what we've been up to

The last few weeks have turned out to be really really busy for our family. Jon is trying to finish up his semester, the rest of us had (in random order) book club, Primary meeting, enrichment, swim lessons, open house at school, father/son campout, ballet, English Dept. party, school half day, activity day girls, mother's day crafts in Seth's class and at church yesterday...phew. Thankfully I had an awesomely-relaxing Mother's Day (except for the afore mentioned Mother's Day craft in Primary that I was in charge of- that was crazy). Jon did a great job taking care of all my usual responsibilities so I could just chill. I wish every day was Mother's Day. (Plus, I got released from my calling yesterday- it was a great day!)

I made these rolls for enrichment and the school open house (they were on the same night). They were yummy and got eaten up quickly.

This is Maryn's new dress, thanks Aunt Wendy!

We were watching funny animal videos on You Tube. Maryn loves to snuggle Seth!

wedding: Wendy

I had an absolutely totally fun time during my trip to Tucson. There was a party literally everyday for 4 days, intermixed with all the wedding preparations. The whole event turned out beautifully, the weather was perfect, the overall look of the decorations was totally cool--totally Wendy, and of course the real Mexican food was so, so good (you really can't find that in my neck of the midwest).

True to form, I didn't take many pictures during my trip. The following are a few of the highlights. The rest can be viewed here. I'm anxiously waiting for Wendy and Chad to get home from Mexico so I can see the actual wedding pics from the real photog. Until then, here's a few--

This is one of the only pictures I got of the happy couple. Not the best because they are feeding cake to each other, but you can see Wendy's beautiful dress (knee-length) and a little glimpse of one of the cakes behind them. Wendy was very hands-on, not just in the planning of this wedding, but in its execution as well. What bride makes her own wedding cakes? She did. And they were really yummy.

Near the end of the night: Mom, me, Rach and Wendy (where were you, Car?) Wendy had 5 bridesmaids. She let us pick our own dresses (either white or cream) and she made us each a necklace (as well as her own). So awesome.

Jonas and Papa.

To continue the partying fun, the next day we had a birthday party for Ellena. Jonas got some goods out of the party too. This is the costume I bought to try and keep him from wearing Maryn's princess dresses. (It isn't working all that great so far.) Carlie got him the cool hat and swords to complete the look.

And finally, Wendy played guitar and sang a song for Chad, I Feel it All-- the song from their engagement video. It sounded really great, she is so talented. As I was listening to it, I looked around and realized that no one was filming it! Aaah! So I ran across the yard, got my puny little camera and recorded the last half of the song.

To end, I've included their engagement video (which I shot). It's really cute and she was so surprised! Chad flew in from Seattle and met us in Tucson, she saw him when she looked through that telescope thing. Watch it.

Halloween 2008

Happy Halloween to all!

For costumes this year, Seth chose to be Indiana Jones (thanks to Aunt Carlie for the hat and "man-purse") Maryn chose to be a kitty, and Jonas was a cowboy (with a too big hat and no boots- don't worry, he still looked cute). Jon was also Indiana Jones for some of the festivities (picture below).

We participated in a variety of Halloween activities this year: our ward trunk-or-treat, trick-or-treating at Daddy's office building, and trick-or-treating with our friends on Halloween night. (See those pumpkin buckets in the picture above? By the time we were done with all of these festivities, we had accumulated 6 bucket-fulls of candy. Sick. We let the kids pick out 10 pieces each and are going to give the rest to our Bishop- he keeps a stash in his office.)

Seth had been practicing the Indiana Jones half-smile, it shows up in a lot of the pictures.

Jonas's bandana functioned well as a bib to keep candy goo off of his coat.

By the time we remembered to take a picture of Indy father and son- Seth had had enough of the festivities.

The next few pics are of our kids and their BFFs. We all went trick-or-treating together in their neighborhood. (Which is a few residential streets away from a fancy country club, we even went to his house- but he wasn't handing out subs.)

Henry Jones, Jr. and Henry Jones, III.Little witch and kitty girl.

I'm sure the kids had a lot of fun over the past few days. They enjoyed trick-or-treating (for while, until they realized how much walking it took) and enjoying playing with their friends late into the evening (past their bedtimes). Jonas showed no hesitation and walked right up to people on their porches with his hands outstretched. We also had freakishly-good, AZ-type fall weather, not too cold at all.

As usual, for the grandparents, more pics of the events can be seen here.

yes, we're tired around here

This is how I found Jonas napping a few days ago, surrounded by his favorite things.

Maryn has been having night terrors where she wakes up screaming and is inconsolable. It wears both of us out.

But she sure is a pretty girl.

overheard at breakfast this morning

(Jon and I were in the living room, the kids were eating breakfast in the kitchen.)

Seth- "Mom's really the boss.  I know Dad's bigger than her, but she really is still the boss."

Maryn- "No, Dad's the boss!"

Seth- "No, Mom!"

Maryn- "No, both of them!"

Jon- "Maryn's right, now quit arguing!"

Seth and I know the truth.

the finished product

My goal over the next few weeks is to finish a bunch of projects that have been sitting around my house unfinished (some for over eight months). I have this problem where I get all excited to start a new project and then get burnt out when I realize I can't do it perfectly the first time. I need to get over that. Thus the push to finish everything, perfect or not. I can do it...right? (I'm going to chronicle my progress here so as to add some accountability, if only to myself.)
Project #1 finished: A crochet bag for Jon's new Macbook. (I'm obviously not doing these in chronological order because I started this one most recently and finished it first- mostly because Jon needed it quickly.) I started with the idea that I would use up some cool brown and black wool yarn leftover from making hats and few months ago, instead of buying anything new. I'm really bad at trying to gauge how much yarn will make how much product. So after I did that one big brown section and saw that I was almost out, I panicked and decided to add the green wool (of which I had recently bought a bunch on clearance) in small increments with the remaining brown and black. As you can see, the green sections started to get bigger and bigger until I finally ran out of both brown and black and had to finish everything up in green. I think it turned out kind of ugly, but Jon thinks it looks cool (and has even gotten some compliments on it since) so that's all that really matters. The inside lining is just three of those craft foam sheets hot glued together to form-fit the computer. Stitched together the yarn and lining in a few place, sewed on a button and presto- a laptop bag!

rear view (this probably should have been the front, more interesting stripes)

interior view

so much to say

My sister left yesterday morning after an eleven-day visit. We had such a fun time together. I loved having her here for so many reasons- here are a few (in no particular order)

• It was nice to have an extra pairs of hands to her me take care of my kids (although, I think this visit may have deterred her from having any more kids herself).
• I liked having someone to make and eat treats with without feeling guilty.
• I love the level of comfort our relationship has. We spent the better part of 18 years together- sharing a room for most of them. And while those times we not always pleasant- I think that all of the hard times were worth it to get us where we are today. I love you sis!
• I'm so glad that there is someone else in the world who laughs harder at their own jokes than anyone else.
  

During the whole visit, I don't think we managed to get a picture of the two of us together. Inevitably though, almost everywhere we went, people asked us if we were twins.

We did get some cute pictures of the kids- especially our two little babies who are only 2 weeks apart. I added some more to my my web album here, but I'll also post a few of my favorites.

Jonas and Ellena in Easter cuteness.

Maryn, Seth and Jonas sliding.

Maryn and Ellena in matching outfits (we did this a lot).

I do want to write another post about our trip to Nauvoo and Easter times (maybe two more posts) because they were special events and this post is getting long. (Maybe after I conquer this mountain of laundry...)

"Bootie-licious" (or pics to go with my last post)

Seth and Maryn in their Christmas Sunday clothes. Seth looks pretty happy doesn't he? To see more pics of our holiday times, click here. We also had some fun times with Wendy, click here to see those pics. Our family with Darth Vader at the Star Wars exhibit, for more pics of this fun trip, click here.Now onto pictures of the projects I have completed this past month (in random order). (For a few more pics of these projects, click here.) First- a hat for Wendy. She bought the fancy-schmancy yarn and I crocheted it, we added cute little pom-poms to the end of the earflaps later.

A hat for Annie. Unfortunately, it was too small by the time it made it to her house (three weeks after I sent it, thank you postal service). See her wear it here. A hat for Ellena. This one fit because I had Jonas to try it on. See her wear it here.
Mary Jane slipper booties for Annie, made intentionally big so as not to run into the preivous problem. Jonas modeled these too. See them received here.

And finally, a collaborative effort. Wendy cable knitted the front two panels and I crocheted the border, made the flower, and put the whole thing together. I was surprised that she actually put it on for the picture, she won't wear it more than a few seconds.

Projects not shown- a red sparkly scarf and white hat with huge pom-pom for Carlie and camo-colored booties for Jonas. I'm currently working on some blue sneaker booties for Jonas also.

You may be asking yourself- when does she have to time do all of this and keep her house clean, her family fed and still get some sleep? The answer is- I don't. That's what hobbies are all about, right? :)

getting back on track

I have not posted anything for a while for a few reasons. The main reason being that as more and more days came and went, I realized that it would take more and more effort to catch up on my blog and that made me avoid it altogether. But now, Jon started his new semester today and so our daily routines have begun to normalize. I realize that I need to get back to my real life. So I will attempt to give a short summary of our last 2 weeks.

First of all, some people commented and wanted more details about our crazy Christmas Eve. Well here they are in all their glory: We drove up to Chicago on Sunday (Dec 23) night and picked up Wendy from the Chicago Midway Airport. (Which was so busy, they wouldn't let anyone stop and wait for the people they were picking up, so we had to drive in a stop-and-go circle with hundreds of other cars 5 or 6 times.) We stayed at a hotel that I had booked online that was in downtown Chicago. It was an older but pretty nice hotel. The kids had trouble going to sleep because they were so excited about everything- Chicago, Wendy, Christmas. We should have planned better and brought the pack and play for Jonas and a sleeping bag for the kids- but we didn't- so Jon shared a bed with Seth and Maryn and I shared a bed with Wendy and Jonas. It was pretty much uncomfortable for everyone. Then as we were leaving the next day, a piece of paper was slipped under our door- it was a bill for parking at the hotel- $30. I have never heard of anything so crazy- a hotel charging you extra to park at their hotel! Next, we headed off to the museum to see the exhibit. We decided to be smart and save the $12 it cost to park there and park on the street a few blocks away. It was free admission day- so it was crazy busy. It was a challenge trying to keep our small group together. We went to the exhibit first and stayed in there for about an hour. It was really really awesome! There were costumes from the movies, a hovercraft you could ride on, an R2D2 you could build then plug in and drive, and a viritual game you played with small tiles on a large circle while watching yourself on a screen (hard to explain, but really cool). The rest of the museum was really really awesome too, three floors full of really cool interactive rooms about a variety of topics. By the time we got out of the exhibit, we only had the energy and time to go to a few rooms- farming, circus, and space exploration. Jon walked the few blocks, got the van and brought it back to the museum so we could load up the crew. He returned with a Christmas present from the City of Chicago- $50 ticket for not having our IL liscense plate on the front of our van. This is the law in IL, but there are so many cars in our town that don't have it, we have just been dragging our feet about getting it done. So we saved $12 in order to pay $50. Merry Christmas.

We had a nice Christmas, low-key, here at home with Wendy as a guest. We spent the next week getting our needlework on- me: crochet and Wendy: knitting. We both attempted to teach the other our skill, but both ended up sticking to what we know. We collaborated on a really cute sweater poncho for Maryn (that she won't wear- the stinker) and completed a bunch of other projects. I will post pics later this week.

We spent new year's eve at a friends house playing board games and singing along to the guitar (2 of my favorite things). Wendy went back up to Chicago to do the NYE thing and came home 24 hours later with Hans. We spent the next week watching movies, eating good food, crocheting/knitting, playing nintendo, and avoiding the outdoors (wind chill was below 0).

Last week...mmm...what did we do? My brother came home from a mission on Jan 10. Our town's library opened up their new building and we went three times (it's really cool). The rest of the week blends together.

And now here I sit. Dirty dishes, dirty laundry, dirty house, dirty kids- and I'm blogging. I guess my life really is back to normal.

cankle

Just to gross you all out, here's two pics of my ankle yesterday morning and evening, respectively. As I previously posted, it feels a lot better and really doesn't look all that bad. So I guess I'm on the mend.