedom.

A few of my favorite things

People keep asking me if I've taken pictures of the new house. Well I finally did and here they are to who ever is interested. These are a few of my favorite things about the house.

I love the entry way.

It's the perfect spot for our Jesus picture!

I got my dream fridge! Thank you Sears Outlet!

Before going up the stairs you get a beautiful view of my piano cubby.

I love our banister! Not many houses come like this anymore.

Mike let me do what I wanted to our bedroom so we have a chocolate brown accent wall with a light blue on the others. I had some fun prepping the walls with tape outlining trees. This is just one of two on the same wall. If I don't end up liking it, I can always just finish painting the room. It was fun and I felt art-sy. And FINALLY, we have a ceiling fan in our bedroom! It's been a while.

Who knows when our back yard will be finished. Mike both ended his ASU classes this week and started at the Art Institute. Brooklyn only has 2 weeks left before summer vacation. The heat is already upon us. Oh well. It will happen when it happens. We're just happy to be home! Thanks to everyone who helped us move!

Who wants to help us move!?

So, I'm fairly confident that you're sitting at your computer and your hand just shot up in the air volunteering for this joyous task. I (Mike) sent out an email to the contacts I have but for those that may have slipped through the cracks, I extend an invitation and many thanks in advance.

We're starting at our current address at 8 AM this Saturday (5/1/10) to load the truck.

We hope to start unloading at the new house around 10-ish.


We could use help on either end so if anybody is willing, we'd love to have you and would love for you to see our new home, too.

If you'd like to help, or even think you might be able to, just leave a comment with your email address and we'll send you the details.

THANK YOU!!

New houses are fun but, holy crap, are the a lot of work!

Easter time!

Happy Easter everyone!

Fablehaven

Just finished reading this book. This is actually the 2nd volume. Yes, I've been sucked into another series that apparently hasn't been finished yet. It's a great easy read and very imaginative. I'd place it up there with Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia. Lots of magic and mystery for a couple of middle school aged kids. Lots of good twists and irony. Not as predictable as you would imagine. I often get caught up in the climax really worried, not knowing how it will turn out. Who knew reading a book could also raise your heart rate? :) I happened to pick this volume up at Costco for $4.97 (paperback). I love good cheap books. I think I'll go back and just buy the series. I'm sure Brooklyn would like to read it one day.

24 days and counting . . .

I'm so excited about this move. I can't go a single day without thinking about little things like cleaning the new kitchen or HAVING CARPET. One thing I have my eye on right now is this:

I can't wait to have a new refrigerator to fill it with all the fun healthy stuff and not have to bend over backwards to see what I forgot to eat earlier in the week or to dig in my "freggie" drawers (thanks Brittney for the most awesome healthy term ever. aka fruits and veggies) Only 24 days until we get the keys and praying things go smoothly!

Here it is!

We're buying this house!

I wanted to wait until we had the inspection done before I announced it to everyone. We've been looking at houses since January mostly just to see what was out there and if we could afford something. Well, apparently we can! Closing date is Apr 16th! Stay tuned for more of our first time home buyer experiences!

ZOOOOOOO!

I'm such a bad mom. I have never taken Brooklyn to the zoo so this week I got to make up for it. On Monday I drove to Tucson with two of my sis-in-laws to visit another sis-in-law and we took all of our kids to the Reid Park Zoo. Except for Kyla. She's 14 and too cool for the zoo. :)

Rhinos

Giraffes

Monkeys

Train rides

I got to take Grant (6) and Matt (6) in my car on the way. Best moment in the car? Here it goes:

Radio: Ra ma ra ma la . . .

Grant: Lady Gaga!

Me: You know who Lady Gaga is?

Grant: Ya, my mom listens to this.

Matt: Hey, how do you make Lady Gaga cry?

Me: How Matt?

Matt: Poker Face!

(Uncontrollable laughter ensues)

We had a great time. Thanks again guys for making it such a fun day!

I think my circuits just overloaded...

Whatever Kristi's surprise is, I don't know if it can compete with this...

This is where the big nerd inside me really overpowers the medium-sized nerd I really am on the outside.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

We'll soon be making an announcement. I just thought I'd send out a teaser and let you all guess at what it could be. (If you know what it is don't ruin it for everyone else!)

Until next time . . .

OH NUTS!

Yesterday I was thinking that I have had such an amazing week! Brooklyn and I have been working on not fighting as much. When your child has an opinion about everything it's hard to get her to do simple tasks like putting on clothes, taking a bite of food, picking up a backpack, etc. So, this week has been great. I stopped nagging so much and Brooklyn stepped up her responsibilities, however simple they may be. I was telling Mike how great she's been so he suggested we go out for a treat.

When Brooklyn came home she picked ice cream so we headed to Golden Spoon. I know, frozen yogurt and ice cream are not the same things, but 5 year olds don't know that frozen yogurt is better for you and they can't tell the difference anyways. She got a Just Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles and I decided to get the Low Fat Peanut Butter Cup. All of the tables were taken inside so we walked across the parking lot to sit at the tables outside of Taco Bell. There we sat enjoying our non-ice cream. We like to sample each others and Taylor got to have some, too. It was a little windy and cold so we ate as fast as we could so we could hurry back to the car. I got to finish the last couple bites of Brooklyn's because she was too cold. So we got in the car and headed back home.

When we got home I noticed Taylor's allergies were acting up again. We just got over a bad case of seasonal allergies with her. We had to give her two breathing treatments a day with two different meds and thank goodness we got it all cleared up, but now she was showing symptoms again: flemy cough, congested, but runny nose, itchy, watery, red eyes, you know the bit. So I busted out the breathing treatment again (which I had just put away that morning). After that grueling process she didn't seem to be getting better. In fact, it was worse. She just kept crying and crying and rubbing snot all over her face and then she was sneezing like crazy! I decided to put her in the bathtub and hope the warm water would calm her down. It worked . . . for about 3 minutes, then the crying and the rubbing started again. I wrapped her up in a towel and kept her hands away from her face. I put on her favorite movie (baby einstein) and just held her until she would calm down. She was about asleep when I noticed little red bumps on her face. Then it hit me . . . Peanuts! I was sure it was an allergic reaction to the peanut butter cup flavor frozen yogurt I gave her. I unwrapped her and saw the hives spread all over her body. I got her dressed and we all rushed to Good Night Pediatrics and had the doctor tell me what to do. Luckily, nothing worse happened than the hives. Poor girl, her face was so swollen. You could even see the little bumps on her ears. The doctor prescribed a steroid medication for three days and dosage amount of benedryl and sent us on our way. After the first dose of benedryl she was already looking so much better.

Today she's doing fine. She still seems a little swollen and itchy, but I'm so glad it's not as bad as some people get it. I would hate to have to carry an epinephrin pen everywhere I go. Doctors don't do scratch tests until the child is 4 years old, but the doctor last night told me, this is most likely something she will not grow out of so getting her tested at 4 would be a good idea and to just stay away from peanuts altogether.

Now . . . how far do you think I should take this? Should I throw out the peanut butter, read labels on all of my food to make sure it wasn't made or manufactured with or near peanut oil etc, etc, etc? Or should I just be careful what I give her and let everyone else eat what they want? Anyone else have nut allergy horror stories?

Hooray for 10Ks!

Some of you may know that for the past 10 weeks I've been in training for the London's Run 10K. Well, the event was last Saturday and I did it! I can't believe I actually did it. It took a lot of hard work and motivation to go running on those cold, dark mornings. I just kept going, mostly because the fat was melting off me like butter. I was losing at least 1/2 a pound every time I ran so I didn't want to stop. For those who may be interested, here's the program I followed.

http://rununiversity.com/couchtok.html

Here are my results:

Chest: -1 inch

Waist: -1 inch

Hips: -2.25 inches

Thigh: - 1.5 inches

Total lbs lost: 20!!!!

Time for the 10K: 1hr 5min 5sec

(That's an average of less than 10 min for a mile. I started out killing myself to just do 13 min miles)

Thanks Erin for being my rock! I wouldn't have made it to the event if it weren't for you. Thanks Mike for supporting me in this even though you had to get up some mornings before you wanted to take care of the kids and for buying me awesome running shoes. Thanks Melissa and Jen for being my fitness gurus and your great advice. Thanks to all the bands on my playlist: Jimmy Eat World, All-American Rejects, Kings of Leon, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Paramore, Guster, Rascal Flatts, Savage Garden, and yes, even Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Only 3 more events to do this year and I'll have met my goal.